Archive » Terrorist attacks

My good friend and fellow Philadelphia Daily News columnist Michael Smerconish has an important and incredible column today about the airline worker in Maine who encountered Mohammed Atta on 9/11:
MICHAEL Tuohey “stared the devil in the eyes and didn’t recognize him.”
Now he kicks himself for not having acted, although if he had, our government probably [...]

It was another sad milestone for 9/11 families today. The medical examiner’s office in New York has announced it will halt efforts to try and identify the remains of the 2,749 people who were killed in New York on Sept. 11, 2001:
Speaking in the Bronx yesterday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the remains would stay at [...]

Reader Joe L. reminds me that today was a significant day in the War on Terror–back when the Islamists had been waging the war, but most of us had failed to see it yet. Writes Joe:
It was on this date, 16 Feb 1989, that investigators announced that the cause of the 1988 crash of Pan [...]

There was a shootout at the Hudson Valley Mall in Kingston, N.Y., this afternoon. At least two and possibly three gunmen reportedly opened fire. Reuters reports that three to ten people were wounded.
The Times Herald-Record of Middletown, N.Y. reports that a U.S. Army recruiter was shot, and may have been targeted.
(Hat tip: Ed Moltzen)
Update: I’m [...]

Ward Churchill was bad enough. Now we have the Democrat mayor of Baltimore likening President Bush to the Sept. 11 terrorists over the issue of budget cuts. From the Washington Post:
Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley yesterday compared President Bush’s proposed budget cuts to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, saying that Bush, like the al Qaeda [...]

You know that VW/terrorist spoof ad that went viral last week?
VW has decided to sue the satirists, whoever they are:
Company spokesman Hartwig von Sass said VW lodged a criminal complaint with prosecutors in Brunswick, Germany, but did not specify a perpetrator. “This is an attack on Volkswagen’s good name,” he said of the ad, [...]

The Library of Congress has put an incredible online exhibit up on its site called the September 11, 2001, Documentary Project. Organized by the American Folklife Center, the project is modeled after a similar oral history compiled after Pearl Harbor called After the Day of Infamy.
Both sites are must-read, bookmark-and-revisit-often.
Among the drawings included in the [...]

The deadly Glendale train derailment is one of today’s top stories.
Randy Townley asks: Are we now seeing the new face of terrorism?
Not in this specific case, but it’s certainly a concern in the wake of Madrid’s 3/11.
Josh Lefkowitz and Lorenzo Vidino had an important article in The National Interest on train terror plots last [...]

Eugueni Kniazev (Dec. 11, 1954-Sept. 11, 2001)
My latest column, which is also a special news feature in today’s New York Post, is dedicated to the memory of the man pictured above. The story exposes how our behemoth, $34 billion Department of Homeland Security sent a green card approval notice on Jan. 15, 2005 to [...]

KGTV San Diego reports on an arrest in the alleged Boston “dirty bomb” plot. The brief article notes:
Mexican police arrested Jose Beltran Quinones in Mexicali, Mexico, Monday. Beltrans claimed that he helped a group of Chinese nationals illegally cross into the United States from Mexico.
According to his tip, they were intent on detonating [...]

FOX News reporting that one of the Chinese suspects in the Boston case has been caught. No story links anywhere yet, but we’ll keep an eye out. (Update: Here it is.)
Meanwhile, San Diego authorities are investigating a possible tunnel in the Imperial Valley may have been used to smuggle the illegal aliens.
And the feds [...]

Apropos of the Time report on possible limousine bomb terror at the inaugural, there’s a good backgrounder from Global Security.org on Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Devices (VBIEDS).
Wonder how that’s pronounced? VEE-bides? Vee-buy-eds? Vuh-BEADS?
Anyway, here’s a handy BATF explosive standards chart on VBIEDS:

The Time article says an al Qaeda document on VBIEDS attacks calls for [...]

Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy has a great column in National Review Online defending the Justice Department’s actions in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He concludes:
The post-9/11 detentions were lawful, ethical, strategically appropriate, and involved an infinitesimal portion of the Muslim population in the United States. To have conducted the investigation [...]

Here’s the story of a con artist who thought he could rip off 9/11 charity funds with perhaps the most politically correct of ploys–claiming that his gay lover died at Ground Zero:
A man who collected $68,000 from a charity by falsely claiming his boyfriend died in the World Trade Center attacks has pleaded guilty to [...]

During his DHS confirmation hearing, Michael Chertoff will likely receive heavy criticism for his role in the DOJ round-up of Middle Eastern illegal aliens in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News has launched the first volley in what is likely to become a meme:
[W]hile Chertoff may [...]

