RUTHFULLY YOURS

While Merrick Garland’s hyper-politicized Justice Department keeps hunting for terrorists at school board meetings, real terrorism continues: San Antonio’s KSAT reported Saturday that “a Gonzales County man was sentenced to 18 years in federal prison for conspiring to provide material support to the foreign terrorist organization Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham/Syria, also known as ISIS.” The convict’s name is Jaylyn Christopher Molina, or rather, it was Jaylyn Christopher Molina; now’s it’s Abdur Rahim. Molina/Rahim is “accused of conspiring with a South Carolina man to provide services to ISIS by administering a chat group to share pro-ISIS propaganda and instructions on firearms training and bomb-making.” What was that you were saying again about “white supremacists” being the biggest terror threat the nation faces today?

Molina was very clear about his allegiances, writing in an online chat: “Let it be clear, I am against America. America is my enemy.” He and another American, Kristopher Sean Matthews, or rather, Ali Jibreel of Elgin, South Carolina, to commit “Netflix worthy” terror attacks at Trump Tower and the New York Stock Exchange, which they thought would gain them “rock star status.”

Molina wrote: “We need to stick together, we need to defeat them, we need to take a lot of casualties, a lot of numbers.” Matthews stated: “I would hit places like that to send a message.” According to the legal complaint against the pair, Molina “also described attacking communications centers and plans to ‘fortify a town barrier and establish the first bases or establish a HQ.’” Both Molina and Matthews pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS), discussed traveling to Syria to join up with the jihad group, and even tried to make contact with an ISIS operative who would help them get there. Molina pursued his jihad online, posting instructions on how to train to handle an AK-47 along with directions on how to build a bomb.

This raises a question that has come up many times before, but has never been answered: why do so many converts to Islam come to hate their own country? Nor are Matthews and Molina by any means the first Americans converted to Islam to try to join ISIS. Spc. Hasan Edmonds, a Muslim member of the U.S. Army National Guard, was arrested in 2015 at Chicago’s Midway Airport; he had been planning to join the Islamic State. His cousin, Jonas “Yunus” Edmonds, was arrested as well. They had allegedly been plotting a jihad attack against a U.S. military facility — making Hasan Edmonds the latest in a long line of people who convert to Islam and then turn traitor.

Is it just a coincidence that so many converts to Islam come to regard the country in which they were born and raised, the land of their families and forefathers, as an enemy? Or is there some connection?

Hasan Edmonds clearly believed that his new religion required a shift of his allegiance. “I am already in the American kafir [infidel] army,” he told an informant in January, “and now I wish only to serve in the army of Allah alongside my true brothers.”

Other American converts to Islam who have turned traitor include Sgt. Hasan Akbar, an American engineer from the 101st Airborne Division, who murdered Capt. Christopher Scott Seifert and Maj. Gregory Stone, wounding fifteen others in a grenade and small-arms attack in northern Kuwait on March 22, 2003. As he committed his murders, he yelled, “You guys are coming into our countries, and you’re going to rape our women and kill our children.”

Yet Akbar was not Iraqi or Kuwaiti. He was an American from Los Angeles. But when he became a Muslim, any allegiance he may have had to America was gone. Likewise in the cases of al-Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn and the Marin County Mujahid, John Walker Lindh, both of whom converted to Islam and ended up waging war against the country of their birth on behalf of its enemies.

All the major Muslim organizations in the United States condemn ISIS. So why, when Jaylyn Molina and Kristopher Matthews converted to Islam, did they fall prey to its supposedly twisted and hijacked understanding of Islam? Why wasn’t the peaceful, tolerant, true Islam that everyone assumes converts to Islam are taught in American mosques able to withstand a challenge from the supposedly un-Islamic vision of ISIS? Why aren’t the mosques they attended being investigated? Why am I the only person in the country asking these questions?

