New York Governor George Pataki finally reached down and grabbed a pair today. He has told the International Freedom Center that they are not wanted at Ground Zero.

"Freedom should unify us. This center has not," Pataki said. "Today there remains too much opposition, too much controversy over the programming of the IFC. ... We must move forward with our first priority, the creation of an inspiring memorial to pay tribute to our lost loved ones and tell their stories to the world."

For those of you not familiar with this controversy, the International "Freedom" Center has been trying to exploit Ground Zero to build what amounts to an anti-American monument. They wished to build a museum to show how American intervention has ruined lives around the world and how the "peaceful Muslims" have been persecuted and terrified. Of course that's not EXACTLY how they put it, but the message remains the same.

In the spirit of cooperation, Pataki was even generous enough to offer to help find some other location for the IFC to build their museum. Of course their reply was much less gracious.

Pataki initially said the state would help the International Freedom Center find another home, but center officials said they weren't interested and considered the project dead.

As expected, not everyone is happy about the center being closed down. Mayor Bloomburg has been quoted as saying "Although I understand Governor Pataki's decision, I am disappointed that we were not able to find a way to reconcile the freedoms we hold so dear with the sanctity of the site." Of course if he thinks that the center had anything to do with freedom, he sould probably go back and read his literature again.

For more information about just what the IFC had planned, you can visit Take Back The Memorial or check out this Opinion Journal article.

Thanks to my ever-vigilant CF readers for bringing this story to my attention.

Posted by: Drew at 10:10 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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Buried far down in a report about the conviction of a Spanish al Qaeda cell leader is this nugget, which confirms what most reasonable people have suspected about the pan-Arab propaganda outlet al-Jazeera all along.

From the Associated Press via Yahoo! News:

Twenty-one others also stood trial, but on charges not directly related to Sept. 11. Of those, 16 were convicted of belonging to or collaborating with a terrorist organization and five were acquitted.

One of the 16 was Tayssir Alouny, a correspondent for the pan-Arab TV network Al-Jazeera. He was convicted of collaboration and sentenced to seven years in jail.

Al-Jazeera condemned Alouny's verdict.

"It was a black day in the history of the Spanish justice," Al-Jazeera news editor Ahmed al-Sheik told the broadcaster from Madrid. "We were all shocked because everyone expected Alouny to be freed. It is a regrettable event in the history of international journalism when a journalist who sought the truth becomes the accused."

Posted by: Bluto at 12:18 PM | Comments (17) | Add Comment
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(Sacramento, California) In the ongoing three-year probe of the alleged Lodi, California, Islamic terrorist cell, five people have been implicated and, of those, three have been deported for immigration violations and two are being held in federal custody without bail.

Last month, 47-year-old Islamic cleric Muhammad Adil Khan and his son were deported for overstaying their visas. On Wednesday of this week, 39-year-old Islamic cleric Shabbir Ahmed was deported for the same reason. The three were deported without being charged with any crimes, however, the government alleged that they intended to set up a terror training camp in Lodi. It's noteworthy that both Ahmed and Khan are allegedly linked to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

The two being held in custody, charged with lying to federal agents, are 23-year-old Hamid Hayat and his father, 47-year-old Umer Hayat. In a development yesterday resulting from a federal grand jury hearing, prosecutors charged Hamid Hayat with providing material support to terrorists.

From MercuryNews.com:

The federal indictment alleged that Hamid Hayat, 23, provided material support and resources for carrying out international acts of terror between March 2003 and June 4, 2005, when he was arrested days after returning to the United States from Pakistan. Hayat faces multiple charges for which the combined maximum sentence is 31 years in prison.

"Today's charge centers around the fact that Hamid Hayat attended a terrorist training camp in Pakistan in 2004, returned to this country with the intent of committing jihad against America, and by doing so provided material support to terrorists," U.S. attorney McGregor Scott said.

Posted by: Mike Pechar at 03:56 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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The following is an email exchange I had with Nicole Argo, one of the panel on suicide terrorism that I panned recently here. That is, it was unfair to the extent that some of my criticism wasn't so much substantive as atmospheric, and it may also have been unfair to Argo. I still disagree with Pape's policy prescriptions, which I think do not follow from his analysis, and I thought Bloom's attitude rather superficial and trite, reflecting the "unseriousness" of the Moveon crowd. And I still have the sense that the way nearly all of these people frame the issue of suicide terrorism reflects a false dichotomy between "military" and "non-military" strategy.

In the 1940s Roosevelt created an agency that he called the "Board of Economic Warfare," which was chaired, rather ironically, by R. Buckminster Fuller. While this agency wasn't "military," its design purpose was unambiguously to serve the military campaign. If there is value in the work of these researchers attempting to understand the nature of terrorism it probably is not in an alternative to a military strategy, but in service to it... with the laudable objective of preventing a drift toward what Clausewitz calls "Total War."

But Argo was quite gracious in the following note, and in a follow-up (which I won't post because I haven't quite figured out how to respond yet). Anyway, here's the exchange. The quotes from my original post are in bold, her comments in italics, and my responses in plain old, plain old.
more...

Posted by: Demosophist at 12:53 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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We won the battle in Afghanistan. We will win the battle in Iraq. But will we win the war on terror? Not without fighting it on its most important field of battle: the internet. Aaron at Internet Hagganah has an important essay:

Afghanistan was invaded.

It had to be done.

It had to be done, and it was not enough.

So it is with the Internet.

Posted by: Rusty at 11:37 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Our success in the War on Terror has created an ethical and logistical problem. What do we do with the hundreds of terrorists who have been captured? What is the most just way to deal with pure Evil?

Warehousing them at Guantanamo Bay is, at best, a temporary solution. At worst, not only are our soldiers exposed daily to twisted, malevolent subhumans, but traitors and fools within our own society seek to use their captivity for political profit. We can't transfer custody of many of them to their countries of origin because they might be tortured (though that would be justice for many of the brave jihadi babyhunters). And some of their homelands simply allow them their freedom, so that they can go back to plotting and executing the murders of innocents. We can't (horrors) execute them, because that would be a "waste" of "human life".

So what do we do with the sort of creature who enjoys planning assaults on children?

The Dread Pundit Bluto has a solution. A solution that not only tackles the problem of captured terrorists, but applies it to the solution of another serious, but unrelated, problem, and addresses a secondary evil peripherally. Three birds with one stone. more...

Posted by: Bluto at 11:53 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.--President George W. Bush

I've just spent the last ten minutes of my life watching disgusting videos produced by the Islamic Media Center. One was a high-production video based on candid camera with laugh tracks accompanying the death of American soldiers. Here is the e-mail associated with these disgusting propaganda films.

zubeiddah1417@hotmail.com

Was Joseph Goebels, chief propagandist for Nazi Germany, who never picked up a weapon and killed any one, a legitimate target in war? If so, why are those that produce jihad videos used to bolster the morale of our enemies and recruit new fighters to kill our soldiers not legitimate targets?

Bonus terrorist e-mail:

b52b52@gawab.com Not working *sigh*

If you get a response, please FORWARD the e-mail to me (not just cut and paste)

Posted by: Rusty at 04:11 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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(Damman, Saudi Arabia) According to an early report in the Arab News, two al-Qaeda members on the list of 36 most-wanted terrorists have been killed in a gunbattle outside a supermarket in the city of Damman in eastern Saudi Arabia. The two dead terrorists were identified as Zaid Saad Al-Samari, 31, and Walid Mutlaq Al-Radadi, 21. Two Saudi policemen also died from wounds received in the battle.

An area used as an operations center in Damman was put under siege by Saudi Security Forces.

"Sporadic gunfire is continuing around the buildings where the members of the deviant group are holed up," one security source said, adding that there were 10 suspects inside.

"The security forces have reinforced their positions and are bringing in bulldozers and additional heavy equipment."

"We're in no rush to storm the building as we’re hoping to capture them alive and obtain information about wanted terrorists," he said.

[ ... ]

There were unconfirmed reports that terrorists had killed one of their own colleagues when he tried to surrender to security officers.

The reports also indicated that the terrorists might have run away from Madinah after their commander Saleh Al-Oufi was gunned down by security forces last month.

In an updated report from Reuters, Saudi Security forces stormed the terrorist stronghold and "cleared and secured" the area. A source estimated that at least six terrorists were killed and ten were wounded. Four policemen also died.

I think it's great that the Saudis are going after the al-Qaeda terrorists in the kingdom. However, they'll never win because they're fighting an enemy that continues to be resupplied with recruits from the Wahabi mosques and schools within the country. So, they're destined to fight forever unless the schools are reformed or dismantled which, of course, won't happen since Saudi Arabia is officially a Wahabi Nation.

Companion post at Interested-Participant.

Posted by: Mike Pechar at 07:04 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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(Los Angeles) Four homegrown Islamic terrorists identified as members of the radical group Jamiyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh, or JIS, have been arrested for conspiring to attack military facilities, synagogues, and other targets in California.

From The Mercury-News:

Four suspects were charged Wednesday with conspiring to wage war against the U.S. government through terrorism. Named in the federal indictment were Levar Haley Washington, 25; Gregory Vernon Patterson, 21; Hammad Riaz Samana, 21; and Kevin James, 29.

All but Samana, a Pakistani national, are American born and Muslim converts. Counterterrorism officials have found no evidence directly connecting the group - described as the cell of a California prison gang of radical Muslims - to al-Qaida or other foreign terror networks.

Law enforcement officials and terrorism experts said it could represent one of the first Islamic terrorism cases involving U.S. natives without those connections.

The founder of Jamiyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh is California State Prison inmate Kevin James (aka Shakyh Shahaab Murshid) who preaches terror to Islam's enemies. Followers apparently pledged loyalty to James "until death by martyrdom."

Interestingly, the plotters were exposed only after they were arrested for an unrelated series of gas station robberies. Subsequent searches of their possessions found weapons, ammunition, and plans for the attacks. In other words, the authorities were lucky to catch these fanatics before they acted.

"Make no mistake about it -- we dodged a bullet here, perhaps many bullets," Los Angeles police Chief William Bratton said at a news conference.

Companion post at Interested-Participant.

Posted by: Mike Pechar at 02:10 PM | Comments (16) | Add Comment
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