Feds charge Virginia resident with support of terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Tayyiba

The US Attorney for Virginia has announced that

Jubair Ahmad, 24, a native of Pakistan and resident of Woodbridge, Va., has been arrested on charges in the Eastern District of Virginia of providing material support to Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT), a designated foreign terrorist organization, and making false statements in a terrorism investigation.

It seems that Ahmad was responsible for posting of

a propaganda video to YouTube on behalf of LeT, after communications with a person named “Talha.” In a subsequent conversation with another person, Jubair identified Talha as Talha Saeed, the son of LeT leader Hafiz Mohammed Saeed. Talha and Jubair allegedly communicated about the images, music and audio that Jubair was to use to make the video. The final video contained images of LeT leader Hafiz Saeed, so-called jihadi martyrs and armored trucks exploding after having been hit by improvised explosive devices.

OK, so the Feds can take pride in nabbing this idiot but they downplay the significance of LeT. Calling it a terrorist organization doesn't do it justice because LeT is the group behind the Mumbai mass murders.

As for Ahmad's parents, I have a question- what do you think your son was doing in his bedroom with the door locked and the lights dimmed?

To the Feds, I say keep up the pressure. We face a threat from within, and we'll only have ourselves to blame if we let these wannabe killers pull off something beyond posting a video.

Well, that's what I have to say.

Read the full press release.

Stephen M. Flatow

Mumbai Attack Conviction

The Associated Press reports out of Mumbai,

"An Indian court on Monday convicted a Pakistani man of murder and waging war for his role in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks that left 166 people dead in the heart of India's financial capital. Two Indians accused of helping plot the attacks were acquitted."

Mohammed Ajmal Kasab,

"the lone survivor of the attack's 10 gunmen, ... was convicted on nearly all the 86 charges against him, including murder and waging war against India. While an exact total of the convictions was not immediately available, the handful of acquittals appear to have been for relatively minor charges, such as forging an identification card. Sentencing is expected to be Tuesday. He faces a possible death sentence."

It's still hard for this Westerner to understand the motivation behind the attack. The New York Times has many, many articles and reports on the attacks. You can read the archive results, here.

Read the full report on 1010 WINS & AP.

Planning for Mumbai-style Attack - a follow-up

We previously wrote about NYPD Trains for Mumbai-style Attack. John Yoo, writing in the Wall Street Journal, "Yes, We Did Plan for Mumbai-Style Attacks in the U.S. Why the latest assault on Bush anti-terror strategy could make us less safe," compares the Bush administration's response to al-Qaeda's attacks and the threat of a Mumbai-style attack happening here with new policies of the Obama administration.

Suppose al Qaeda branched out from crashing airliners into American cities. Using small arms, explosives, or biological, chemical or nuclear weapons they could seize control of apartment buildings, stadiums, ships, trains or buses. As in the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, texting and mobile email would make it easy to coordinate simultaneous assaults in a single city.

After 9/11, we had a responsibility to consider all possible threats.In the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, strikes on New York City and Washington, D.C., these were hypotheticals no more. They became real scenarios for which responsible civilian and military leaders had to plan. The possibility of such attacks raised difficult, fundamental questions of constitutional law, because they might require domestic military operations against an enemy for the first time since the Civil War. Could our armed forces monitor traffic in a city where terrorists were preparing to strike, search for cells using surveillance technology, or use force against a hijacked vessel or building?

According to Yoo, while the military did its job, "it was the duty of the government to plan for worst-case scenarios -- even if, thankfully, those circumstances never materialized." Such efforts raised "unprecedented questions under the most severe time pressures."

Judging from the media coverage of Justice Department memos from those days --released this week by the Obama administration -- this careful contingency planning amounted to a secret plot to overthrow the Constitution and strip Americans of their rights. As the New York Times has it, Bush lawyers "rush into sweeping away this country's most cherished rights." "Irresponsible," harrumphed former Clinton administration Justice Department officials.

