It’s been my view that the anti-anti-terrorist movement amongst liberals since 2001 had little to do with principled stands on civil liberty or pacifism, but was driven by sheer vindictiveness against George W. Bush for having the nerve to beat Al Gore in 2000. Ever since then, more important for Democrats than the security and success of the nation was preventing the success of the hated Bush.
I went so far as to believe that the Democrats were perfectly willing to see us lose a war, or lose American lives in a terror attack because intelligence operations were compromised or obstructed--or otherwise allow harm to the country, if those things contributed to sabotage the Bush administration. I believed it, in part, because I watched it happening in front of my very eyes.
It is probably the most cynical opinion I’ve ever held. And it’s turning out to be absolutely true.
The proof of it is demonstrated in the Left’s sudden discovery, since Election Day, that Islamic terrorists are a threat to the country. Of course, the only thing that’s changed in the Islamic war against the West since November 4th is who’s turn it is to lead the fight. It's not as if we've just had another 9/11-type attack (thanks to George W. Bush).
But until Obama was elected the Left consistently treated Islamic terrorism as, at best, a marginal criminal matter whose root causes can be blamed on American racism, imperialism, and unwillingness to adopt the Kyoto Treaty, or, at worst, something made up by Cheney-Bush at a barbecue in Crawford, Texas.
Regardless, at no time has it been taken seriously by liberals.
(Asking “Why haven’t we caught bin Laden yet?” is not taking it seriously. That was only meant as a jibe at Bush. They said the same thing until Bush caught Saddam, and when Bush did they promptly went about-face and said catching Saddam didn't make any difference. No one who understands this battle believes that bin Laden’s head on a pole on international TV will end global Islamic jihadist attacks. And if he’s captured alive, no one on the Left will let him face justice without whimpering that his rights are being violated.)
Anyway, I see where Michelle Malkin has tapped into some of this, too, in her recent comments about the incoming administration’s sudden maturity on the subject of Gitmo:
Playing Games at Gitmo
Nothing clarifies the mind like a jihadi boomerang.
By Michelle Malkin
The human-rights crowd is right: Life is hard for a Guantanamo Bay detainee. The deprivation is unspeakable. According to the facility’s “cultural adviser,” their brains have not been “stimulated” enough. So this Thanksgiving, America is drawing up plans to provide the 250 or so suspected jihadists at the “notoriously Spartan” detention camp with basic sustenance including, as reported by the Miami Herald, movie nights, art classes, English-language lessons, and “Game Boy-like” electronic devices.
Next up: Wii Fi, Guitar Hero, Sudoku, People magazine, and macrame. Anything less would be uncivilized.
On a deadly serious note, the detainees aren’t the only ones playing games at Gitmo. Some top legal advisers and supporters of Barack Obama, whose name detainees chanted on election night, are now rethinking the president-elect’s absolutist campaign position on shutting the center down and flooding our mainland courts with every last enemy combatant designee. Yes, reality bites. And Democrats must now grapple with the very real possibility that an Obama administration could potentially release a Gitmo denizen who would turn around and commit mass terrorist acts on American soil or abroad.
Nothing clarifies the mind like a jihadi boomerang. Never before have an administration and its followers matured so quickly in office — and they haven’t even taken office yet.
While Obama paid lip service to the “Close the Gitmo gulag!” agenda on 60 Minutes over the weekend, his kitchen cabinet is proceeding more pragmatically. Believe it or not, the Obama crowd is now contemplating a preventive detention law and an alternative judicial system for the most sensitive national security cases involving the most highly classified information — information that has no place being aired in the civilian courts for public consumption.
Listen to relentless Bush critic David Cole, who told the New York Times last week: “You can’t be a purist and say there’s never any circumstance in which a democratic society can preventively detain someone.” Added Ben Wittes of the Brookings Institution: “I’m afraid of people getting released in the name of human rights and doing terrible things.”
Moreover, Obama transition team members have suggested to The Wall Street Journal that despite his campaign season CIA-bashing, “Obama may decide he wants to keep the road open in certain cases for the CIA to use techniques not approved by the military, but with much greater oversight.”
