Tuesday, April 30, 2013

IDF airstrike kills top terrorist in north Gaza

 

IDF airstrike kills top terrorist in north Gaza

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4374130,00.html

 

Israeli aircraft target terrorist behind recent rocket attack on Eilat as he

rides motorbike near Hamas training camp. PM: We said we would not let

rocket fire pass quietly

 

Yoav Zitun

Latest Update:          04.30.13, 12:25 / Israel News

           

 

IDF kills terrorist in Gaza for the first time since Operation Pillar of

Defense: Israeli aircraft killed a senior terrorist in north Gaza at

approximately 10 am Tuesday. According to Israeli security officials, the

terrorist, a Salafi who belongs to Global Jihad, orchestrated the recent

rocket attack on Eilat, Israel's southernmost city.

 

The Palestinians reported that the terrorist was riding his motorbike near

a Hamas training camp when he was targeted by an Israeli aircraft. Another

man, apparently the terrorist's aide, was injured in the strike.

 

Hamas' Health Ministry identified the terrorist as Haytham Almishal, 24, a

resident of the Shati refugee camp who worked in security at the Shifa

Hospital in Gaza. Channel 10 said Mashal was a rocket-manufacuring expert.

 

Tuesday's attack was the first deadly airstrike carried out by Israel since

a ceasefire ended Operation Pillar of Defense in November.

 

 

Shortly after the strike in Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said,

"Today we hit one of the people involved in the wicked rocket fire on Eilat.

I said that we would not let this pass quietly. We do not accept the firing

from the Gaza Strip or from the Sinai Peninsula. We will work to protect

Israel's citizens."

 

 

 

שיגור רקטת הגראד לאילת

 

Terrorists launch Grad rocket at Eilat

 

 

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum called the targeted killing "dangerous and

unjustified," adding that it was meant to create a tense atmosphere in the

Strip.

 

 

Israel is trying to "divert attention from the Judaization and the

settlement enterprise in Jerusalem," he said, adding that the strike was a

violation of the Egyptian-mediated agreement which ended the war in

November.

 

 

The Israeli military confirmed it had carried out the attack, which came

just two days after Netanyahu had warned of a strong military response to

sporadic rocket fire onto Israel.

 

 

 

לאחר החיסול בעזה (צילום: AP)

 

Terrorist's body carried in Gaza

 

 

Following the attack on Eilat, the PM said those responsible "were

apparently members of a terrorist cell that left Gaza and used Sinai in

order to attack an Israeli city.

 

 

"This is unacceptable. We will exact a price for this; this has been our

consistent policy for the past four years and it will serve us here as

well," he said.

 

 

Ynet's military analyst Ron Ben-Yishai said the strike in Gaza was a joint

Shin Bet-IDF operation carried out as part of Israel's policy of deterrence

and prevention. Almishal, he said, wasn't killed only because of his

involvement in the rocket fire on Eilat, but mainly because he took part in

the preparations for additional rocket attacks on Israel from Sinai, Gaza or

both.

 

 

Should the targeted killing fail to bolster Israel's deterrence, the IDF

will not wait long before launching another major offensive in Gaza,

according to Ben-Yishai.

 

 

Nine rockets have been fired at Israel over the past 10 days by global jihad

organizations, mainly as acts of defiance against the Hamas government. The

regime in Gaza tried to prevent the rocket attacks, in part due to pressure

applied by Egypt, but its efforts were ignored by the Salafist and jihadist

groups.

 

 

Ben-Yishai said Almishal became an independent expert on weapons, mainly

rockets. He supplied rockets to anyone who was interested. According the

analyst, there is a fair amount of such "freelancers" in Gaza. Almishal

served as a weapons consultant for all the terror groups, but mainly to the

small Salafist groups who are firing rockets at Israel.

 

 

Among other things, Almishal transferred Grad rockets and gave advice ahead

of the rocket attack on Eilat. It remains unclear whether he served as a

mediator between the Bedouins in Sinai who hold the rockets and the

organization which carried out the attack (Shura Council of the Mujahideen

in the Environs of Jerusalem), or if he transferred the rockets directly

from the Salafi groups from weapons caches in Gaza.

