FDD

Dispatches from the Danger Zone: "America Has Lost a True Patriot"

My old friend Smith Hempstone, the swashbuckling and adventurous writer and blunt-talking diplomat, died the other day at age 77 in Washington.  America has lost a true patriot. 

I became friendly with Smith in Africa about 15 years ago when he was the US ambassador to Kenya and I was ambassador to the Seychelle Islands, 1000 miles out from Mombassa in the Indian Ocean.

I had lunch with Smith a few times at Nairobi’s legendary Muthaiga Club where we would kill a couple of bottles of South African wine gabbing at a table near a stuffed moth-eaten lion in a glass case. Smith had a short, white beard and a face like red shoe leather.  He was witty and hard-drinking and, in his safari vest and khaki trousers, seemed like a character from Kenya’s past; more a white hunter chum of Denys Hatton Finch than a swallow-tailed diplomat. 

Dispatches from the Danger Zone: Castro's Cuba

I had responsibility for Radio Marti into Cuba for six years during the cold war.

We broadcast a line of sight signal from a tethered aerostat balloon off Marathon Island in the Florida Keys into Cuba bringing honest news and information to an island dictatorship with no free press and no information beyond what Castro personally wanted his citizens to have.

The Left in Congress and in the Public Policy Think-Tank World, then still in the throes of their long homo-erotic love affair with Fidel Castro (and the mega- loser Che Guevara,) hated Radio Marti and worked hard to undermine it. 

These were often the same people who talked frequently about human rights and press freedoms but never demanded them for the captive people of Cuba because they wouldn’t criticize Castro.

“No enemies on the left,” was their motto and that of their friends in the mainstream press, who were always fawning on Fidel. 

Castro was only 32 when he came to power. 

He has ended up as the world’s longest-serving leader, the media keeps reminding us. The man who outlasted nine US presidents.  Although as Buckley Carlson pointed out to me those American leaders had to contend with the annoying inconvenience of being democratically elected.

Danger Zone Available for Podcast

August 13th's episode is now available for download.

Dispatches from the Danger Zone: "Try not to let the facts get in the way of a good story"

U.S. Bloggers really hung the news agency Reuters out to dry – and about time.

They caught them doctoring a photograph of downtown Beirut after an attack by the Israeli air force.   

Reuters had added an extra amount of smoke and a few extra buildings to make the bombing look more serious and more severe than it really was.

Reuters has admitted the doctoring, done by computer software, and blamed the photographer, one Adnan Hajj, who now has been fired.

He is the same Reuters cameraman who was accused of doctoring photos after an Israeli air attack on the Lebanese town of Qana.   

That picture showed a man, standing in rubble, holding a dead girl, a small child, aloft for the camera lens. A picture taken at 7:21 am shows the dead girl being held above an ambulance.   A picture three hours later, at 10:25am, shows the same girl being loaded in the same ambulance.   Another photo, taken 20 minutes later, shows the same child being carried by a Lebanese rescue worker, no ambulance in sight.

This propaganda, aided by news photographers, is typical of Hezbollah and their friends.  When they report civilian casualties in Lebanon they invariably double the actual figure. 

Dispatches from the Danger Zone: Israeli Intelligence

The Israeli Air Force has been unable to employ targeted killings in the fight against Hezbollah to any significant degree because of a shortage of real-time intelligence, a high-ranking IDF officer told the Jerusalem Post.

The good news is that this has caused the three Israeli intelligence agencies- the Mossad, the Shin Bet and Military Intelligence - to work together in an almost unprecedented way, Israeli’s are saying. Of course, The universal competitiveness of every government’s bureaucratic agencies is both their strength and their weakness and, of course, it is always more difficult to gather intelligence during a war than before the fighting begins.

Danger Zone Available for Podcast

August 6th's episode is now available for download.

Dispatches from the Danger Zone: Lest we Forget

Lots of talk about Hezbollah these days and some mention of the lethal attacks they have made on Americans in the past:

• the Khobar Towers attack in Saudi Arabia
• the Marine barracks attack in Beirut back in 1983,
• the kidnappings and killings in Beirut of CIA station Chief Bill Buckley and US Marine Colonel Rich Higgins
• the murder of navy Diver Robbie Stethem when Hezbollah hijacked a TWA flight in 1985.

What seldom, if ever, gets mentioned though are some of the other atrocities against Americans committed by Hezbollah –all of which have gone unpunished. Let me refresh the record with mention of a few of them.

Dispatches from the Danger Zone: "A Tough Week"

At his weekly briefing, the spokesman for coalition forces in Iraq, Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, said progress is being made to restore order to the streets of the Iraqi capital but acknowledged that it had been "a tough week."

In one 24 hour period last week Police in Baghdad recovered 38 bodies in the city. All showed signs of terrible torture.

5,800 civilian deaths occurred in Iraq in May and June alone.

These are Muslims killing Muslims, and in the most cowardly, sneaky, dishonorable ways. What is wrong with these people? What animals the so-called "insurgents" are.

Also, this week's Danger Zone radio lineup is here and last week's podcast is here.

Danger Zone Available for Podcast

July 23rd's episode is available for download.

Danger Zone Available for Podcast

July 16th's episode is available for download.