Next thing you know, they’ll start arguing that the world has been fooled by years of sob-story propaganda about the Gitmo detainees — funded by Kuwaiti government-subsidized lawyers who cast them all as innocent potato farmers and schmucks dazed and confused on battlefields.
Next thing you know, they’ll rediscover the facts that detainees have systematically lied and exaggerated stories about mistreatment at Gitmo, and that interrogators and military personnel have bent over backward to accommodate their personal and religious needs and wants.
Next thing you know, they’ll start reminding us that dozens of former Gitmo detainees have been released and recaptured on the battlefield while committing acts of terrorism.
Funny, when President Bush and his homeland-security team realized these very realities seven years ago, they were branded terrorists and hounded relentlessly by Congress, the media and the left. When Attorney General Michael Mukasey eloquently defended the administration’s counterterrorism policies at the Federalist Society before he collapsed, he was heckled as a “tyrant.” And when I wrote my second book expounding on this very thesis, I was labeled a racist and fascist whose ideas exploring the proper balance between security and civil liberties had no place in public discourse.
Now, at long last, some liberals have realized that the sacred goal of “regaining America’s moral stature in the world,” as Obama put it, may be less important than ensuring that al-Qaeda killers don’t strike on American ground again.
Viva la Hope and Change!
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Showing posts with label global islamic jihad. Show all posts
Showing posts with label global islamic jihad. Show all posts
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Mortgage Fraud Going Strong in Dearborn
The Dearborn area’s latest mortgage-fraud case ended in a guilty plea for Kalil Khalil, who was convicted in federal court 2 weeks ago for a fraud scheme that raked in $21 million. (“Tax accountant sentenced in $21-million mortgage fraud case”).
According to Stephen Murphy, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, Khalil’s “scheme began in January 2001 with fraudulent loan applications and documents.
“Murphy said the fraud occurred in several ways, including: loans received were not used to purchased or refinance a home; fake borrowers were named on the applications; the fraudulent borrower’s employment was false as were documents confirming employment; and appraisals were forged or inflated.”
Khalil’s partner in crime, Tariq Hamad, already was sentenced last September to nine years in prison for his part in the scheme. (“Dearborn man pleads guilty to mortgage fraud charges”).
After they fraudulently obtained money, Hamad and Khalil deposited it in various bank accounts, concealing their identitied by creating them in the names of straw title companies.
In a FrontPageNews article, (“Mortgage Fraud Funding Jihad?”), Patrick Poole details how these schemes often work:
The fraud usually begins when a seller is approached by a buyer with an offer too good to be true: the purchase of the home at a price well above list price (in some cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars). The catch is that the money over and above the list price is to be returned to the buyer by the seller at the time of closing. The incentive for the seller is that they receive their initial asking price, and in many mortgage fraud cases, the fraud ring tries to target homes that have been on the market for more than a year and where the seller will be eager to accept the buyer's unusual arrangements.
The next phase of the fraud almost always involves an insider at the mortgage company who will agree to a loan at the inflated value of the home (the list price plus whatever amount is to be returned to the buyer). In some instances, a phony construction company is established by the buyer on an associate to justify on paper the additional amount of the loan. Once the loan is approved, the deal goes to closing where the seller takes the equivalent of the list price and the buyer walks away with their share of the transaction. In a number of cases, no one ever occupies the home nor is a mortgage payment ever made.
The Columbus case demonstrates the flexibility and ease with which the fraudulent transactions are accomplished. According to an article in the Columbus Dispatch, one buyer, Mohamed A. Mohamed targeted homes in the inner city, where in one case a mortgage was obtained for $160,000 on a home that county officials had only appraised for $34,000. That mortgage was eventually foreclosed and Mohamed lost his mortgage brokers license, but he still maintains a real estate agent license and has been involved in other transactions in that capacity.
Conversely, a series of purchases made by Hany Rezk Ibrahim and his wife involve several of the highest priced residential real estate transactions made in the Columbus area in the past year, with the Ibrahims walking away with approximately $250,000 in each transaction. In one case, the pair bought a home for $1.3 million that had sold for $540,000 the year before. Just prior to going on his real estate purchasing spree, Hany Ibrahim incorporated a home improvement company, listing an address at a local condominium complex as the corporate address.
