RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Taliban announced the commencement of their spring offensive with a vow that their main focus this year would be on targeting “foreign forces” in Afghanistan.

Their strategic goals come as Russia has been arming the Taliban over the winter, according to Defense Department officials and Afghan officials. “We continue to get reports of this assistance, and, of course, we had the overt legitimacy lent to the Taliban by the Russians,” Gen. John Nicholson, commander of the Resolute Support mission, told reporters in Kabul this week. “That really occurred starting late last year, beginning through this process they’ve been undertaking.”

In February testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Nicholson told lawmakers that Russian support for the Taliban was increasing.

The general added that he believes Russia is “concerned that if there’s a coalition and a U.S. presence in Afghanistan that this affects their ability to influence the Central Asian states to the north.”

Pressed on what Russia’s endgame in Afghanistan could be, Nicholson said he thinks the Kremlin’s goal is to “undermine United States and NATO.” Russia ally Iran also believes that successful democracy in Afghanistan “will be a threat to them,” he added.

In addition to the reports of material support, Afghan officials have reported seeing Russian trainers on the ground with Taliban in Uruzgan province.

The Taliban have denied receiving assistance from Russia, but added in an April 14 statement, “However it should be clear that the Islamic Emirate – as a representative of its people and a guarantor of its national interests – seeks to develop cordial relations with all its neighbors and regional powers.”

The Taliban spring offensive is named Operation Mansouri, after late Taliban leader Mullah Mansour, who was killed in a May drone strike.

“Although over the course of the 15-year Jihad the foreign occupiers have suffered heavy casualties and a large number of the coalition have withdrawn from our lands yet under American leadership some unjust countries insist on the continued occupation of Afghanistan,” said the Taliban Leadership Council in a statement. “…The Islamic Emirate therefore has determined that with the advantageous weather we once again launch our yearly spring offensive against the foreign forces and their internal allies named Operation Mansouri.”

They added that during Mansour’s tenure “the mujahideen gained various decisive victories, annihilated highway robbers and impious people, foiled various seditions and intrigues, leaped forward in the political and social arenas, humiliated various foreign powers compelling them to leave our land, and achieve copious other proud milestones.”

“With the help of Allah Almighty and the infinite sacrifices of our Mujahid nation the foreign forces have suffered a historic defeat having been forced to admit that the Mujahideen control more than half of Afghanistan,” they said. “Hence, keeping the evolving situation in mind, this year’s Mansouri Operations will differ from previous ones in nature and will be conducted with a twin-tracked political and military approach.”

The Pentagon has agreed to formally review an anti-terror training program taught to special forces by a private contractor for material deemed offensive to Islam and Muslims, even though the Muslim group that lodged a complaint against the allegedly “Islamophobic” program has been accused by the Justice Department of supporting terrorism and is currently banned from outreach activities by the FBI.

The instructor hired to teach the program says he fears his class might not get a fair hearing, because military brass have assigned the review to a Muslim military chaplain who graduated from a radical Saudi-funded Islamic school raided by federal agents after 9/11 on suspicion of terrorist activities. He is their second choice for conducting the review. They had originally picked a more radical military chaplain to inspect the training materials before learning he has ties to an imam with a history of ministering to Muslims later convicted of terrorism.

Brass decided to launch the review after receiving a letter from the Council on American-Islamic Relations last month demanding the commander of US Air Force Special Operations sever ties with longtime counterterrorism instructor Patrick Dunleavy, claiming his lessons “contain anti-Islamic content.” CAIR, a suspected terrorist front organization, did not cite any examples of content from his “Dynamics of International Terrorism” course to support its claim.

Dunleavy formerly served as deputy inspector general of New York State prisons’ criminal intelligence division and also worked with the NYPD’s intelligence division for several years. His five-day course, which he’s taught complaint-free at the AIr Force for several years, covers homegrown terrorism and prison radicalization, which tie directly into recent ISIS cases.CAIR claims to be a “Muslim civil-rights organization,” but the feds have ID’d

CAIR and its founder as “members of the US Muslim Brotherhood,” while designating them both as “unindicted co-conspirators” in a 2008 terror-financing case involving Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and a US-designated terrorist group.

“From its founding by Muslim Brotherhood leaders, CAIR conspired with other affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists,” US prosecutors charged in one court filing.

As a result, the FBI has cut off ties to CAIR until investigators “can resolve whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and Hamas.”

Air Force Special Operations commander Lt. Gen. Marshal Webb received the CAIR letter and, in turn, ordered Special Operations School commandant Lt. Col. Christopher Portele to initiate a review. It is not clear if Webb is aware of CAIR’s well-documented support of terrorists. A spokeswoman did not return calls seeking comment.

A recent incident on a train in Oakland, California offers a glimpse into how domestic terrorism may soon affect all of us, close up and personally. In that incident, a group of teenagers swarmed onto a train, robbed several passengers, beat two of them, then quickly escaped before police arrived. See here and here.