 

 

Not only was Almishal not a member of any Salafist or global jihad

organization, he was on the payroll of one of the Hamas government's

security agencies in Gaza. His rocket expertise offered him a way to earn a

side income. 

 

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EDL Terror Attack Plot: Six Men Plead Guilty

 

EDL Terror Attack Plot: Six Men Plead Guilty

http://web.orange.co.uk/article/news/edl_terror_attack_plot_six_men_plead_guilty

 

A planned terror attack - possibly aimed at assassinating English Defence

League leader Tommy Robinson - only failed because the rally being targeted

finished earlier than planned and the would-be attackers turned up late.

 

Six islamist extremists from the Birmingham area have pleaded guilty to

plotting the attack on an EDL march in the West Yorkshire town of Dewsbury

last June.

 

Omar Mohammed Khan, 28, Mohammed Hasseen, 23, Anzal Hussain, 24, Mohammed

Saud, 22, and Zohaib Ahmed, 22, and Jewel Uddin, 27, all British nationals,

appeared at Woolwich Crown Court.

 

The court heard they planned to ambush EDL marchers using shotguns,

explosives, knives and swords.

 

West Midlands Police have defended their actions surrounding the case after

it emerged one of the men, Uddin, had been under lows-level surveillance in

connection with another terrorist plot.

 

They confirmed he was an associate of some suspects in a Birmingham-based

plot to set off a series of rucksack bombs, which they claimed would rival

the 7/7 attacks.

 

But a source told Sky News there had been nothing to suggest in his

behaviour and movements that he was involved in any other  terrorist

planning.

 

Prosecutors say five of the defendants in the EDL case travelled to the town

to carry out the attack on the afternoon of June 30.

 

When they arrived there in two vehicles at 4pm and discovered the rally had

already ended, they drove around Dewsbury for a while before heading back to

Birmingham.

 

The plot only came to light after one of the vehicles, a Renault Laguna

driven by Khan, was stopped later that day in a routine check by a police

traffic patrol, on the M1 near Sheffield. The car had no valid insurance.

 

The vehicle was impounded and when it was searched by staff at a compound

two days later, they discovered a haul of deadly weapons.

 

The cache included two sawn-off shotguns and ammunition, as well as an

improvised explosive device packed with 458 pieces of metal shrapnel,

including nails.

 

Police also found three partially constructed pipe bombs, samurai swords,

machetes and numerous knives.

 

Also in the boot of the car were 10 leaflets dated the June 30, the day of

the planned attack.

 

Titled, 'Operation in Defence of the Prophet Mohammed', the leaflets set out

the men's justification for the planned attack.

 

It read: "To the enemies of Allah and His Messenger. This is a message to

the kuffar female devil, the self-proclaimed Queen Elizabeth and her

accursed jubilee, fooling a nation of blind sheep.

 

" ... To the EDL (English Drunkards League), enemies of Allah: Today is a

day of retaliation for your blasphemy of Allah and his messenger Mohammed.

 

"We love death more than you love life. The penalty for blasphemy of Allah

and his messenger is death.

 

"What we did today was a direct retaliation for your blasphemy of Allah and

the Prophet Mohammed."

 

A spokesman for West Midlands Police said that had the plot succeeded, it

would almost certainly have resulted in significant casualties.

 

Uddin and Khan were arrested by armed police in Birmingham three days after

their failed attack. The others were detained a day later.

 

Senior sources have told Sky News the terror cell appeared to a be a

home-grown group.

 

There is apparently no evidence any of the men travelled to Pakistan or

other countries to receive terrorist training.

 

However, terrorist-related literature and training manuals were discovered

during subsequent searches of properties linked to the men.

 

The group had carried out significant research on their targets. Computers

seized by police revealed they had visited internet sites about the EDL.

 

Although there is no firm evidence EDL leader Tommy Robinson was an intended

target, the plotters' computers show they had specifically searched for him

online.

 

Despite apparently not having direct links to al Qaeda or other militant

groups, the authorities say the group possessed a good degree of knowledge,

especially about counter-surveillance techniques.

