Boston and Benghazi - We deserve answers from our government

I have a unique point of view when it comes to the terror attacks that have occurred over the last dozen years.

I lost a high school friend on 09/11/01.  He was on the 104th Fl of Tower Two at World Trade. I was on duty with the US Navy serving on an exercise in Egypt when it all went down.  I was unable to come home for over a month. It was a terrible time and we were unable to help our people at home.

I lost a shipmate of mine when he was killed on the USS Cole in Yemen in October 12th 2000.  He was a shipmate of mine from the USS Constitution when we were on the Under Sail Operation in July 1997 in Boston.  I was home this time and unable to help those on the USS Cole which is what any Sailor would want to do.

Now, the attack was in my home city of Boston, killing 4 people (including the MIT Police officer gunned down by the terrorists) and injuring almost 200 others.  Once again, I found myself overseas, this time in Kandahar, Afghanistan.  I was only able to follow the story, send out messages via twitter and pray they got the Bastards.  Prayers answered.

In the last 7 months, we also suffered the loss of 4 of our people in Benghazi, Libya including 2 US Navy SEALS who are my Navy Brothers. Once again, I was in Kandahar when this happened and unable to do anything to help. The way this terrorism incident was handled was so poorly done, it defies logic.  The way the President and Hillary Clinton acted was shameful and without honor.  We were lied to about what happened, plain and simple.

I take all of this very seriously and find the response from the White House on both attacks to be highly unsatisfactory.  The White House is an impediment to finding the truth and stonewall more than the Nixon White House, which is no small feat.

We, the American people, need answers on what happened in Boston and Benghazi.  What is most unsettling is we have the most inexperienced President in the history of our nation and his administration has done nothing but pump a pile of BS out to the people he serves.  I don't expect every last piece of info but we need more reliable info than we are being given.

They hit my city and my people.  The terrorists have done this before and now done it again.  At the same time, a BS artist and his half-arsed administration told the world they have this covered and that the terrorists are done.

What is "done" is the confidence that the American people have in those in Washington DC as they have proven to be as incompetent as they come.  They are worse than incompetent as they continue to brag about how well they are doing when they are failing miserably.

The people of Boston and our local Police are the ones who got it done in Boston.  Seven months after Benghazi, we have no answers and no one has been held responsible. 
I would say under any measure of things, BOSTON gets it done while the Obama Administration, not at all.  The people of Boston got it done as they stepped up to help our local law enforcement.  The FBI and ATF was in support but the credit goes to the local law enforcement.

Some people smarter than me write about what to do with the captured terrorist in the WSJ.  I leave it to you.  I feel we deserve much better response and answers than a bunch of BS artists slapping themselves on the back in Washington telling us to trust them when they have proven to be totally untrustworthy.

We need answers on Boston and Benghazi.  Period. Now.

Enemy Combatants in Boston

Was there a FISA order issued for Tamerlan Tsarnaev?

Wall Street Journal - 04/22/13

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A row has broken out over whether the Obama Administration is violating the legal due process of Boston terror suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev by not reading him his Miranda rights before questioning. The more relevant question for the safety of the U.S. homeland is why the Administration has declined to designate him as a terrorist enemy combatant.

With Dzhokhar wounded and in custody and his brother Tamerlan dead, the focus is shifting to how the brothers became radicalized and whether they had links to foreign or domestic terror networks. It's becoming clearer by the day that elder brother Tamerlan had become increasingly religious and that his motive last week was Islamic jihad against America.

 

 

U.S. officials say he spent months overseas in 2012, including time in Chechnya. Media reports say the FBI questioned him after a warning from a foreign intelligence service (presumably Russia's). Yet the FBI appears not to have kept an eye on him, though media reports now say that within a month of returning from Russia he was posting jihadist videos on websites.