Poole also identifies at least three more recent incidences of mortgage fraud in Dearborn:
As we said last October, "mortgage fraud is a big problem in Dearborn for several reasons, not least of which include the destruction of property values, the deterioration of neighborhoods, and further destabilizing an already badly depressed real-estate market.Dearborn’s mortgage-scammers are also a problem because fraud is one more source of funds that find there way to international terrorist organizations, especially, in Dearborn’s case, Hezbollah." In this most recent case, court records stated that Tariq Hamad claimed he invested the money in the stock market, where he lost it.
We at DU possess no information at this stage permitting us to contradict this, or to state the pair were in reality diverting the funds to terrorism. But it wouldn’t be unreasonable to draw an inference from the patterns of recent history.
According to Stephen Murphy, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, Khalil’s “scheme began in January 2001 with fraudulent loan applications and documents.
“Murphy said the fraud occurred in several ways, including: loans received were not used to purchased or refinance a home; fake borrowers were named on the applications; the fraudulent borrower’s employment was false as were documents confirming employment; and appraisals were forged or inflated.”
Khalil’s partner in crime, Tariq Hamad, already was sentenced last September to nine years in prison for his part in the scheme. (“Dearborn man pleads guilty to mortgage fraud charges”).
After they fraudulently obtained money, Hamad and Khalil deposited it in various bank accounts, concealing their identitied by creating them in the names of straw title companies.
In a FrontPageNews article, (“Mortgage Fraud Funding Jihad?”), Patrick Poole details how these schemes often work:
The fraud usually begins when a seller is approached by a buyer with an offer too good to be true: the purchase of the home at a price well above list price (in some cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars). The catch is that the money over and above the list price is to be returned to the buyer by the seller at the time of closing. The incentive for the seller is that they receive their initial asking price, and in many mortgage fraud cases, the fraud ring tries to target homes that have been on the market for more than a year and where the seller will be eager to accept the buyer's unusual arrangements.
The next phase of the fraud almost always involves an insider at the mortgage company who will agree to a loan at the inflated value of the home (the list price plus whatever amount is to be returned to the buyer). In some instances, a phony construction company is established by the buyer on an associate to justify on paper the additional amount of the loan. Once the loan is approved, the deal goes to closing where the seller takes the equivalent of the list price and the buyer walks away with their share of the transaction. In a number of cases, no one ever occupies the home nor is a mortgage payment ever made.
The Columbus case demonstrates the flexibility and ease with which the fraudulent transactions are accomplished. According to an article in the Columbus Dispatch, one buyer, Mohamed A. Mohamed targeted homes in the inner city, where in one case a mortgage was obtained for $160,000 on a home that county officials had only appraised for $34,000. That mortgage was eventually foreclosed and Mohamed lost his mortgage brokers license, but he still maintains a real estate agent license and has been involved in other transactions in that capacity.
Conversely, a series of purchases made by Hany Rezk Ibrahim and his wife involve several of the highest priced residential real estate transactions made in the Columbus area in the past year, with the Ibrahims walking away with approximately $250,000 in each transaction. In one case, the pair bought a home for $1.3 million that had sold for $540,000 the year before. Just prior to going on his real estate purchasing spree, Hany Ibrahim incorporated a home improvement company, listing an address at a local condominium complex as the corporate address.
Poole also identifies at least three more recent incidences of mortgage fraud in Dearborn:
- [In 2006] a Dearborn, MI man pled guilty to mortgage fraud in a plea deal with federal authorities to prevent being charged additionally with terrorist activities. At the time of his arrest, federal authorities found books, posters and recruitment videos for the Hezbollah terrorist organization inside the home of Nemr Ali Rahal. According to the Detroit News, a picture was also recovered of Rahal tearing up an American flag. Rahal had fraudulently obtained more than $500,000 by falsifying information on a mortgage application. Customs officials had also stopped Rahal and his son the previous year for having military-grade explosive residue on their passports as they reentered the US from Canada.
- In another Dearborn-area case, two men, Mohammed Krayem and Mahmoud Youssef Kourani were accused in 2004 of transferring more than $200,000 obtained through real estate fraud and cigarette smuggling to Kourani's brother, Haider Kourani, the Hezbollah chief of military security for southern Lebanon. The money was to be used for purchasing military equipment from the United Nations Protection Force for use in attacks against Israel….