Dispatches from the Danger Zone: The Grieving Widow

The US media made a whole lot out of Abu Musab Zarqawi's wife saying he was sold out by Al Qaeda.  Poor baby.  You'll recall he was killed in Iraq by Americans on June 7th. He was the Jordanian-born leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq.  He was also a braggart, a former street thug and sex criminal - a rapist - and a vicious murderer.

His wife is called 'Um Mohammed' (meaning the mother of a son named Mohammed.  Fathers are commonly called 'Abu' as in 'Abu Mazen' meaning the father of Mazen).  So, Um Mohammed told an Italian newspaper reporter, in an interview in Geneva, Switzerland where she has been staying recently, that Al Qaeda "reached agreement with US Intelligence and betrayed her husband because he was becoming too powerful."

No explanation was offered as to who she specifically meant by 'Al Qaeda' but not likely it was Osama Bin Laden.  More likely it was one of Zarqawi's running dogs in Iraq who ratted him out for the huge reward offered - 25 million US dollars.

Danger Zone Available for Podcast

July 2nd's episode of the Danger Zone is available for download.

Danger Zone Available for Podcast

June 25th's episode is now available for download.

Dispatches from the Danger Zone: Too much Excitement in the Saudi Kingdom?

King Abdullah has told Saudi editors to cut back on publishing pictures of women… They could get men excited and lead them astray.

The king wasn’t talking about naked pictures, or half naked pictures or even bathing suit pictures –he was talking about any pictures of women doing anything, even digging ditches or scrubbing floors. 

Anyway, the king's order about photos of women went to newspaper editors at a meeting with them.   

Until now King Abdullah, who took over the throne in August, has been described as a “mild” reformer. Mild sounds right.

Recently Saudi newspapers have run a few pictures of women but only those wearing traditional Muslim headscarves, no bikinis, no naval rings.

The king told editors this week that publishing a woman's picture for the world to see was just wrong.

Dispatches from the Danger Zone: Where is "The Jackal"?

It has been about ten years since the terrorist named “Carlos the Jackal” was sentenced to life in prison in France for murder.  He was lucky to have missed the guillotine.  It was banned by France in 1981. 

“Carlos” is a Venezuelan Communist named Ilich Ramirez Sanchez. His father was a left-wing Venezuelan lawyer who named his three sons Vladimir, Ilich and Lenin all borrowed from his Russian hero.  He arranged for the boy to attend Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, where Ilich made the KGO connections he would often use in his terrorist activities over the next twenty years.

Ilich, or Carlos as he likes to be called, is now pushing 60 years old.  He has a round flat face like a pizza pie and eyes like little olives pushed into the dough. 

So what’s happening to him these days?

Danger Zone is Available for Podcast

May 14th's episode is available for download.

Danger Zone Available for Podcast

May 7th's episode of Danger Zone is available for download.

This week's Danger Zone lineup is available here.

Dispatches from the Danger Zone: You Think Gas Prices are Bad Now? (RWC)

Then imagine another terrorist attack, especially one on Saudi oil refineries.

Our friend former CIA Director Jim Woolsey had some interesting things to say about that possibility this week, according to a front page story in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review.

If terrorists took out the sulfur-cleaning towers in northeastern Saudi Arabia, crude oil prices could easily top $150 a barrel and stay there for more than a year, Woolsey said. 

Just such a scenario was mentioned in a recent book by former CIA officer Bob Baer.

A barrel of oil is now selling for around $73 with gas prices in the United States hovering around $3 a gallon.

Consider that Americans could be paying twice that amount.

Woolsey also made the point that Americans don't want to think about where some of the money goes when they buy gasoline and other oil products: to groups that threaten the U.S. or are hostile to the West in other ways.

He didn’t mean just terrorists. 

Dispatches from the Danger Zone: UAE Fact Check (RWC)

Funny, all this talk lately about Dubai and the United Arab Emirates.

I come down on the side of those who thought the issue was beclouded by political demagoguery and simple racism, while real issues about port security have been long ignored by members of congress.

But, something to consider about the UAE –aside from what company is going to run the US terminals -was laid out by Terry Jeffrey in Human Events.

Here is a quick précis of questions and answers worth remembering.

Danger Zone Available for Download

The April 2nd episode of Danger Zone radio is available for podcast.

This week's lineup is available here.

Dispatches from the Danger Zone: Col. Khadafy Is Annoyed

Libya feels "cheated" that it will stay on the U.S. State Departments list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Colonel Khadafy is presumably annoyed.

We have been taken advantage of, said the Libyan representative in Washington, and blamed domestic US politics and the furor over the Dubai Ports deal.

Presence on the terrorism list bars a country from getting U.S. arms; controls sales of items with military and civilian applications, limits U.S. financial aid and requires Washington to vote against international loans.

The United States has taken steps toward restoring commercial relations with Libya since Khadafy announced his intention to give up weapons of mass destruction in December two years ago.

But Libya still needs to attract about $30 billion in foreign investment to
boost its oil production capacity. state” came on the heels of a panel discussion and media-show at Columbia University in New York.

This Week's Danger Zone is Available for Download

This week's episode is now available for podcast.

