State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters on Tuesday that talks between the United States and the Taliban for a “political solution” to the security of Afghanistan will result in concessions from both sides. Within hours of that statement, the Taliban took credit for an attack in Afghanistan that resulted in the death of four Americans.
The Associated Press reported Wednesday morning that the Taliban have “claimed responsibility” for an attack on an U.S. air base in Afghanistan that resulted in the death of four Americans. This attack was facilitated after the Taliban announced the opening of offices in Qatar for the purpose of negotiations for a “political solution” in the Afghan region.
The State Department seems to have put no pre-conditions for the Taliban to come to the negotiation table and suggests that major concessions could be made to the terrorist group in an effort to bring security and stability to the region without the need for U.S. presence.
State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki left the possibility open with reporters on Tuesday that upcoming “negotiations” with the Taliban could result in the delisting from the United States’ “Most Wanted” terrorists list in order to facilitate stability in the Afghan region. When asked about the Taliban’s insistence for leaders to be removed from the “Most Wanted” list, Psaki said, “There need to be negotiations, there need to be discussions. The U.S. will have some, Afghans will have some, but I’m not going to get ahead of what the end results will be.”
Once limited to Afghanistan, al-Qaeda, thanks to U.S. policies, has metastasized around the world, and is in the consolidation/training phase for the new jihad.
By Raymond Ibrahim:
Americans pay attention to terrorists when they blow up battleships, skyscrapers, and embassies. But if history has taught us anything, it’s that the real threat lies in the calm before the storm.
The last ten years have been relatively secure in the U.S. Since 9/11 there have been no major terrorist attacks executed on our soil before Boston, and no large loss of American lives. This has lulled Americans into a false sense of security.
But our government should know better.
In fact, the very same U.S. policies that created al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in the 1980s—leading to the horrific attacks of 9/11—are today allowing al-Qaeda to metastasize all around the Muslim world. As in the 80s, these new terrorist cells are quietly gathering strength now, and are sure to deliver future terror strikes that will make 9/11 seem like child’s play.
To understand this dire prediction, we must first examine the United States’ history of empowering Islamic jihadis—only to be attacked by those same jihadis many years later—and the chronic shortsightedness of American policymakers, whose policies are based on their brief tenure, not America’s long-term wellbeing.
In the 1980s, the U.S. supported Afghani rebels—among them the jihadis—to repel the Soviets. Osama bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri, and countless foreign jihadis journeyed to Afghanistan to form a base of training and planning—the first prerequisite of the jihad, as delineated in Sayyid Qutb’s Milestones.
Al-Qaeda—which tellingly means “the base”—was born.
The U.S. supported al-Qaeda, they defeated the Soviets, shook hands with Reagan, Afghanistan became ruled by the Taliban, and for many years all seemed well.
But it wasn’t. For over a decade al-Qaeda, unfettered in Afghanistan, trained and plotted. Then came the strikes of 9/11, which were portrayed by the talking heads as a great and unexpected surprise: “What happened? Who knew? Why do they hate us?”
Had al-Qaeda not secured a base of operations, 9/11 would not have occurred.
But if Reagan helped create the first al-Qaeda cell in relatively unimportant Afghanistan, Obama is helping to create numerous, more emboldened, al-Qaeda cells in some of the most important Islamic nations.
He is doing this by helping get rid of Arab autocrats who were effective at suppressing jihadis (even if for selfish reasons), while empowering some of the most radical jihadis who were formerly imprisoned or in hiding.
And all in the name of the “Arab Spring” and “democracy.”
Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan said twice this week that he waged the 2009 Fort Hood shooting massacre to defend “others” from his fellow soldiers. Those others, he said during a hearing Tuesday, were “The leadership of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the Taliban.”
Hasan plans to represent himself during his pending murder trial in military court, using a defense that says he acted in “defense of others.” Despite his own statement, and detailed records showing he communicated with American-born al-Qaida cleric Anwar al-Awlaki before the attack, the government considers the attack a form of “workplace violence” rather than terrorism.
