To think some people question why I refuse to wear underwear from Nigeria
Behold the jockey shorts of would be terrorist, Nigerian Muslim Abdul Farouk Abdul Mutallab. The guy must really hate America (for our freedoms) if he is willing to put on a pair of explosive underpants.
Enhanced security measures only make flying more troublesome
In the wake of the Nigerian Muslim terrorist that tried to blow up a Northwest airliner as it was preparing to land in Detroit, authorities have introduced a whole host of added security procedures that don’t make flying any safer from the threat of terrorism, but they do make flying on a commercial plane even more of a pain in the ass.
This morning, travelers flying from Canada to the United States were subjected to a second layer of security including a pat down of every traveler and a 100% luggage search by hand. The added security measures added an extra three hours to the already lengthy security processing time.
The fun doesn’t stop at the plane’s door. Passengers over the weekend were told to remain in their seats for the final hour of their flight. They were also told they could not use any electronic devices, even iPods, or even their own personal headphones. They were also told that they could not access their carry-on luggage or have anything in their laps. They were also told to keep their hands in plain sight until the plane landed.
Need to use to the restroom within an hour of landing? Too bad.
The TSA is also for some unknown reason requiring JetBlue to suspend showing TV on flights. Not just for the final hour, but for the entire flight. No TV, no movies, no XM radio.
This is a huge personal loss to me. JetBlue is the only airline I use simply because of the ability to watch Law & Order marathons while I travel back and forth to California.
None of these added procedures would have posed so much as a speed-bump to Abdul Farouk Abdul Mutallab. He had the explosives stuffed in a condom stuffed in his underwear. Would a pat-down search have detected the explosives? Unless whoever was doing the search was willing to stick their hand down his pants, I’m guessing it wouldn’t.
Not allowing Abdul Farouk Abdul Mutallab to listen to an iPod wouldn’t have done anything to make things safer.
Nigerian Muslim terrorist was placed on a terrorist watch list last month
Abdul Farouk Abdul Mutallab, the Nigerian Muslim that tried to blow up a Northwest airliner on Christmas day, was added to a terrorist watch list only last month, yet he was still allowed to board an airplane for the United States.
Abdulmutallab was added to the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) list after his father told U.S. State Department officials that he was worried about his son’s radical beliefs and extremist connections. To think that I have to take off my shoes and have TSA inspectors x-ray them before boarding a commercial airliner, but a guy can be reported to the federal government for being a dangerous Islamic extremist with dubious connections, yet he is allowed to board and aircraft for the United States like a regular person.
Do they want another terrorist attack to happen? I live in a world where if you fail to do your job correctly and something bad happens as a result, you get fired. It would be nice to know that someone is getting fired because Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab was allowed to board an airplane for the United States. I know that’s not about to happen. If nobody was fired as a result of the 9-11 terror attacks, nobody will be getting axed because of this.
I just don’t get it. Supposedly the only reason Abdulmutallab’s bomb didn’t go off is because the detonator was faulty. I have to wonder if he was able to blow up the jet, would we even know that someone on a terrorist watch list was on the plane? Would we even be told it was an act of terror?
My guess is that we wouldn’t. It would be explained as some kind of mechanical failure and life would simply go on.
Nigerian Muslim tries to blow up Northwest Airlines airliner
Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian Muslim flying on board a Northwest airliner from Amsterdam to Detroit tried to ignite some kind of mystery powder and blow up the plane. He was tackled by some of his fellow passengers before the power could do whatever it was intended to do.
He has told investigators that he was acting on the behalf of Al-Qaeda.
Good thing there were some able bodied passengers on hand to give Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab the beating he richly deserved. It’s not like the flight attendants could have done it. If there’s one thing we learned on September 11, 2001, it was that flight attendants that weigh 105 lbs might be pretty to look at, but they are entirely unless when it comes to stopping a Saudi with a box cutter.
If it was up to me, I would have taken the billions of dollars TSA spent staffing pointless checkpoints and shoe inspectors and instead used it to pay former Army Rangers and other military types to be flight attendants. Not coffee. tea, or me type of flight attendants made popular in the 1950’s and 60’s, but flight attendants for the new century. Flight attendants that might not know how to make you a good Bloody Mary, but they would know how to kill you with a pencil.
The Mexican pig flu has already killed 10,000 Americans
Federal health officials are now saying that 10,000 Americans have succumbed to the H1N1 flu. And that’s only since this past April.
That’s more Americans than Islamic terrorists have been able to kill in the last 20 years.
