MORE HOMELAND INSECURITY FILES
Something’s up (and it’s not just my teething baby and me). The Washington Post reports today on renewed efforts by the FBI to gather intelligence from Arab/Muslims via targeted voluntary interviews:
FBI agents have launched a series of interviews of Muslims and Arab Americans in the Washington area and across the country, hoping to glean information that could prevent a major terrorist attack during this election year. A few dozen voluntary interviews of community leaders, students, businesspeople and others have been conducted so far, according to attorneys and Muslim activists. Authorities said they do not know how many people will be contacted, but the effort is expected to expand significantly in the next week or so.
Some details on what FBI is asking about:
Several people in California and Arizona have been asked whether they knew anyone who had recently been in the Pakistani border region of Waziristan, regarded as a possible refuge for al Qaeda figures. They were also asked about Abu Nour, which agents identified as a mosque and school in Syria that was popular with American converts to Islam, the attorneys and activists said.
“We were told by the FBI agents that they’re concerned there could be a coming threat from people who are recent converts to Islam,” said Stacy Tolchin, a San Francisco lawyer who accompanied a Turkish Kurdish immigrant to an interview this week.
The civil liberties Chicken Littles are naturally up in arms:
“It creates fear in the community and accomplishes absolutely nothing,” said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute.
The interviews are voluntary. They could yield information that potentially saves thousands or more. Zogby and company would have the Justice Department do absolutely nothing in order to avoid creating “fear in the community.”
Forget what’s in the McDonald’s bag. P. C. hypersensitivity is a potent enough weapon of self-destruction.
Update: The Los Angeles Times reported on these interviews two weeks ago in an article entitled, “FBI Delays Interviews in Fighting Terror Plot; After accusations of profiling, an official says the agency is being careful whom it talks to.” In the article, the Times quoted an unnamed FBI official saying initiation of the interviews had been delayed because the FBI was “being sensitive to” the concerns of Muslim groups who object to profiling. (Hat tip: Sissy Willis)
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Come on Michelle, you know perfectly well the FBI is only allowed to interview Jewish senior citizens, Japanese minors and Afghans (the dog breed, not the nationality) about their ties to terrorism.
Anything else would be effective – oh! whoops, I mean racist. Yeah, racist.
It seems like something or someone is spurring on our government to be more proactive. I like it.
“…an official says the agency is being careful whom it talks to.”
Well isn’t that special.
I wish the FBI would spend more time thinking about saving the lives of Americans regardless of how “insensitive” they have to get!
When can we get around to making Norman Mineta unemployed while we are at it?
Given the time and the circumstances, I’d say the FBI’s surge of pro-activity could be explained many ways. Not the least plausible of the explanations is this one: opponents of the Bush Administration are simply slavering for the chance to scream that it’s not doing enough to safeguard the country in this critical time. That’s apart from their “Chicken Little-ism” of the moment, of course; you can expect that from the Left and the Muslim lobby whenever a federal officer does anything more than feed a parking meter. They’d keep doing it even if the FBI were to capture hundreds of Muslim terrorists in the very act of planting bombs.
If we omit his vastly superior character, President Bush’s main campaign trump is his record in the War on Terror. The Kerry/Edwards campaign, which has little other than its tonsorial assets to boast about, would love to be able to point and say, “See? We told you he wasn’t doing the job right! Bush Snoozed / America Losed!” Or something along those lines.
Apart from that, when you have 1.3 billion potential enemies out there, some appreciable fraction of whom hate you so much that they’d be willing to die to harm you, a somewhat elevated vigilance is a good thing.
When lives are at stake as they surely are here, sitting on your hands in order to keep someone within their “comfort zone” is completely unacceptable. Leave your PC’ness at the door please.
What was in the McDonalds bag? Almost certainly, food.
Of course it was food, John. I always take my supper into a cramped, somewhat smelly john to enjoy. You just can’t buy ambiance like that.
Islam is a rapidly growing religion in prison, a very worrisome situation considering that the new adherents already have a criminal history and a higher incidence of anti-social personalities. Richard Reed and Jose Padilla come to mind. Islam’s reach into this population should be scrutinized more.
When and not if, we are attacked again I hope someone has a current list of all the Bush and American haters so we can start rounding them up.
And, with chaos ensuing from another major attack, how do you think the prisons are going to be able to lock down for a very long period of time the vermin that’s there.
With no or little distribution of foods or energy sources we stand a chance of seeing massive breakouts and criminals running rampant across the entire land.
How many again are incarcerated?
I hope you all are well armed.
