Unearthing Global Terrorist Connections
Tags: Afghan Campaign, border security.
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In spite of what you might have heard from the left, under President Bush’s leadership, we have vastly improved our ability to track terrorists and keep America safe:
In the six-and-a-half years that the U.S. government has been fingerprinting insurgents, detainees and ordinary people in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Horn of Africa, hundreds have turned out to share an unexpected background, FBI and military officials said. They have criminal arrest records in the United States.
There was the suspected militant fleeing Somalia who had been arrested on a drug charge in New Jersey. And the man stopped at a checkpoint in Tikrit who claimed to be a dirt farmer but had 11 felony charges in the United States, including assault with a deadly weapon.
The records suggest that potential enemies abroad know a great deal about the United States because many of them have lived here, officials said. The matches also reflect the power of sharing data across agencies and even countries, data that links an identity to a distinguishing human characteristic such as a fingerprint.
“I found the number stunning,” said Frances Fragos Townsend, a security consultant and former assistant to the president for homeland security. “It suggested to me that this was going to give us far greater insight into the relationships between individuals fighting against U.S. forces in the theater and potential U.S. cells or support networks here in the United States.”
The fingerprinting of detainees overseas began as ad-hoc FBI and U.S. military efforts shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It has since grown into a government-wide push to build the world’s largest database of known or suspected terrorist fingerprints. The effort is being boosted by a presidential directive signed June 5, which gave the U.S. attorney general and other cabinet officials 90 days to come up with a plan to expand the use of biometrics by, among other things, recommending categories of people to be screened beyond “known or suspected” terrorists.
Fingerprints are being beamed in via satellite from places as far-flung as the jungles of Zamboanga in the southern Philippines; Bogota, Colombia; Iraq; and Afghanistan. Other allies, such as Sweden, have contributed prints. The database can be queried by U.S. government agencies and by other countries through Interpol, the international police agency.
Couple points:
1. The “dirt farmer” in Tikrit who turned out to be wanted in the US: all through this post-liberation battle in Iraq we’ve heard endlessly from the left that those fighting us are just Iraqis who want us out…and how do they know this? Because it was reported in the news…as if a western MSMer who spends most of his time in the Green Zone can tell the difference between an Arab from Tikrit and an Arab from Damascus. Certainly, plenty of Iraqis – for a while – joined the fight against us and the Iraqi government, but the vital leaven in the enemy forces, the thing which kept the fight hot, was the foreigners who came in with money, expertise (its not like Saddam actually trained his people to defend themselves, ya know?) and the will to fight. One wonders how many “Iraqis” in the news voicing opposition to the US were really Iraqis…
2. The fact that many of these people have turned out to be wanted in the US for various crimes gives one pause about claims of innocent people winding up in Gitmo – once again, how would an MSMer really be able to find out that the “innocent detainee” he’s interviewing is really someone innocent? Obviously, if someone is wanted in the US but is out and about in, say Somalia, then he’s already tangled with the law and got out of it by one means or another. Unless one wants to subscribe to the theory that our soldiers and intelligence agents are stupid thugs, one must give the benefit of the doubt to our side and discount media stories about allegedly innocent detainees. Not that an innocent person cannot have been picked up, but that the chances of a completely innocent person winding up in Gitmo are very small and would be the exception proving the rule.
3. What a good idea, huh? Everyone who is detained by us is fingerprinted and we gather forensic data from terrorist attacks in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere and slowly build up a picture of who is doing what to whom. Over time this would give us a very good picture of what we’re up against (in terms of numbers, skills, effectiveness, etc) and allow us to subvert the terrorist groups from the outside and derail their efforts through misdirection.