It’s almost unreal to think that this many people have died from the swine flu. That just goes to show you that the flu isn’t something to take lightly. To me, it’s just one more reason that we as a nation should be investing our resources into a national, universal health care system. The chances that you will die from a virus are much higher than the chances that you will be killed by an angry Muslim terrorist, yet we are more than happy to spend billions of dollars on fighting terrorism. When President Obama wants all Americans to have access to affordable, quality health care, some people say it proves he’s just like Adolf Hitler.
911 terrorists will finally stand trial
After eight long years, some of the terrorists involved in the terror attacks of 911 will face a trial in a civilian courtroom. From the AP (via MSNBC):
Attorney General Eric Holder announced the decision Friday to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to trial at a lower Manhattan courthouse.
I don’t understand why it took this long. Granted, I didn’t expect Bush to do something like this, but we elected Obama over a year ago, and he was sworn into office in January.
This should have been done his first week in office.
I’ve long believed that we will never defeat terrorism militarily. Terrorism is a technique, not a nation or a group of people. How do you wage war against a technique? The goal should be to hunt down and bring to justice those that engage in this awful, disgusting technique.
Ideally it should be done a lot sooner then eight years after the fact.
For the past eight years, we have fought terrorism by spending billions of dollars in invading and occupying two Muslim countries. We’ve lost well over 5,000 service members and thousands more have been injured in this futile military pursuit. It’s hard to say exactly if these costly military excursions and occupations have contributed to the fact that the United States has not suffered a terrorist attack since September 11, 2001, but what is quite clear is that there are more Islamic terrorists in the world today then there was on September 12.
I believe the military occupation of two Muslim countries has greatly contributed to this problem. I believe that if you want to create more Islamic terrorists, occupy a Muslim country.
I don’t know if we will ever defeat terrorism. It’s hard to defeat someone who engages in a technique that often results in their own death. I do know this: terrorism will never be defeated in an epic tank battle.
Responding to terrorism with our massive military makes about as much sense as responding to North Korea invading South Korea by sending the FBI to the Korean Peninsula. If terrorism will ever be defeated, it will be in the courtroom, not the battlefield. It will be defeated with our laws and our judicial system, not our smart bombs and our main battle tanks.
Fort Hood shooter posted messages on the Internet defending suicide bombers
U.S. Army psychiatrist Major Malik Nadal Hasan, the American of Jordanian decent that brandished two handguns and opened fire on a large group of his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, is still alive. He was not killed on the scene as reported yesterday. He was shot four times and is in custody at the hospital. Reports now say that he’s expected to live.
What a shame.
On the scale of things, a field grade officer who is also a psychiatrist, turning a weapon on his own fellow soldiers, has got to be one of the most horrendous things you can imagine. At least it’s one of the most horrendous things I can imagine. Whatever happened to doctors doing no harm?
About six months ago, Hasan posted a comment concerning martyrdom and suicide bombing that seems to be defending the practice. Hasan wrote:
There was a grenade thrown amongs [sic] a group of American soldiers. One of the soldiers, feeling that it was to late for everyone to flee jumped on the grave with the intention of saving his comrades. Indeed he saved them. He inentionally [sic] took his life (suicide) for a noble cause i.e. saving the lives of his soldier. To say that this soldier committed suicide is inappropriate. Its more appropriate to say he is a brave hero that sacrificed his life for a more noble cause. Scholars have paralled [sic] this to suicide bombers whose intention, by sacrificing their lives, is to help save Muslims by killing enemy soldiers. If one suicide bomber can kill 100 enemy soldiers because they were caught off guard that would be considered a strategic victory. Their intention is not to die because of some despair. The same can be said for the Kamikazees [sic] in Japan. They died (via crashing their planes into ships) to kill the enemies for the homeland. You can call them crazy i you want but their act was not one of suicide that is despised by Islam. So the scholars main point is that “IT SEEMS AS THOUGH YOUR INTENTION IS THE MAIN ISSUE” and Allah (SWT) knows best.
It’s ironic that a Muslim U.S. Army major can post a comment on the Internet that essentially defends suicide bombings by equating the terrorists who do them as being heroes, but if he had posted that he was gay, he would have been quickly discharged. Federal law enforcement officials learned about Hasan’s Internet postings six months ago. If six months ago he posted that he was gay, he would not have been Fort Hood yesterday.
He would have already been a civilian.
U.S. Army major at Fort Hood kills 12, wounds 31 others
Malik Nadal Hasan, a 39-year old U. S. Army major opened fire with two handguns at Fort Hood, Texas, killing 12 and wounding another 31. Most of those shot were U.S. soldiers processing their paperwork for an up coming deployment to Iraq and/or Afghanistan.
