Tag Archive for: al-Qaida

Texas Muslim linked to Afghan Military Base Car Bombing

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How long before people like Muhanad Al-Farekh decide to set off their jihad car bombs right at home in Texas?

“Ex-Manitoba student linked to Afghan car bombing: U.S. officials,” by Colin Freeze, The Globe and Mail, November 11, 2015:

U.S. prosecutors say they can tie an alleged al-Qaeda extremist who became radicalized in Winnipeg – and who the CIA had once considered killing overseas with a drone strike – to a deadly car-bomb attack against a military base in Afghanistan.

Muhanad Al-Farekh, an American born in Texas, allegedly joined al-Qaeda eight years ago with two students he met during his university studies in Canada. He was captured in Pakistan and recently brought back to the United States to face a charge of supporting terrorism. He will also likely be charged with murder or murder-conspiracy by the end of this year.

Authorities suggest they can produce fingerprint evidence that links Mr. Farekh to a January, 2009, car bombing in Afghanistan. Officials will not confirm which attack it is, but the most prominent such bombing that month killed four Afghans and two U.S. soldiers in Kabul.

New charges against Mr. Farekh would raise the profile of a once-obscure case that started as a missing-persons investigation in Canada and evolved into a U.S.-led international manhunt in which authorities accused the three men of joining al-Qaeda.

The probe started in 2007, when three University of Manitoba students disappeared from Winnipeg. Friends of the men said that they grew more outwardly religious and, at times, intolerant. A criminal complaint filed in New York says they listened online to lectures by the firebrand preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen suspected of terrorism.

Over the years, as evidence mounted that the men had joined al-Qaeda terrorists operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the investigation reached into the inner sanctum of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency….

Earlier this year, The New York Times reported that Mr. Farekh was at the centre of a 2012 “kill or capture” debate. Washington officials reportedly deliberated whether they would allow him to live or die, until then-attorney general Eric Holder pushed for arrest, charges and a criminal trial.

The two Canadians who travelled with Mr. Farekh – Ferid Imam and Maiwand Yar – have been unaccounted for since disappearing into the Afghanistan-Pakistan borderlands. The U.S. suspect was flown from Pakistan to the United States almost a year ago. He made an appearance in a Brooklyn court last spring to face a single charge of “conspiracy to provide material support to terrorism.”

But during a September hearing, a prosecutor revealed that the U.S. Department of Justice will raise the stakes. “We believe we will be adding additional charges, certainly, including ‘conspiracy to murder’ and perhaps a substantive ‘murder’ count,” prosecutor Zainab Ahmad said.

According to a transcript obtained by The Globe, Ms. Ahmad said prosecutors can now produce “recently declassified evidence of the defendant’s involvement in planting the vehicle-born, improvised-explosive device [VBIED] outside the U.S. base in Afghanistan.”

The transcript does not go into specifics. But court documents available through an electronic database say fingerprints from VBIED wreckage recovered after a January, 2009, attack have been compared with those of Mr. Farekh….

According to the documents, one of the Canadians that same month sent a letter to his family in Winnipeg in which he said: “I tell you please not to follow what the media says about Talibans, Al-Qaida [sic] and other groups fighting for the sake of Allah.“…

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Revealed: Obama carefully orchestrated lie about al-Qaida demise to win re-eelction

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Former New York City Mayor Rudi Giuliani started a firestorm with his assessment that President Barack Obama does not love America. The liberal progressive media came down on him and the guilt by association trick was launched. Even a 12-year-old Georgia fella named CJ Pearson came to the defense of America’s mayor – and was smacked down by Facebook. And during a Fox and Friends Sunday interview with Tucker Carlson I was asked the same question. I gave a simple response — you don’t lie to someone you love. And from the lips of this president, sadly, there have been many instances of such.