The attack killed 13 people and wounded 30 more. Because of the “workplace violence” designation, victims will not receive Purple Hearts and survivors have not received combat benefits. U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., has sponsored an amendment to an appropriations bill to change that. Hasan, meanwhile, remains in the Army pending his trial. He has received $278,000 in pay since the Fort Hood attack.
In addition to being denied benefits, survivors may now have to face Hasan if they are called to testify at his trial. “It’s definitely going to make (testifying) a lot more difficult,” retired Staff Sgt. Shawn Manning told the Washington Times. “And it makes me sick to my stomach that he’d even (use that defense).”
In addition to his Awlaki connections, witnesses say Hasan shouted ”Allahu Akhbar” as he opened fire. Others said he made no secret of his radical Islamic beliefs during his time in service. He justified suicide bombings, had “SOA,” or “Soldier of Allah,” on his business cards and gave a presentation called, “Why the War on Terror is a War on Islam.”
None of that has been enough for the government to classify his shooting rampage as a terrorist attack. His new claim that he acted to defend leaders of a terrorist organization likely won’t be enough, either.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has called for called for a Justice Department civil rights investigation against a small-town Washington teacher for “racism.” Her offense? According to Brigitte Gabriel of ACT! For America, “during a class on bullying, she referred to Hamas and the Taliban as examples of organizations that use violence to bully people.”
In a statement, the teacher said:
I explained to [the students] that I was not talking about Muslims and Arabs in general, but groups that chose to impose their will by training people to intimidate and kill other people. … It is related to a state mandate that public schools teach students about bullying and not allow it.
CAIR’s attack against the teacher is specifically aimed at the education system, threatening to constrict the capacity of our youth to comprehend the world. The implications of an education system dominated by the Islamist group are dire and in direct conflict with the American way of life.
Hamas Deliberately Targets Children. In 2011, the terror group launched an anti-tank missile directly at a yellow school bus. A 16-year-old boy, the only passenger on the bus, was critically wounded. The driver had just dropped off 30 other students. The New York Daily News called the attack “subhuman.”
The Taliban Regularly Stone Women to Death. In 2010, ABC News reported on a video showing a woman stoned to death by the Taliban. Below is an unedited, graphic video of the horrific crime.
The Islamist Group CAIR Has Penetrated Deep Into America.
CAIR has penetrated areas far from traditional Muslim population centers such as Dearborn, MI and Northern New Jersey. CAIR’s latest assault is against a teacher in Concrete, WA (A pin), an isolated town 100 miles from Seattle.
A rally in support of the teacher will take place Tuesday, March 19 at 7:30 p.m. at the Concrete Assembly of God, Concrete, WA.
The new Secretary of State John Kerry has proposed $60 million in aid to the Syrian Opposition Council in order to provide basic services in areas they control as well as medical and food supplies for their military. This announcement was met with skepticism by some backers of the Syrian opposition affiliated with the secular forces and also by a number of military and Middle East experts. Farid Ghadri, leader of the Syria Reform Party and a secular supporter of the Syrian opposition, has been arguing that “since the bulk of the opposition, the one recognized by the United States, is dominated by the Islamists the funds will be used by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists to ensure a political influence in the zones controlled by the rebels.” Over the past few months, other opposition leaders, including former MP Ma’moun Homsi who attended the opposition conferences in Turkey and Egypt and worked with the Muslim Brotherhood, told us “if Washington earmarks financial help strictly to the Brotherhood, they will get a Brotherhood dominated Syria after Assad.” Homsi, himself a conservative Sunni blasted the Brotherhood on December 12, 2012 for being “authoritarians.” Sherkoh Abbas, chairman of the Kurdish National Assembly of Syria said “it seems that the US Administration did not learn from past experiences with the Taliban in Afghanistan.” He argued that by granting millions of dollars to mostly Islamist leaders of the opposition Washington will be responsible for the rise of Taliban like groups in Syria. The Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists are fighting the Assad dictatorship to replace it with a Jihadi totalitarian regime.” He added: secular and moderate Syrians, Kurds and Assyrian Christians won’t see much from that aid, it will fall into the hands of Salafists who are the foot soldiers of al Qaeda.”