This Week's Danger Zone is Available for Download

This week's episode is now available for podcast.

Dispatches from the Danger Zone: A New Strategy (RWC)

President Bush has laid out a new National Security strategy –the first made public since 2003. It was in a 49 page report.  He once again took a walk up Tough Street.   

Mr. Bush made clear that he was reserving the right to strike first against terrorists and against hostile countries which threaten the use of biological or chemical warfare, or the use of nuclear weapons. 

He said the doctrine of preemption “remains the same” –even though critics say it has been undermined by the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

“We do not rule out the use of force before attacks occur, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemies’ attack ,” Mr. Bush said.

This Week's Danger Zone Available for Download

This week's episode is available for podcast.

This Week's Danger Zone Available for Download

This week's episode is available for podcast.

Dispatches from the Danger Zone: Osama's Opera? (RWC)

Our president was greeted recently in New Delhi, India by 100,000 or more Muslim protestors shouting “Death to Bush.” The president’s two days in India was to discuss nuclear anti-proliferation and came after a quick, unexpected stop in Afghanistan.

In West Bengal, a new traveling opera is gaining attention from audiences in the rural country side because of its attacks on America and its glorification of Islamic terrorism. This attitude may explain some of the hatred against Bush and the US.

The opera is called ”Osama”.

It started as sidewalk theatre in Calcutta, a city that has the world’s most crowded sidewalks. (Millions of people actually live on them.)Unintentional theatre is everywhere. There is so much to see that frankly I can’t imagine people wasting their time with a stupid opera.

This Opera is not is not meant to be La Boehme or Die Fledermouse.  It is pure agit-prop.  The Hindu impresarios and actors who organized the play portray Osama as Saint Bin Laden, a robin-hood like character, a benign friend of women and children and very hateful towards America.

Hindus and Muslims in this part of the world have serious conflicts and the fact of Hindus playing the Muslim parts has caused trouble.

But, if this opera succeeds their successful principal actor will star in a new opera, called, no kidding “Saddam”. This Sunday's Danger Zone radio lineup is available here.

The Danger Zone - Every Sunday, 9pm

This week's Danger Zone lineup is available here.

Last week's episode is available for podcast here.

This week's Danger Zone Available for Download

This week's episode is available for podcast.

The Danger Zone - Every Sunday, 9pmEST

This week's Danger Zone lineup is here.

Last week's episode is now available for podcast here.

Dispatches from the Danger Zone: Mexican Military Crossing (RWC)

A Congressional panel is looking into why the Mexican Army has made incursions into the US along the Texas-Mexican border.   

Mexican soldiers were seen on January 23rd crossing the Rio Grande River escorting drug smugglers. They were confronted by US police and fled back into Mexico.

The soldiers, or at least men in Mexican military uniforms, were in a camouflaged Humvee sporting a mounted .50 caliber machine gun. They ran but torched a vehicle and left 1400 pounds of marijuana behind.

Congressman Michael McCaul a Republican of Texas is a former federal prosecutor who heads the Investigations Subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee.  He is leading the inquiry into the question of what it is that Vincente Fox’s army seems to be doing.

Tune in this Sunday at 9pm for this week's Danger Zone.

This Week's Danger Zone Available for Download

The latest episode of Danger Zone is now available for podcast.  To download the podcast, click on the Danger Zone podcast link (bottom left side of the blog) and follow the directions.

Tune in to Danger Zone Radio - Sunday, 9pm EST

Sunday's groundbreaking WMAL radio show Danger Zone will feature Patrick Stethem, the brother of U.S. navy diver Robbie Stethem and Regis Le Sommier. Read More.

The show's archives are available here.

Dispatches from the Danger Zone: Sheehan Speaks, Again (RWC)

Left-wing activist Cindy Sheehan was paid $11,000 for a one hour talk at the State University at Oneonta, NY the other night.  Sheehan has demanded an immediate withdrawal from Iraq.

The money to pay her came from student activity fees required of undergraduates.

As “balance” to Sheehan, as they described it, the college booked retired U.S. Army Colonel Scott Rutter to speak.  He was paid $600.

Listen to Danger Zone radio every Sunday at 9pm EST.  This week's lineup is here and the program's archives are here.

Dispatches from the Danger Zone: Germans Give the U.S. the Finger

You saw, did you not, that the German government gave the finger to the U.S. this week—once again?

They let terrorist Mohammad Ali Hammadi go and gave him a free flight to Lebanon, back into the arms of Hezbollah from whence he came.

Hammadi is the Islamist killer who tortured and murdered the young US Navy diver Robbie Stethem, of Waldorf, Maryland, after hijacking a TWA flight in the Mideast in 1985.   

Robbie Stethem was beaten terribly by Hammadi and two other Pro-Palestinians and then shot in the head and thrown onto the tarmac at Beirut airport.  If you were reading the newspapers or watching TV twenty years ago you likely remember it.

Other Americans aboard the plane were beaten and abused, all simply because they were American.

The other two hijackers are still at large with big US rewards on their heads. 

The Germans once had them but they let them go after acquitting one on a technicality and convicting the other of a much lesser charge than kidnapping or murder.

