Tag Archives: Islamic Terrorism

DHS whistleblower was ordered to scrub records of Muslims with terror ties

Is Barack Obama focused on protecting the American people?
Is Barack Obama focused on protecting the American people?

This is from The Hill.

Full text:

Amid the chaos of the 2009 holiday travel season, jihadists planned to slaughter 290 innocent travelers on a Christmas Day flight from the Netherlands to Detroit, Michigan. Twenty-three-year old Nigerian Muslim Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab intended to detonate Northwest Airlines Flight 253, but the explosives in his underwear malfunctioned and brave passengers subdued him until he could be arrested. The graphic and traumatic defeat they planned for the United States failed, that time.

Following the attempted attack, President Obama threw the intelligence community under the bus for its failure to “connect the dots.” He said, “this was not a failure to collect intelligence, it was a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already had.”

Most Americans were unaware of the enormous damage to morale at the Department of Homeland Security, where I worked, his condemnation caused. His words infuriated many of us because we knew his administration had been engaged in a bureaucratic effort to destroy the raw material—the actual intelligence we had collected for years, and erase those dots. The dots constitute the intelligence needed to keep Americans safe, and the Obama administration was ordering they be wiped away.

After leaving my 15 year career at DHS, I can no longer be silent about the dangerous state of America’s counter-terror strategy, our leaders’ willingness to compromise the security of citizens for the ideological rigidity of political correctness—and, consequently, our vulnerability to devastating, mass-casualty attack.

Just before that Christmas Day attack, in early November 2009, I was ordered by my superiors at the Department of Homeland Security to delete or modify several hundred records of individuals tied to designated Islamist terror groups like Hamas from the important federal database, the Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS). These types of records are the basis for any ability to “connect dots.”  Every day, DHS Customs and Border Protection officers watch entering and exiting many individuals associated with known terrorist affiliations, then look for patterns. Enforcing a political scrubbing of records of Muslims greatly affected our ability to do that. Even worse, going forward, my colleagues and I were prohibited from entering pertinent information into the database.

A few weeks later, in my office at the Port of Atlanta, the television hummed with the inevitable Congressional hearings that follow any terrorist attack. While members of Congress grilled Obama administration officials, demanding why their subordinates were still failing to understand the intelligence they had gathered, I was being forced to delete and scrub the records. And I was well aware that, as a result, it was going to be vastly more difficult to “connect the dots” in the future—especially beforean attack occurs.

As the number of successful and attempted Islamic terrorist attacks on America increased, the type of information that the Obama administration ordered removed from travel and national security databases was the kind of information that, if properly assessed, could have prevented subsequent domestic Islamist attacks like the ones committed by Faisal Shahzad (May 2010), Detroit “honor killing” perpetrator Rahim A. Alfetlawi (2011); Amine El Khalifi, who plotted to blow up the U.S. Capitol (2012); Dzhokhar or Tamerlan Tsarnaev who conducted the Boston Marathon bombing (2013); Oklahoma beheading suspect Alton Nolen (2014); or Muhammed Yusuf Abdulazeez, who opened fire on two military installations in Chattanooga, Tennessee (2015).

It is very plausible that one or more of the subsequent terror attacks on the homeland could have been prevented if more subject matter experts in the Department of Homeland Security had been allowed to do our jobs back in late 2009. It is demoralizing—and infuriating—that today, those elusive dots are even harder to find, and harder to connect, than they were during the winter of 2009.

Has the Obama administration done a good job of preventing terrorist attacks? Does his attitude of blaming America deter terrorist attacks, or does it embolden radical Islamists to perform more attacks?

The Daily Caller lists 7 terrorist attacks that occurred during the 7 years of the Obama presidency, as of July 2015.

Here is one:

In November 2009, Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan opened fire in an attack at Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas. Hassan killed 13 people and wounded over 30 more.

In a document dated Oct. 18, 2012 obtained by Fox News, Hasan wrote: “I, Nidal Malik Hasan, am compelled to renounce any oaths of allegiances that require me to support/defend man made constitution (like the constitution of the United States) over the commandments mandated in Islam.”

The U.S. government has steadfastly refused to call Hasan’s militant slaughter a terrorist attack. Instead, federal officials have repeatedly characterized Hasan’s actions as “workplace violence.”

A U.S. military court sentenced Hasan, a military psychiatrist, to death in 2013.