 

On the day of the planned attack they travelled to Dewsbury without their

mobile phones, a well-known anti-surveillance tactic to prevent their

location being pinpointed.

 

The six will be sentenced on the June 6.

 

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PROHIBITED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

 

 

 

 

 

How to intimidate a paperclip general

http://www.prudenpolitics.com/newsletter?utm_source=P&P%20Auto%201&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=7071

 

April 30, 2013

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How to intimidate a paperclip general

By Wes Pruden

Political correctness is always petty, often infuriating, and sometimes does no permanent harm. But occasionally it’s a threat to the nation’s security. When a paperclip general at the Pentagon surrenders to the enemy at the first sound of the popguns, the harm can be permanent.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stood up to the enemy in Iraq, where he made an enviable combat record. But at the Pentagon, he appears to have fallen, not on his sword, but on a paperclip, attached to a point of religious doctrine.

When, 18 months ago, apologists for Islamic radicals complained that an instructor at the National Defense University, the military war college, was guilty of the sin of showing insufficient deference to radical Islam, the general first humiliated him, then cashiered him, to appease Muslim critics, some of them radical and no friends of the United States. Now the instructor has been rejected for battalion command and his promising Army career is effectively over.

Army Lt. Col. Matthew Dooley (a good Irish Catholic name), decorated for valor in Iraq, was an instruction leader at the Joint Forces Staff College in Washington, lecturing on the dangers of radical Islam, when he invited an authority on Islamic extremists to talk to his students about how the extremists operate. You might think that “knowing the enemy” is a good thing in senior Army officers. One passage in the materials used by a guest lecturer, former FBI agent John Guandolo, particularly enraged the critics:

“If Islam is so violent, why are there so many peaceful Muslims? This is similar to asking why there are so many Christians who are arrogant, angry and vindictive, if Christian doctrine requires humility, tolerance and forgiveness.” There were no protests from Christians, or Christian organizations. But one participant in the course complained to the Pentagon, and the witch hunt, led by the thoroughly frightened Gen. Dempsey, began.

Paperclip generals, more politician than warrior, naturally take their cues from the White House, and it’s reasonable to assume that the pressure from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was the prevailing pressure, intense and effective. President Obama bows low in the presence of Muslims, as we all know, and ordered effective cleansing of all references to Islamic terrorists. John Brennan, the hero of Benghazi and the new director of the CIA, insists there is no such thing as an “Islamic extremist.” The al Qaeda terrorists who blew up the World Trade Center had nothing to do with Islam, they were just terrorists trying to make a dishonest living. The Muslim major who shouted the Islamic battle cry, “Allahu Akbar” (“God is great!”) as he killed 13 and wounded 30 at Fort Hood, Texas, was guilty only of “workplace violence,” not “terrorism.” If he’s convicted of murder by court martial, he can apply for workmen’s compensation (and call John Brennan and Gen. Dempsey as supporting witnesses). Paperclip generals have sharp antennae and know who punches their tickets.

They know how to cover the part of their anatomy that most needs covering, too. Gen. Dempsey landed hard on Col. Dooley at a press conference, speaking as an academic and maybe even a theologian: “It’s totally objectionable,” he said of the colonel’s course work. “It was just totally objectionable, against our values, and it wasn’t academically sound. This wasn’t about, we’re pushing back on liberal thought. This was just objectionable, academically irresponsible.”

Such an emotional response was not quite what’s expected of a four-star general. A week later another general, only a two-star, was dispatched to blame the colonel for “institutional failure.” Gen. Dempsey’s spokesman, a Marine colonel, insisted his boss’ public denunciation of the “individual” had not poisoned the investigation. “[Col.] Dooley’s name is never even mentioned,” he told The Washington Times.

We can’t expect paperclip generals to show the fighting spirit of Stonewall Jackson or U.S. Grant, Blackjack Pershing or George S. Patton. They were men of their times and we’re stuck with our own times, and the men who populate the times. But the craven deference to the Islamic lobby, which often makes no distinctions between the millions of good Muslims and the bad Muslims, is a recipe for catastrophe.

