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http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-israel-nsa-20130912,0,3708841.story

The National Security Agency regularly gives Israel intercepts that may include sensitive data about U.S. citizens, a memo leaked by Edward Snowden says.

“One of NSA’s biggest threats is actually from friendly intelligence services, like Israel,” an unnamed NSA official is quoted as writing in one document. “There are parameters on what NSA shares with them, but the exchange is so robust, we sometimes share more than we intended.”The reason that risks are taken with Israel, the second former official said, is because Israel and the U.S. have many mutual foreign policy interests, and Israel in some cases has greater expertise in Middle Eastern languages and cultures.”Managing the intel-sharing relationship is always kind of a quid pro quo,” the official said. “One country may have access to certain communications that we can’t otherwise get, so there are decisions made at fairly high levels whether or not it’s worth it to share.”

BY KEN DILANIAN
WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency routinely shares raw intelligence data with Israel that probably includes sensitive information about Americans, according to the latest top-secret document leaked by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

The 2009 document, a memorandum of understanding between the NSA and its Israeli counterpart, says the U.S. government regularly hands over intercepted communications that have not first been reviewed by U.S. analysts and therefore may contain phone calls and emails of American citizens.

The agreement allows for the possibility that intercepts given to Israel might include the communications of U.S. government officials, in which case Israel is supposed to destroy them immediately. Other data on U.S. citizens who aren’t in the government, however, can be kept by Israel for up to a year, according to the document, first published Wednesday by Britain’s Guardian newspaper.

NSA officials declined to answer questions but issued a statement saying, “Whenever we share intelligence information, we comply with all applicable rules, including the rules to protect U.S. person information.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323595004579069291111631648.html?mod=opinion_newsreel smaller Larger After writing in the London Telegraph that Monday was “the worst day for U.S. and wider Western diplomacy since records began,” former British ambassador Charles Crawford asked simply: “How has this happened?” On the answer, opinions might differ. Or maybe not. A consensus assessment of the past week’s events could easily form […]

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3972/tired-of-war What better time is there to develop an even more voracious appetite than the very moment when the only people likely to stand up to you are too busily engaged in self-pity to notice your whirring centrifuges? What does it mean for a nation to be “tired of war”? Those were the words that […]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323623304579061743892108318.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion National September 11 Memorial Foundation officials last week introduced a cavernous, $700 million underground museum to the media. Opening in the spring, the museum at the former World Trade Center site will exhibit many irreplaceable, authentic artifacts from that terrible day. One of the pieces on display will be the New York Fire Department’s […]

Obama Foreign Policy In Tatters, U.N. Hopeless On 9/11 Anniversary This article by Anne Bayefsky originally appeared on FOX News. Born and bred in Canada, I settled in New York City on September 9, 2001. I came via Durban, South Africa, after enduring the U.N.’s virulently racist “anti-racism” world conference. On September 11, watching the […]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/09/10/emir-abdelkader-jihad-islam-column/2795857/ What does a historical commemoration in Lyon, France, have in common with an essay contest inElkader, Iowa? Answer: Emir Abd el-Kader. Name doesn’t ring a bell? Perhaps that’s because he has been dead for 130 years. Nevertheless, the emir’s story shouldn’t be forgotten, especially on 9/11. His legacy of heroic — and honorable — resistance to […]

http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2013/09/11/12-years-after-9112001-and-21564-jihad-terror-attacks-later-u-s-policymaking-elites-are-still-in-jihad-denial/

My Preface to the paperbound 2008 edition of The Legacy of Jihad, written in late 2007, included this observation:

During mid-November, 2007, a grim milestone was recorded in the macabre tally being kept assiduously in cyberspace by [The Religion of Peace (TROP) website]: the 10,000th attack by jihad terrorists resulting in some 60,000 dead and 90,000 injured since the cataclysmic acts of jihad terrorism on September 11, 2001.

[TROP] does not include combat-related statistics, and he acknowledges that the death toll may increase in the days and months following any given attack (as victims die from their injuries), and this rarely gets reported. His tally also excludes the genocide in Darfur committed by the Islamic government in Sudan, and their marauding jihadist militias (the Janjaweed), whose murderous ravages the UN estimated last year had resulted in some 400,000 dead, and 2 million displaced.

[TROP]identified three episodes of such continuous, mind numbing jihadist carnage which had perhaps unsettled him most: Nadimarg, India (3/23/03), dozens of Hindu villagers roused out of their beds and machine-gunned by Lashkar-e-Toiba; Beslan, Russia (9/3/04), some 350 people slaughtered by jihadists—half of them children; Malatya, Turkey (4/18/07), three Christian Bible distributors bound, tortured for hours, then gruesomely murdered by men who acted explicitly in the name of Islam.

Just under six years later, the rate of carnage having escalated, that gruesome tally as of September 10, 2013, was 21,564 attacks. During the recently completed week of August 31 through September 6, 2013, alone, there were 49 jihad terror attacks, including 6 “jihad martyrdom” homicide bombings, resulting in 309 deaths, and 610 critical injuries. Those figures for the entire month of August, 2013, were 260 jihad terror attacks occurring in 25 countries (directed against votaries of 4 non-Muslim “infidel” religions, and also including sectarian Islamic violence between Muslims), causing 161 deaths, and 3412 critical injuries.

http://yoelmeltzer.com/. One of the many lessons that can be learned from the 2005 Gaza Disengagement is that the unthinkable can certainly happen.  Thus, if thousands of Jews can forcibly be removed from their homes in Gaza, a move that multiplied the amount of Israeli citizens living under the threat of rocket attack from tens of […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/how-far-we-have-traveled?f=puball It would be instructive to highlight the political distance the U.S. has traveled since Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence 237 years ago in order to underscore the stark reality of the state of the United States and the condition of its citizens. In astronomical terms, the distance may be measured as that […]

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/09/10/day-two-highlights-from-the-world-summit-on-counter-terrorism/

Some interesting and provocative discussions during Day 2 of the World Summit on Counter Terrorism in Herzliya, Israel (my Day 1 overview is here). Some of the highlights from the second day of proceedings:

A report released at the conference announced an estimate that the Assad regime in Syria has 1,000 tons of chemical weapons.

Syracuse professor William Banks offered his assessment, in line with one offered the previous day, that while the Syrian regime may have violated international law with the use of chemical weapons (even though they are not a signatory to the chemical weapons convention), the remedies do not include the use of force, much as President Obama is proposing.

Qanta Ahmed warned against the virulence of Islamist ideology, claiming it was more dangerous than nuclear weapons, and stressed the importance of moderate Muslims unmasking the “wolves in sheeps’ clothing,” i.e., so-called “moderate” Islamists.

Undoubtedly the most lively discussion of the day involved Canadian columnist and author Tarek Fatah. During his speech, which you can see in the clip below, he notes that missing from much of the debate over the use of chemical weapons by Syria, and even Iran’s budding nuclear program, is that Pakistan already possesses 100+ nuclear weapons.

Fatah also added that two of the top Islamic partners in the “war on terror,” Turkey and Pakistan, are among the biggest purveyors of the jihadist ideology we are confronting globally (Saudi Arabia could also be added to that list).

Brian Jenkins of RAND Corp noted the diminishing effectiveness of strikes aimed at decapitating terrorist organizations. According to his research, a terrorist group that suffers decapitation in the first year of its existence is 8.5 times more likely to disintegrate than if the leadership continues; after 10 years existence, that rate is cut in half; by 20 years (al-Qaeda would fall in this category) the effect of a leadership decapitation strike is negligible.