Hasan was killed.
Authorities are saying that it’s far too early to say whether or not this attack was an act of terrorism. Just because the gunman has a name that sounds Arabic, doesn’t mean that it’s related to Islamic terrorism. At least that’s what they are saying on TV. For all we know, Major Hasan might have been a Baptist or a Mormon with a bad attitude.
Not that I’ve ever known a Mormon with a bad attitude.
The Army has two other suspects in custody. They, like Hasan, are U.S. soldiers. Their names have not been released.
Health care reform is scarier than terrorism
Republican Representative Virginia Foxx from the fifth district of North Carolina spoke on the House floor and said that we have more to fear from health care reform than we do terrorists. Watch it:
If she said that not having access to quality, affordable health care was more of a threat than some radical Islamic fundamentalist hiding in a cave in Pakistan, I might actually agree with her. She didn’t say that. She’s not telling people to be afraid of not having access to quality health care, she is telling people to be afraid of health care reform because it will somehow infringe on our freedoms.
I don’t really understand people that actually encourage others to be scared. As an elected official, she really should be doing the complete opposite.
India links Mumbai terror attacks to Pakistan
Now that the Mimbai crisis is finally over, Indian is casting suspicion on Pakistani militant groups.
One of the terrorists, Azam Amir Kasab, 21, from Pakistan, was captured alive. He had been pretending to be dead and when he was being transported to the hospital, someone noticed he was breathing. His injuries turned out to by very minor.
Kasab told investigators that he and his fellow terrorists were told to target whites, preferably Americans and the British.
It’s also been reported that the Mumbai attacks were funded in part by cash raised in British mosques.
Pakistan officials are adiment that they were not involved in the attacks and are demanding that Inda prove that Pakistan is responsible by producing evidece linking them to the attacks.
If India confirms that Pakistan is involved in the attacks, how do they respond? Both Pakistan and India have nuclear weapons. If the two countries go to war over this incident, can they refrain from going nuclear?
Pakistan behind trouble in India?
I’m not sure this is of any suprise to anyone, but officials in India are coming to the conclusion that Pakistan may be behind the terror attacks in Mumbai. From The Times of India:
While initial reports from India suggested the Mumbai carnage was a localised attack by militant malcontents in India because of the “Deccan Mujaheddin” decoy that was used to claim responsibility, evidence cited by Indian army and security experts based on phone intercepts, nature of weaponry, mode of entry by sea etc., has quickly focused the attention on Pakistan.
I’ll admit that when I first heard that the attacks were being carried out by Islamic terrorists, I immediately thought Pakistan was involved. Mostly that’s because I know that India and Pakistan don’t get along. I’m also somewhat of a religious bigot and when I hear that something blew up and people were killed, I think that Muslims and not Southern Baptists or Mormons were involved.
I’m not saying that all Muslims are terrorists. I’m only saying that most terrorists are Muslim.
Didn’t something happen on this day in history?
I almost forgot all about the terrorist attacks 9-11, but then I got stuck driving behind a rusty pick-up truck with a bumper sticker on the back that told me to never forget what happened on September 11, 2001. So I wont.
Of course I am being facetious. You would have to be a complete retard to ever forget about the attacks on 9-11. Like most Americans living on the east coast, I remember that day only too well. I was working second shift back then. I’d get home from work around 1:00 a.m. and would normally sleep in till 9:00 a.m. I remember waking up that morning and checking my email to find three frantic messages from my mother back in California. She wrote about trying to call me and not getting through and how she just saw on the news that Washington D.C. was being attacked too.
Huh?
I immediately woke up Sheri. She too was working second shift. I didn’t know yet what exactly was going on, but I wanted both of us to find out together.
If you had told me then that we would quickly ascertain who was responsible for the attacks and instead of capturing or killing the individual responsible, we would focus all of our resources on invading a country that had nothing to do with the attacks, I would have told you that you were smoking crack.
It’s been seven years and Osama bin Laden is still at large. Who would have thought that?
The al-Qaida in Iraq is not the real al-Qaida
Our illustrious president spoke last night on the television about his most favorite subject – the Iraq war. From his speech:
Anbar province is a good example of how our strategy is working. Last year, an intelligence report concluded that Anbar had been lost to al-Qaida. Some cited this report as evidence that we had failed in Iraq and should cut our losses and pull out. Instead, we kept the pressure on the terrorists. The local people were suffering under the Taliban-like rule of al-Qaida, and they were sick of it. So they asked us for help.
The al-Qaida he should be worried about is the al-Qaida in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. That is the real al-Qaida. That is the al-Qaida that attacked the United States on 9-11. The al-Qaida in Iraq? They just call themselves that to give themselves some cheap terrorist credibility. Everyone knows that al-Qaida attacked the United States six years ago and Bush has failed to bring them to justice. Bush has failed to make them pay. Bush and his inability to make al-Qaida pay turn them into the terrorist organization that every two bit terrorist wants to be apart of.
Just because they call themselves al-Qaida doesn’t make them al-Qaida. The al-Qaida in Iraq is as much al-Qaida as American skinheads are Nazis. Sure, they may have a photo of Hitler in their mom’s basement, but that doesn’t mean they are the same bunch that fought Patton’s Third Army in the Battle of the Bulge. Those were real Nazis. They weren’t pretending to be Nazis.
Just because someone identifies themselves as a Nazi on their MySpace page doesn’t mean they are a Nazi. Just because someone in Iraq says they are al-Qaida doesn’t make them al-Qaida.
Michael Chertoff’s guts are telling him that you should be afraid
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said that the nation faces a heightened chance of an attack this summer. Not because he knows of any credible intelligence that points to that. No, because he feels it in his large intestines.
“Summertime seems to be appealing to them,” he said of al-Qaeda. “We do worry that they are rebuilding their activities.”
Still, Chertoff said there are not enough indications of an imminent plot to raise the current threat levels nationwide. And he indicated that his remarks were based on “a gut feeling” formed by past seasonal patterns of terrorist attacks, recent al-Qaeda statements, and intelligence he did not disclose.
Don’t just sit there. Go grab some duct tape and save yourself! It’s summertime and Michael Chertoff’s bowels are talking!
Rudy Giuliani is an idiot
Rudy Giuliani should have been spending less time flying around the country giving paid speeches on the 9-11 terror attacks and spent more time actually learning more about them. Including the reasons we were attacked.
This following is a partial transcript from the recent Republican South Carolina Presidential debate.
REP. PAUL: No. Non-intervention was a major contributing factor. Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we’ve been over there; we’ve been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We’ve been in the Middle East — I think Reagan was right.
We don’t understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. So right now we’re building an embassy in Iraq that’s bigger than the Vatican. We’re building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us. (Applause.)
MR. GOLER: Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attack, sir?
REP. PAUL: I’m suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it, and they are delighted that we’re over there because Osama bin Laden has said, “I am glad you’re over on our sand because we can target you so much easier.” They have already now since that time — (bell rings) — have killed 3,400 of our men, and I don’t think it was necessary.
MR. GIULIANI: Wendell, may I comment on that? That’s really an extraordinary statement. That’s an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don’t think I’ve heard that before, and I’ve heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th. (Applause, cheers.)
And I would ask the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn’t really mean that. (Applause.)
MR. GOLER: Congressman?
REP. PAUL: I believe very sincerely that the CIA is correct when they teach and talk about blowback. When we went into Iran in 1953 and installed the shah, yes, there was blowback. A reaction to that was the taking of our hostages and that persists. And if we ignore that, we ignore that at our own risk. If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem.
They don’t come here to attack us because we’re rich and we’re free. They come and they attack us because we’re over there. I mean, what would we think if we were — if other foreign countries were doing that to us?
Congressmen Ron Paul is correct. Bin Laden didn’t attack the United States because of our love of apple pie and baseball. He didn’t attack us because we love Jesus.
Rudy Giuliani has made a lot of money off of 9-11. You would think he would try to learn a thing or two about it. Instead he comes off looking like an idiot.
Congressman Ron Paul was right. The so-called “America’s Mayor” was wrong.
Asking Muslims to denounce terrorism is like asking Catholics to denounce pedophilia
Here’s a letter I wrote that was published in the local newspaper, the Herald-Mail. It was in response to a letter written by someone who was calling for all Muslims to denounce terrorism. For some reason, it struck a nerve with me. Here is my letter:
I wanted to weigh in with an opinion on the recent letter written by Jack Myers where he called upon Muslims everywhere to denounce suicide terror attacks. Why stop at only calling on Muslims to denounce terrorism? Should be ask all religious people to denounce terrorism?
Muslims believe in the God of Abraham, along with people of the Jewish and the Christian faith. Should everyone that worships the God of Abraham also denounce terrorism? There are over a billion peace loving people in the world that practice Islam. Only a small percentage of that number recognizes or endorses terrorism as a legitimate method of achieving objectives. It is ridiculous and insulting to lump all Muslims in with the terrorists. The reality is that an overwhelming majority of Muslims don’t condone terrorism or even know a terrorist.
