Ignoring Our Own Intelligence - Ghosts of Zacarias Moussaoui

A pattern of activity appears to be developing regarding terrorists incidents in the United States. When Major Hasan committed his act of terror at Ft. Hood the Army wanted us to believe they were surprised. An Army training handbook entitled “Kidnapping and Terror in the Contemporary Operational Environment”, printed in September 2008, talked about the “lone Wolf terrorist:”. and ...“Individuals who feel disenfranchised from society or the ability to influence personal lifestyle”, a description that sounds similar to Major Hasan. Hasan exhibited disturbing speech and behavior. and communicated with a radical cleric.

We are now presented with another terror plot involving an attempted bombing of a Northwest flight in Detroit, Steve Emerson the noted terrorists expert, reported on Fox news that the alleged suspect, a Nigerian, was known to law enforcement but they didn’t have enough information to put him on the terrorists watch list.

We should begin to ask ourselves, why Hasan wasn’t intercepted and the Nigerian attempted bomber didn’t make the Watch list?

We don’t need another commission to study another failure, we need people who are ready to act based on the information that has been gathered?

We have an intelligence apparatus that is identifying both behavior, and Individuals, but we are failing to act based on our own warnings.

Like our failure to search Zacarias Moussaoui’s computer just prior to 9-11, we are "blinking red" and we needed someone with the intestinal fortitude to make a decision.

CAN WE CALL IT A TERRORIST ATTACK NOW ?

When it happened, most of the media referred to the incident as a mass killing by a disturbed individual, one writer went so far as to say he thought that it might be a case of workplace violence. When we talked about Major Hasan’s killings at Ft Hood many avoided the phrase “a terrorist attack”. The public was gently ushered away from the facts

Al-Jazeera, of all places, has offered us more evidence that is difficult to ignore! A New York Times story says that the Al-Jazeera website posted an interview with the radical cleric Anwar-al-Awlaki, in which Awlaki says Nidal Hasan asked him: “what Islamic law dictated about Muslim soldiers who serve in the American military and kill their colleagues”.

How cautious should we be when we speculate what Mr. Awlaki told Major Hasan ?

You can read the New York Times story at:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/25/world/middleeast/25yemen.html?th&emc=th

TERRORISM AND DRUG TRAFFICKING

CNN has reported the seizure of a ship with 1.5 tons of Cocaine 200 miles of the Iberian coast. The ship reportedly is involved in a drug network that “stretches from London and Spain to the Caribbean and Colombia,”

The seizure of this drug laden ship comes on the heels of the recent DEA arrest of Oumar Issa, Harouna Touré and Idriss Abelrahman, in Ghana. Their arrest was a DEA, Narco- Terrorism conspiracy case. According to an affidavit in that case the defendants were assisting FARC, a Colombian terrorist group, and Al-Qaeda, in transporting drugs across Africa. The destination of those drugs was Spain.

Alongside these two cases the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime released their “2009 Afghanistan Opium Survey” which states that “90% of the opium production originates in Afghanistan” and “the drug trade is linked to the insurgency and to the Taliban”. When you put all these circumstances on the table you begin to see a direct connection between terrorism and the drug trade.