The FBI has some explaining to do, and more than merely claiming that it can't track everyone who pops up on a foreign intelligence list. One question is whether anyone in government requested that the federal FISA court issue a warrant so Tamerlan could have his Web postings or phone calls surveilled electronically. This doesn't mean G-men in a car following him 24-7. It means putting him into a National Security Agency program so that pro-jihad postings would be noticed.

FBI officials were clearly major sources for the Associated Press stories in 2011 that attacked the New York Police Department for its antiterror surveillance program, in part for reasons of bureaucratic competition. But in the Boston case, we only wish the NYPD had been in charge. Instead the FBI interviewed Tamerlan, then apparently lost interest or focus even as he was showing signs of radicalization, so the homegrown jihadist was able to engineer the most successful terror attack on U.S. soil since 9/11.

Which brings us to interrogating 19-year-old Dzhokhar if he recovers from his wounds. The flap over reading his Miranda rights is a largely irrelevant distraction. Under a 1984 Supreme Court decision (New York v. Quarles), police can invoke a "public-safety exception" to Miranda for a short period of time. Attorney General Eric Holder has embraced this exception as a way to show that the criminal-justice system can handle terrorists as well as the law-of-war paradigm favored by the Bush Administration.

But this is mainly for political show. The only real issue in letting Dzhokhar lawyer-up under Miranda is whether evidence gathered during interrogation can be used in court. There's already plenty of video and other evidence linking him to the bombings.

The important security issue isn't convicting Dzhokhar but finding out what he knows that might prevent a future attack or break up a terror network. This is where naming him an enemy combatant would be useful. Such a designation allows for extensive, long-term interrogation without a lawyer. Especially because President Obama has barred enhanced-interrogation techniques, such long-term psychological pressure can be crucial to learning if the brothers worked with anyone else, if they received terrorist training, and more.

This is why Senators Kelly Ayotte, John McCain and Lindsey Graham are urging the Administration to label Dkhokhar an enemy combatant. The Supreme Court has ruled that even American citizens—Dkhokhar is one—can be held indefinitely as enemy combatants. If he cooperates, the combatant designation can be revoked and he can always be transferred to the criminal-justice system for prosecution.

The Boston bombing also ought to chasten Senators Rand Paul, Mike Lee and other libertarians who keep insisting that the U.S. homeland is not part of the terror battlefield.

"It's different overseas than it will be here. It's different in the battlefield than it will be here," Mr. Paul told Fox News earlier this year. "Which gets precisely to the argument I have with some other Republicans who say, well, 'the battlefield is everywhere, there is no limitation.' President Obama says this. Some members of my party say the battle has no geographic limitations and the laws of war apply. It's important to know that the law of war that they're talking about means no due process."
Boylston Street sure looked like a battlefield on Monday, and so did Watertown on Thursday night. The artificial distinction is Mr. Paul's focus on geography. The vital distinction for public safety is between common criminals, who deserve due process protections, and enemy combatants at war with the U.S., wherever they are.

As for due process, the greatest danger to liberty would be to allow more such attacks that would inspire an even greater public backlash against Muslims or free speech or worse. The anti-antiterror types on the left and GOP Senators who agree that the U.S. isn't part of the battlefield are making the U.S. more vulnerable.

Americans erupted in understandable relief and gratitude on Friday with the rapid capture of the terrorist brothers. But we shouldn't forget that their attack succeeded, with horrific consequences for the dead, the wounded and their loved ones. The main goal now is to prevent the next attack.

Correction: The FBI says it interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011. An earlier version of this story cited erroneous media reports saying he was interviewed in 2012.

A version of this article appeared April 22, 2013, on page A14 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Enemy Combatants in Boston

Prayers for all in Boston

Boston.  My city and where I call home has joined the list of cities that are a victim of terrorism.
 
I woke up early this morning in Kandahar to the news that my home city had been bombed by unknown terrorists. No one knows who did this but they will be found and brought to justice.

The words of Sir Winston Churchill come to mind and they are how I feel at this moment.