Gen. Martin Dempsey

The West in general and America in particular has shown remarkable patience and forbearance to the Muslims in our midst, according them, as we should, respect and a welcome into what we once called “the melting pot.” But somebody ought to instruct the paperclip generals that there’s an enemy out there in the dark, and it’s important to know who he is.

Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.

 

Gun Prohibitionists To Try Ballot Initiatives

No Lawyers - Only Guns and Money


Headline Of The Day

Posted: 29 Apr 2013 01:59 PM PDT


Given firearm sales since Barack Obama was first elected President, seeing a headline calling him the "Gun Salesman of the Year" is not really news. Where it appears, is news.


"Barack Obama, Gun Salesman of the Year" is the title of an opinion piece at Bloomberg View.

Just seeing that along with the stats on gun sales must be making the owner of Bloomberg LLC just cringe.

I love to see Mayor Bloomberg cringing!

SIGTac Stabilizing Brace

Posted: 29 Apr 2013 01:33 PM PDT


I've written in the past about devices and/or gimmicks such as the Halix NSN chin brace that will allow you to use an AR-15 pistol as a PDW or personal defense weapon. The general consensus at the time was that it had marginal utility and that the ATF would probably decide it was a stock.

Now comes word that Sig Sauer's SIGTac line is coming out with the SB-15 stabilizing brace. As you can see in the video below, it is a method of strapping the recoil tube to your forearm. According to SIGTac, it is ATF approved. They plan on rolling this out at the NRA Annual Meeting so I'll be interested in seeing the approval letter.

It does appear effective in stabilizing the AR pistol. No word yet on the price.







H/T GearScout

Gun Prohibitionists To Try Ballot Initiatives

Posted: 29 Apr 2013 05:40 AM PDT


Gun prohibitionists in Washington State think that perhaps they will have more success with a gun control ballot initiative than they have had with the legislature. Their rationale is that the big evil NRA intimidates legislators and "the people" won't be similarly swayed.

Washington Rep. Jamie Pedersen, a Democrat who had sponsored unsuccessful legislation on background checks at the state level, said a winning ballot initiative would make a statement with broad implications.

"It's more powerful if the voters do it - as opposed to our doing it," Pedersen said. "And it would make it easier for the Legislature to do even more."


On Monday, proponents of universal background checks in Washington will announce their plan to launch a statewide initiative campaign that would require the collection of some 300,000 signatures, according to a person involved in the initiative planning who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to pre-empt the official announcement.


The Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility has scheduled a fundraiser in Seattle at the end of next month and hopes to have a campaign budget in the millions of dollars.

 I don't doubt that they could have a multi-million dollar budget if Mayor Bloomberg and/or Bill Gates opens their wallets. If I remember correctly, Gates was a big supporter of a 1997 Washington State initiative that went down to screaming defeat.

This all presupposes that the gun prohibtionists have a large grassroots backing and that they can mobilize them. You know, like the NRA and other gun rights organizations.

The Brady Campaign's "director of mobilization" seems a little leery of the effort.

Brian Malte, director of mobilization at the national nonprofit lobbying group Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said passage through Congress is the ideal in order to have a national solution and so that states with strong gun laws aren't undermined by nearby states with weaker standards. He noted that initiative campaigns are costly endeavors that can drain important, limited resources.

Still, Malte said, the ballot measures are an option to consider.

"At some point, certainly decisions need to be made about what the right time is to say we take it to the people," Malte said.

I'm guessing the right time is right after a highly publicized mass shooting and when they think they have achieved a critical mass of low information voters.

Still Rep. Pedersen seems quite sure of himself.

Pedersen said he was working with the initiative organizers on language for the proposal, and he said the Legislature would first have another chance to adopt the measure early next year. If it fails among lawmakers again, the proposal would then automatically go to the ballot, where Pedersen said he welcomed a campaign competing against groups like the NRA.

"I'm not afraid of it at all," Pedersen said. "The public is really with us. It's the right policy. I think it can be useful for further progress."

