HOMELAND INSECURITY
Iraqi terrorists caught
along Mexico border
American intelligence chief confirms
'people are alive' as a result of capture


Posted: August 23, 2007
4:04 p.m. Eastern




© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

President Bush with National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell
President Bush's top intelligence aide has confirmed that Iraqi terrorists have been captured coming into the United States from Mexico.
The confirmation comes from National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell, who talked about the situation in an interview with the El Paso Times recently.
"Coming up through the Mexican border is a path," McConnell said. "Now, are they doing it in great numbers? No, because we're finding them and we're identifying them and we've got watch lists and we're keeping them at bay."
But, he said, "There are numerous situations where people are alive today because we caught them (terrorists)."
(Story continues below)
Intelligence officials say the numbers and details of such situations are classified, but McConnell pointed as an example to Mahmoud Youssef Kourani, who entered the United States through Tijuana, Mexico, in 2001, and later pleaded guilty to helping raise money for Hezbollah, which has been designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization.
The goal, McConnell said, is for terrorists to gain admittance to the United States, and then produce "mass casualties."
"You've got committed leadership. You've got a place to train. They've got trainers, and they've got recruits," McConnell told the newspaper. "The key now is getting recruits in. So if your key is getting recruits in, how would you do that?"
McConnell's office did reveal some numbers, during fiscal 2006, there were 14 Iraqi nationals caught trying to enter the U.S. illegally, while so far in 2007, that number is 16.
"Now some we caught, some we didn't," McConnell told the newspaper. "The ones that get in – what are they going to do? They're going to write home. So it's not rocket science; word will move around."
Also revealed was that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection intercepted 60 Iraqis crossing the nation's southwestern border in 2006 who were seeking asylum in the U.S., while that number so far in 2007 is 178.
The Times report said a U.S. intelligence analyst said there's been evidence that human smugglers, or coyotes, are telling Iraqis to ask for amnesty if they are caught.
The typical scenario is this: Forged documents are used to get an Iraqi into a country in South or Central America. Since travel from country to country is allowed without vises in many locations there, they work their way north to the U.S. border.
McConnell told the newspaper the numbers are classified, but there have been a relatively small number of people with known links to terrorist groups who have been caught at that point.
Kourani, for example, apparently paid a Mexican Consulate official in Lebanon $3,000 for a Mexican visa and then was smuggled into the United States in the trunk of a car.
He was sentenced to more than four years in prison after admitting he helped raise funds for Hezbollah.
When the newspaper asked U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, about the situation, he said, "It's not something we would talk about."
"We have had intelligence about al-Qaida identifying Latin America as a potential or prospective area where they could come through, but frankly, I'm surprised that the director would make definitive statements like that because, even if it were true, you wouldn't want to publicize that," Reyes told the Times.
McConnell was senior vice president with Booz Allen Hamilton, focusing on intelligence and national security, before being appointed to his current post by Bush in February.
He previously was the director of the National Security Agency and served as a member of the Director of Central Intelligence senior leadership team before then.