There is another question as well: what if Molina and Matthews had succeeded in carrying out a large-scale jihad massacre at Trump Tower? How many Leftists would stand up and cheer because the killing took place at a site that had Trump’s name on it? Can anyone really doubt that this would have brought out the Left’s enthusiastic bloodlust?

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 23 books including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad and The History of Jihad. His latest book is The Critical Qur’an. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/does-iran-have-hit-team-us-kenneth-r-timmerman/

Iran’s Quds Force, which the Biden White House has reportedly discussed removing from the terrorism list, has more than a hundred active agents operating inside the United States, according to former U.S. and Iranian intelligence officials.

Their current goal is to penetrate the security perimeter surrounding former President Donald J. Trump and to kill him.

The Iranian plot is not a secret: Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamene’I, boasted in January that Iranian agents inside the United States were tracking the former president’s movements, and could penetrate the security systems protecting him.

That boast appeared in the form of a chilling video, posted to the Khamenei’s website and to Twitter by regime sympathizers and intelligence analysts, showing Quds Force operatives targeting the president on the tee of his West Palm Beach golf club. It ended with a photograph of Qassem Soleymani, the Quds Force commander killed by a U.S. drone strike outside the Baghdad airport on Jan. 2, 2020, and a black screen: “Revenge is Definite.”

They have also threatened to kill former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and CIA Director Gina Haspel in retaliation for their role in the drone strike that killed Suleymani and 17 others on Route Irish at the Baghdad airport. “Ironically, that’s the same road where Suleymani had killed dozens of Americans,” said John Maguire, a former CIA deputy station chief who worked in Iraq after the 2003 invasion.

U.S. intelligence agencies, including the FBI, have known for over a decade about Iranian programs to recruit and train Quds Force operatives – preferably non-Iranians – capable of penetrating Western countries.

“The Quds Force started creating this capability in Baghdad in 2004,” Maguire said. “They wanted educated candidates; ideally, candidates with foreign travel documents and experience traveling in the West. The Quds Force organized, controlled, trained and supported this capability.”

The prospective agents learned how to make improvised explosive devices out of common materials, how to identify concealed fire positions for a sniper attack, and how to conduct surveillance and counter-surveillance, among other operational skills. Many went to Lebanon for a full year’s paramilitary and martial arts training with Hezbollah.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18629/nuclear-sea-launched-cruise-missile

President Biden, overruling his top generals and military advisors in the Pentagon, has defunded development of the Sea-Launched Cruise Missile-Nuclear (SLCM-N). They warn, correctly, that SLCM-N is vitally necessary for nuclear deterrence.

Throughout the Cold War, and today, in order to prevent nuclear war, it is foundational to the concept of deterrence that the U.S. should allow no nuclear adversary to achieve significant advantages in the balance of nuclear power.

Indeed, the U.S. under President Biden is not willing to risk nuclear escalation on behalf of Ukraine, which is why Russian nuclear blackmail is succeeding.

U.S. President Joe Biden, overruling his top generals and military advisors in the Pentagon, has defunded development of the Sea-Launched Cruise Missile-Nuclear (SLCM-N). They warn, correctly, that SLCM-N is vitally necessary for nuclear deterrence.

Throughout the Cold War, and today, in order to prevent nuclear war, it is foundational to the concept of deterrence that the U.S. should allow no nuclear adversary to achieve significant advantages in the balance of nuclear power.

SLCM-N, if developed and deployed, would be a long-range (2,500 km) cruise missile, stealthy because it can fly under radar, highly accurate, armed with a warhead of variable yield (5-150 kilotons), and launchable from U.S. Navy tactical platforms, submarines and surface ships, including nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs), guided missile cruisers, and destroyers.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/biden-administration-exacerbates-threats-national-michael-cutler/

Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan has created unprecedented threats to U.S. national security as I noted in an earlier article, Biden’s Catastrophic Policies: Immigration and Afghanistan and those threats are about to be exacerbated by a policy change of the Biden administration.

