Terrorists

Negotiating with terrorists won’t bring peace to Afghanistan.

Plus, Elon Musk steps in it.

On September 29, the State Department added British citizen Sally Jones to its list of foreign terrorists. Jones is a 46-year-old punk rocker who converted to Islam and moved from Kent to Raqqa to join the Islamic State in 2013. She is also newly widowed, having lost her 21-year-old husband, ISIS…

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has released its latest statistics on the number of former Guantanamo detainees who are either confirmed or suspected of returning to the fight. As expected, there has been a slight increase in the number of ex-detainees who have rejoined…

Last Friday, I moderated a panel at Hudson Institute titled, “Why is Qassem Suleimani Smiling? The Iran Deal and Sanctions Relief for Terrorists.” (See video of the event here.) The panel’s focus was not speculative—for instance, how the regime might spend the signing bonus promised by the Joint…

Hillary Clinton compared Republican views on federal funding for abortion and elective contraception to the views of terrorists. Speaking in Cleveland Thursday, Clinton criticized Republicans who want to limit federal funding for abortions as wanting to deny "access to health care."

On July 21, the Pentagon announced that Muhsin al-Fadhli, an al Qaeda operative who had been wanted for more than a decade, was killed in an airstrike in Syria earlier in the month. Fadhli has been dead at least once before. In September 2014, the United States launched airstrikes against his…

Israeli media is reporting that an IAF strike on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights border killed several pro-Assad fighters today. One of them is believed to be Samir Kuntar. Many are hoping that it is.

The United States is offering big pay outs to anyone who has "information" on key ISIS leaders. "The U.S. Department of State's Rewards for Justice Program is offering rewards for information on four key leaders of the terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The Secretary of…

President Obama told CNN's Fareed Zakaria that 99.9 percent of Muslims reject radical Islam. He made the comments in response to a question about the White House avoiding using the phrase "Islamic terrorists."

A White House spokesman refused to call the Taliban a "terrorist group," though he did admit ISIS is a terrorist organization:

John Kerry is going to France today to give "a big hug to Paris," a week after the brutal terrorist attacks there.

The Department of Defense announced this evening that five more terrorists have been transferred from Guantanamo Bay. This time, four have been transferred to Oman and one to Estonia. Here's the press release announcing the release to Oman:

The White House won't be calling jihadists adherents to "radical Islam." At least, that's the reasonable take away from this extraordinary exchange the White House press secretary had today with a reporter:

The year began on a rough note for the U.S. State Department's Think Again, Turn Away anti-terror program. On January 1, the State Department used the program's official Twitter account to tweet a photo collage accompanied by the message, "Entering 2015, taking time to honor some of terror’s many…

The Republican National Committee announced today a new ad campaign arguing "Obama's Foreign Policy Is on the Ballot" in next week's election. 

The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Comey, said tonight that Americans fighting for the Islamic State in Syria are "entitled to come back" because they hold American citizenship:

The attacks on ISIS targets in Syria will do damage.  And the enemy may look for ways to retaliate.  Troubling news, in that regard comes from Justin Sink who writes in The Hill:

The president of the National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council, Kenneth Palinkas, says in a press release the immigration system may be exploitable by the terrorist army ISIS.

Comforting as it is to speak of the world in the language of policy and politics, strategy and tactics, there is this other element. This chord of madness that stirs the enemy as, for instance when, as Reuters reports:

Attorney General Eric Holder has a "lot of sleepless nights," reported ABC News this morning. Chief among his concerns? The threat of "homegrown violent extremists."

Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, has long been hard for the central government to control because of its combustible mix of Arabs and Kurds. The first time I visited Mosul was in August 2003 when a tenuous calm was maintained by the 101st Airborne Division. Its commander, a then-obscure two-star…

The War on Terror may be over but the warriors seem to be keeping busy.  Which could mean that those already in captivity should be kept there and that space should be available as more are captured.