Meanwhile, Barack Obama and his Democrats are saying that we have to get out of Iraq – at least, they’re saying it “pre-refinement”; we’ll probably see a changed tune soon, however – because Iraq has distracted us from the “real” war on terrorism…thing is, under President Bush we’ve managed to win in Iraq, win in Afghanistan, kill or capture many thousands of terrorists, build up a data base on global terrorism, de-fang Libya, end Pakistan’s “Nukes R Us” market, secure a growing alliance with India, Eritrea, Djibouti, Georgia and Poland, watch as France, Germany and other European States figure out that we’re doing the right thing in the War on Terrorism, increase the size of our military, re-equip our forces with the most modern weapons and materiel available, beef up our intelligence agencies, start to secure the border…and this is just the stuff we know about; there’s probably a lot which is still classified and we might not find out about for 50 years. Not a bad job for the man the left considers to be an evil idiot.
HAT TIP: NRO’s The Corner
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62 Responses to “Unearthing Global Terrorist Connections”
Caucus of Corruption
reality calvert;
Seven months later, a report by the U.S. Geological Survey confirmed it: The North Cuba Basin held a substantial quantity of oil — 4.6 billion to 9.3 billion barrels of crude and 9.8 trillion to 21.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Cuba wasted no time, dividing the 74,000 square mile (120,000 square kilometer) area into 59 exploration blocks, and then welcoming foreign oil conglomerates with offers of production-sharing agreements.
Oil companies from China and Canada, already prospecting for oil along Cuba’s coast, began talks with Cuban energy officials about investments in deep-water operations.
Then, in May, Spain’s Repsol-YPF announced it was partnering with India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corp., and Norsk Hydro ASA of Norway to explore for oil and gas in six of the 59 deep-water blocks along Cuba’s maritime border with the United States. (Sherritt International Corp., the Canadian oil company, has acquired exploration rights in four of the deep-sea blocks.)
——————-
read the links…you brainless lemming….
JS;
>>>>small brains think alike….calvert and pain…do you two have the ability to reason? obviously not>>>
THIS is what pain, describes herself as……..go figure.
These are the FOREIGNERS, who come to this blog to tell US what is wrong with America and W.
“Pain
Knight Slayer of Shai’ tan
Majordomo of Hell and Terra
Order of the Black Rose of the Empire
Ayatollah of Rham and its Shadow
Fair Judge Executioner of Souls
Quarterer’s Order of the Descending Aorta, 1st Class, with diamonds, mesentery and lymph nodes
Lord Gaoler of Dis
Womb of Empires
先生 立石 上様
Fifth Sea Lord of Hell
Chair, Hellac Consumer Products Safety Commission
Oracle of Elections
Chair, Hellac Commission on Sentient Being Rights
Lord High Justice of the Court of Acts & Merits
Knight Commander of the Hellac Gordian Knot of Silver
Keeper of the Keys of all the Gates of Hell
Qadi of Hades
Chamberlain Imperial of the Necropontiff
Order of the Quartz Heart (Eng.)
Count-Palatine of Sheol
Marquis di Gehenna
Emperor Consort
White Rod
President Pro tempore Bax Culdnu
23 Melnar 2 AS”
too funny…
delusional and selfish beoch, isnt she….
51. js | July 8th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
And still no matter how much foaming spit hits your keyboard and monitor there still isn’t anyone drilling for oil offshore around Cuba. Exploration tracts and the notional facts that oil MAY be there isn’t drilling for production purposes js and no matter how loud you shout it still isn’t true.
And so you can be a total dumbass here’s a link to GOPUSA who has Dick Cheney retracting exactly what he said about China and oil drilling off the coast of Florida.
Now note that’s not Think Progress or the dailyKos or Talking Points Memo or even the HuffPo, that’s GOPUSA! Now what are your going to do call me a sodomite/pornographer/AntiChristian/Liberal. Defeaticrat/traitor/BDS suffering loser or something to that effect because you are a liar?
I still write the truth everyday js and you write lies to make yourself less than an uneducated cretin who thinks a political party made up of elitists cares about you, your religion or your economic problems. You js make me laugh every single time I read a comment from you.
I mean what’s the point of lying when the truth is going to come out eventually and make you look like not just an asshat but a lying for no reason asshat!