On June 14, 2022 The Los Angeles Times reported, Some Afghan refugees now have chance to avoid terrorism designation that blocked path to U.S.

Here is how this disconcerting news report begins:

Doctors, teachers, engineers and other Afghans who were forced to associate with the Taliban will now have a chance at asylum or visas after the Biden administration loosened a terrorism-related designation on Tuesday, according to government officials and documents reviewed by the Los Angeles Times.

The exemption will be applied on a case by case basis after security vetting and is expected to help Afghans who fled their country after U.S. troops withdrew and the Taliban took over last August, as well as some Afghans who entered the U.S. earlier, said officials from the Department of Homeland Security.

The administration assurances that each case will be adjudicated on a case by case basis that will involve security vetting does absolutely nothing to assuage my serious concerns.

The fact that among the refugees are doctors, teachers and engineers does nothing to prove that these individual do not pose a threat to US security.  I would remind you that Osama bin Laden had a degree in civil engineering (which, in fact, made him all the more dangerous) and George Habash the founder of the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) an exceedingly violent terrorist organization, was a pediatrician.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/iran-plotted-cyberattack-on-boston-childrens-hospital-during-nuclear-talks/?utm_source=

FBI director Christopher Wray revealed that Iran plotted a cyberattack against the Boston Children’s Hospital last summer, as the Biden administration negotiated a return to the nuclear agreement with Tehran.

Wray, speaking to a Boston College cybersecurity conference today, called the attempted attack “one of the most despicable cyberattacks I’ve seen.”

He said the FBI worked to thwart the plot after receiving a tip from an intelligence partner, and that the agency notified the hospital.

“And quick actions by everyone involved, especially at the hospital, protected both the network and the sick kids who depend on it,” he said.

Wray didn’t specify whether the attack, which was planned by “hackers sponsored by the Iranian government,” would have been a ransomware attack. He did, however, elaborate on the threat posed by such schemes.

“Unfortunately, hospitals these days — and many other providers of critical infrastructure — have even more to worry about than Iranian government hackers.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18552/threatening-national-security

Once again, the power brokers in DC are signaling that in American politics, there is no room for debate on big issues, there is only one right answer.

Too often our legislative leaders forget that they are spending taxpayer money, and that with government spending even for benefits, there is no such thing as “free” anything. When there is no accountability, it is easy to spend someone else’s money.

Even though for their own well-being [NATO countries] should spend more for European security, these are legitimate, internal debates for their governments to have. It should be the same in America.

[I]n the U.S., it is frowned upon by some even to discuss why we are investing in European security and stability.

We all would do well to remember the costly lesson from the 1930s: how quickly Hitler’s invasion of the Sudetenland spread to most of Europe.

During my days in Congress, as many of us wanted to invest in defense spending, we were faced with an ultimatum from the Democrats. For every $1 increase in defense spending, there had to be a matching $1 increase in social spending. No discussion about the need for that spending, just this as an expected process.

[Y]ou would think they could find some programs to cut to fund Ukrainian aid. Not in Washington. They only increase spending, not make tough decisions about shifting priorities as the world changes. This is unfortunate — and ultimately devastating to the national security funding we must have if we are successfully to deter the potential threats to the US and the Free World by China.

Yet it seems as if the power brokers in Washington would prefer to start name-calling their opponents and avoid having to defend their positions. This does not make our country stronger…. We still have time — but not much — to engage in a serious debate on this issue. If we do not, we shall miss a real opportunity to prioritize what is crucial for the survival of our republic and what is not.

Within hours of 11 Republican Senators voting to delay proceeding with the roughly $40 billion Ukraine aid package, and days after 57 Republicans voted against the package in the House, the name calling has begun. “Isolationists!” Others characterized those who opposed the measure as “politicizing” the issue. Once again, the power brokers in DC are signaling that in American politics there is no room for debate on big issues, there is only one right answer.