Both are long free from Germany, although both still have US warrants for their arrest.  But our government hasn't done anything about them in all these years and there is little reason to believe they are ever going to. We don't seem to have the will necessary.

Dispatches from the Danger Zone: Across the Border (RWC)

A new detailed study gives the lie to the stereotype of the illegal immigrant from Mexico coming to the US to find work –because there are no jobs at home.

The Pew Foundation surveyed nearly 5,000 Mexican immigrants, almost all of them illegal, and found they were invariably employed back in Mexico.

They were drawn to the U.S. by higher wages, social services and a better lifestyle. 

The migrants come "not from the poorest fringes” of Mexican society, which has been the stereotype, but from the "heart of Mexico's labor force."

Median earnings for the illegals in the US are about $300 a week, much, much higher than in Mexico-and in Atlanta and Dallas illegal workers averaged much more than the median wage.

Not surprisingly the lowest paid employees were women who spoke little or no English and those without any identification.

So maybe the U.S.’s putative friend Mr. Vincente Fox might do more to shore up life for his own folks at home rather than tolerating the lousy conditions that propel them north.

The Mexican economy has always been top-heavy with rich and corrupt political figures squatting like bloated toads on a society that functions on slave wages, puny pensions and few social safety nets.  What a place.  We ought to demand Fox get his own chicken house in order or cut off the flow of U.S. aid.

Dispatches from the Danger Zone: MWL Leader Deported (RWC)

A prominent Washington DC area Muslim leader has been deported and is on his way back to Saudi Arabia.

Abdullah Alnoshan of Falls Church was director of the Muslim World League in Northern Virginia. 

He had been arrested this summer by FBI agents from the Joint Terrorism Task after a raid on Muslim World League Headquarters - one of several Northern Virginia Muslim charities suspected of aiding terrorism.

The MWL is purported to have provided money to al Qaeda and Osma Bin Laden.  They have denied that and the charity has not been charged.

Alnoshan, who is 44, has been in and out of the Washington area for years, and in and out of the U.S. and the Mideast – although his in and outing has come to an end.

The government says he was traveling on forged documents. 

The U.S. made him quite comfortable for a long time.  By now, he has arrived in Saudi Arabia, a little less "comfortable" venue, one suspects.

Dispatches from the Danger Zone: Bloodlust (RWC)

Fareed Zakaria made one good point, for a refreshing change, in his Time Magazine ruminations.

The rising clamor in Washington to run from Iraq might be the right or wrong thing, Zakaria says, but its timing has zero to do with events in Iraq.  The country is no worse off than it was three months ago.

The fact is that Iraq is much better off and the noise from the democratic left in the US and Western Europe, and their friends in the media, has a great deal to do with political bloodlust, blind hatred for George Bush, and the elections of 2006 and 2008.   

The fact is that the US has been creaming the foreign fighters in Iraq.  There are significantly fewer on the battlefields because they have been killed or captured—and a much better job is being done to secure the enormous border with Syria.

This trend is one reason, according to Rowan Scarborough in the Washington Times, that the Bush administration seems more confident about reducing the American troop presence next year to less than 138,000. (It is now about 160,000).

Another positive fact: Condi Rice seems to have a handle on shaping the war’s administration.

Dispatches from the Danger Zone: NorthCom (RWC)

The Pentagon has been pushing legislation that would allow the FBI to share information about US citizens with the military, the CIA and other intelligence agencies, so long as that information is connected to foreign intelligence.   

The White House wants this to strengthen investigations into terrorism or the threat against America of weapons of mass destruction.

The Pentagon is already busy in the intelligence field in the US. 

They established “Northcom”- out in Colorado Springs -right after 9/11 to react to terrorist threats in the US.   

NorthCom (or Northern Command) has intelligence centers in Colorado and Texas with almost 300 intelligence analysts employed, about 200 more than currently work at the State Departments intelligence office,and some few more than the entire Department of Homeland Security.

Each of the military services has quietly begun its own post-9/11 collection of domestic intelligence, that is, within the US-all aimed at gathering information on potential threats to military bases and people in the US and abroad.

Dispatches for the Danger Zone: CIFA (RWC)

The Pentagon is expanding its intelligence capabilities within the United States. 

The White House is talking about giving broader powers to a little known Pentagon agency "The Counterintelligence Field Activity" office, called CIFA.

CIFA was created three years ago to coordinate Pentagon security efforts including protecting US military bases from attack.

Under new powers it would have the authority to investigate crimes within the US, such as treason or terrorism, even economic espionage.

CIFA is no small potatoes outfit.  Its budget is classified and so is the size of its work force. CIFA is believed to have more than 1,000 people working fulltime.

Dispatches from the Danger Zone: France's Weakness (RWC)

Columnist Mark Steyn, editor of the Spectator in London, had an interesting take on the riots in France:   

He said, “for a half decade French Arabs have called for a low-level intifada against synagogues, kosher butchers, and Jewish schools.

“The concern of the political class has been to prevent these attacks from spreading to targets of more, ah, general interest.

“Unlike America’s Europhiles, France’s ‘Arab Street’ correctly identified Jacques Chirac’s opposition to the Iraq War for what it was: A sign of weakness.”

And of course, Chirac’s response to the rioting was slow and very late.