And another:

In April 2013, Chechen brothers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev exploded two pressure cooker bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

The bombings killed three people including an eight-year-old boy. Hundreds of runners and spectators were seriously injured. Seventeen people saw their limbs blown off.

Three days later, the brothers ambushed and killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev died when his brother ran over him with a stolen Mercedes SUV in the midst of a shootout with police. In April, a jury found Dzhokhar Tsarnaev guilty of 30 criminal counts. He later received the death penalty.

There is a plan to protect us from these sorts of activities, and it was recently announced by Obama’s attorney general, Loretta Lynch.

The Daily Wire reports:

Speaking to the audience at the Muslim Advocates’ 10th anniversary dinner Thursday, Lynch said her “greatest fear” is the “incredibly disturbing rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric” in America and vowed to prosecute any guilty of what she deemed violence-inspiring speech.

“The fear that you have just mentioned is in fact my greatest fear as a prosecutor, as someone who is sworn to the protection of all of the American people, which is that the rhetoric will be accompanied by acts of violence,” she said.

[…]After touting the numbers of “investigations into acts of anti-Muslim hatred” and “bigoted actions” against Muslims launched by her DOJ, Lynch suggested the Constitution does not protect “actions predicated on violent talk” and pledged to prosecute those responsible for such actions.

This is the same woman who declined to charge Lois Lerner for using the IRS as a weapon to persecute conservative groups in an election year.

Do you feel safe now? Do you think that the Democrats are serious about the threat of Islamic terrorism? Do you think that you should elect the Democrats again in November 2016?

13 Hours movie review, and my top 25 posts about the Benghazi cover-up

13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi

I went to see the movie 13 hours on Saturday and found that it dovetailed nicely with all the stories that I had written on this blog about the events in Libya and the subsequent lies and cover-up by the Obama administration.

I was asked to review the movie and post all of the links to the previous stories by my friends Kevin and McKenzie, so that’s what I’m going to do.

So, I am a huge war movie fan, and I read military biography and military history. The most frustrating thing in war movies and books about war is that the go too far down to the level of details, without providing the context. Very frustrating. I don’t want movies to be too much about action and fancy animations. I want to learn something about the strategy and tactics in play. And 13 Hours does not disappoint.

You get a lot of exposure to the real world of espionage, black ops and drones for one thing. They show you the insides of a real CIA station in Libya, tell how it was acquired, and they show what goes on there. You also get to see what diplomats do, and who is responsible for keeping them safe. The battle scenes feature a ton of top down / map-like shots. There are shots of maps with the buildings and who will be deployed where, and for what reason.

Everything is called by its real name, e.g. – a technical is not called “a pickup truck with a heavy weapon”, it’s called a “technical”. An AC-130 gunship is not “air support” it’s an AC-130 gunship. A Predator drone is not a drone, it’s a Predator. An F-16 is not a “fighter jet” it’s an F-16. A QRF is not a “Quick Reaction Force”, it’s a QRF. Too bad for you if you don’t read enough to know what these things are and how they work. Everyone should be interested in these things, because these things matter for national security and foreign policy.

And the actual scenes of shooting is not mindless gunplay like in “Inception” or “The Matrix” – they try to show you the ranges, the cover, the concealment, the lines of sight, suppression, etc. There is realistic confusion about fog of war (FOW) and identifaction: friend of foe (IFF). The fact that this is a true story where the people involved all collaborated on the book and on the movie makes it really something if you like realism. This is how State Department and CIA work in other countries really goes down. If you liked “Act of Valor”, “American Sniper”, “Blackhawk Down”, “Lone Survivor” or the battle scenes in “Rules of Engagement”, then you need to see this movie.

Hillary Clinton look bored about the deaths of 4 Americans who asked for her help
Hillary Clinton look bored about the deaths of 4 Americans who asked for her help

What difference at this point does it make?

All right, now the politics was kept to a minimum in the movie, but I was asked to list out all the posts that I wrote about this.

The list of posts goes back in time from October 22, 2015 to September 13th, 2012 (the day after the terrorist attack):

  1. Hillary Clinton’s State Department ignored 600+ requests for more security in Benghazi
  2. Why did Hillary Clinton blame the Benghazi terrorist attack on an “Internet video”?
  3. All evidence points to Hillary Clinton as source of internet video lie
  4. E-mails: Hillary Clinton’s top aides knew in minutes that Benghazi was a terrorist attack
  5. Clinton confidants were present to “separate” damaging documents before Benghazi probe
  6. E-mails: Susan Rice prepped to lie about Benghazi by White House
  7. Transcripts show that top U.S. military officials briefed Obama on Benghazi terrorist attack
  8. Benghazi liar Susan Rice to be appointed National Security Adviser by grateful Obama
  9. Released e-mails show that State Department edited terrorism out of Benghazi talking points
  10. Obama: editing of talking points to cover-up of Benghazi terrorist attack is a “sideshow”
  11. BBC News covers whistle-blower testimony: “After Benghazi revelations, heads will roll”
  12. What we learned from the Benghazi whistle-blowers
  13. Whistle-blower: State Department cut counterterrorism experts out of Benghazi decisions
  14. Official: We knew Benghazi was a terrorist attack “from the get-go”
  15. Benghazi whistle-blower: assets to protect the embassy were available
  16. Obama administration refused to engage top counter-terrorism resource for Benghazi
  17. Classified cable sent on August 16th warned of vulnerability of Benghazi consulate
  18. Requests for support from Benghazi defenders denied by the Obama administration
  19. White House told that terrorists took credit for Benghazi attack within two hours
  20. Unmanned drone observed Benghazi attack, no help sent for 7 hours
  21. CIA in Libya reported that Benghazi was a terrorist attack in first 24 hours
  22. Obama’s Watergate: State Department falsifies Obama’s Benghazi cover-up
  23. Benghazi attack was a massive failure of Obama’s security policy
  24. UK Independent: “America ‘was warned of embassy attack but did nothing’”
  25. Al Qaeda chief suspect in Libya terrorist attack, Obama flies to Las Vegas fundraiser

And of course the famous Hillary Clinton meltdown when questions about why she blamed a terrorist attack on a YouTube video, and why there was a stand down order to prevent help from being sent.

Hillary also lied to the families of the victims, telling the families that she blamed a YouTube video for protests that got out of hand.

To make a long story short, the Benghazi terrorist attack occurred two months before the 2012 re-election of Barack Obama. And that’s why Obama, Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice lied to the American people about it – they did not want the American people to know how poorly their Libya intervention had worked out. An intervention that was strongly supported by easily-influenced moderate, establishment Republicans such as Marco Rubio, by the way. Everyone who voted for the Obama administration in the 2012 elections voted against the 4 Americans who were killed in that terrorist attack. As Secretary of State, Clinton did not prioritize national security. Her focus was on promoting abortion and gay rights abroad.

Searching by tag name

If you want to search the blog by tag, just add tag/<tagName> to the end of the web page address (URL). The list above was generated with: “https://winteryknight.com/tag/Benghazi“. Use a dash for spaces in the tagName. For my other series of posts about Democrat scandals, such as Fast and Furious, just change the tag name: “https://winteryknight.com/tag/Fast-and-Furious“. You can do the same thing with the e-mail scandal, the Clinton Foundation scandal, and all the other scandals of this corrupt Democrat administration.

Mohamed Elmi and Mohamed Salad shoot at crowd of unarmed people in Calgary, Alberta

Canada Election 2015: Socialists in red, Communists in Orange, Conservatives in blue
Canada Election 2015: Socialists in red, Communists in Orange, Conservatives in blue

Recently, Canada went to the polls and elected a very pro-Muslim substitute teacher named Justin Trudeau to be their Prime Minister.

Canada’s Global News reports:

U.S. commentators reporting on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s personal welcome of Syrian refugees are drawing comparisons with the angry anti-refugee politics in their own country.

The story of Trudeau greeting refugees at the airport in Toronto Thursday night was the top story for awhile yesterday on the New York Times website.

A video and similar items appeared on Newsweek, the BBC, NBC, Paris Match, and the UK Guardian, Independent and Daily Mail.

[…]The headline on the G-Q website was, “Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Just Gave U-S Politicians a Refreshing Lesson in Compassion.”

He welcomed in tens of thousands of Syrian refugees, as the leftist New York Times reported:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau greeted a planeload of weary Syrian refugees landing in Toronto early Friday, telling the first to disembark that “you’re safe at home now” as he handed them winter coats.

“Tonight they step off the plane as refugees, but they walk out of this terminal as permanent residents of Canada,” Mr. Trudeau told government employees gathered at the airport.

Trudeau gave them full benefits as permanent residents – included access to the single payer health care system and retirement benefits.

And he also said this before the recent election:

The Liberal Party has always favored importing massive numbers of unskilled immigrants from foreign countries. They want them collecting welfare benefits right away, and to start voting right away, too. I wonder who these new immigrants vote for? The party of smaller government, or the party of a socialist welfare state?

A shooting in Calgary

Yesterday, this happened in Calgary, Alberta:

Here’s the story from Breitbart News:

Two men have been charged with attempted murder in the Canadian city of Calgary after a nightclub shooting early Sunday morning. Mohamed Elmi, 31, and Mohamed Salad, 29, also face a host of other charges, including unauthorised possession of a firearm, aggravated assault and possession of a firearm with an altered or defaced serial number.

A 38-year-old man was sent to hospital immediately after the attack with serious soft tissue injuries to his torso.

[…]Canadian media has been careful not to make any link between the suspects named and their religion. The word ‘jihad’ is conspicuously absent in media coverage,  something that is irritating social media users who are openly speculating whether or not they have been banned from making any connection with radical Islam.

Canada does not allow non-criminals to carry weapons – only criminals are allowed to carry them. Canadian politicians don’t want to offend criminals by allowing their victims to shoot back at them when they’re shot at.

Police office shot in Philadelphia

Last week, there was news about a shooting in Philadelphia:

Look at how the Democrat mayor responded to it:

Story here:

On January 8, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney (D) rejected ties to Islam in the ambush shooting of Philadelphia police officer Jesse Hartnett and suggested the big lesson is that we need more gun control.

Hartnett was shot with a gun that was stolen from a police officer’s house. And the suspected gunman, Edward Archer, “allegedly told authorities he targeted an officer because police defend laws that are contrary to the Quran.”

6 ABC reports that Archer “confessed” to having carried out that attack “in the name of Islam” and that Archer “pledged his allegiance to ISIS.”

However, during Mayor Kenney’s speech, while flanked by city and law enforcement officials, he said, “In no way, shape, or form does anyone in this room believe that Islam, or the teaching of Islam, has anything to do with [the shooting of Officer Hartnett].”

Fox News reports that Kenney said the shooting shows the need for more gun control: “There are too many guns on our streets and I think our national government needs to do something about that.”

The weapon was stolen from a police officer. And in the past we have seen how political correctness created new lower hiring requirements on police officers have resulted in criminals being able to overpower them and take their weapons, as in this case of a criminal overpowering a woman police officer and taking her weapon. The Obama administration is doing the same thing to integrate women into combat units, as well, which will reduce the combat effectiveness of our military forces. And the same thing is being done by fire departments. Political correctness is more important than effectiveness for the taxpayers who pay the bills.

The Obama administration

Now the Obama administration tends to describe attacks like this Philadelphia attack as “senseless violence”, “workplace violence”, and “random violence”.

Here is how Obama responded to the recent San Bernadino terrorist attack:

The Obama administration did, however, announce a plan to respond to these attacks.

Here it is from the Daily Wire:

Speaking to the audience at the Muslim Advocates’ 10th anniversary dinner Thursday, Lynch said her “greatest fear” is the “incredibly disturbing rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric” in America and vowed to prosecute any guilty of what she deemed violence-inspiring speech.

“The fear that you have just mentioned is in fact my greatest fear as a prosecutor, as someone who is sworn to the protection of all of the American people, which is that the rhetoric will be accompanied by acts of violence,” she said.

[…]After touting the numbers of “investigations into acts of anti-Muslim hatred” and “bigoted actions” against Muslims launched by her DOJ, Lynch suggested the Constitution does not protect “actions predicated on violent talk” and pledged to prosecute those responsible for such actions.

This is the same woman who declined to charge Lois Lerner for using the IRS as a weapon to persecute conservative groups in an election year.

The ACLU

Here is a recent story about a Muslim ACLU leader, who said that she did not like being asked to condemn terrorist attacks by radical Muslims:

The deputy director of the ACLU of Michigan said in an op-ed Monday that she refuses to condemn radical Islamic terrorism in order to prove her allegiance to the United States.

Rana Elmir wrote that she’s “consistently and aggressively asked” to condemn Islamic terrorism, and is tired of having her religious views linked to atrocities like the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and in Paris and San Bernardino this year.

“I emphatically refuse,” she wrote in an opinion piece in The Washington Post.

The op-ed was titled: “Stop asking me to condemn terrorists just because I’m Muslim.”

I just want to say two things at the end of this post. First, half my relatives are Muslim, but they’re the peaceful kind. Second, I’m all for welcoming in skilled immigrants who can work, follow the law, and avoid collecting government benefits.