Yoo's article does not descend into an apologia for Bush administration tactics. It is a look at the Constitutional underpinnings of the post-9/11 actions of the government going as far back as Alexander Hamilton's opinions on the use of Federal force.

To blame Yoo and others for abuse of Constitutional powers is just silly and that's what is "irresponsible."

There's a good history lesson here, one that folks on the left and right should read. Read the full article.

India's Partition of 1947 - Is the world still paying a price?

Anyone familiar with the motion picture Gandhi will recall the plea made by Hindu leaders to their Muslim counterparts for the latter to drop their demand that India be partitioned and thereby create the Muslim state of Pakistan.

The Mumbai attacks, organized from outside India, and a list of many more, are symptomatic of Muslim "disaffection." Identifying that disaffection is easy according to some. Norman Berdichevsky, writing in New English Review, takes a different approach.

A few academics and editorial writers claiming to be scholars and quite a few liberal pundits/observers, have argued that some blame for the recent atrocious acts of terror in Mumbai should be put on India’s Hindus by stressing that the terrorist group of “disaffected Muslims” carrying out the outrage of random murder of civilians was “probably funded from outside India." They believe as Fareed Zakaria stated in Newsweek, that Indian Hindus “had it coming” because "One of the untold stories of India is that the Muslim population has not shared in the boom the country has enjoyed over the last 10 years. There is still a lot of institutional discrimination, and many remain persecuted."

He continues,

This view is not just wrong and short-sighted, it is symptomatic of why India has become a major target for terrorism that enjoys widespread support not only in Pakistan but in the wider Muslim world. Hatred of India stems from a psychological need to link India and Israel as guilty in the “injustice” Muslims believe they have suffered and to deflect blame and muddy the waters by shifting responsibility for the Partition of India in 1947 to the Hindus and conjuring up the vision that the Jews and Zionism did precisely this in Palestine in 1948. Nothing is further from the truth.

Berdichevsky explores the similarities and dissimilarities between India and Israel and the partitions that created the modern states. But he does not brook the argument that the creation of modern Israel was foisted on a Muslim population.

The truth of the 1948 partition in Palestine is that the Muslims rejected it totally and any possibility of living in peace alongside a tiny Jewish state. Instead they aided in the invasion of the country by the regular armies of six Arab states plunging their homeland into war and ending as defeated refugees. Had they accepted it, the great majority of Palestinian Arabs would today be enjoying the rights of their own independent homeland without the bloodshed of the last sixty years and a minority of them would be citizens of a much more secure, serene and tolerant Israel, untroubled by the threat of constant renewed warfare and terrorism.

Read the full article A Tale of Two Partitions: India 1947 and Palestine 1948 here.

NYPD Trains for Mumbai-style Attack

We recently posted The Coming Swarm - Get ready for small attacks regarding the likelihood of Mumbai-style attacks in the United States.

Well, it looks as though the New York Police Department is planning for such an event. In an AP story posted today,

"NYPD officials say the mission at their firearms training facility reflects their belief that the city is vulnerable to a New York sequel to the Indian siege, and their determination not to be outgunned."

Makes sense to me. And a good example of fine police work in anticipating the worst. Will other cities follow through?

The Coming Swarm - Get ready for small attacks

The New York Times runs an op-ed by John Arquilla, who teaches in the special operations program at the Naval Postgraduate School and is the author of “Worst Enemy: The Reluctant Transformation of the American Military.” His topic-- the prospect of more "Mumbai model" terror operations, including the possibility of similar attacks taking place in the United States.

What's the attractiveness of these smaller group attacks?

The basic concept is that hitting several targets at once, even with just a few fighters at each site, can cause fits for elite counterterrorist forces that are often manpower-heavy, far away and organized to deal with only one crisis at a time. This approach certainly worked in Mumbai, India, last November, where five two-man teams of Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives held the city hostage for two days, killing 179 people. The Indian security forces, many of which had to be flown in from New Delhi, simply had little ability to strike back at more than one site at a time.