Steyn has been predicting street rioting and assassinations in Europe for some time. 

He once said he was more optimistic about the future of Iraq and Pakistan than he is about, say, Holland or Denmark.

Seemed too dark and off-kilter at the time, but maybe not.

This Sunday's Danger Zone lineup is here.

Dispatches from the Danger Zone

The Maldon Institute had another interesting report this week.  It was on support among some US college students for the French rioters.

Muslim students in New York, Chicago and San Francisco have been trying to create on-campus sympathy for the rioters. 

One report said dozens of students had signed sympathy pledges with many more joining as the week progressed.

This Sunday's Danger Zone lineup is here.

This Week's Danger Zone is Available Online

The most recent episode of Danger Zone, FDD's anti-terror radio show, is now available for download.  In addition to the podcast archives, you can listen to the show Sunday nights at 9pm on WMAL in the DC area or via the WMAL website.

Dispatches from The Danger Zone

Foreign money for Russian terrorism continues to flow to Chechen militants in the Caucasus.

According to a report by the Maldon Institute, money has been transferred to Muslim Terrorists in Russia from people and organizations in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Great Britain, Indonesia, even Vietnam-for a total of forty countries.

Maldon says that money to destabilize Dagestan is coming now from Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan.

Three organizations-The Muslim Brotherhood and two which are part of the al-Qaeda international network –Al-Haramain and the “Center for the Fight Against Infidels” (there’s a title not easily forgotten) have sent $10 million into Russia for terrorist operations against Moscow and in the North Caucasus.

Dispatches from the Danger Zone

Arizona's Minute Men -the border watchers- are now active in liberal Vermont.

An offshoot of the group watching the US-Mexican border for illegal aliens is now spread thinly along the Vermont-Canadian border, at least on the weekends. 

That border is about 300 miles long and has long been thought a crossing for potentially dangerous jihadists.

Maine, New Hampshire, New York and points West are next the Minute Men say.   

The U.S.-Canada border is heavily wooded, remote and about 5,525 miles long. 

A dozen or so Minutemen were out in Herndon in Northern Virginia this week –armed with video cameras,they were taking photos of contractors cruising the local 7/11 looking for day labor, much of it illegal.

RICHARD CARLSON: Dispatches from the Danger Zone

The French government has introduced a long awaited anti-terrorism bill.

It would stiffen sentences for convicted terrorists,broaden the use of surveillance cameras, and increase physical and electronic surveillance of citizens traveling in and out of certain mideastern countries -- ones that are known to have training camps for Muslim fanatics.

The Interior Ministry has led the campaign to strengthen French laws since the London bombings of this past summer.

President Chirac has said he hopes the bill will become law by the end of the year.

The week in France saw a continuance of rioting in Paris suburbs with large Muslim and African populations.  One suspects the legislation is ever closer to passage in the wake of those thousands of firebombings.

RICHARD CARLSON: Dispatches from the Danger Zone

A Maoist terrorist was killed by police in India in a shootout.

The man belonged to the Adivasi Liberation Tigers (ALT) part of the Maoist Communist Party of India.

Separately, two other CPI-Maoists were seized along with large amounts of cash, military uniforms, explosives and detonators in the Adilabad district of India.

Outside of a few American college faculty lounges and in the mountains of Nepal, we thought you could count the number of serious “Maoists” left in the world on your fingers and toes. Of all the outfits in the world, why would any sane person want to be a “Maoist”.  Dumb and pathetic

Certainly there are few true believers still breathing in China, where Mao is slowly being recognized, albeit silently, as the greatest mass murderer in human history, non-pareil.

RICHARD CARLSON: Dispatches from the Danger Zone

Remember those four al-Qaeda suspects who escaped from a very secure U.S. military prison in Afghanistan?

It happened this summer but word only leaked out recently.

The Pentagon now says one of them was a top lieutenant to Osama Bin Laden – Omar Al-Faruq, a Kuwaiti captured in Indonesia three years ago.

Al-Faruq had been secretly flown back into Afghanistan in 2002 –and locked up with hundreds of other terrorist suspects in a prison heavily guarded by U.S. and Afghanistan soldiers, outside of Bagram air base.

If the Pentagon knows how the four men, including a Syrian, a Libyan and a Saudi, all wearing orange jump suits got through the three security rings around the prison-  including a live mine field, they have not said.

An Afghan Taliban leader interviewed by Newsweek claimed the escape was a ruse -that the four men had been exchanged in secret for captured US Special Forces operators.   

The pentagon said the claim was false “and absurd.”

RICHARD CARLSON: From the Propaganda File

Al-Qaeda in Iraq has issued a statement saying that “the foreign media” has obscured the “truth” of the severity of crimes committed in Iraq by allied forces. 

With the long memory for which al-Qaeda religious theorists are famous, they refer back to the first century and call the allies “Crusaders”.

They claim the Western media is undercounting the number of American casualties in Iraq.  Now there’s a phony charge that just jumps out at you:

Al-Qaeda claims 20,000 Americans have died so far, not the well publicized 2,000.

Here’s a second charge, equally out of touch with reality:  the western media is trying to “confuse” its readers and viewers into supporting the War.  We don’t think so. I guess they don’t watch CNN or read any British newspapers.