Flash mobs are nothing new, and in fact, many of them are actually good, as when a number of people in a shopping mall suddenly spring a pleasant surprise and perform a rehearsed, choreographed music routine.

Some flash mobs, by contrast, are criminal. Groups of criminals, in concert, have been known to swarm a retail store, quickly stealing as much as they can carry, and then making their escape before law enforcement can respond.

Criminals are inventive and resourceful, and now that the Oakland incident has made the news, there will be plenty more crews of robbers who are already taking notes and planning their own heist, perhaps on a larger scale.

It is only a matter of time before someone (actually, many) figures out that there is money to be made by inciting civil disorder. It would not take much “community organizing” to pull it off. The police cannot be everywhere, nor can they respond quickly enough to this kind of crime.

The next thought is to ask, when the risk escalates, is, what will we, the ordinary citizens, do when we fear to take a train or bus, or to go shopping? One possible remedy comes to mind, as follows.

The name Bernhard Goetz has largely been forgotten, but in 1984, nearly every American was familiar with what came to be known as the subway vigilante incident. During that era, before Rudolph Giuliani became mayor, crime on the New York subway system was infamous, and worse yet, the response by law enforcement was tepid and ineffective. It was in this context that Goetz took matters into his own hands. He pulled a gun and shot three teenagers, on a train, who already had criminal records, and who were intimidating him for money. One of the robbers was paralyzed for life.

Only when Giuliani became mayor (ten years later), and imposed what some considered draconian law enforcement measures, did the crime rate (including murder) in New York City dramatically decrease. Giuliani proved that by enforcing laws against even so-called “minor” infractions, the ripple effect is to increase respect for the law in general, thereby reducing more serious crime. Giuliani was well aware of the “broken windows” principle, and he used it to good effect.

“For a brief moment after the attacks of 9/11,” Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said Tuesday, “our nation shook off its complacency, and realized our American values had a mortal enemy called radical Islam.” This threat, Kelly said, “has metastasized and decentralized, and the risk is as threatening today as it was that September morning almost 16 years ago.”

Part of the problem, Gen. Kelly said, is that many “holy warriors” will depart their home countries, and because of the Visa Waiver Program, “they can more easily travel to the United States which makes us a prime target for their exported violence.”

To address this problem, President Donald Trump issued an executive order temporarily restricting travel from seven predominantly Muslim nations with terrorist issues, only to have the order blocked by federal judge James Robart. Last month, President Trump issued “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States.” Federal judge Derrick Watson blocked the order, ruling that a reasonable person would conclude that the measure was “issued with a purpose to disfavor a particular religion,” not to prevent terrorists from entering the United States.

Neither judge made any reference to the way terrorists had gained entry to the United States in the past, particularly before September 11, 2001. As it happens, the United States government has already addressed that subject at considerable length.

“It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the

United States if they are unable to enter the country.”

That is from the introduction to 9/11 and Terrorist Travel: Staff Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States, which the 9/11 Commission failed to include in their larger report in July of 2004. It emerged on August 21, 2004, the same day the 9/11 Commission disbanded. The 19 radical Islamic terrorists responsible for 9/11 were able to enter the United States, and the report explains how they did so.

Those involved in that attack successfully entered the United States 33 times over 21 months through nine airports. A ballpark figure for the number who should have got in is zero. As the report notes, all 19 of the 9/11 terrorist visa applications were incomplete in some way, with data fields left blank and questions not fully answered.

WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly warned today that Islamic terrorism “is threatening us today in a way that is worse than we experienced 16 years ago on 9/11” because of how terrorists’ operations have “metastasized and decentralized.”

Speaking at George Washington University, Kelly emphasized “we are under attack every single day” and “the threats against us are relentless.”

“We are under attack from criminals who think their greed justifies raping young girls at knifepoint, dealing poison to our youth, or just killing some of us for fun,” he said. “We are under attack from people who hate us, hate our freedoms, hate our laws, hate our values, hate the way we simply live our lives. We are under attack from failed states, cyber-terrorists, vicious smugglers, and sadistic radicals.”

In the years since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the DHS chief said, “we’ve grown somewhat accustomed” to the terror threat and “now question all the security, all of the issues that we have put in place to secure the nation, because it’s a little bit of an inconvenience at an airport, or a little bit of an inconvenience as you pass onto an airplane.”

“The threat to our nation, our American way of life, has not diminished… As I speak these words, the FBI has opened terrorism investigations in all of our 50 states. And since 2013, there have been 37 ISIS-linked plots to attack our country.”

Kelly noted estimates that as many as 10,000 Europeans fought with ISIS in Iraq and Syria, in addition to thousands more foreign fighters representing the rest of the globe including the Western Hemisphere, and “they have learned how to make IEDs, employ drones to drop ordnance, and acquired experience on the battlefield that, by our reports, they are beginning to increasingly bring home.”

“Many of these holy warriors will survive, come back to their home countries, where they will wreak murderous havoc in Europe, Asia, the Maghreb, the Caribbean and the United States,” he added.