- In June 2005, two Dearborn-area men, Ahmad and Musa Jebril, were convicted of mortgage fraud charges after defrauding six banks for $250,000 and dozens of people of up to $400,000. The Jebrils were active supporters of Hamas, and federal authorities said that Ahmad Jebril was training a cell of local men to wage jihad against the US. Both Musa and Ahmad Jebril had been thrown out of their local mosque, where Musa had been an imam, for their radical activities. A local Muslim writer has described in an article for Beliefnet the climate of fear that the two men created in the Islamic community by their jihadist preaching and activities. The indictment also noted that immediately following the November 1995 car bombing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which killed four Americans, the Jebrils faxed a statement in support of the attacks to CNN. Subsequent to their conviction of mortgage fraud, the Jebrils and one of their associates were additionally charged by the federal government with trying to bribe a juror during their fraud trial.
As we said last October, "mortgage fraud is a big problem in Dearborn for several reasons, not least of which include the destruction of property values, the deterioration of neighborhoods, and further destabilizing an already badly depressed real-estate market.Dearborn’s mortgage-scammers are also a problem because fraud is one more source of funds that find there way to international terrorist organizations, especially, in Dearborn’s case, Hezbollah."
We at DU possess no information at this stage permitting us to contradict this, or to state the pair were in reality diverting the funds to terrorism. But it wouldn’t be unreasonable to draw an inference from the patterns of recent history.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Don't Know Much About History
On Monday I returned to my Detroit alma mater, Wayne State University, to hear Daniel Pipes’s lecture on “The Threat to Israel’s Existence: Why It’s Back, What It Means.”
The lecture was co-sponsored by our friends at the Anti-Racist Blog, Stand With Us, as well as the Zionist Organization of America.
The audience of 150-200 were predominately Middle Eastern young people, and overwhelmingly hostile to Dr. Pipes. As we noted earlier, the scheduled lecture led beforehand to some protests, tearing down of posters, and handing around literature defaming Dr. Pipes as a racist and defender of the hated apartheid State of Israel.
As reported at the Anti-Racist Blog, the main organizers of the anti-Pipes activities was a group called Anti-Racist Action, (ARA), (not to be confused with the Anti-Racist Blog). ARA is a completely knucklehead hate group with an incomprehensible philosophy that allows them room to preach hatred, silencing of opponents, and violence in their efforts to stamp out “racism,” “homophobia,” etc.--and Israel.
Dr. Pipes’s lecture was a brief one, followed by a contentious question-and-answer period. It was evident from the nature of the “questions” that Dr. Pipes’s opponents were determined to attack his point of view, and badly unprepared to do so. One young lady made the mistake of prefacing her "question" to Dr. Pipes by admitting that she knew little of history, which she likened to "mumbo-jumbo." Her lack of foundation didn't prevent her from holding a strong opinion about the history of Israel and the Middle East.
This young lady wasn't the only one there who was a stranger to Islamic history. One significant moment came after Dr. Pipes, attempting to discuss Islam's failure to adopt the practice of charging interest, and the continued, unexamined, practice of slavery. At the mention of Islam's historic practice of slavery, there was a spontaneous reaction from the audience, outraged at the suggestion that there is slavery in Islam. The following video clip, posted by Anti-Racist Blog, records the moment right after which the audience began jeering Dr. Pipes for stating Islam’s historical practice of slavery.
Dr. Pipes’s astonishment, and mine, were genuine. Most of the other antagonistic comments and disrespectful questions were prepared in advance--poorly so--but they were clearly not spontaneous.
This reaction was spontaneous. These students were just as shocked as the Columbia students were when Ahmadinejad said there were no homosexuals in Iran. No one showed up expecting to hear that. But in contrast to what Ahamdinejad said, there is no basis upon which these Muslim students can deny the practice of slavery in Islam. (“Islam's Wretched Record on Slavery”).
Yet I was convinced these young people really do believe that Islam and slavery have nothing to do with one another. This reflects not only on their historical ignorance, but especially on the dishonesty of their Islamic teachers. Is it such a wonder that so many American Muslims believe there were no Islamic hijackers in those planes on 9/11?