Last, al-Qaeda called the American and British soldiers “poorly paid” and “frightened toys”.  They said they “lack the energy and the intelligence to win.”

They are talking about the two best educated, smartest and most highly paid armies in the world -- Britain and the US.

RICHARD CARLSON: Dispatches from the Danger Zone

An Afghan identified as one of the world's most wanted drug kingpins has been extradited from Afghanistan to face drug smuggling and other charges.

Baz Mohammad is accused of using drug profits to support terrorism and the Taliban –and naturally, himself.

Mohammad has been directly linked to the Taliban.  He once public ally boasted that selling heroin to Americans was an effective form of jihad.   

Mr. Mohhamad has a point.

RICHARD CARLSON: Dispatches from the Danger Zone

A Federal Judge in Northern Virginia has refused to throw out a confession by a terrorism suspect who claims he was tortured in a Saudi prison, that the statements were false.   

Ahmed Omar Abu Ali will go on trial on charges of plotting to kill President Bush.   

Abu Ali's statements to his Saudi jailers, in which he admitted being part of an al-Qaeda plot, are central to the government's case.

RICHARD CARLSON: Dispatches from the Danger Zone

Good newspaper column by Debbie Schlussel, a friend of ours who is syndicated from Detroit.

Debbie attacks a new movie called "The War Within" produced by the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Mark Cuban.   

Debbie calls Mr.. Cuban “the Worlds Most Annoying Sports Fan.” 

I don’t know about that, but he does appear to have a moronic streak.

Mr.. Cuban’s movie is about a Pakistani immigrant, a suicide bomber, who blows up New York's Grand Central Station.

The producers want us to sympathize with him –sort of your Nice Islamist Boy Next Door - as he labors to kill as many men, women and children in New York as he can.

Mr.. Cuban’s movie wants you to feel his inner pain.

The director is quoted as saying: "How are we ever going to understand what's going on right now if we don't see these people (he is referring to terrorists) as human beings?"

“I am a firm believer in empathy” says the director, “of coming into awareness of the experience of another.”

Can you imagine during WW2 if we prattled in movies or other media about the humanity of Hitler?

RICHARD CARLSON: Dispatches from the Danger Zone

Some weeks ago I wrote about $5 million worth of British food for Katrina victims whose distribution was stymied by bureaucrats at the FDA and the Department of Agriculture.   

The story was generally ignored in the mainstream press although Cindy Sheehan couldn’t scratch herself without media analysis and TV camera crews following every finger-movement 

The food was never used.  It ended up being trucked around and then it was dropped off in an Arkansas warehouse.

It is still there. 

These British Army military rations were requested as a donation for Hurricane victims by the US State Department.

The flight to the US cost British taxpayers almost $5 million dollars.

RICHARD CARLSON: Dispatches from the Danger Zone

Saddam Hussein’s trial started in Baghdad in front of five judges but has now been put off for a month.  It will start again November 28th, the Monday after our Thanksgiving weekend, likely televised.

This is the first of a series of trials that Saddam and various co-defendants are expected to face. They are accused of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity and they have been busy and practiced leaders in all of those endeavors. 

Saddam was arrogant, defiant and uncooperative in the Tribunal court –and briefly struggled with his guards after refusing to acknowledge his name and saying he was innocent. Outside, the courthouse was ringed with 10 foot blast walls, bomb dogs, dozens of soldiers and a tank.

Saddam is expected to face up to 14 different trials, though it is unlikely that all of them will actually take place. 

Saddam is being charged with a series of capital offenses and if execution is ordered it will take place within 30 days of the end of any appeal.  By hanging or firing squad.

Keep in mind that this is a man responsible for the savage murders of an estimated 300,000 people, most of whom disappeared into mass graves. And those figures ignore the hundreds of thousands of people who died in stupid, losing wars Saddam initiated against Iran and Kuwait.

RICHARD CARLSON: Dispatches from the Danger Zone

Our friend Doug Farah, the fine investigative reporter and former West Africa Bureau Chief for the Washington Post, made the point to us in a conversation the other day:  the US needs some fresh ideas in their campaign to cut off the flow of money to terrorists.   

Doug said the current tactics in opposition to money laundering are based on US government experience with the drug cartels, experience gained and developed in the 1980’s.  That strategy relies heavily on regulation of the formal financial system. Intelligence work plays only a secondary role. 

These strategies are not working, Doug says.  We think he is right.  Terrorists now take money generated by legitimate business or legitimate charity and divert smaller portions for illegal purposes.  This is a kind of “reverse money laundering” and is hard to detect or stop.  In the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, this was the principal tool of the Bush administration. It grabbed and kept about $130 million from charities and some other groups being used to finance terrorism.  It designated some specific people as financiers of terrorism, almost all of it of them of the Mideastern jihadist variety.   

The problem is the terrorists are increasingly savvy.  They have been changing their methods to stay a step ahead of the US and Western democracies and their law enforcement and intelligence counter-terrorism activities.  Al-Qaeda and its allies, Doug Farah says, haven’t relied on the formal financial sector for years.  They no longer use banks but have turned to the ancient Hawala method of money transfer, or they deal in precious gems or gold or smuggled commodities and their financial networks are in offshore tax havens whose names change constantly.