So, why should America get ready for such attacks? Because it's already happened here in the form of the 9/11 attacks "where four small teams of Qaeda operatives simultaneously seized commercial aircraft and turned them into missiles, flummoxing all our defensive responses."

So how are swarms to be countered? The simplest way is to create many more units able to respond to simultaneous, small-scale attacks and spread them around the country. This means jettisoning the idea of overwhelming force in favor of small units that are not “elite” but rather “good enough” to tangle with terrorist teams. In dealing with swarms, economizing on force is essential.

It's not too late to develop a response. Read the full op-ed here.

New Report Links Pakistan to Mumbai Attack

The New York Times is covering the release of a report "compiled by Indian authorities and officially shared Monday with the Pakistani government."

"The information seems designed to achieve at least two Indian objectives. First, it seeks to demonstrate that the attackers were sent from Pakistan. The dossier, a copy of which was provided to the New York Times, contains photographs of materials found on the fishing trawler they took: a bottle of Mountain Dew soda packaged in Karachi; pistols that bore the markings of a gun manufacturer in Peshawar; Pakistani-made items like a matchbox, detergent powder and shaving cream.

Second, the information seeks to rally international support for the Indian effort to press Pakistan on its handling of militants. It contains a list of 26 foreigners killed in the Mumbai attacks, and chronicles India’s efforts in recent years to persuade Pakistan to investigate suspects involved in terror attacks inside India and shut down terror training camps inside Pakistani territory. In its final pages, it demands that Pakistan hand over “conspirators” to face trial in India and comply with its promise to stop terrorist groups from functioning inside its territory. It was shared this week with diplomats from friendly nations; one described it as “comprehensive,” another as “convincing.”

Pakistan and India have not been on the best of terms since Pakistan was created following the grant of independence to India by the British in the late 1940s. Border wars between the two countries have popped up from time to time over the past 60 years. One might say, "OK," so there have been skirmishes along the border, so what?

The "what" is this-- India and Pakistan both possess nuclear weapons. Pakistan has exported its technology to places like Iran. India continued nuclear bomb testing long after it was fashionable to do so. Stable countries? To some, no. Driven by religious fervor and an inferiority complex, Pakistan seeks to reach its place in the sun. India, by sheer population size, dwarfs Pakistan.

Will the report heal the rift between India and Pakistan? No, but it could give the Pakistani government a pretext to crack down on extremist groups and their backers.

Read more here

The New York Times: Separating the Terror and the Terrorists

The December 14, 2008 column by The New York Times public editor Robert Hoyt, Separating the Terror and the Terrorists, caught my attention because it touched upon an issue of great concern to terror victims and their families-- the general reluctance of the media to call a spade a spade. It was worth a letter to the public editor and off it went. The Times published it as the lead-off letter under Letters To the Public Editor-- Other Voices: When Labels Carry Moral Weight.

The points made by Mr. Hoyt:

"When 10 young men in an inflatable lifeboat came ashore in Mumbai last month and went on a rampage with machine guns and grenades, taking hostages, setting fires and murdering men, women and children, they were initially described in The Times by many labels.

They were “militants,” “gunmen,” “attackers” and “assailants.” Their actions, which left bodies strewn in the city’s largest train station, five-star hotels, a Jewish center, a cafe and a hospital — were described as “coordinated terrorist attacks.” But the men themselves were not called terrorists."

Mr. Hoyt attempts to explain the "reluctance" of the Times and other news sources to call a terrorist a terrorist.

In the newsroom and at overseas bureaus, especially Jerusalem, there has been a lot of soul-searching about the terminology of terrorism. Editors and reporters have asked whether, to avoid the appearance of taking sides, the paper bends itself into a pretzel or risks appearing callous to abhorrent acts. They have wrestled with questions like why those responsible for the 9/11 attacks are called terrorists but the murderers of a little girl in her bed in a Jewish settlement are not. And whether, if the use of the word terrorist can be interpreted as a political act, not using it is one too.

The issue comes up most often in connection with the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, and to the dismay of supporters of Israel — and sometimes supporters of the other side, denouncing Israeli military actions — The Times is sparing in its use of “terrorist” when reporting on that complex struggle.

He concludes by writing

I do not think it is possible to write a set of hard and fast rules for the T-words, and I think The Times is both thoughtful about them and maybe a bit more conservative in their use than I would be.

My own broad guideline: If it looks as if it was intended to sow terror and it shocks the conscience, whether it is planes flying into the World Trade Center, gunmen shooting up Mumbai, or a political killer in a little girl’s bedroom, I’d call it terrorism — by terrorists.

Now that caught my eye and off a letter went to the public letter. Here's my response as printed:

Re “Separating the Terror and the Terrorists” (Dec. 14):

I write as the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered by Islamic Jihad in April 1995.

While I appreciate your approach to the use of “T-words” for a situation that “shocks the conscience,” it is, because of its subjective nature, nothing more than a small step, albeit in the right direction.

The general refusal of The New York Times and its writers and editors to recognize that people who intentionally target and murder civilians, whether on a bus in Gaza or in a hotel in Mumbai, are attempting to alter a political situation (the classic definition of terrorism) and are therefore terrorists defies logic.

STEPHEN M. FLATOW West Orange, N.J., Dec. 15, 2008

Mumbai Terror Attacks - What's the local news saying?

The story surrounding terror attacks lasts only as long as there's room on the front page. One day's crisis becomes next week's old news. The memory of its victims soon fades away. So I thought I would take a 5 minute look around the news about the Mumbai terror attacks. To my pleasant surprise, a major story has arisen.

From the Associated Press, December 8, 2008, "Pakistan arrests suspected Mumbai plotter."

"Security forces overran a militant camp on the outskirts of Pakistani Kashmir's main city and seized an alleged mastermind of the attacks that shook India's financial capital last week, two officials said Monday."

Is this event a demonstration of resolve by Pakistan or a one-act play to get India and the United States off its back?

From the Times of India – "26/11 terrorists trained by Pak army, navy instructors: Report"

"The ten terrorists involved in the Mumbai attacks were among 500 men trained to "elite" commando standards by the Pakistani army navy instructors and were directly supported by the ISI, a media report here said on Sunday.

"The Indian intelligence have the names of the 26/11 terrorists' ISI trainers and handlers and have intercepted internet phone calls between them, The Sunday Times said."

Much is still to be revealed about the plotting, planning and execution of the Mumbai attacks. Mourning for the lost will soon become, however, a private affair.

Mumbai Attacks - Pakistan in the Spotlight

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was in Pakistan following a visit to India, the New York Times reports. The Times reports on troubling links between Pakistan and the terrorists who murdered 170 last week in Mumbai.

According to the Times, "The new links to Pakistan added fresh complications to American diplomatic efforts to secure cooperation between India and Pakistan, which has questioned some of the evidence that Pakistanis were involved. On Thursday, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice met in Islamabad with Pakistani leaders, a day after meeting with Indian leaders, to urge that the two countries work together to find the attackers and bring them to justice.

“Pakistan should also take the necessary steps to prevent any non-state actors from indulging in such activities against any country from its soil,” Ms. Rice said, according to a statement from the Pakistani prime minister’s office."

Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani guerrilla group, is believed to be behind the attacks. As the home to hundreds, if not thousands, of Islamic madrases, Pakistan attempts to keep both ends of the candle lit. At one end is American aid, the other is freedom from attacks by Jihadist terror groups given sanctuary in Pakistan's northwest territories.

The Pakistani government has a lot of soul searching to do. Any more evidence that Pakistani government indifference led to the attacks could be disastrous for the subcontinent.