These young people are quite devoted to their religion, about which they seem to know very little.
The lecture was co-sponsored by our friends at the Anti-Racist Blog, Stand With Us, as well as the Zionist Organization of America.
The audience of 150-200 were predominately Middle Eastern young people, and overwhelmingly hostile to Dr. Pipes. As we noted earlier, the scheduled lecture led beforehand to some protests, tearing down of posters, and handing around literature defaming Dr. Pipes as a racist and defender of the hated apartheid State of Israel.
As reported at the Anti-Racist Blog, the main organizers of the anti-Pipes activities was a group called Anti-Racist Action, (ARA), (not to be confused with the Anti-Racist Blog). ARA is a completely knucklehead hate group with an incomprehensible philosophy that allows them room to preach hatred, silencing of opponents, and violence in their efforts to stamp out “racism,” “homophobia,” etc.--and Israel.
Dr. Pipes’s lecture was a brief one, followed by a contentious question-and-answer period. It was evident from the nature of the “questions” that Dr. Pipes’s opponents were determined to attack his point of view, and badly unprepared to do so. One young lady made the mistake of prefacing her "question" to Dr. Pipes by admitting that she knew little of history, which she likened to "mumbo-jumbo." Her lack of foundation didn't prevent her from holding a strong opinion about the history of Israel and the Middle East.
This young lady wasn't the only one there who was a stranger to Islamic history. One significant moment came after Dr. Pipes, attempting to discuss Islam's failure to adopt the practice of charging interest, and the continued, unexamined, practice of slavery. At the mention of Islam's historic practice of slavery, there was a spontaneous reaction from the audience, outraged at the suggestion that there is slavery in Islam. The following video clip, posted by Anti-Racist Blog, records the moment right after which the audience began jeering Dr. Pipes for stating Islam’s historical practice of slavery.
Dr. Pipes’s astonishment, and mine, were genuine. Most of the other antagonistic comments and disrespectful questions were prepared in advance--poorly so--but they were clearly not spontaneous.
This reaction was spontaneous. These students were just as shocked as the Columbia students were when Ahmadinejad said there were no homosexuals in Iran. No one showed up expecting to hear that. But in contrast to what Ahamdinejad said, there is no basis upon which these Muslim students can deny the practice of slavery in Islam. (“Islam's Wretched Record on Slavery”).
Yet I was convinced these young people really do believe that Islam and slavery have nothing to do with one another. This reflects not only on their historical ignorance, but especially on the dishonesty of their Islamic teachers. Is it such a wonder that so many American Muslims believe there were no Islamic hijackers in those planes on 9/11?
These young people are quite devoted to their religion, about which they seem to know very little.
Thursday, September 06, 2007
AP News Flash: They Aren’t Mad About Abu Ghraib After All
Speaking of alleged terror plots, AP writer Paul Haven has this light to shed on the equally significant terrorist bust in Denmark this week:
A pair of alleged Islamic terror plots uncovered this week in Germany and Denmark share some disturbing hallmarks: Officials link both to al-Qaida and have found tentacles stretching all the way to Pakistan, the likely hiding place of Osama bin Laden. (“Foiled Terror Plots Share Hallmarks”).
As I complained elsewhere about the use of the term "alleged," everything in this paragraph makes some sense except Haven’s eccentric use of the phrase “alleged Islamic terror plots,” which I find confusing.
Which element is it that is supposed to be only alleged? Is it allegedly Islamic? Is it allegedly terrorist? Allegedly a plot? Or perhaps, (and it isn’t so far-fetched), is it only an allegation that the territories in which the plots were discovered are still going to be known as “Germany” and “Denmark”?
Meanwhile, David McHugh, Haven’s colleague at AP, wrote his report on the German (alleged) terror plot , (“Germans Arrest 3 in Alleged Terror Plot”), with a bit more common sense:
Security experts said the two purported plots are a reminder that Muslim extremists are not driven just by anger at the United States and its policies.
Islamic radicals "treat the whole Western world as their enemy," said Tadeusz Wrobel, an analyst of military and security issues in Warsaw.
I’d like to hear more from Taduesz, but that’s all the AP had room for.
But why exactly do we all need a reminder that Muslim extremists are not driven just by anger at the United States and its policies, and that they treat the whole Western world as their enemy?
Could it be because of all the ink that’s been spilled by the Western press endlessly repeating that the only reason for the anger of Islamic radicals has been the US and its policies?
If you read through Haven’s account from Denmark you see he’s still sticking with the "classic" anti-American viewpoint on the plots:
The schemes - which could have caused massive loss of life - have been a chilling reminder to Europeans of the threat they still face due to porous borders, restive minorities and perceived allegiance to the United States.
Now doesn't that make more sense than simply tarring an entire religion of peace as enemies of the West? "Bad Europeans. Not only are you friends with the USA (I thought the whole world hated us?), but your porous borders also suck in millions of us from Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, and elsewhere in the Middle East, after which our refusal either to assimilate or go home again makes us unhappy--in fact, it makes us positively restive. I’m so restive right now I could spit! Or blow up some Europeans."
Haven keeps trying to make sense of this:
While Europe and the United States have diverged - often sharply - on issues such as Iraq, the creation of the U.S. holding facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the CIA's use of secret prisons for terror suspects, it is Europe that has found itself the victim of more terror attacks since Sept. 11.
Journalists like Haven still seem puzzled that the facts don't fit the theory, even when their profession puts them in the way of security experts and analysts who point out the obvious to them all the time: the obvious being that Islam doesn’t hate us because of Abu Ghraib, but because of who we are.
As Richard Thompson of the Thomas More Law Center said recently, “the political goal of radical Islam is to destroy our Judeo-Christian culture…That the Quran calls for Muslims to subjugate the world, especially Christians and Jews, is a fact that anyone can look up.”
A pair of alleged Islamic terror plots uncovered this week in Germany and Denmark share some disturbing hallmarks: Officials link both to al-Qaida and have found tentacles stretching all the way to Pakistan, the likely hiding place of Osama bin Laden. (“Foiled Terror Plots Share Hallmarks”).
As I complained elsewhere about the use of the term "alleged," everything in this paragraph makes some sense except Haven’s eccentric use of the phrase “alleged Islamic terror plots,” which I find confusing.
Which element is it that is supposed to be only alleged? Is it allegedly Islamic? Is it allegedly terrorist? Allegedly a plot? Or perhaps, (and it isn’t so far-fetched), is it only an allegation that the territories in which the plots were discovered are still going to be known as “Germany” and “Denmark”?
Meanwhile, David McHugh, Haven’s colleague at AP, wrote his report on the German (alleged) terror plot , (“Germans Arrest 3 in Alleged Terror Plot”), with a bit more common sense:
Security experts said the two purported plots are a reminder that Muslim extremists are not driven just by anger at the United States and its policies.
Islamic radicals "treat the whole Western world as their enemy," said Tadeusz Wrobel, an analyst of military and security issues in Warsaw.
I’d like to hear more from Taduesz, but that’s all the AP had room for.
But why exactly do we all need a reminder that Muslim extremists are not driven just by anger at the United States and its policies, and that they treat the whole Western world as their enemy?
Could it be because of all the ink that’s been spilled by the Western press endlessly repeating that the only reason for the anger of Islamic radicals has been the US and its policies?
If you read through Haven’s account from Denmark you see he’s still sticking with the "classic" anti-American viewpoint on the plots:
The schemes - which could have caused massive loss of life - have been a chilling reminder to Europeans of the threat they still face due to porous borders, restive minorities and perceived allegiance to the United States.
Now doesn't that make more sense than simply tarring an entire religion of peace as enemies of the West? "Bad Europeans. Not only are you friends with the USA (I thought the whole world hated us?), but your porous borders also suck in millions of us from Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, and elsewhere in the Middle East, after which our refusal either to assimilate or go home again makes us unhappy--in fact, it makes us positively restive. I’m so restive right now I could spit! Or blow up some Europeans."
Haven keeps trying to make sense of this:
While Europe and the United States have diverged - often sharply - on issues such as Iraq, the creation of the U.S. holding facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the CIA's use of secret prisons for terror suspects, it is Europe that has found itself the victim of more terror attacks since Sept. 11.