" We ask no favours of the enemy. We seek from them no compunction. On the contrary, if tonight our people were asked to cast their vote whether a convention should be entered into to stop the bombing of cities, the overwhelming majority would cry, "No, we will mete out to them the measure, and more than the measure, that they have meted out to us." The people with one voice would say: "You have committed every crime under the sun. Where you have been the least resisted there you have been the most brutal. It was you who began the indiscriminate bombing. We will have no truce or parley with you, or the grisly gang who work your wicked will. You do your worst - and we will do our best."

The Afghan people have said "enough is enough" and they have taken on the Taliban

This is the GOOD NEWS many of us who have been working to help Afghanistan and the Afghan people have been waiting for - The Afghan people fighting the Taliban.

The Afghan people have taken on the Taliban in their own villages.... This is very much like what happened in Anbar Province, Iraq where the people got sick of the terrorists and turned on them.

This is what will be needed if Afghanistan will be free.  Awesome to see Afghanis standing up to these cowards who use IEDs and terror to keep the Afghan people from being free to set their own destiny.

Villagers Take On Taliban in Their Heartland

By CARLOTTA GALL

NY TIMES

 

Published: March 20, 2013

PISHIN GAN SAYEDAN, Afghanistan — An uprising against the Taliban that began last month in this southern Afghan village has now spread through dozens of others, according to residents and Afghan and American officials, in the most significant popular turning against the Islamist insurgents in recent years.

Since early February, when villagers joined with police forces to begin ousting Taliban fighters from this region of rich vineyards and orchards southwest of Kandahar City, hundreds of residents have rallied to support the government. Nearly 100 village elders vowed at a public meeting Monday to keep the Taliban out as the new fighting season sets in, and Afghan flags are flying from rooftops in the villages, residents said.

Isolated uprisings against the Taliban have been reported in several different parts of Afghanistan over the past 18 months. But the revolt in Panjwai is considered significant because it is the first in southern Afghanistan, in the spiritual heartland of the Taliban movement, where the group’s influence had endured despite repeated operations by American and NATO forces.

Though no one is claiming that the Taliban are forever out of the fight even in this district — the insurgents have vowed a vengeful return and in the past week killed two men in the area — the Panjwai uprising has given an example of what can be accomplished when local resentment over bullying by militants is accompanied by reliable government support.

It has been good news in an often-pessimistic season, as the Taliban have appeared to make inroads in some other places around the country where American troops are pulling out.

In interviews, villagers and local officials said that although the uprising grew out of villagers’ anger at Taliban brutality, it gelled because of the growing strength of the Afghan security forces and a particularly active police force in the region. The new Panjwai police chief, Sultan Mohammad, is from Zangabad, the name of the surrounding area, and his appointment in January galvanized local support for the government.

“It’s been a long time coming. But in short, the people have said enough is enough, and they became fed up with the Taliban,” Maj. Gen. Robert B. Abrams, the American commander in the south, said in a news briefing with Pentagon reporters last week. He said the Taliban had been ousted from all but four villages in the district at that point.

American and Afghan forces have fought a grueling campaign in the districts of Kandahar since the surge of 2010 when thousands of extra American troops were sent into southern Afghanistan.

Although the Taliban were routed in crucial areas that year, they maintained a grip in the southern part of Panjwai, in the village clusters of Zangabad and Sperwan, and threaded the area with improvised explosive devices and ambush sites.

Though the surge of Western troops, and the increase in Afghan security forces that followed, has brought greater security for much of Kandahar Province, in some areas it also brought increased tensions with locals, and even greater violence in some pockets.

Indeed, one of the worst atrocities of the war occurred just a few hundred yards from this village when 16 Afghan civilians were killed in their homes last year. An American soldier, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, has been accused of killing the civilians in a nighttime rampage, raising local anger against the government and American forces in the region.