I dunno, from what I’ve seen the nanny-state Big Mother health gestapo (how’s that for cramming a bunch of metaphors into one clause?) would likely argue that McDonald’s food constitutes a weapon of mass destruction.
It’s like Super-Size Me meets F911. What more could a politically correct unelected bureaucrat hope for? Christmas in July I’m telling you.
To add to what onecent recently stated about Islam, I thought it funny to point out the most popular political party among prisoners, convicts and the like. However, I don’t think we need to name names or point out the obvious. I’ll just say, while outside prison, Hunts, while inside prison, Heinz.
More seriously, those of us who are Bush supporters need to bring the boy back to planet reality: we want immigration control, not lawlessness. We want protection for the families on our border towns and ranches who are harassed, threatened and even murdered, whose property has been torched, vandalized or stolen and are not allowed even to defend themselves. This is a sick, sick problem when we prefer privilege for panhandlers and deny our duties to the inherent rights of our citizens. Bush had better wake up- the policies at the top in Washington are violently hurting mucho Americanos.
The same people who are screaming about the infringement of “civil liberties” will be demanding to know why the government didnt do enough if there is another terrorist attack on US Soil.
I posted on this on my blog.
I completely disagree with the statement the post reporter made saying American Muslim leaders have been trying to build bridges after 9-11.
The reporter was completely on a PC trip. Since when did building bridges mean inflaming anti-American Muslim sentiment, funneling money and gearing up support for Hamas, pursuing hidden agendas and calling for and out and out jihad against Americans? Because many of these leaders have been doing just that.
I think that, for the most part, these interviews do not accomplish much. The FBI is still relatively defunct, even after September 11 and the agency revisions. I suggest the book, Terrorist Hunter by a Jewish-Iraqi woman who lives now in the United States and went undercover and infiltrated the Muslim-American communities and exposed what many of them were really doing at their “conferences.”
She writes:
Of course, I was thinking, how could those FBI agents find anything in al-Deek’s neighborhood with the methods they used? Knock-knock. “Do you know Usama bin Laden?” Instead of learning the material as my colleagues and I did, the FBI agents conducted the investigation of al-Deek’s address in that tres bizarre manner.
Just read Annie Jacobsen’s recent article. Riveting, alarming, frustrating, outrageous, and truly important. As I read it, I couldn’t help think back about the old “mouse-bites-cat” story. We have every reason – and right – to believe there are groups working within our own country measuring us for another hit. Of course, they demand rights and personal freedoms they would never consider granting others to help cover their work.
Many thanks to Annie for having the courage to document this frightmare (during this Orwellian time of PC-ism gone insane). Now to the important issue – what can we Mice do about this?
The FBI should not have to go to the Muslim leaders. The Muslim leaders should have been going to the FBI on 9/12.
One of the biggest disappointments in the War on Terrorism is the failure of moderate Muslims in the US to clean out the extremists in their midst. We know that many mosques harbor and are funded by Saudi Wahabbi extremists.
I’ve heard Manzoor Ijaz point this out on Fox News, too.
Unfortunately but not surprisingly, Arab/Muslim-American groups have taken their lead from the ACLU and NAACP. Instead of acting responsibly, they’ve done nothing but whine about “discrimination” and the like.
AIn addition, Athena, I agree with you in your latest post.
Tom the Redhunter
“failure of moderate Muslims in the US to clean out the extremists in their mids”
Still waiting for the nonexistant definition of a “moderate” muslim. I know it’s a complicated issue, but like the borg say, “Resistance is futile”.
Quark 2 has the right idea, be well armed.
Can you imagine a Christian “extremist” beheading someone and no outcry from Cristioans? Are there moderate Cristians, or Buddists, Methodists, or Mormons?
One day it will come down to wearing a burka or not being alive.
I am 72 years old and lived through many many threats on our country but none as bad as this. When we lightened instead of tightened our immigration laws (s/a student visas, green cards, etc. etc.) we lost the ability to know or care who comes into our country. Neither political parties are reporting these uncidents that are happening everyday and I question “why?” Why do we let the ACLU and other so called “rights” organizations maintain this kind of power, protecting enemies, regardless of the consequences to the American people and why do the news broadcasts not tell us more than “elevated alert” notices? What happened to the rights of all the Americans who immigrated here in the past and had to “adopt” American customs rather than bringing their customs here (schools teach in all foreign languages now – this was not allowed 40 or 50 years ago.) Immigrants were expected to become Americans first and leave their native country alliances behind them. If we don’t stop allowing so-called rights to every one coming into our country regardless of their allegiance, we might as well turn America over to the mid-east and be done with it!