FDD

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.

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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.