We can cut of the flow of terrorist money.  Ours is a sophisticated society and government.  We just need to gather sufficient will.

RICHARD CARLSON: Dispatches from the Danger Zone

The head of the Marxist Leninist Workers Party, an arm of the Irish Republican Army –the IRA –has been indicted for counterfeiting US $100 bills in cahoots with the North Korean government.

Sean Garland has been arrested and charged in Belfast along with five other IRA members and some North Koreans.

The $100 bills were described by the US Secret Service in Washington as “of very high quality. “ Garland allegedly bought the bills from North Korean government officials at a meeting in Warsaw, Poland. Apparently trying to hide his connection with North Korea, Garland allegedly told friends the counterfeit notes were made in Russia.

Last month some Chinese nationals, all men, were arrested in Los Angeles for trafficking in counterfeit US $100 bills printed in North Korea.

The indictment says Garland would use official Communist Workers Party trips to meet North Koreans and purchase the new Ben Franklin $100 notes in a half dozen European countries, including Germany, Denmark, the UK and Russia.

The indictment also says North Korea was using its diplomats in those countries to supply the notes to Garland and his IRA friends.

For information on this week's episode of Danger Zone, featuring former FBI director Louis Freeh, click here.

RICHARD CARLSON: Dispatches from the Danger Zone

Here’s a story you might not have heard:  Some of the vehicles used in car bombings that have killed US soldiers and Iraqi civilians in Iraq were stolen from Americans in the United States. 

The FBI's counterterrorism unit is looking into US-based theft rings after discovering that some of the vehicles came from the US, says the Boston Globe, quoting unnamed US officials.

So far, there is no evidence that the cars were stolen specifically to be used as bombs but there is a lot of evidence that a broad criminal network, that includes terrorists and Iraqi insurgents, is responsible.

The inquiry began after coalition troops raided a bomb-making factory in Fallujah, Iraq last November.  Inside they found an SUV registered in Texas that was being prepared for a bombing mission.

Investigators said they are comparing several other cases where vehicles stolen in the United States wound up in Syria or other Middle East countries and ultimately were transferred into the hands of Iraqi insurgent groups -- including Al Qaeda in Iraq, led by Jordanian-born Abu Musab Al Zarqawi.

Some of the cars had false VIN’s on them –Vehicle Identification Numbers - re-stamped into the metal of the car’s frames.

Investigators believe the cars were loaded onto ships in the ports of Los Angeles, Seattle, and Houston - ended up in Syria, and then were driven across the border into Iraq and delivered to terrorists.

The car bomb has become the top weapon in the world for carrying out terrorist attacks.

RICHARD CARLSON: Dispatches from the Danger Zone

From Madrid ... you might have noticed this first story, but not perhaps in its entirety. The second story is a doozy.

A Syrian man accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington has been convicted and sentenced in Spanish court. 

Imad Yarkas, who is 41, had been jailed along with 17 others convicted on charges of aiding al-Qaeda. All are men from North Africa or Syria.

The prosecutor asked the judge for a sentence of 74,000 years for Yarkas.  He said he based the notional sentence on the deaths of 3,000 people.

The judge gave Yarkas 27 years instead.

Prosecutors were disappointed.

Do the math. Yarkas will pay for each person killed at the rate of about 3 days in jail for each life taken. You can get more than that for shoplifting.

Missing from many news accounts is that a reporter for al-Jazeera, the Arabic News network, was sentenced in the same trial to seven years for aiding al-Qaeda.

Tayssir Alouni is the journalist.  He was chummy with Bin Laden and once interviewed him after 9/11.

He was charged with collaborating with al-Qaeda and received 7 years.

RICHARD CARLSON: Dispatches from the Danger Zone

Bulgarian police in the northern Danube city of Russe nabbed almost seven pounds of hafnium, a material used in the manufacture of radioactive "dirty bombs" 

It was being smuggled into Romania at the time.

Intelligence sources believe the potentially lethal material was destined for Iran and their nuclear weapons or for use by terrorist bombers.

A criminal organization in Bucharest was the go-between in the smuggling.

The hafnium was concealed in an automobile driven by a Bulgarian man.  He was arrested… but two Romanian companions were released by police and have disappeared.

The corruption of the Balkan police forces is legendary so the release is not a surprise...but law enforcement corruption will likely be a stumbling block for Bulgaria and Romania in joining the European Union.

RICHARD CARLSON: Dispatches from the Danger Zone

Intelligence authorities say they believe that an Islamic terror cell was plotting attacks on the Paris Métro.

Police arrested nine suspected plotters, including an Islamic terrorist, released from prison just two years ago.

The suspected targets included the Métro, an unnamed Paris airport and the Paris headquarters of the DST- Directorate for Territorial Surveillance, the French intelligence and counterterrorism agency. 

The reports did not cite the specific airport: Orly or Charles de Gaulle.

A DST officer told me the cell had been in contact with Al Qaeda.

The recent raid came after authorities were tipped by Algerian Intelligence which had arrested a suspect in Algiers a week ago and had squeezed information from him.   