Yet it was the Taliban’s callousness that caused the population to snap, Afghan officials and the villagers here said. Between 300 and 400 civilians have been killed or injured by bombs or ambushes by the Taliban in the past six months in Panjwai, according to the district governor, Hajji Fazel Mohammad.

“People are angry because the Taliban have been laying mines in their orchards and vineyards,” he said in an interview at his district office. A member of the Taliban would lay mines and then get killed and no one knew where the mines were, he said. “People are now fed up with the Taliban and are joining us.”

The spark came in early February when the Taliban commander of the area, Mullah Noor Mahmad, 35, came to arrest men in this village. He called on the house of Hajji Abdul Wudood and demanded the handover of two sons he accused of spying for the government.

“They wanted to slaughter my sons,” Mr. Wudood said in an interview last month in his home. “They wanted to take them to the desert where they had a court and a base.”

Mr. Wudood, a 60-year-old former mujahedeen fighter against the Soviets in the 1980s, had had enough. He and his eight grown sons decided to make a stand.

Several villagers who had lost relatives to the Taliban joined them. The village had already been starting to boil: Three days earlier the same Taliban commander had beaten up farmers who were clearing undergrowth from the village irrigation canal.

Mr. Wudood turned for help to the district police chief, Mr. Mohammad, an old mujahedeen associate and a relative by marriage. Together they hatched a plan to ambush the Taliban.

On Feb. 6, they moved against a Taliban base in a nearby village. Seventy unarmed villagers accompanied the police, guiding them through the minefields and acting as lookouts. After a short firefight, the police routed the Taliban, killing three men, and chasing the remainder south toward the desert.

Army and police units pursued the Taliban down to their base on the edge of the desert in the days after. As the word spread, dozens of villages showed their support for the government and offered men for the Afghan Local Police forces to guard their villages.

General Abrams says the local support and expansion of government forces — he still commands 17,000 troops in the region, and Afghan fighters now amount to 52,000 across various agencies — has coincided with a period of weakness for the Taliban here, financially in particular. “They lack the money, they lack the arms and ammunition, and they are having a challenge gathering their forces,” he said, speaking by telephone from his headquarters at Kandahar airfield on Tuesday.

The head of Afghanistan’s National Security Directorate, Asadullah Khalid, a bitter enemy of the Taliban who is still recovering in the United States from a suicide attack against him in Kabul last year, said he had been trying to nurture popular uprisings as a way to beat the Taliban.

“One thing for sure is that the people are tired of the Taliban and they don’t want the Taliban,” he said in an interview. “And when the people don’t want the Taliban, the Taliban cannot come in. I feel this is the beginning of the end of the Taliban, but the question is how can we use this.”

Provincial and local leaders in Kandahar express pride at the uprising’s success so far, but they warn that if the government does not follow through with increased police support, the Taliban could undermine it all. “It all depends on what the government does with these people,” said Hajji Agha Lalai, a member of Kandahar’s provincial council. “If they support them and equip them, it will be a revolution.”

 Taliban leaders were furious at losing Panjwai and have been plotting their return to the district in meetings in the Pakistani town of Quetta this week, police and intelligence officials said. One Taliban commander, who spoke on the condition of anonymity during a telephone interview, acknowledged the loss of Panjwai, but said the movement was starting to infiltrate more fighters into southern Afghanistan along with workers coming in for the opium poppy harvest.

Last weekend, two workers from a construction firm were kidnapped and killed in Panjwai. Their bodies were found hanging in different villages near the desert where Taliban fighters still have a presence, police officials said.

Mr. Wudood said he had received warnings that the Taliban had ordered his assassination. Yet he remained defiant.

“This time it is not only me,” he said. “There are thousands of us in Zangabad and in Sperwan. They cannot eliminate us all. We are the true owners of this land and the men who are attacking us are coming from outside, and we are not scared. We will defend our land.”

Ruhullah Khapalwak contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Taimoor Shah from Kandahar