In my book The Coming Revolution: Struggle for Freedom in the Middle East that predicted the upheavals in 2010, I argued that whenever a dictatorship might fall, particularly in Syria, there will be a race between Islamists and secular reformists over the future of the country. It would be toxic for the free world to willingly arm and fund the Islamists, including the Salafists, for they will work on using this support to impose an Islamist regime instead of a liberal democracy. The decision by the Obama Administration to fund the Brotherhood-dominated opposition in Syria with $60 million dollars will further the cause of the Islamists and empower them while doing nothing to promote freedom in that region of the world with the secular democratic forces in civil societies.
Dr Walid Phares is an advisor to the US Congress on Counter Terrorism, and the author of ten books including Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies against America and The Coming Revolution: Struggle for Freedom in the Middle East. Dr Phares appears on national, international and Arab media. He teaches at several universities and briefs US Government agencies on Terrorism and the Middle East.
If truth is the first casualty of war, author Kerry Patton has ably attempted to correct that dictum in his highly entertaining novel, Contracted: America’s Secret Warriors, a fictionalized account of the heroic but overlooked work performed by civilian contractors in Afghanistan.
As a military veteran and expert in intelligence, security and counter-terrorism who has worked at the highest levels of government, including the Department of Defense and Homeland Security, Patton initially began Contracted as an autobiography.
However, fear of breaching intelligence secrets led Patton to switch gears, writing a fictionalized story instead, one based on true events, but told through the voice of Declan Collins, a former military man recruited out of civilian life by the CIA for intelligence work in Afghanistan.
There, Declan and his civilian partner, Rex Browhart, himself a former military vet, find themselves assigned as military advisors at a Forward Operating Base in eastern Afghanistan.
At the FOB, Collins and Browhart form a working alliance with a varied group of officers and enlisted men on a plan to arm Afghan warlords eager to fight the Taliban, a plan Collins believes will save American lives.
Most of the men aiding Collins in this task are a mixture of Special Forces, including Delta Force, Navy Seals and Army Rangers and Green Berets. To Collins, these men are modern day warriors, part of a dying breed, driven to sacrifice their lives for God, family and country.
It’s a patriotic theme Patton employs throughout his book, one in which money isn’t the primary motivating factor driving these contractors — most of whom are former military — but rather a deep love of country further fueled by an abiding loyalty to aid their brothers-in-arms.
Unfortunately, the press has helped to paint a picture of civilian contractors as either nothing more than mercenaries in search of a quick paycheck or out-of-control homicidal maniacs, such as those in Blackwater, the private security consulting firm employed by the US government during the Iraq war.
Not surprisingly, that negative portrayal tends to overlook the heroism and sacrifices that many contractors have performed and endured once they have left the comfort and safety of the civilian world for life in a combat zone.
In fact, it is to that point that Patton reportedly wrote Contracted, noting it is “truly meant for those unsung heroes who never get recognized yet often get chastised.”
Patton also doesn’t neglect the hardships faced by the family and loved ones left behind, weaving into his book the struggles and fears faced by Collins’ new young wife, Brannagh. As Patton has noted, “This book is not just for them (the contractors) but for their friends and family as well. They too deserve some recognition.”
That recognition comes at the same time as the use of civilian contractors in combat zones by American corporations, defense contractors, and governmental agencies — including the DOD, State Department and CIA — is growing in both prominence and danger.
Specifically, in 2012 American civilian contractors constituted 62 percent of the US presence in Afghanistan. These contractors are used in many unarmed roles, including transporting supplies, staffing food services, building homes and commercial facilities and serving as interpreters.
However, they are also employed in armed capacities, jobs which include providing security for State Department and Pentagon officials, guarding US installations, gathering intelligence and training the Afghan army and police.
Still, whether operating in armed or unarmed roles, the risks these civilian contractors face are great. In 2011, 430 American contractors were reported killed in Afghanistan — 386 who worked for the Defense Department — and 1,777 injured or wounded.
Frank Crimi is a San Diego-based writer and author of the book Raining Frogs and Heart Attacks. You can read more of Frank’s work at his blog,www.politicallyunbalanced.com.
To sign our petition to stop the witch hunt against Rep. Michele Bachmann, click here.