The suspect’s wife was one of the group of nine arrested in a raid in Evreux, about 50 miles northwest of Paris. Among those apprehended was Safe Bourada, an Islamic terrorist freed from prison in 2003.

RICHARD CARLSON: Dispatches from the Danger Zone

Al-Qaeda’s leader in Iraq has taken over the insurgency against the West says General Richard Zahner, the Army’s top military intelligence officer.

In an interview in Baghdad, Zahner said this is “an insurgency that’s been high jacked by a terrorist campaign.” Zahner pointed to Abu Musab Zarqawi as its leader in an interview with Bradley Graham of the Washington Post.   

The General says that Zarqawi and his foreign Jihadists have supplanted the Baath Party, the pro-Saddam Hussein insurgents who have been so troublesome for so long.

RICHARD CARLSON: Dispatches from the Danger Zone

Here’s a name from the past:  Ambassador Zaeef, Abdul Salam Zaeef.  Not exactly a household moniker but you may remember him as the spokesman for the Taliban back in 2001 - black silk turban, heavy beard, long, horsy face.

Zaeef was on American TV from the side porch of his home in Pakistan almost daily after 9/11 and on the run-up to the Afghanistan bombing by the US in October of 2001.

I visited Zaeef at his house in Islamabad for a few days that October, the week before the US attack on Afghanistan. 

Zaeef was still taking his orders from Mullah Omar, the Taliban Chief but after the US military bombed the hell out of Afghanistan Zaeef seemed to disappear. No surprise there. I called his cell phone a few times but he never answered.

RICHARD CARLSON: Dispatches from the Danger Zone

Washington DC government sent a convoy of ten buses to New Orleans to help in the evacuation, drop off some diapers and food and water, and bring back up to 200 evacuees for shelter.

The caravan left on September 2nd a Friday.  You’ll be amused by the official list of who was aboard:

10 drivers.
19 social workers.
2 "mental health professionals."
3 "emergency management workers."
2 physicians
1 physician’s assistant’s
And 28 police officers.

Now that’s 65 people.  There may have been more, but if so the City’s not admitting to it.   

Hard to believe they didn’t have a couple of  p.r. people aboard.

Five days and 2160 miles later –that’s 44 hours of driving time- the caravan returned.  The only evacuees they brought back were two college students who hitched a free ride to Washington.  200 evacuees from New Orleans came to Washington but they had the good sense to fly.

The best part of this story is this:  When this expensive motorized boondoggle arrived back a DC city councilman named David Catania declared the mission “a success.”

This is our Government in Place for when – not if - we have a serious calamity in Washington, DC.  Scary.

RICHARD CARLSON: Dispatches from the Danger Zone

Saddam Hussein has admitted to investigators that he ordered the massacre of thousands of Kurds in Northern Iraq and has confessed to executing 150 men and boys from a village near Baghdad.

Iraq president Jalal Talibani made the announcement in a TV interview.

The most interesting take was in the NY Times.  The reporter, one Richard A Oppel, Jr wrote, “… it was not clear from the interview whether Mr. Talibani was saying that Mr. Hussein had acknowledged that his actions were criminal or that the former leader merely admitted he had ordered killings because he believed they were proper. In the past he has not denied that he ordered people killed.”

“Proper?” The killings were proper? Well, we bet Saddam thought they were proper.  He killed tens of thousands of folks, including women and babies, for different reasons, some of them political, some of them because he felt like it –but all of them “proper” by his reasoning, the reasoning of a megalomaniacal leader who has total control over other human beings.

Saddam faces proper hanging if he is found guilty after his proper trial begins in mid-October.

RICHARD CARLSON: Dispatches from the Danger Zone

New moves against women by radical Muslims in Nigeria.

In Kano, a busy trade center of a half million people in the North, women are now banned from motorcycle taxis and can only sit on the back seat of mini-buses. 

This, the authorities say, is to preserve public morality. 

They are upset because women passengers have been sitting too close to the male drivers.

Kano is one of 12 states in Northern Nigeria now dominated by Islamic Law.   

Authorities have introduced flogging for drinking liquor, amputations for stealing, and death by stoning for adultery.

RICHARD CALRSON: Dispatches from the Danger Zone

Here’s a name dredged up from the old days of the Cold War-The “USS Pueblo.”   

Remember our US Navy ship that was attacked and seized by the North Koreans in 1968.

Few Americans are aware of it, but North Korea is still holding the USS Pueblo -- 37 years later.

Now they have hinted they might give it back. 

A retired diplomat brought that word home from a recent trip to North Korea and has passed it to the State Department.   

Ambassador Don Gregg told authorities that hints were dropped in Pyongyang that if a “high level” US delegation was sent to North Korea for a visit they would consider giving the ship back.

The Pueblo was attacked and seized in international waters off the Korean coast in January of 1968. 

Its crew of 83 was held in captivity for almost a year. 

One of them was killed and many others wounded. Some of the sailors and officers were tortured.   

The US never did much about it except to grovel.

Danger Zone

The most recent episode of Danger Zone, FDD's anti-terror radio show, is now available for download.  In addition to the podcast archives, you can listen to the show Sunday nights at 9pm on WMAL in the DC area or via the WMAL website.