From: World Net Daily

Thursday, August 23, 2007



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Watching Al Jazeera, Part I

So Karen and I sit down, flip channels, and what do you know, suddenly Al Jazeera pops up.
"Since when do we get Al Jazeera?" I ask.
"We don't," Karen assures me.
Oh man, gotta call the cable company and make sure we're not paying for this Jew-hatred.
There's all this slow mo footage overlaid with sinister musical stings of grim looking Jooz carrying M16's; this is intercut with Bedouin children herding sheep, looking all innocent and peaceful.
And the narrator/host/entertainer, a woman with shoulders like a fullback, and an absolutely tragic mullet style hair-do from the 80's, keeps talking about "G-d's Jewish warriors," and she repeats these three words—I'm counting, mind you—and by the time she hits number 107, I give up.
I now know what it's like to get brainwashed in some North Korean reeducation gulag.
Anyway, this Al Jazeera lady with the hoo-ha Oxford accent—big shock—states:
"The second intifada was an attempt by the Palestinians to shake off the Israeli occupation."
Really?
Well, what else can you expect from Al Jazeera.
Actually, the second intifada was Arafat's answer to the Camp David Accords. His way of saying no to all negotiations after Barak offered the terrorist leader 96% of everything, including dividing Jerusalem.
The whole two hours of this Al Jazeera program is such typical, and poisonous Arab propaganda that Karen and I are kind of fascinated. This huge lady with the really bad hair interviews guess who as experts on Israel?
Jimmy Carter. Karen Armstrong. John Mearsheimer. There's the obligatory angry loser from Peace Now — dude, clean your office, it looks like cat litter. And a couple of Israeli lefties who are so far gone they might as well be living in Damascus.
Gee-willikers, Al Jazeera lady forgot to interview Hizbullah/Iranian-proxy strongman Hassan Nasrallah; his views on Israel are pretty much the same as the usual suspects above. He's always ranting about the evils of the Israeli occupation. And he vehemently denies that he's a Jew-hater. Like Carter, Armstrong and Mearsheimer he insists that he's merely anti-Zionist.Yup, Nasrallah gets positively indignant when he's accused of being an anti-Semite. Sheesh, can't anyone criticize and bomb Israel without being accused of being a Jew-hater?
There's this long segment on the — horror musical sting here — Israel lobby. Obligatory shots of well-dressed, um Jews, tables of food, which I suppose is proof of evil, people chatting and looking, y'know, conspiratorial.
I'm waiting for Al Jazeera lady to start quoting The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, because that's really what this segment is all about, but I suppose she's too cool for that. This is after all Al Jazeera. They are , allegedly, civilized.
Then fullback lady pulls out the big guns: Actual Jewish terrorists. She comes up with Baruch Goldstein, Yigal Amir , and a group who rigged explosives to the car of an Arab Mayor they suspected of aiding terrorists and who planned on blowing up an Arab girl's school, Disgusting and wrong, but they were caught and arrested, by Jewish cops, thank G-d.
That's it for Jewish terror.
Personally, I think the Jewish people have shown remarkable restraint in the face of a genocidal enemy.
Al Jazeera lady gets all indignant about American Christians who support Israel. They're warriors because... I have no idea; they sing and dance and pray.
I always thought that warriors are people who, y'know, pick up weapons and fight.
Let's face it, Al Jazeera lady is playing the old Soviet game of manipulating and ultimately destroying language: slavery is freedom, the bottom is the top, evil is good.
Karen and I are smiling. Wow, these good Christians show more love of Israel than many Jews. G-d bless them. Al Jazeera just did a big favor, probably increased membership in that Florida Church by 20%.
Then there's segment called: "The Power Couple."
"Hey isn't that your cousin Shani?" I say to Karen.
"Yup, sure is."
Al Jazeera lady grimly reports on Assemblyman Dov Hikind and his wife Shani, who raise money for a united Jerusalem.
Al Jazeera lady darkly spits out: "All. Completely. Legal."
Horrifying.
Al Jazeera lady points out that some of these Jewish warriors are wearing, prepare yourselves: diamonds.
I'm in a state of shock, feel like melting into a puddle.
The chutzpah of Jewish women wearing diamonds.
Every Al Jazeera viewer knows that women should be wearing, y'know, burkahs!
Al Jazeera lady pines for the past when Jews were forbidden to live in Jerusalem; when the Western Wall was the city garbage dump; when synagogues were horse stables; when headstones from Jewish cemeteries were used by the Jordanians to pave streets; when Jordanian soldiers sat on the walls of the Old City, shot and murdered Jews.
Ah, the good ol' days.
Basically, the whole two hours is a hit piece on Jews who wish to live in Judea and Samaria. Al Jazeera lady blames, well, everything on the Jooz. She never points out that after the Jewish surrender of Gaza, Hamas proclaimed victory and promised that "all of Israel would be liberated."
I guess that's sort of an inconvenient truth.
Here's a larger truth: what happens when Arab/Muslims proclaim parts of London, Paris, Brooklyn, under Sharia and the presence of Jews an intolerable provocation?
There are already 22 Arab countries that are Judenrein.
Why does the world find this perfectly acceptable, perfectly natural?
Why does the world keep drawing new lines in the sand where the presence of Jews is unacceptable?
Just asking.
"Hey," says Karen, "this isn't Al Jazeera, this is CNN."
"Well, I know that, I've just been using this as a literary device to make a point."
Christiane Amanpour's work is guilty of moral equivalence. She's a disgraceful journalist. And I guarantee this: tonight 's segment will be an apology for Muslim jihadists.
Posted by Robert at August 22, 2007 10:41 AM