Several men who served with Army sergeant Bowe Bergdahl in Afghanistan say Bergdahl deserted in 2009 before being captured by the Taliban. Bergdahl's release this weekend as part of an exchange with the U.S. for five top Taliban operatives who were being held in Guantanamo Bay has prompted those…

The Obama administration announced today that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who has been held by the Taliban for several years, has been freed from his captors. Reading the stories of his newfound freedom it is impossible not to feel joy for Bergdahl and his family. NBC News reports that Bergdahl held up a…

Boko Haram, the militant group responsible for the recent kidnapping of 276 girls in Nigeria, was not designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) by the State Department until November of 2013 despite a long record of violence. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has now come under…

News broke this week that under a plan released by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, the United States Army will be reduced to its smallest force since before World War II.  Though not directly related to that plan, another announcement this week by the Defense Department gives, perhaps, a taste of…

The Olympics – ancient and modern divisions – were intended to be celebrations where men laid down their arms and engaged in competitions that did not end with bodies strewn across the landscape.  The intentions were noble but the games – especially those of today – were inevitably corrupted by the…

The State Department today publicly announced a $10 million reward "for information leading to the arrest or conviction of any individual responsible for the September 11, 2012 Benghazi attacks." The announcement for the reward is posted on rewardsforjustice.net.

The State Department yielded to pressure from a coalition of Seattle and Washington state politicians, community groups, and advocacy organizations and agreed to withdraw at least one ad in the department's Metro bus ad campaign in Seattle promoting the “Rewards for Justice” campaign. The program…

Congressman Tom Cotton made the case today on the House floor to keep terrorists at Gitmo:

The State Department announced Monday a total of up to $23 million in rewards for information on terrorists in West Africa, the first time the Department's Rewards for Justice program has offered rewards in that part of the continent. Although the Obama administration has repeatedly insisted that…

The names of two terrorists currently "remain" on the Newseum's "Memorial Wall," a letter written by the chief executive officer of the Newseum confirms. The letter is addressed to Warren David, president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and signed by CEO James C. Duff. 

At one point in The Company You Keep, Robert Redford’s new film about the residue of the Weather Underground, a character named Sharon Solarz is captured by the FBI after living under a series of aliases since her involvement in a Michigan bank robbery decades earlier in which a security guard was…

CNN reports:

Ben Smith reports that Jewish groups are outraged the Newseum plans to honor two terrorists:

The Egyptian interior ministry announced Saturday that an al Qaeda plot against a Western embassy and other targets had been disrupted. Two suspected terrorists are being held for questioning and a third is under house arrest.

BuzzFeed reports:

Steve Hayes, writing for nytimes.com:

The Newseum, a museum in Washington, D.C. that chronicles the news industry, plans to add two dead terrorists to its "Journalists Memorial."  The announcement to include these terrorists on the memorial, which "pays tribute to reporters, photographers and broadcasters who have died reporting the…

President Barack Obama talked about Gitmo prisoners today and said, "I don't want these individuals to die."

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, killed during the Boston rampage last week, and his surviving brother Dzhokar Tsarnaev, 19, who is charged by federal authorities in the series of abominable crimes, are doubtless the first Chechens many Americans will ever have heard of. And the news coverage of the last…

CNN’s headline this morning reads, “Boston suspect: It was just us.” The headline links to an article that begins by explaining that the “surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings has told investigators that his older brother, not any international terrorist group, masterminded the deadly…

During President Obama’s trip to Israel last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to apologize for the “operational mistakes” that in May 2010 led to the deaths of nine Turks who attacked Israeli commandoes after they boarded the…

NBC reports:

In explaining why President Obama didn't call the Boston bombings a "terrorist attack," former adviser David Axelrod said, "I'm sure what was going through the president's mind is -- we really don't know who did this -- it was tax day":

It’s good to be a government worker in Portland, Oregon. And not just because of the subsidized sex changes. It seems that city workers’ salaries are also ample enough to support a family and . . . finance a little terrorism on the side.