Over the last four years, the United States has suffered a series of comprehensive intelligence failures. These intelligence failures ranged from a lack of preparation for the attacks of September 11, 2012, the misguided assessment that there was a moderate group of Taliban willing to form a government and the refusal to believe that the Arab Spring would lead to Islamist takeovers, rather than liberal open societies.
The Obama Administration’s foreign policy has been one disaster after another and it has been quick to blame intelligence failures for its own mistakes. When accounting for its lies about a YouTube trailer leading to the attack on the Benghazi mission, Obama blamed the intelligence. But it turned out that the intelligence had been edited and censored for political reasons. What appeared to be an intelligence failure in Benghazi was actually political manipulation. And the same may well be true of the entire Arab Spring, of Afghanistan and the entire spectrum of attacks on September 11, 2012.
As a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann was proven correct in all the areas where the Obama Administration and its political allies suffered from intelligence failures.
In September 2011, one year before the attacks, Michele Bachmann warned that the Arab Spring was a disaster that would lead to the rise of radical elements across the Middle East. Widely ridiculed for it at the time, she was demonstrating the insight and foresight that a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is supposed to have.
Where Obama was proven wrong; Bachmann was proven right. When Michele Bachmann first warned about the Muslim Brotherhood, it was an obscure organization to most people in Washington D.C. After its successful seizure of power in Egypt however, Bachmann’s critics no longer have any excuse for pretending that condemning the group’s ruthless manipulations is a conspiracy theory. Not when Egyptian liberals are among the loudest voices warning about the Muslim Brotherhood threat; not just to Egypt or the Middle East, but to America as well.
A recent article in the Egyptian magazine, Rose El-Youssef listed some of the prominent and influential Muslim Brotherhood figures with access to the policymaking apparatus of the Obama Administration. Two of those figures were in the Department of Homeland Security. This article was another piece of evidence in a mountain of evidence, much of it collected by the FBI, about the conspiratorial activities of the Brotherhood and its front groups in the United States.
It wasn’t the intelligence that failed. It was the political operation that allowed Muslim Brotherhood operatives close access to the policymaking apparatus of the United States government that led to the politicized intelligence and the policy failures. Those policy failures led to the ascendance of Al Qaeda in North Africa and the Middle East, the triumph of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the attacks of September 11, 2012.
Nevertheless liberal organizations have launched a petition demanding that she be removed from the intelligence committee for spreading “conspiracy theories” and attacking “dedicated public servants”. After the complete implosion of Obama’s foreign policy, such attacks should be seen for what they are; an attempt to silence one of their critics who had been right all along while covering up their own lies.
To understand the source of the politicized environment that led to the foreign policy disasters, we need look no further than the Center for American Progress and its tentacle, Think Progress.
The Center for American Progress is a secretive think tank funded by covert donors which was described by Time Magazine as Obama’s idea factory and the single greatest influence on his administration. For all intents and purposes, CAP was the criminal brain in the Frankenstein of old Clinton staffers that would become the Obama Administration.
Secret Pakistan BBC – Double Cross : This first episode investigates duplicity that emerged after 9/11 and disturbing intelligence reports after Britain’s forces entered Helmand in 2006.
In May this year [2011] , US Special Forces shot and killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. Publicly Pakistan is one of America’s closest allies – yet every step of the operation was kept secret from it.
Filmed largely in Pakistan and Afghanistan, this two-part documentary series explores how a supposed ally stands accused by top CIA officers and Western diplomats of causing the deaths of thousands of coalition soldiers in Afghanistan.
The documentary makers meet serving Taliban commanders who describe the support they get from Pakistan in terms of weapons, training and a place to hide.
The following two part article by written Patrick Poole last August exposes a 20 year influence operation by the Pakistani ISI that may explain US foreign policy towards Pakistan:
In Part One, I explored the court documents in the case of Ghulam Nabi Fai, the executive director of the Kashmiri American Center (KAC) who admitted in a 26-page Statement of Facts at the time of his plea deal last December that he was an influence agent working for the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI. He penetrated the halls of Congress and successive administrations over a 20-year period to help shape U.S. foreign policy in Pakistan’s favor.