And here’s yet another example as reported by Fox News via the Wall Street Journal: “On May 2, 2011, a small team of American military and intelligence professionals landed inside the high white walls of a mysterious compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The team’s mission, code-named Operation Neptune Spear, had two primary objectives: capture or kill Osama bin Laden and gather as much intelligence as possible about the al-Qaida leader and his network. A bullet to bin Laden’s head accomplished the first; the quick work of the Sensitive Site Exploitation team accomplished the second.”

“It was quite a haul: 10 hard drives, nearly 100 thumb drives and a dozen cellphones. There were DVDs, audio and video tapes, data cards, reams of handwritten materials, newspapers and magazines. At a Pentagon briefing days after the raid, a senior military intelligence official described it as “the single largest collection of senior terrorist materials ever. The United States had gotten its hands on al-Qaida’s playbook—its recent history, its current operations, its future plans.”

Now, you’d think that with this “treasure trove” of actionable intelligence data, the United States under the Obama administration would have embarked on a series of strike operations to bring the bin Laden terrorist network to its knees. It would be a time when we could rally behind the young community organizer from Chicago, and maybe he’d find the courage to go on offense against the Islamic jihadist enemy that brought the most horrific attack against the United States. Yes, you would have thought…

What happened is completely the opposite, and is now being fully revealed.

“Nothing was done. The analysis of the materials—the “document exploitation,” in the parlance of intelligence professionals—came to an abrupt stop. According to five senior U.S. intelligence officials, the documents sat largely untouched for months—perhaps as long as a year. In spring 2012, a year after the raid that killed bin Laden and six months before the 2012 presidential election, the Obama administration launched a concerted campaign to persuade the American people that the long war with al-Qaida was ending. In a speech commemorating the anniversary of the raid, John Brennan , Mr. Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser and later his CIA director, predicted the imminent demise of al-Qaida. The next day, on May 1, 2012, Mr. Obama made a bold claim: “The goal that I set—to defeat al-Qaida and deny it a chance to rebuild—is now within our reach.”

And that was as close as we ever got — within reach. The sad reality was that politics was more important to the Obama administration than destroying the enemy. What happened was yet another deception — a great deception indeed.

“The White House provided 17 handpicked documents to the Combatting Terror Center at the West Point military academy, where a team of analysts reached the conclusion the Obama administration wanted. Bin Laden, they found, had been isolated and relatively powerless, a sad and lonely man sitting atop a crumbling terror network. It was a reassuring portrayal. It was also wrong. And those responsible for winning the war—as opposed to an election—couldn’t afford to engage in such dangerous self-delusion.”

The American people were told in 2012 that Osama bin Laden was dead. We were told al-Qaida was on the run and decimated. We were led to believe that Islamic terrorism had been defeated. I think we can all come to a consensus at this point in time that we were lied to — unless the intoxicants in the kool-aid are still active.

ISIS is not a jayvee team. Al-Qaida in Iraq has resurrected itself, is reconstituted, and is now being engaged by an Iraqi Army backed by Iran. Please, do not just take my words to heart, but hear what the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, LTG Michael Flynn has to say: “The leadership down at Central Command wanted to know what were we learning from these documents,” says the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, according to the transcript of an interview with Fox News anchor Bret Baier for a coming Fox News Reporting special.”

“We were still facing a growing al Qaeda threat. And it was not just Pakistan and Afghanistan and Iraq. But we saw it growing in Yemen. We clearly saw it growing still in East Africa.” The threat “wasn’t going away,” he adds, “and we wanted to know: What can we learn from these documents?”

Here is the truth. As President Obama was campaigning on the imminent death of al-Qaida, those with access to the bin Laden documents were seeing, in Bin Laden’s own words, that the opposite was true. Says Lt. Gen. Flynn: “By that time, they probably had grown by about—I’d say close to doubling by that time. And we knew that.” Sadly, the American people did not know that.

What was true was this: “Lt. Gen. Flynn says bin Laden was giving direction to “members of the wider al-Qaida leadership team, if you will, that went all the way to places like West Africa where we see a problem today with Boko Haram and [al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb], all the way back into the things that were going on in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Bin Laden advised them on everything from specific operations in Europe to the types of crops his minions should plant in East Africa.”

Osama bin Laden was killed back in May 2011, going on four years and 1.5 million documents were captured during Operation Neptune Spear. To this day, only two dozen have been revealed to the public. Sure, if there is still actionable intel data, it should be kept classified, but I tend to believe that window of opportunity has long since closed.

“Mr. Harvey, the senior DIA official, believes that the documents should be declassified and released to the public as soon as possible, after taking precautions to avoid compromising sources or methods. Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, inserted language in the 2014 intelligence authorization bill requiring just that.”

The Wall Street Journal writes, “one letter, dated July 2010, the brother of Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s current prime minister, sought to strike a peace deal with the jihadists. The letter also shows that Pakistani intelligence was willing to negotiate with al Qaeda. Al Qaeda’s network in Iran is also described in bin Laden’s letters. The Iranian regime held some senior al-Qaida leaders, eventually releasing them. One letter recounts a plan, devised by Yunis al Mauritani, one of bin Laden’s senior lieutenants, to relocate to Iran. Once there, Mauritani would dispatch terrorists to take part in operations around the world.”

This has been a very revealing week for America. We now know that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used her private email from a private server in her personal home to conduct official diplomatic business for four years.

We now know President Obama has obstructed access to the Bin Laden raid materials by intelligence professionals in order to manipulate the political dialogue and messaging.

Now we are facing a potential non-transparent negotiation with a nuclear Iran.

We have little knowledge about why four Americans were abandoned to die in Benghazi.

We ask ourselves, how and why was ISIS allowed to grow and fester like a malignant cancer right under our nose?

These are troubling times in the Republic — but what is more troubling, who will stand up to this absolute lawless tyranny and deception?

Delusional: U.S. military will no longer target Taliban – even though they just murdered 3 American contractors

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Last week we shared the story about the Taliban claiming responsibility for the terrorist attack that killed three American contractors. The Americans, working as contractors for the North Carolina-based Praetorian Standards Inc., were shot and killed, and another was wounded by a member of the Afghan security forces — actually a Taliban infiltrator. And we thought combat operations were ended.

Now, what do you think the Obama administration had to say about the “aggression conducted by armed insurgents?”

Naturally, as reported by CNS News, “State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki declined on Friday to directly say whether the murder of three U.S. civilians at the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Thursday—which the Taliban claimed responsibility for–was an act of terrorism.”

“Obviously any attack that kills contractors, that kills individuals who are working there in harm’s way, is horrific and a tragedy but I’m not going to put new labels on it today. She also said: “We see a difference between Taliban and ISIL.”

Hey, I know the difference: one group is regional to Afghanistan and Pakistan and mostly speaks Pashtun; the other is global and speaks a variety of languages. However, they are both Islamic terrorists, savage and barbaric in their actions, something seemingly lost on Jen Psaki.

And for the Islamapologists who refute the idea that this current conflagration has anything to do with religion — well, some beg to differ, namely, the enemy.

“As reported by the Washington Post, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said that the killer was Ihsanullah bin Mullah Rahmatulla, who had infiltrated Afghan security forces. “He managed yesterday evening to attain his goal and opened fire with his rifle on a group of American occupiers,” Mujahid said, as quoted in the Post. The attacker was then killed. “The martyr was able to successfully defend his religion … and the glory of his country, and by giving himself away as a sacrifice, he cast a number of the occupying disbelievers into the abyss of hell,” said the Taliban spokesman, according to the Post.”

“At last Friday’s State Department press briefing, CNS News asked: “The Taliban has taken credit for murdering three American civilian contractors at the Kabul airport yesterday. Were those murders an act of terrorism?”

“Well, one, I think the Department of Defense has spoken to this a bit so I’d point you to their comments,” said Psaki. “There was a shooting at the North Kabul International Airport Complex yesterday. We’ve seen reports that the Taliban have claimed responsibility. There’s an investigation going on into this incident. Obviously, any attack that kills contractors, that kills individuals who are working there in harm’s way, is horrific and a tragedy but I’m not going to put new labels on it today.”

“AP Reporter Matt Lee later returned to the question asking Psaki: “I’m just not sure why you wouldn’t just say of course it’s a terrorist attack.” “It’s an act of terror when American citizens are, individuals, are killed, like contractors, absolutely,” Psaki said. Later, Lee asked her: “Is there anything that has been uncovered in this investigation into what happened at the Kabul Airport to suggest that it was not in fact a terrorist attack?” “I was not suggesting that,” said Psaki, “but I think we have a responsibility as the U.S. government to let processes see themselves out and that’s what we’re doing.”

Ok, what processes? This is why we have an administration that is simply incapable of defending the American people against the Islamic terrorist threat. They’ve sought to reduce this enemy into some complex wire diagram when the entire time you have a simplistic linear equation.

Here are two examples:

“A reported asked Psaki, “It was an Afghan policeman who did this, obviously working for the Taliban. Are you concerned that this may happen time and time again?” Psaki responded, “I am not going to address your question.”

“Psaki continued, explaining that President Obama had made a determination not to target “belligerents” in Afghanistan because they were members of the Taliban. She said: “Also, back when we made our decision about our combat role in Afghanistan the president talked about how U.S. forces would continue to target the remnants of al-Qaida in Afghanistan, but the U.S. military forces will no longer target belligerents solely because they are members of the Taliban.”

So I want you all to understand what this means. Our troops remaining in Afghanistan will not be “targeting” any member of the Taliban. In other words, our men and women will be sitting duck targets who will allow the proliferation of the “armed insurgents.”

What mentality possesses the Obama administration that it can stand and issue such clearly delusional statements? I cannot understand any possible logic in a policy that says we’re not going to fight the enemy who is fighting us?

And recognize this is why President Obama and his ilk see no problem with the release of five senior Taliban leaders – it’s just no big deal. So why are we leaving a residual force in Afghanistan? Why are we exposing our troops to a policy of abject failure, one that refuses to recognize the enemy’s existence, or its intent?

This inane game of redefining the enemy in order to fit your politically-driven ideology does not lend itself to success or victory — and certainly will lead to more deaths of our American troops, and in this case, security contractors.

If I’m al-Qaida — well, just say you’re Taliban and that’s your “get out of jail free card.” Who in the Congress, House or Senate Armed Services Committees has held a hearing to ascertain the viability of such a strategy as Obama is offering in Afghanistan? The Congress has oversight and if anything there should be a hearing requiring the Department of Defense and CENTCOM to explain this strategy.

Jen Psaki’s revelation should be disturbing for every American — unless you’re just a cheerleader for this current administration. This disclosure will not bode well for our residual force left in Afghanistan. Not only has Obama released and reconstituted the enemy and its leadership — he is providing them safe passage and the ability to once again reestablish sanctuary. After all, it was the Taliban who invited al-Qaida into Afghanistan and provided them comfort and aid in the first place.

And we have a president who is also providing the enemy aid and comfort, as well as material support by way of returning their leadership — a violation of U.S. code.

But oh well. The Patriots won.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on AllenBWest.com. The featured image is of a Taliban fighter.

Are we toast? Saudi king is dead; ISIS expands; we’re abandoning Yemen and Iran has a missile launcher

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On Tuesday evening President Obama stated, “the shadow of crisis has passed and the state of the union is strong” — and of course the blind followers cheered.

Obama also hinted that we had “turned the page” on our fight against terrorism. Remember his unilateral declaration at the National War College that the war on terror had ended — and of course he has commanded that combat operations end in two theaters of operation; Iraq and Afghanistan.

But nothing could shine the light on President Obama’s naiveté (or approval?) more than the fact that just 48 hours after he dismissed the “shadow of crisis,” we are evacuating yet another U.S. Embassy — this time in Yemen.

It’s the same Yemen that just last fall, Obama referred to as the model of his success — just like Vice President Joe Biden once chimed that Iraq would be one of Obama’s greatest successes. When Obama said the shadow of crisis has passed, we had three U.S. Naval warships off the coast of Yemen ready to evacuate the embassy.

And if you’ve forgotten, this is the second U.S. Embassy to be evacuated in less than a year — the other being Libya…y’all remember the swan diving jihadists? This hardly reflects a state of the union that is strong. What it does reflect is a foreign policy of abject failure, resulting from the Obama “pivot” away from the Middle East.

And so now we have the Houthis, whose slogan is “Death to America, Death to Israel” by the way. We reported on them late last year, of course no one cared. Just the same as a year ago this week, when President Obama referred to ISIS as a “jayvee” team. The al-Houthi Islamist group is Shiite and backed by — yep, you got it — that nondescript country called Iran about whom Obama threatened a veto if Congress passed legislation restoring sanctions.

Let me put this all into perspective.

Yemen is home to the most vicious al-Qaida affiliate — yeah I know, they’re decimated and on the run – al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). This is the same group which claimed responsibility for the recent Paris Islamic terrorist attack.

There are now reports that ISIS is expanding into Yemen and as we reported last year, AQAP was seeking a pledge of alliance with ISIS. Yes, the Houthis and al- Qaida don’t exactly get along — but the Houthis are backed by Iran — who we are assisting the fight against ISIS in Iraq, along with their support to Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

And the Obama administration just announced it would send 400 advisors/trainers to Syria. But we’re allowing Iran to pursue its nuclear program, 10,000 centrifuges,– and the Washington Post just gave President Obama three more Pinocchios for his SOTU assertion that Iran’s nuclear program has slowed down. And as you know, Obama threatened to veto congressional action to sanction Iran.

Why should we kinda care? The Yemeni government was pro-American and was aiding in the fight against Islamists within their borders. Now, not only has the Yemeni government been toppled, it has been replaced with the specter of Iranian influence in the vicinity of a chokepoint entering the Red Sea — and not far from Somalia — yet another hot bed of Islamism.

Now, add on top of this hot fudge sundae the fact that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia just passed away. Yemen is the southernmost country on the Arabian Peninsula where chaos now abounds at a time of a transition of leadership in Saudi Arabia.

The Saudis are Sunni and cannot be too happy with the Obama administration’s lack of focus and resolve in the face of Iranian regional hegemonic designs. So what does Saudi Arabia do? In concern for their own existence will the Saudis provide material support to Sunni Islamic terrorists in order to defeat the Iranian-backed Houthis?

And there is another wild card to this equation, as reported by The Algemeiner, “The Israeli satellite imaging company ImageSat released images from Iran revealing a new nuclear development site. The images show what appears to be a new missile launcher that stands 89 feet tall and is capable of launching a nuclear missile to Israel or Europe, according to a report by Israel’s Channel 2.”

“Among the new nuclear developments pictured was a large long-range missile, never seen before in the West. The missile is powerful enough to launch a satellite or a manned spacecraft, the report said.”

Now does this sound like someone with whom we should — or even can – be negotiating?

Ladies and gents, I know some of you may feel, who cares, let them all kill each other. Yes, to a point they will, but the shadow of crisis will not pass that easily.

From Libya extending all the way to Pakistan, and probably beyond, militant Islam has taken root and is exporting its terror and hatred all over the globe. And the policy of this administration is to remain in a state of denial. America sides with Turkey and Qatar. America is releasing Islamic terrorists back onto the battlefield. All the while w’re told move along, nothing here to see.

There’s lots to see, and my greatest concern is that the situation only worsens in these final two years of the Obama reign.

What can we do? Well, first we gotta pray — and I am serious folks. The situation in which we find ourselves is a perfect storm benefitting the Islamic fascists. Not only are they on the move and consolidating their gains while increasing recruitment, we are enabling it by decimating our own military capacity.

