Terrorist Attacks

Terrorist Attacks
Since 9/11, Americans have come to know the every day threat of terrorism looming overhead. It’s excedingly difficult to forget the jubilation expressed by Islamists all over the world at the sight of the Twin Towers collapsing. An image of a Palestinian woman clucking her tongue and waving her hands in the air is likewise very difficult to forget. She was just one of millions of sympathizers celebrating the deaths of almost 3,000 human beings. In Muslim countries all over the world clerics are fomenting more and more hatred against the U.S. It’s even happening in mosques here in America. There haven’t been actual attacks in the U.S. since the 9/11 attack, but that is not because terrorists haven’t tried.
According to a report by the Heritage Foundation,19 attacks against America have been thwarted. Those include shoe bomber Richard Reid, who attempted to blow up an airliner with explosives planted in his shoes, seven men charged with plotting to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago, and four men plotting to blow up a jet fuel artery running through residential neighborhoods at JFK Airport in New York City. A possible trial run of an attack occurred just the end of last month. Ahmed al Soofi and Hezam al Murisi, residents of Detroit, Michigan, were detained when their flight arrived in Amsterdam, final destination, Yemen. Soofi’s baggage contained non-functioning cell phones taped together, box cutters, and a cell phone taped to a bottle of Pepto-Bismol. They claimed the cell phones were gifts and have been released by Dutch authorities. Cell Phones from abroad are indeed common gifts. Maybe it’s just cultural differences, but wouldn’t you honor someone with a gift of functioning cell phones, in their original wrappings, maybe wraped around clothing for protection?
When terrorists flew airplanes into the World Trade Center Towers and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, Americans realized they were no longer safe. No longer was terrorism confined to foreign countries like Israel, Pakistan, and Lebanon or confined to Airplanes hijacked by the PLO. It was now on Our Own Front Lawn.

Terrorist Attacks through history in which Americans were killed is summarized on the page “Terrorist Attacks” to your right. The attacks upon Americans and Israelis (whom the jihadists equate) started with the PLO, founded by Yassar Arafat (self-proclaimed Palestinian who was in reality Egyptian), in the 1960’s. "Sky-jacking terrorism” first began against Israeli targets abroad by PLO and Fatah in the late 1960's, and Yasser Arafat, who founded both, is considered the father of modern terrorism. He is directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent Israeli citizens, the deaths of untold numbers of Arabs and the killing of more than 100 U.S. citizens. Among the Americans were two diplomats, whose murders in Sudan, Arafat ordered by radio from his Beirut headquarters. In fact, groups under Arafat's direct or indirect command – including Fatah, Black September, Tanzim and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade – were responsible for hundreds of bombings, hijackings, assassinations and other attacks, including the 1972 murder of 11 of Israel's Olympic athletes in Munich, the 1973 murder of the American ambassador to Sudan, Cleo Noel, and the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruiseship (resulting in the murder of wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer, whose body was then thrown overboard). Leon Klinghoffer was 69, a retired American businessman who was celebrating his 36th wedding anniversary to wife Marilyn with a cruise on the Achille Lauro. For more information on Arafat, see the page, “Father of Terrorism” to your right.

To the jihadists, America and Israel are the same. Before 1969, this was not the case.
In 1969, it was the KGB who prompted Arafat to declare war on American "Imperial-Zionism" during the first summit of the Black Terrorist International, a neo-Fascist pro-Palestine organization financed by the KGB and Libya's Moammar Gadhafi. Yasser claimed to be the one to come up with the "Imperial-Zionism" strategy to attack the US, but this was actually a favorite tool of Russian intelligence to feed ethnic hatred. The KGB regarded anti-Semitism and anti-Imperialism as a valuable instrument in furthering anti-Americanism. Why is there such vicious hatred now for Americans? One reason may be for our political support of Israel, the only nation in the Middle East that emminates our values of democracy, liberty, and equality for women. But venomous lies about Israelis by presumably well-educated and prominent individuals in Islamic Government-Supported press does not help our plight.

On 13 March 2002, the Middle East Media and Research Institute (MEMRI) published excerpts of a translation of an article which had appeared in the Saudi Arabian daily newspaper Al-Riyadh on 10 March of that year. The article, a column by Dr. Umayma Ahmad Al-Jalahma of King Faysal University in Al-Dammam, dealt with the "The Jewish Holiday of Purim". The author of this blood libel is not your average Jew-hating Saudi. He is not just a columnist, he is an academic: Umayma Ahmad Al-Jalahma of King Faisal University in Al-Dammam. So while the de-facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz-al-Saud, is whispering sweet nothings into our trembling ears, his Government-Supported Press is telling its readers under a headline: "Special Ingredient For Jewish Holidays is Human Blood From Non-Jewish Youth." You can read this excerpt under the page, “Vulgar Saudi Lies”, to your right. Please be warned, it will make you ill, but it is important to know what jihadists believe as fact about Israelis, because they equate Israelis with YOU!

While the terrorist attacks of past have included the use of bombs (suicide bombers,
car and truck bombs, airplane bombs), 9/11 showed us that they can be more imaginative. They are now plotting to acquire and use, chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. A Department of Homeland Security report states that, in a 1999 interview with Osama bin Laden, he claimed it is his religious duty to obtain chemical and nuclear weapons. In 2003, extremist Cleric, Nasir bin Hamd al-Fahd issued a fatwa in which he declares that Islamic law permits the use of weapons of mass destruction for jihad. In January 2004, British police raided a London apartment and found traces of the poison ricin, a substance derived from Castor beans. Police suspect the Islamic militants arrested in the case were plotting to lace the food supply on at least one British military base using the ricin. Some reports linked the Islamists with al-Qaida, and a British mosque raided later in connection to the case, contained a number of forged passports, hundreds of documents relating to forging identities, weapons, and a gas canister. Since then ricin has been mailed to U.S. Senators and has been found in several locations in the U.S.