As noted in the affidavit by FBI Special Agent Sarah Webb Linden that was the basis for the criminal charges filed in federal court against Fai, he was in constant communication with his ISI handlers, exchanging more than 4,000 emails between June 2008 and his arrest in July 2011. According to the FBI, the ISI spent more than $4 million funding Fai’s operation, funneling money to straw donors in the Pakistani-American community. The operation was coordinated by Zaheer Ahmad, a U.S. citizen living in Pakistan who was charged along with Fai in the case.
As I noted in Part One, while the establishment media reported on Fai’s arrest, the story virtually disappeared from all of the leading news outlets. But while the U.S. media was ignoring the scandal entirely, the matter was the subject of considerable media scrutiny in Indian and Pakistani media.
One curious episode that received no attention from the U.S. media was the strange death of Fai’s conspirator, Zaheer Ahmad.
Several months after Fai’s arrest, an extensive investigative piece (the only one ever published on the topic) by ProPublica noted Ahmad’s ties to Pakistani nuclear scientist Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood. Mahmood had met with Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri prior to 9/11, wanting to help al-Qaeda obtain nuclear weapons. Ahmad told the ProPublica researchers:
In a phone conversation, Ahmad said he was free and working at Shifa. “Until this case is finished, I can’t discuss this,” Ahmad told a ProPublica reporter. “And it could be dangerous for you, too.”
Two days after the ProPublica exposé appeared, a bombshell report from the Hindustan Times placed Ahmad (Fai’s conspirator) at the meeting with Mahmood, Bin Laden, and Zawahiri just weeks prior to the 9/11 attacks.
Two days after that Hindustan Times article appeared tying him to the meeting with al-Qaeda leaders, Ahmad, who was living in Pakistan, dropped dead from a “cerebral hemorrhage”.
So within one week the following happened: ProPublica published an exposé examining Fai’s efforts on Capitol Hill on behalf of Pakistani intelligence; another report tied Fai’s charged conspirator in the case with meeting with Osama bin Laden just weeks prior to the 9/11 attacks; and the conspirator dropped dead.
Yet that was not sufficient to stoke the curiosity of the American media.
Why did this story get buried?
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To summarize what we know of Ghulam Nabi Fai:
He came to the U.S. to study under one of the top Muslim Brotherhood leaders, Ismail Faruqi, who founded the International Institute for Islamic Thought, which was identified by U.S. Customs as the hub of terrorism financing in the U.S.
Fai later served as national president of the Muslim Students Association (MSA), during which time, according to an email cited in the FBI affidavit, he began serving on behalf of his Pakistani ISI masters.
He then served on the Shura Council for the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).
The wife of ISNA’s longtime Secretary General and present Director of Interfaith Outreach Sayyid Syeed was one of the original incorporators of KAC. Syeed had preceded Fai as national president of the MSA.
According to IRS filings, KAC’s Pakistani intelligence influence operation was launched with a $20,000 loan from the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), which owns the property to hundreds of mosques around the country.
No doubt these organizations would say that their associations with Fai are ancient history and that they had no knowledge that Fai was operating on behalf of Pakistani intelligence.
But Fai’s involvement with these organizations continues to this day.
********
Federal prosecutors told the court in a sentencing memo that Fai’s cooperation with the FBI was lacking following his plea deal, particularly noting his lack of cooperation regarding “his involvement with the Muslim Brotherhood, and Pakistani terrorist groups.” (p. 9, fn. 3)
The story of the Pakistani ISI’s 20-year penetration into the heart of Congress, the State Department, the National Security Council, and the Pentagon should have been big news, especially since the U.S. government has identified the ISI as a terrorist organization in military tribunal documents.
But it wasn’t.
The media savaged Rep. Michele Bachmann and her congressional colleagues for daring to request an investigation into organizations that the U.S. government has gone into federal court and identified as front groups for the international Muslim Brotherhood yet somehow still considers helpful outreach partners. The story of how these same Islamic groups and leaders rushed to the support of Ghulam Nabi Fai and hailed Pakistan intelligence’s influence man on Capitol Hill as a hero even after admitting his crimes should be equally major news.