Asking Muslims to denounce terrorism is like asking Catholics to denounce pedophilia. Of course the vast majority of Catholics do not condone or endorse pedophilia. Similarly, the vast majority of Muslims do not condone or endorse terrorism. Don’t allow the actions of a small few lead you to make erroneous judgments about a majority.
I don’t know if we will ever win this war on terror. How do you win a war against a technique? I do know that we will not win it by insulting a billion Muslims that don’t support terrorism. It’s giving credibility to the idiotic notion that all Muslims are blood thirsty terrorists that only have children so they can strap bombs on them and turn them into suicide bombers.
It’s like asking Christians to denounce rattlesnake handling.
The ironic thing about my letter to the paper was the title they gave my letter. It’s as though the editor didn’t even read what I wrote.
He entitled it, “All should denounce terrorism“.
Really? Was I saying that everyone should denounce terrorism? That’s not even close to the point I was making.
George Bush is only brave when other people’s lives are at stake
President Bush suggested Thursday that Democrats don’t have the stomach to fight the war on terror. He was at a Republican campaign fundraiser in Alabama and had lots of nasty stuff too.
“Five years after 9/11, the worst attack on the American homeland in our history, Democrats offer nothing but criticism and obstruction and endless second-guessing,” Bush said at a Republican fundraiser.”The party of FDR and the party of Harry Truman has become the party of cut and run,”.
Party of cut and run? How does Bush have any business saying something like this? He is the guy that acted like a wuss on the day of 9-11. When the Saudi terrorists attacked, he was at an elementary school in Sarasota, Florida reading to kids. Instead of getting on Air Force One and returning to Washington D.C., he flew around the country hiding from threats that never existed. He even spent time in a bomb shelter at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. How embarrassing. There were a lot of people doing brave and courageous things on the day of 9-11. Don’t let anyone fool you. George Bush wasn’t one of them.
I’m tired of Bush and gutless neo-con chickenhawks like him constantly trying to man-up on everyone else. Only in America can someone like Rush Limbaugh describe a man such as John Kerry as a coward. John Kerry earned a Silver Star for killing the Viet Cong into the jungles of Viet Nam. The only thing Limbaugh has ever killed was a bottle of oxicotin.
I find it ironic that Bush can refer to leaving Iraq as “cut and run”. What more do we have to do over there? We took care of ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. Granted, Iraq didn’t have any weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein was captured and is now on trial. They have had democratic elections in Iraq. Twice. Iraqi People even got purple fingers. What more is there to do? Mission accomplished, right? Major combat operations in Iraq are over, right? So why continue the military occupation of Iraq?
Not only are we paying a heavy toll in American lives, it is costing the American taxpayers approximately $2 billion dollars a week to occupy Iraq. Then again, it’s not like current taxpayers are going to be footing this bill. It will be this country’s great, great, great grandchildren that end up paying for the Bush Iraq war. Future taxpayers will be footing the bill for Bush’s war. Bush isn’t really keen on the idea of paying for the things he wants. He drives up the national debt while cutting taxes. Mostly these tax cuts go to the ultra rich. Tax cuts for people that don’t sacrifice or contribute anything to the war on terror or Bush’s war in Iraq. It’s not as though their children are enlisting in the military after high school and going to Iraq or Afghanistan.
Then again, if you join the military, your chances of going to Afghanistan are not all that high. The odds of going to Iraq are seven times more likely then going to Afghanistan. That’s a shame too, especially if someone joined the armed forces to kill the people that caused the terror attacks on 9-11. Instead of occupying Iraq, our military needs to be in Afghanistan killing the Taliban and hunting down bin Laden.
-
Recent Comments
-
Rick: Hayami: Ryan, so far I’ve seen no evidence that Handley was sexually attracted to real children. Then you haven't been doing e...
-
Hayami: Ryan, so far I've seen no evidence that Handley was sexually attracted to real children. There're quite a few otaku who are more attracted to anime characters than to real people. There're quite a few erotic anime/manga/games fans who are attr...
-
siriunsun: Well, Rick.........you know how it is: John McSame just LOOKS the same as lots of people who were born in the United States. And his name is a lot more in line with certain stereotypes that make lots of sheep in this country feel happy and com...
-
Ryan: Matt Damon? Matt Damon!...
-
-
-
Books I Am Reading
-
Music I Am Listening To
-
- Kucinich caves on health care reform. Will now vote for the non-public option health care reform bill. http://bit.ly/9t4gNI
- Peter Graves has died - http://bit.ly/blfTde #cnn
- Courage? Really? http://is.gd/axTwj
Follow me @rickrottman