Sarin gas has also been employed recently by terrorists. Sarin, developed in Germany in 1938, is a an odorless, colorless gas and one of the nerve agents suspected to have been used during the Iran-Iraq War in 1980. In 1995, Japanese terrorists released Sarin on the Tokyo subway, killing 12, and injuring about 6,000. It is so potent that even a small drop on the skin causes muscle twitching. In addition to Sarin, mustard gas, tabun, chlorine, and compounds containing arsenic were used by Iraq on Iranians during the 1980 war. It is evident that terrorists already have access to these agents.

Just in the wake of 9/11, several letters containing anthrax were delivered to a New Jersey Post Office. On October 5, 2001, photojournalist Robert Stevens died of pulmonary anthrax and co-worker Ernesto Blanco suffered from symptoms of what at first was thought to be the flu, but later determined to be pulmonary anthrax. By the middle of November five people had died from inhaling anthrax and 17 more were injured from inhaling or coming in contact with the agent. The strains involved in the illnesses had the same genetic markers as U.S. military strains and the aerosolized strain of anthrax used in the attacks was originally produced at the US Army's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, the location of the government's only aerosolized anthrax production facility in the country, and sent to Fort Detrick, Maryland in 2001. In late July 2008, an Army scientist committed suicide before federal prosecutors could charge him and four others with mailing the letters. Could terrorists actually infiltrate our own military? On November 5, 2009, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, an American-born Muslim of Palestinian descent, shot and killed 13 people at Fort Hood Army Base in Texas and wounded 32 others. It is reported that he shouted “Allah Akbar” (God is great) before opening fire.

According to Wikipedia, FBI terrorism task forces have officially declared Hasan had no links to known terrorist groups and that Hasan’s emails to Anwar al-Awlaki, (a US citizen in Yemen, also known as the “Bin Laden of the Internet”), were consistent with “medical research”. To view just another twist, and for all of you conspiracy advocats, GlobalResearch.Ca has suggested that the FBI had been slow to identify the perpetrators of the Anthrax attacks because that perpetrator may be the U.S. Government itself. GlobalResearch.Ca

Anthrax is only one of several biological agents being explored by terrorists. Others include botulinal toxin, smallpox, and bubonic plague. In January 2009 , the Black Plague killed at least 40 al-Qaeda operatives in their African training camp, indicating the organization was diligently working to develop the bacteria (or its airborne form pneumonic plague) as a weapon of mass destruction. Bubonic Plague is spread by bites from infected rat fleas. According Jeffrey A. Lockwood, author of Six-Legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War, insects may also become a weapon used by terrorists. During World War II, the Japanese killed more than 400,000 Chinese by dropping plague-infested fleas and cholera-coated flies, the French and Germans pursued the mass production and dispersal of beetles to destroy enemy food supplies, and during the Cold War the U.S. military planned to produce 100,000,000 yellow fever-infected mosquitoes a month to use for dispersal over the Soviet Union. Lockwood posits that terrorists with $100 worth of supplies, simple instructions, and plane tickets could introduce Rift Valley fever (a mosquito-borne virus found in Africa that affects livestock and humans) to the U.S. or another target countries with little or no chance of being caught.

In January, 2009, a report by the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, testifying before the U.S. Congress, highlight
the danger in which we find ourselves: “The commission believes that unless the world community acts decisively and with greater urgency, it is more likely than not a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013.” Pakistan has nuclear weaponry. Iran may be obtaining it now. Former Soviet nuclear weapons and Soviet know-how are for sale on the black market. The threat that a terrorist could get his hands on a nuclear weapon is real. A dirty bomb, radiological dispersal device (RDD), a conventional explosive wrapped in radiological material and designed to disperse radiation, or a radiation-emitting device (RED) could kill thousands. The materials for both the RDD and the RED are easier for terrorists to
acquire than more traditional nuclear weapons .

And let’s not forget the threat of an airborn Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) attack that would wipe out the country’s electronics and send the U.S. into the pre-industrial age.
An EMP burst as a high-intensity burst of electromagnetic energy caused by the rapid acceleration of charged particles. It can be initiated by exploding a nuclear weapon high above the earth, or by a non-nuclear weapon detonated close to a specific target. The charged particles of EMPs send electrical systems into chaos in three ways. It disrupts
electronics, acts as a powerful lightening strike, and flows through electricity transmission lines, damaging distribution centers and fusing power lines. Power grids would shut down, computers and their networks would crash, sewer systems would cease to function, late model automobiles, with their complicated computer systems would no longer run, and telephones and ATMs would shut down. There would be collapse of medical systems, breakdown of police and fire protection, loss of bank records. Distribution of food supplies, water systems, heat and communications, would become non-existent. All the normal day-to-day functions that we take for granted would cease. Dr. William R. Graham of the Claremont Institute, states that an EMP attack would spark, “unprecedented cascading failures of major infrastructures. The degradation of infrastructure could have irreversible effects on the country’s ability to support its population”.

BUT WAIT… EMPs aren’t only caused by nuclear radiation! They’re also caused by Solar Flares. NASA states that we are currently in an increasing cycle of Solar activity and that this cycle will climax in….. December, 2012. Hmmm!

NEXT BLOG: Solar Flares and EMPs.