But it’s even worse than that. Fai was not only supported by these Islamic organizations, he served in senior leadership of these very organizations, which the U.S. government continues to consult with to help shape our domestic and foreign policy. These very same organizations are welcomed into the halls of Congress, the White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon to this day.
That’s the reason I believe the story of Ghulam Nabi Fai, the Kashmiri American Council, and the Pakistani ISI is the biggest D.C. spy scandal you’ve never heard about.
The staggering implications of what federal prosecutors presented in court about this matter under any other circumstances would have shaken Washington, D.C., to its core. Instead, the political and media establishment closes their eyes in self-imposed blindness.
And in the end, it will be the American people who reap the consequences.
The number of civilian fatalities from terrorist attacks in Pakistan is rising on a similar trend line with U.S. foreign aid to Pakistan over the past 10 years.
The foreign aid isn’t working. It actually appears to be backfiring. More aid = more terror.
Although American financial aid to Pakistan has begun declining, there is no appetite in Washington, D.C., to stop spending taxpayer dollars to fund the de facto terrorist state of Pakistan. Sen. Rand Paul was right to push for at least making aid to Pakistan conditional. Although Sen. Paul’s latest effort was defeated, these findings should give some reason for reconsideration:
Sources: Congressional Research Service and SATP.org, graph by MoneyJihad
The possible correlation resembles the relationship between aid to the Palestinian territories and the number of Palestinian terrorist attacks.
Data for this graph were compiled from CRS and SATP reports.
A proposed new handbook for soldiers serving in the Middle East reveals an alarming level of political correctness that infests the military chain of command. The 75-page document suggests that American ignorance of Taliban culture is chiefly responsible for the spate of so-called green-on-blue attacks by Afghan trainees on their American trainers, that have claimed the lives of 63 coalition troops this year alone. The manual is still in the drafting stages, but an article published by the Wall Street Journal reeks of the typically leftist “blame America first” mentality that should enrage every American.
The leaked manual, characterized by the WSJ as the “final coordinating draft,” offers a list of “taboo conversation topics” soldiers should avoid. These including “making derogatory comments about the Taliban,” “advocating women’s rights,” “any criticism of pedophilia,” “directing any criticism towards Afghans,” “mentioning homosexuality and homosexual conduct” or “anything related to Islam.”
In short, a combination of self-censorship and subservience to Islamist culture – self-imposed dhimmitude if you will – is seen as the key to countering the murderous behavior of Afghan trainees.
The handbook continues: “Bottom line: Troops may experience social-cultural shock and/or discomfort when interacting with [Afghan security forces,]” it states. “Better situational awareness/understanding of Afghan culture will help better prepare [troops] to more effectively partner and to avoid cultural conflict that can lead toward green-on-blue violence.”
You know what really facilitates green-on-blue violence? Armed Afghan trainees in the presence of their unarmed American counterparts. Unbelievably, until the policy was quietly rescinded last August, American soldiers were required to remove their magazines from their weapons, while quartered inside bases with their armed Afghan trainees. That insidious policy was promoted as a “gesture of trust” directed towards our Afghan “partners.” It took 21 deaths in 2011, followed by an additional 40 deaths in 2012, for military brass to reach the painfully obvious conclusion that it wasn’t working.
In September, the training of Afghan troops was temporarily suspended. It was then Americans got their first hint regarding the mindset that has apparently reached fruition with this handbook. Islamic “sensitivity training” was stepped up.
A list of orders troops were expected to obey–or face severe punishment–included the following: Wear surgical gloves whenever handling a copy of the Koran; never walk in front of a praying Muslim; never show the bottom of boots while sitting or lying across from a Muslim, considered an insult in Islam; never share photos of wives or daughters; never smoke or eat in front of Muslims during the monthlong Ramadan fasting; avoid winking, cursing or nose-blowing in the presence of Muslims, all viewed as insults; avoid exiting the shower without a towel; avoid offering and accepting things with the left hand, which in Islam is reserved for bodily hygiene, and considered unclean.
A senior US Army intelligence official illuminated the insanity. “The Afghans that know we’re doing all this PC cultural sensitivity crap are laughing their asses off at our stupidity,” he contended.
by MEREDITH DAKE:
