Al Qaeda
August 6, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Last week I put up a brief post on how the current terror warning that has seen the U.S. close most of its embassies in the Middle East–based on “chatter”–is peculiar, if not worse. Every watcher of The Sopranos or The Wire knows that the bad guys are not dumb, and know that we’ll be listening to any conventional communication, which is why I suggested this whole thing might well
»
August 2, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Never mind the Snowden defection to the Soviet Union Russia (which really is an old-style defection, with a decent interval to fool the American media); how about Obama’s obviously risible claim that “Al Qaeda is on the run.” Yeah, because one way you keep terrorists on the run is to . . . close 21 embassies. Riiiighht. This warning is supposedly based on increased “chatter.” I expect this is true.
»
May 29, 2013 — Steven Hayward
So Obama thinks the problem of terrorism has receded to pre-9/11 levels and we can call the whole thing off. Won’t be long now before the New York Times re-runs the Larry Johnson article from July 2001, “The Declining Terrorist Threat,” which confidently proclaimed: Americans are bedeviled by fantasies about terrorism. They seem to believe that terrorism is the greatest threat to the United States and that it is becoming
»
May 23, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
President Obama delivered an address today at the National Defense University called “The Future of our Fight Against Terrorism.” Actually, part of the speech was about the past, including much self-congratulation and some shots at President Bush. This part of the speech is revisionist rubbish. As Max Boot explains: Obama said, for example, that after he came into office, “we unequivocally banned torture, affirmed our commitment to civilian courts, worked
»
April 19, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
AEI’s lead Russia scholar, Leon Aron, has this, in part, to say: Islamic radicals have been very active in Chechnya since the early 2000s, when the Chechen independence movement truly radicalized into a fundamentalist movement. Since then, there have been several large attacks in Russia, such as the Beslan school siege in 2004 and the Nord Ost theater attack in 2002. Several Chechens were sent to Guantanamo. . . .
»
April 19, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
NRO has a good compilation of information about the two brothers suspected (for very good reason) of setting off the explosives in Boston. As Scott noted, they apparently are of Chechen origin. And apparently they are Muslims. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, now dead, is quoted in a photo essay as saying that he doesn’t drink or smoke anymore because “God said no alcohol.” He also complained that “there are no values anymore,”
»
December 30, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Well, why not? They’re one for one so far. Maybe someone will claim the bounty by organizing a group movie review. The AP reports: Al-Qaida’s branch in Yemen has offered to pay tens of thousands of dollars to anyone who kills the U.S. ambassador in Sanaa or an American soldier in the country. An audio produced by the group’s media arm, the al-Malahem Foundation, and posted on militant websites Saturday
»
December 7, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Fareed Zakaria argues that it’s “time to terminate the war on terror.” Zakaria doesn’t make clear precisely what, as a practical matter, he has in mind. But it looks like he wants he wants the U.S. to deem our efforts at protection from terrorism something other than an armed conflict and to phase out of modify the government’s emergency powers. Zakaria cites a recent speech in which outgoing Pentagon General
»
December 3, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
The Washington Post reports on the reemergence of al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). According to Bruce Reidel, a former CIA counterterrorism expert now with the Brookings Institution, “what we’re now seeing is al Qaeda in Iraq’s revival, not only as a movement in that country but as a regional movement.” Reidel notes that from its base in the Sunni provinces west of Baghdad, AQI is building networks in Syria and
»
October 6, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Eli Lake reports on White House deliberations over retaliation for the killing of Amb. Christopher Stevens and other Americans in Benghazi. U.S. intelligence agencies reportedly have compiled a list of suspects in the assault. According to some intelligence officials, there is enough detail to take military action to kill or capture ten of the operatives tied to the planning of the attack. The administration supposedly is considering whether to pursue
»
September 29, 2012 — Scott Johnson
The Obama administration is peddling a new line regarding its inability to hold the old line on the Benghazi murders: the bad dope came from the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who got everything wrong in the days following the attack. DNI spokesman Shawn Turner issued a statement reported by Reuters in the traditional Friday news dump in which scandals go to die. According to the statement: “[W]e revised
»
September 29, 2012 — Scott Johnson
United States Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice made appearances on five Sunday morning news shows on September 16. Her mission was to peddle the Obama administration’s line on the assault leading to the murder of four Americans in Benghazi, including the American ambassador to Libya. She peddled the same highly rehearsed line virtually verbatim on each of the five shows. Here is how she put it on Fox
»
September 13, 2012 — Steven Hayward
So the Federal Reserve has announced a third round of rank money printing “quantitative easing,” or QE III. The Fed now has more QEs in its history than the House of Windsor. The Fed is going to print $40 billion more a month “indefinitely,” until job growth picks up. As I’ve said before, the various QEs look more like they ought to be known as Titanic easing, as they threaten
»
September 12, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
The attacks on the U.S. embassies in Egypt and Libya should not have surprised the Obama administration, nor should the deadly nature of the Libyan attack have been unexpected. As David Pryce-Jones notes: The murderers of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three of his colleagues in Benghazi were Salafis, that is to say Muslims who believe in returning to the violence and conquest of the early years of Islam. A few
»
September 12, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Unexpected events sometimes can change the dynamics of a presidential election. Do yesterday’s (not altogether unexpected) events in Libya and Egypt have that potential? Probably not, in today’s America. Bill Otis explores the question: I’ve been saying for years that Obama is a more appealing, more masculine form of Jimmy Carter, and he’s about to prove it. Hopefully, this Libyan episode will lead him to Carter’s fate, but the country
»
June 12, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
The Supreme Court apparently is exiting the terrorist detainee administration business. Yesterday, it declined to hear the appeals of seven Gitmo detainees on whose behalf habeas petitions were filed, and denied, by lower courts. In Boumediene v. Bush, the Supreme Court held that detainees have the right to turn to the American judicial system for a “meaningful opportunity” to challenge their confinement. But a meaningful opportunity doesn’t necessarily translate into
»
June 5, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
The U.S. has confirmed that it killed Abu Yahya al-Libi who, according to various accounts, was effectively al Qaeda’s duputy leader. Al-Libi was taken out by a drone strike. With the exception of bin Laden, I tend to view al Qaeda leaders as fairly easy to replace, but there is evidence that this is not the case here. According to this report from CNN’s Security Clearance, al-Libi “is universally admired
»
