February 10, 2004

"Soft targets" of the homeland are made more secure, like Denver's airport:
Upgrade will make DIA window glass less lethal in blast

Denver International Airport plans to spend about $800,000 this spring to apply blast-resistant polyester film to windows in the terminal that are vulnerable to a bomb attack.

Our nation's capital is recovering from yet another chem/bio weapons scare.
I don't know how much you've learned about death from ricin, but it's pretty horrible and worse, slow. It's chemical Ebola, basically.
We know Saddam loved it and so does Al Queda and their other radical jihadist friends.
Now comes news that IslamoNazis may already have sleeper cells in place here:
Islamic extremists invade U.S., join sleeper cells

 Islamic radicals are being trained at terrorist camps in Pakistan and Kashmir as part of a conspiracy to send hundreds of operatives to "sleeper cells" in the United States, according to U.S. and foreign officials.
   
 The intelligence and law-enforcement officials say dozens of Islamic extremists have already been routed through Europe to Muslim communities in the United States, based on secret intelligence data and information from terrorists and others detained by U.S. authorities.
    
A high-ranking foreign intelligence chief told The Washington Times in an interview last week that this clandestine but aggressive network of training camps "represents a serious threat to the United States, one that cannot be ignored." The official said as many as 400 terrorists have been and are being trained at camps in Pakistan and Kashmir.
    
U.S. intelligence officials said the camps, located in the remote regions of western Pakistan and in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, are financed in part by various terrorist networks, including al Qaeda, and by sources in Saudi Arabia.
[...]
Al Qaeda sleeper cells are believed to be operating in 40 states, according to the FBI and other federal authorities, awaiting orders and funding for new attacks in the United States. Financed in part by millions of dollars solicited by an extensive network of bogus charities and foundations, the cells use Muslim communities as cover and places to raise cash and recruit sympathizers.
[...]
In December, the government of India said terrorist training camps in Pakistan and Kashmir that had been closed after the September 11 attacks on the United States had been reactivated, mostly along the disputed border area near the so-called Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir.
    
The Indian government said its army had photographs and other evidence of ongoing terrorist training, much of which was turned over to U.S. officials. That information included satellite photos and communication intercepts, U.S. law- enforcement authorities said, that documented 60 to 70 camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir as well as in Pakistan.
[...]
One veteran U.S. law-enforcement official with an extensive history in counterterrorism said many of the training camps in the Pakistan-controlled regions of Kashmir are operated by the Harakat ul-Ansar, an Islamic militant group tied to bin Laden.
   
 The group's leaders joined with bin Laden in signing a February 1998 "fatwa" calling for attacks on U.S. and Western interests. Also known as the "Movement of Holy Warriors," Harakat ul-Ansar has been tied by U.S. and foreign intelligence officials to the January 2002 abduction and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
    
Several other camps are being operated by an anti-U.S. Muslim group known as Lashkar-e-Taiba, according to U.S. and foreign intelligence officials. Listed by the State Department in 2001 as a terrorist organization, Lashkar-e-Taiba is the armed wing of the Pakistan-based religious organization Markaz-ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad.

Eleven men, including nine U.S. citizens, were arrested last year in Virginia in what authorities called the "Virginia jihad." The men were accused in a 41-count grand jury indictment of engaging in "holy jihad" to drive India out of the disputed Kashmir territory. Six have since pleaded guilty.
    
The indictment said some of the men traveled to Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist camps in Pakistan, where they were trained in the use of various weapons, including small arms, machine guns and grenade launchers. The indictment also said the trips occurred both before and after the September 11 attacks.

Can any of us doubt that these sleeper cells are here? Or that new ones to carry out new attacks are being plotted and planned overseas at this very moment?
I think we owe the nation of India a big thank you for the intell on these camps!
Last week, I praised Musharraf for being such a great ally in the GWOIT, but now I'm not so sure how wonderful he's been.
Pervez has, of late, become a lot like his fellow Muslim Arafat: he condemns terror with his words, but his actions (or in Perv's case, inaction) show that he's still too much behind Islamist jihadis.
For those IslamoFascists who want to attack us that aren't cozied down in sleeper cells here yet, there's this new plan:
Terrorist bid to build bombs in mid-flight

Intelligence reveals dry runs of new threat to blow up airliners
And, of course, if the jihadis prefer something nuclear, there are at least several dozen and as many as a hundred suitcase nukes unaccounted for by the former Soviet Ukraine and Al Queda claims to have them.*
(*Tip of the fedora to Fred and his Axis of EFL gang over at Rantburg, which should be a mandatory stop for the latest war news!)

No matter how good or bad Peggy Noonan thinks President Bush does talking points on MTP, the bad guys are going to keep trying to kill us until we kill them (or lock them up) and President Bush is the only man--and I use that term in its fullest sense--who wants to lead the fight to stop the evildoers from killing us.
He's had my vote in 2000 and it will be my honor to vote for him again this November.