At Hillary Clinton's Benghazi hearing at the House this afternoon, Democratic congressman Eliot Engel said that "Barack Obama was not responsible for the Benghazi attack any more than George W. Bush was responsible for the 9/11 attacks":

President Barack Obama released this statement on the "terrorist attack in Algeria" last night:

This morning, the State Department designated former Lebanese parliament member, and longtime ally of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, Michel Samaha as a specially designated global terrorist. Treasury also designated Samaha for “undermining Lebanon’s democratic processes or institutions,…

Earlier this week, the State Department designated the al Nusrah Front in Syria as an “alias” for al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). The head of AQI, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi al Husseini al Qurshi (a.k.a. Abu Du'a), “is in control of both AQI and al Nusrah.” The designation says a lot about our knowledge, or lack…

The Egyptian government has nabbed a major terrorist tied to the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, according to the Wall Street Journal. And that terrorist has direct, longstanding ties to al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri.

The Pakistani Taliban is now recruiting new hires on Facebook. "The banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan have created a Facebook page to recruit persons to write for a planned quarterly magazine and to work on tasks like video editing and translation," the Times of India reports.

Babies are being named for the recent fighting between the terrorist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Israel, the Israeli media is reporting. At least, babies being born to those affiliated with Hamas.

The Jerusalem Post reports:

The Israeli army has issued a warning to journalists: Stay away from the terrorist group Hamas. The warning was issued on Twitter:

The pro-Israel group Christians United for Israel (CUFI) is circulating a petition asking Twitter not to allow the terrorist group Hamas to use its social media platform.

Jerusalem

President Obama heads abroad Saturday for a four-day visit to Thailand, Burma, and Cambodia. One assumes the president was going to add on to this trip a visit U.S. troops in Afghanistan, which would certainly be the fitting and proper thing to do. Wouldn't it also be fitting and proper, and an…

The Israeli army gives fair warning to Hamas terrorists on Twitter:

In this week's issue, Jeffrey Dressler explains that the Obama State Department has yet to designate the Haqqani network as a foreign terrorist organization, in spite of bipartisan pressure from lawmakers to do so. Led by the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein (D,…

In a rousing speech in Tahrir Square on Friday, Egypt’s new president, Mohamed Morsi, told the crowd that he will work to free Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, aka the “Blind Sheikh.” Rahman is currently serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a…

State Department officials have announced that Hillary Clinton is moving toward taking the Mujahedin e-Khalq, or MEK, off the list of foreign terrorist organizations. The secretary of state has already delayed her decision to review the MEK's status for almost two years, even though congressional…

Adam Kredo reports: 

Some in the Obama administration are desperate to jumpstart peace negotiations with the Taliban in advance of NATO’s summit in Chicago next month.

The Department of Defense announced on Thursday that two Guantanamo detainees had been transferred to El Salvador. The DoD did not name them in its press release, but the New York Times identified the men as two Uighurs (Muslims from western China): Abdul Razak and Ahmed Mohamed. 

Experts: "Strong men more likely to vote Conservative."

The first flotilla in 2010 ended in a bloodbath on the high seas, when the Israeli navy intercepted Islamists and activists seeking to challenge Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip. The second flotilla fizzled, when international lawyers prevented a second round of boats from embarking on another…

Democrats and their partisans in the mainstream media have been fully occupied these past few days with demonizing conservatives for their successful stand against tax increases in the debt ceiling compromise. To Thomas Friedman, the Tea Party is the “Hezbollah faction” of the Republican party.…

Ah, social science. All those numbers. All those technical terms. How comforting. How reassuring.

The Department of Justice has filed charges against five terrorists who are currently being held at Gitmo. This means, as Shepard Smith reports, that KSM and four other terrorists "will likely face trial before a U.S. military commission at Guantanamo Bay." 

The FBI updated its list of most wanted terrorists:

The Wall Street Journal editors write:

Jim Webb: "I again call on President Obama to use the new military commission system that is in place to try the terrorist detainees currently held at the Guantanamo detention facilities."

Douglas Murray writes about the "obscene" payments to terrorists that the British government plans to make in today's Times of London:

A judge's reason for excluding damning testimony against al Qaeda terrorist Ahmed Ghailani makes no sense.