52. FmrMarine | July 8th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Have you no titles?
Are you not the “father of children” or “worker of metals.” We, Ourselves are aware that there is no Peerage in America but of course people do separate themselves by a variety of secular and spiritual titles all the time. Our ability to function on many levels allows Us to perform tasks as diverse as Fifth Sea Lord and preside over matters at civil law as the Ayatollah of Rham & Its Shadow.
Did you not accept help from many countries in driving Saddam Hussein from Kuwait when he invaded that nation illegally? Then it is Our Mandate that We show you the proper way by explaining your errors in invading Iraq and in many other areas. The mark of a truly sentient race is learning from mistakes and since these mistakes that have been made in the last eight years are grave and must never be repeated it is Our duty to make as many pronouncements as possible and do all We can within the boundaries of Hellac Law to guide Terra back toward her destiny.
JS: Do you know how oil-extraction and production companies based in whichever country go about their business? Apparently, you do.
Let’s say Fredrick and Dick Cheney are wrong and there’s all sorts of drilling going on in Cuban territorial waters. Why is that bad? It’s CAPITALISM. Cuba would put a drilling quadrant up for auction. The auction might take a number of forms. It could be winner take all on an open-outcry basis. It could be winner take all on a sealed bid basis. Or it could be proporitionally allocated to all eligible bidders at the price at which the final piece of the quadrant is sold in the so-called “Dutch Auction” process.
It just too bad for US oil companies that ancient cold war BS prevents them from participating in these auctions. But there is hardly a conspiracy among China, France, Spain and Cuba to keep America dependent.
js,
You are a moron. Read your links and nowhere does it say China is currently drilling off the coast of Florida. Time to get a new talking point.
China is not currently drilling off the shores of Cuba; in fact, it doesn’t even have a off shore drilling contract. What is does have is a permit to drill on Cuban land. “China is not drilling in Cuba’s Gulf of Mexico waters, period,” Jorge Piñon, an energy expert at the University of Miami’s Center for Hemispheric Policy, told the Miami Herald. In fact, it is not yet drilling on Cuban land, either.
China’s Sinopec oil company does have an agreement with the Cuban government to develop onshore resources west of Havana, Piñon said. The Chinese have done some seismic testing, he said, but no drilling. Western diplomats in Havana told McClatchy that to the best of their knowledge there is no Chinese drilling offshore.
The Congressional Research Service also debunks Republican claims:
“While there has been some concern about China’s potential involvement in offshore deepwater oil projects, to date its involvement in Cuba’s oil sector has been focused on onshore oil extraction in Pinar del Rio province through its state-run China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation. (Sinopec)”
First Cheney says to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that “oil is being drilled right now 60 miles off the coast of Florida. We’re not doing it. The Chinese are in cooperation with the Cuban government.
“Even the communists have figured out that a good answer to high prices is more supply,” he added. “Yet Congress has said . . . no to drilling off Florida.”
Cheney’s office has since backtracked, issuing a statement that says “It is our understanding that, although Cuba has leased out exploration blocks 60 miles off the coast of southern Florida, which is closer than American firms are allowed to operate in that area, no Chinese firm is drilling there.”
They aren’t allowed to drill offshore nor do they have contracts offshore. Many Republicans have repeated this talking point but it has proven to be false.
there they are…
3 stooges…all 3 idiots are claiming i said china is drilling 50 miles off key west…show me where i said that?
3 stooges…all 3 idiots keep up thier hate filled rants about cheney saying something…but all 3 idiots ignore that cheney really isnt the core source of the facts….facts that all 3 idiots dont have the common sense to figure out…
so…all the rehashing of the same thing these 3 idiots have been clobbered with….really isnt such a intreging thing for me…but mind you…these 3 idiots are will keep arguing that i said something i never did…because all 3…are idiots….halfwits…and stooges…
oh!! there they are..been a while boys…the 3 stooges, LIVE on BLOGSFORVICTORY.COM!!!!! now jump lemmings….jump!!!
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