Because many ISIS foreign fighters hail from countries that have a visa waiver agreement with the United States, “they can more easily travel to the United States, which makes us and continues to make us the prime terrorist target.”

But, he said, “few of the challenges we face from a terrorism point of view are even close to as difficult” as homegrown terrorism, which has seen an “unprecedented spike.”

“In the past 12 months alone, there have been 36 homegrown terrorist cases opened in 18 states. These are the cases we know about,” Kelly said. “Homegrown terrorism is notoriously difficult to predict, detect, and certainly almost impossible to control… if you are a terrorist with an innocent internet connection like the one on your ever-present cell phone, you can recruit new soldiers, plan your attacks and upload a video calling for jihad with just a few clicks.” CONTINUE AT SITE

American armed forces consistently perform so well that their effectiveness is taken for granted. Complaints about military spending cuts during the Obama years are such a cliche that they have been yawned at by our political leaders and completely ignored by the media.

But those years have taken us from cliche to crisis. Three factors have combined to create an emergency in airpower. First is the wear and tear imposed by nearly 16 years of combat. Second are with the massive, reckless cuts in defense spending imposed by President Obama which, under the Budget Control Act of 2011, are scheduled to continue for at least four years. Third is the near-criminal neglect of our forces by Mr. Obama’s generals and admirals. As a result, so many of our combat aircraft are incapable of flying combat missions that the president is deprived of options that may be critical to any war, large or small.

Air power — the ability to clear the skies of enemy aircraft and destroy the enemy’s ground forces — has been a critical element of warfare for nearly a century. Offensively and defensively, air power is the sine qua non of military action.

Constant pilot training and American technological advantages have meant that every generation of American fighter pilots since World War II has inherited air supremacy — domination of the skies — as a birthright. That is no longer the case.

In February, the Navy confirmed that 74 percent of the Marines’ F/A-18s — 208 of 280 aircraft — are incapable of flying combat missions.

Two Illinois men were arrested Wednesday on a federal complaint charging them with conspiring and attempting to provide material support to an associate joining ISIS on the battlefield in Syria. According to the complaint, the men had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, advocated for terrorism on social media, and even shared photos of themselves in terrorist get-ups holding the Islamic State flag at the Illinois Beach State Park in suburban Zion.

Joseph D. Jones and Edward Schimenti, both 35 and from Zion, were charged with “conspiring and attempting to provide material support and resources to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).” Jones is also known as “Yusuf Abdulhaqq” and Schimenti goes by the name of “Abdul Wali.”

According to the charges, the investigation began in September 2015, “when an undercover agent posing as a motorist arrested in a traffic-related incident approached Jones at the Zion Police Department, where Jones was being interviewed about the recent slaying of a friend.”

That agent introduced Jones and Schimenti to other undercover agents posing as ISIS supporters, including an informant whom they believed was planning to travel to the Middle East to join the Islamic State. Jones and Schimenti worked out with the purported jihadist at a Zion gym to help get him into combat shape. They also bought cell phones at a local store, thinking that they would be used as bomb detonators, according to the complaint. CONTINUE AT SITE

WASHINGTON — In his first public remarks since taking the helm of the Central Intelligence Agency, Director Mike Pompeo assured the American public that the CIA is not spying on them and tore into WikiLeaks as a morally bankrupt “non-state hostile intelligence service” that sides with global tyrants.

Speaking today at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Pompeo also implied that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange would have sided with the Nazis during World War II.

Pompeo said he’s “surrounded by talented and committed patriots” in his new job at the agency, who “quietly go about their work and try not to get too worked up over the headlines, including the fanciful notion that they spy on their fellow citizens via microwave ovens” — a jab at White House senior counselor Kellyanne Conway’s interpretation of WikiLeaks’ March data dump about CIA methods.

“But they are not at liberty to stand up to these false narratives and explain our mission to the American people,” he said of his workforce, adding “it is time to call these voices out — the men and women of CIA deserve a real defense.”

“…We are a foreign intelligence agency. We focus on collecting information about foreign governments, foreign terrorist organizations, and the like — not Americans. A number of specific rules keep us centered on that mission and protect the privacy of our fellow Americans. To take just one important example, CIA is legally prohibited from spying on people through electronic surveillance in the United States. We’re not tapping anyone’s phone in Wichita.”

Pompeo, a former Kansas congressman, added that “regardless of what you see on the silver screen, we do not pursue covert action on a whim without approval or accountability… there is oversight and accountability every step of the way.”

President Trump praised WikiLeaks repeatedly on the campaign trail as stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta were published. Pompeo noted today that “we at CIA find the celebration of entities like WikiLeaks to be both perplexing and deeply troubling.”

“Because while we do our best to quietly collect information on those who pose very real threats to our country, individuals such as Julian Assange and Edward Snowden seek to use that information to make a name for themselves. As long as they make a splash, they care nothing about the lives they put at risk or the damage they cause to national security,” he said. CONTINUE AT SITE