Journalists like Haven still seem puzzled that the facts don't fit the theory, even when their profession puts them in the way of security experts and analysts who point out the obvious to them all the time: the obvious being that Islam doesn’t hate us because of Abu Ghraib, but because of who we are.
As Richard Thompson of the Thomas More Law Center said recently, “the political goal of radical Islam is to destroy our Judeo-Christian culture…That the Quran calls for Muslims to subjugate the world, especially Christians and Jews, is a fact that anyone can look up.”
Alleged Newspaper Questions Reality of Global Jihad
In today’s Detroit News, the important wire story about the arrest of three jihadists in Germany caught assembling bombs to blow up Americans was run under the large headline, “Alleged attack plot foiled.”
There’s nothing in the story itself to call into question the truth of what German authorities described of the jihadist plan, nor any other reason to question the reality of the attack plot itself--described by many accounts as “massive.” It was not merely an “alleged attack plot.”
Nor did the rest of the liberal press seem to feel the need to question the reality of the plot, judging from only this sampling of headlines:
“German Police Arrest 3 in Terrorist Plot” -- The New York Times
“German shock at bomb plot arrests” -- BBC News
“German police hunt for terror plot 'back-up team'” -- Guardian Unlimited
“3 planned 'massive airport bombs'” -- CNN International
“Germany arrests three in 'massive' terror plot” -- CTV Canada
As of yesterday there were three suspects in custody, “two German converts to Islam and a Turkish citizen who prosecutors said shared a ‘profound hatred of U.S. citizens.’” German police have launched an international manhunt for as many as 10 more. (“10 More Sought in German Terror Plot”).
There was a very real cottage used to store explosives that was surveilled by as many as 300 law enforcement officials for months; and the jihadists had “obtained military-style detonators and enough chemicals to make bombs more powerful than those that killed 191 commuters in Madrid in 2004 and 52 in London in 2005.”
We understand that the high scrupulosity of professional newspaper editors--not to mention fear of libel lawsuits--require that media descriptions of persons accused of crimes but as yet not convicted of any charge be called “alleged” murderers, rapists, perjurers, etc. This signals that the accused may in fact be innocent and pure as the driven snow.
Like anything, the media is sometimes recklessly inconsistent about this rule about alleged wrongdoers or wrongdoing "alleged"--see for example, the thousands of references to the “Duke rape supects,” the "NSA domestic spying program,” and almost every word printed about the “outing of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame in retaliation for Joe Wilson’s exposure of Bush administration lies about Saddam’s attempts to buy yellowcake from Africa”--not a single word of which was ever true, nor ever was granted the benefit of a single “alleged” in the major media.
Obviously, the story about the German terror plot against US and Western interests is not just a crime story in which suspects (and even the crime itself) must be given the editorial kid-glove treatment (“alleged attack plot”). In fact, it's not a crime story at all, because it's a war story. The story is as big as the war on terror. Or, by the same token, and depending on your political point of view, it may be as small, or as questionable, as the ("so-called") "war on terror."
Am I being too persnickety about the Detroit News’s poor choice of words? More than likely, knowing me. But then again, the devil is in the details, and details add up.
By means of incessant use in mass media of sneer quotes, references to merely “alleged” terrorist links and plots, and endless jabs at “Bush’s war in Iraq” and the “so-called war on terror,” the left manages to feed at least some Americans' desperate fantasy that we are still in a September 10, Islamist-radical free world.
If you don’t think this incessant drip-drip-drip of skepticism has its effect, then consider this.
In late September 2001, the American public was crystal clear that Al Qaida and Islamic terrorists had struck us on 9/11, and would strike again if we didn’t strike back.
Since then, there have been literally thousands of reports daily and hourly from all over the globe of terror attacks, kidnappings, bombings, beheadings, radical threats, fatwas, exposures of plots in mosques, of terror cells, cries of Death to America!, threats of nuclear jihad, foundings of radical Islamic republics, murders of journalists, murders of missionaries, murders of women and children--all of which were matter-of-factly reported and news-crawled (sans the adjective “alleged”) beneath our very eyes. And in every instance these brutal attacks and murders manifestly were rising directly up out of the increasingly violent pathology that is the Islamic world. The average American today knows exponentially more about the extent and virulence of global jihadism than he ever did before 9/11, and that's even if he only halfway pays attention.