Don Rumsfeld’s remarks regarding Flight 93 having been “shot down” over Pennsylvania caused a bit of buzz over the weekend. Here’s what he said:
And I think all of us have a sense if we imagine the kind of world we would face if the people who bombed the mess hall in Mosul, or the people [...]

Lyz Glick, wife of Flight 93 Hero Jeremy Glick, has published a book of letters to her husband and 3-year-old daughter. Unlike the hyperpartisan “Jersey Girls,” a group of shameless Bush-bashing 9/11 widows, Glick avoids politics and refuses to discuss policy and legal matters:
Glick has resumed teaching anthropology classes online from her home for Berkeley [...]

Yet another public school has allowed a teacher to show Michael Moore’s crockumentary to students. From the Seattle Times:
MILL CREEK — A high-school teacher’s classroom showing of the controversial film “Fahrenheit 9/11″ has some local Republicans fired up.
Judy Baker, a teacher at Henry M. Jackson High School, showed the anti-Bush documentary last week to [...]

Robert Weisberg, a professor at Stanford Law School, and his colleague David Mills, a lecturer at Stanford Law School, write in a Slate op-ed (”The Case Against John Ashcroft: Why don’t Democrats condemn the disastrous attorney general?“):
We have seen major terrorist prosecutions brought with much political publicity fail with hardly a whimper. The major jury [...]

John Little at Blogs of War observes that the AP is already rehearsing its teary-eyed eulogy for Yasser Arafat. Not even a mention of Black September, John notes.
Here’s some of the other biographical info they won’t be printing…

Blood-spattered “peace” activism
Arafat’s culture of death
Arafat: Terrorism, Corruption, & Crime

Arafat group sells bombers to Hamas for money, explosives

Arafat’s [...]

A reader sends along the tragic obituary of an Army civilian analyst whose wife died at the Pentagon on 9/11:
Kenneth Edelle Foster, 51, a retired Army sergeant whose wife lost her life at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, died Oct. 10 at his home in Arlington, Tex., of pulmonary fibrosis and congestive heart failure. [...]

Better late than never, I guess.

Orin Kerr, engaging in “amateurish speculation,” raises the scary prospect of Al Qaeda attacks on voting locations on Nov. 2:
I think the more likely Al Qaeda move would be to try to destabilize the U.S. political system. A weakened United States government might mean a government less likely to pressure Iran, more likely to [...]

This is Jonathan Borofsky’s “Walking to the Sky,” on exhibit at Rockefeller Center until Oct. 18. Several figures, including a businesswoman, a grandmother, and a child, ascend the 80-foot-pole. The artist says he didn’t have Sept. 11 in mind when he created it, but rather childhood memories of stories his father told him about walking [...]

MoscowHelp.org provides the following details of the medical conditions of the schoolchildren who survived the Islamofascist attack in Beslan: (Hat tip: Logic And Sanity.)
Godzhiev, Kazbek Age: 10
Brain contusion, temporal and pariental bone fracture. Mechanical ventilation. Condition on 9/7/04: coma changed to deep semicoma, fragmented consciosness appeared. Hypodynemics: steady. 9/8/04: started to react to mother [...]

Bob Felton at Civil Commotion takes USA Today to task for a mealy-mouthed headline:
USA Today notes a growing problem:
Disturbing trend shows that terrorists see no limits on their violence
As it happens, that headline appears in only the print edition, on page A-2; it is not in the online version of the story.
“Disturbing trend?” After the [...]

News item from Arutz Sheva:
Confirmed: Arafat Paid Father of Dolphinarium Terrorist
18:18 Sep 14, ‘04 / 28 Elul 5764
(IsraelNN.com) Recently released documents captured during Operation Defensive Shield confirm that the family of the suicide bomber who attacked the beach front Dolphinarium dance club in Tel Aviv was awarded $2000 by Yasser Arafat. Arafat also sent the [...]

Today, libraries in King County, Wash, will commemorate the third anniversary of September 11, 2001, by sharing touchy-feely “ideas about democracy, citizenship and patriotism” as part of “The September Project.”
Here’s what some of the participating libraries are doing:
* At Bellevue and Federal Way libraries, a theater group called Book-It All Over! will present a production [...]

Being caught up in my book tour, I neglected to post a link to this week’s column. An excerpt:
The third anniversary of Sept. 11 is upon us. We remain at war — and the media remain in denial.
How many times have you picked up a newspaper and read about terrorist attacks perpetrated not by [...]

Don’t let the Labor Day holiday be an excuse to slack off and neglect the ongoing horror and suffering of Russian parents and children at the hands of Islamic terrorists.
Read about this Sophie’s Choice nightmare.
Take in the heart-wrenching photos and heart-stopping live-blogging at Logic & Sanity. (Hat tip: Jeff Quinton.)
Read more about the female suicide [...]