We must develop a strong, potent, expeditionary and lethal strike operations-oriented force for the 21st century battlefield. And I’m not talking about any “smart power” or nuanced rhetorical response, but rather a deterrent force capable of deployment and employment in any geographical contingency area.

This is not about nation building. And at some point in time we will have to combat the enemy’s ideology — we must defeat his belief system in order to delegitimize him. Challenge the enemy and make them own their actions — and stop being Islamapologists.

The crisis has not passed; it’s right here and all over the globe — heck, there’s even a Russian naval warship docked in Cuba while our state department bureaucrats are there to discuss opening up diplomatic and travel relations.

Can we really say that the state of our union is strong? If you believe that then you’re in a state of delusion. And remember, weakness is enticing.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on AllenBWest.com.

Homegrown jihadis arrested in Texas

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Once again, the “religion of peace” demonstrates its true colors — and please don’t give me the line of a few individuals perverting Islam. A few days ago, two Muslim men in Texas were arrested on jihad terror charges.

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Michael Wolfe & Rahatul Khan

As reported by ABCnews.com, the two men were separately charged with terror-related offenses after federal agents said they planned to travel halfway around the world to engage in violent jihad. One of the men, a Bangladesh-born U.S. citizen named Rahatul Ashikim Khan, allegedly wanted to join al-Shabab, a Somalia-based terror group linked to al-Qaida. For the other, Michael Todd Wolfe from Houston, learning to fight in Syria was allegedly the goal.

Anyone who doesn’t believe we have a problem with homegrown jihadis in America is delusional.

According to charging documents, Wolfe’s wife met an undercover FBI agent in August 2013 and told the agent she and her husband wanted to “perform a violent form of jihad” outside of the United States. She said Wolfe “just wants to hop into Syria. He’s just ready to die for his deen [religion]. He’s ready to die for someone, for something,” court documents say.

Over several months, another undercover FBI agent met with Wolfe, and they discussed Wolfe’s plans for going overseas, according to the court documents. On Jan. 22, both undercover FBI agents met with Wolfe and his wife, and Wolfe “indicated that he had learned that al-Qaida in Syria was training brothers from other countries (foreign fighters) and then sending those fighters back from Syria to their home countries to conduct terror attacks,” the FBI says in court documents.

This is the larger concern about ISIS and its Islamic caliphate — just yesterday the head of the FBI acknowledged that some 100 Americans could be part of the ISIS army. What is even more egregious is this: the couple was planning to use some of their estimated $5,000 tax refund to pay for their travel, prosecutors say.

Khan became a U.S. citizen in 2002 and is a full-time student at University of Texas-Austin (a very liberal school), which is now on summer recess. According to charging documents in his case, in early 2011, Khan began communicating with an informant in an online chat room, which he used “as a platform to spot and assess potential recruits for committing violent jihad overseas.”

Khan introduced the informant to an unidentified co-conspirator, possibly in Florida — and we know an American from Florida detonated himself in a suicide bomb attack in Syria recently — who then attempted to recruit the informant to travel to Somalia to engage in jihad there, prosecutors say in court documents. The co-conspirator then introduced the informant to another person, also likely in Florida, who discussed how Khan could get to Somalia to join the terrorist group al-Shabab.

In June 2011, Khan told the informant that his brain “starts bleeding” when he sees weak “Bengalis” who have “no love for jihad” and “no love to shed blood,” authorities allege.

The arrests come a month after the Justice Department asked a special prosecutor in its National Security Division to help lead U.S. efforts aimed at stemming the flow of American fighters to the civil war in Syria.

This is the jihadist version of “coexist” and I believe somehow it is different from the bumper sticker slogan on those Prius cars. The time for political correctness is gone — when tolerance becomes a one-way street it leads to cultural suicide. It also allows the enemy to walk amongst us, masquerading as a religion and affording themselves benefits in order to kill us.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on AllenBWest.com.