And yet now, in September 2007, tens of millions of Americans who once knew better on 9/11, now question not only the reality of the “so-called war on terror,” but even whether it was Islamic terrorists--and not conniving Americans--who knocked down the World Trade Center in the first place.
Such are the power and importance of words.
There’s nothing in the story itself to call into question the truth of what German authorities described of the jihadist plan, nor any other reason to question the reality of the attack plot itself--described by many accounts as “massive.” It was not merely an “alleged attack plot.”
Nor did the rest of the liberal press seem to feel the need to question the reality of the plot, judging from only this sampling of headlines:
“German Police Arrest 3 in Terrorist Plot” -- The New York Times
“German shock at bomb plot arrests” -- BBC News
“German police hunt for terror plot 'back-up team'” -- Guardian Unlimited
“3 planned 'massive airport bombs'” -- CNN International
“Germany arrests three in 'massive' terror plot” -- CTV Canada
As of yesterday there were three suspects in custody, “two German converts to Islam and a Turkish citizen who prosecutors said shared a ‘profound hatred of U.S. citizens.’” German police have launched an international manhunt for as many as 10 more. (“10 More Sought in German Terror Plot”).
There was a very real cottage used to store explosives that was surveilled by as many as 300 law enforcement officials for months; and the jihadists had “obtained military-style detonators and enough chemicals to make bombs more powerful than those that killed 191 commuters in Madrid in 2004 and 52 in London in 2005.”
We understand that the high scrupulosity of professional newspaper editors--not to mention fear of libel lawsuits--require that media descriptions of persons accused of crimes but as yet not convicted of any charge be called “alleged” murderers, rapists, perjurers, etc. This signals that the accused may in fact be innocent and pure as the driven snow.
Like anything, the media is sometimes recklessly inconsistent about this rule about alleged wrongdoers or wrongdoing "alleged"--see for example, the thousands of references to the “Duke rape supects,” the "NSA domestic spying program,” and almost every word printed about the “outing of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame in retaliation for Joe Wilson’s exposure of Bush administration lies about Saddam’s attempts to buy yellowcake from Africa”--not a single word of which was ever true, nor ever was granted the benefit of a single “alleged” in the major media.
Obviously, the story about the German terror plot against US and Western interests is not just a crime story in which suspects (and even the crime itself) must be given the editorial kid-glove treatment (“alleged attack plot”). In fact, it's not a crime story at all, because it's a war story. The story is as big as the war on terror. Or, by the same token, and depending on your political point of view, it may be as small, or as questionable, as the ("so-called") "war on terror."
Am I being too persnickety about the Detroit News’s poor choice of words? More than likely, knowing me. But then again, the devil is in the details, and details add up.
By means of incessant use in mass media of sneer quotes, references to merely “alleged” terrorist links and plots, and endless jabs at “Bush’s war in Iraq” and the “so-called war on terror,” the left manages to feed at least some Americans' desperate fantasy that we are still in a September 10, Islamist-radical free world.
If you don’t think this incessant drip-drip-drip of skepticism has its effect, then consider this.
In late September 2001, the American public was crystal clear that Al Qaida and Islamic terrorists had struck us on 9/11, and would strike again if we didn’t strike back.
Since then, there have been literally thousands of reports daily and hourly from all over the globe of terror attacks, kidnappings, bombings, beheadings, radical threats, fatwas, exposures of plots in mosques, of terror cells, cries of Death to America!, threats of nuclear jihad, foundings of radical Islamic republics, murders of journalists, murders of missionaries, murders of women and children--all of which were matter-of-factly reported and news-crawled (sans the adjective “alleged”) beneath our very eyes. And in every instance these brutal attacks and murders manifestly were rising directly up out of the increasingly violent pathology that is the Islamic world. The average American today knows exponentially more about the extent and virulence of global jihadism than he ever did before 9/11, and that's even if he only halfway pays attention.
And yet now, in September 2007, tens of millions of Americans who once knew better on 9/11, now question not only the reality of the “so-called war on terror,” but even whether it was Islamic terrorists--and not conniving Americans--who knocked down the World Trade Center in the first place.
Such are the power and importance of words.
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