I don't doubt that the Yale-educated Pedersen is a smart guy. I just wonder how he in touch he is with the average Washington State voter outside of King County.

 

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Boston and Freedom

Boston and Freedom
by Andrew P. Napolitano

The government's fidelity to the Constitution is never more tested than in a time of crisis. The urge to do something – or to appear to be doing something – is nearly irresistible to those whom we have employed to protect our freedom and to keep us safe. Regrettably, with each passing violent crisis – Waco, Oklahoma City, Columbine, 9/11, Newtown and now the Boston Marathon – our personal freedoms continue to slip away, and the government itself remains the chief engine of that slippage.

The American people made a pact with the devil in the weeks and months following 9/11 when they bought the Bush-era argument that by surrendering liberty they could buy safety. But that type of pact has never enhanced either liberty or safety, and its fruits are always bitter.

The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. It was written to create and to restrain the federal government. Every person who works for any government in the U.S. has taken an oath of fidelity to the Constitution, not unlike the presidential oath, which induces a promise to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.

The chief and final interpreter of the Constitution is the Supreme Court. One may not always agree with its interpretations, but they are, as legal scholars sometimes say, "infallible because they are final." Those interpretations are particularly final when we have relied on them for generations.

One of those rulings underscores the primacy of constitutional protections, no matter the environment in which they are claimed. Indeed, after the Civil War had ended and President Lincoln was dead, the Supreme Court in a case called Ex parte Milligan (1866) rebuked and reversed Lincoln's unilateral assaults on personal freedoms in the North and in so doing reminded us that the Constitution was written for good times and for bad, and its protections cover all persons at all times and under all circumstances who have any contact, voluntary or not, with the government.

The court has also ruled consistently throughout the 20th century that just as the First Amendment protects the freedom of speech, it also protects the freedom not to engage in speech. One hundred years after Milligan, the Supreme Court first recognized and articulated the constitutional basis for the right to remain silent in the Miranda case. That right is a natural right that is inherent in all human beings, and it is arguably articulated in the First and Fifth Amendments.

But since the court understood that most folks don't know that they have the right to remain silent in the face of government demands for speech, it mandated that all governments – local, state and federal – comply with their affirmative obligation to tell everyone in their custody whom their agents wish to interrogate about the existence of this right, as well as the obligation of the government to honor it faithfully once it has been invoked. That has consistently been the law of the land for the past 50 years.

The pact with the devil occurred in the fall of 2001, when then President George W. Bush and Congress decided that they would use the machinery of the federal government to secure safety, rather than liberty. So, the Bush-inspired Patriot Act permits federal agents to write their own search warrants, and the Bush-inspired new FISA statutes permit search warrants of some Americans' phone calls without a showing of probable cause as the Constitution requires, and the Bush-era intimidation of telephone service providers permitted our overseas spies to snoop on our domestic phone calls. None of this has enhanced safety, and all of it has diminished liberty.

In the Obama administration, the devil has demanded more. In the past five years, we have seen federal spies capturing the keystrokes on our computers, local police using federal dollars to install cameras and microphones on nearly every street corner, and, the latest lamentable phenomenon, the use of false emergencies to undermine freedom.

This began at the Mexican border, where immigration agents have been told to interrogate first and Mirandize later. It moved to Washington, where we have an attorney general who has told federal agents that the extremely limited public safety exception to the Miranda rule can exist for up to 48 hours. And it proceeded to the spectacle of well-meaning FBI agents being told to reject their training and the common understanding of well-regarded constitutional law and interrogate a half-drugged suspect with a hole in his throat whom they were about to charge with mass murder, in utter defiance of Miranda.

The public safety exception to Miranda goes to the safety of the officers and others present at the moment of arrest. It permits the police to express an excited utterance ("Where's the gun?") in an effort to protect themselves before securing the defendant and before advising him of his rights. According to the Supreme Court, it can last for just a few seconds.

The Obama administration's radical reinterpretation of the natural and constitutional right to remain silent is unprecedented, terrifying and disingenuous. Think about this: The governor of Massachusetts, the superintendent of the Massachusetts State Police, the mayor of Boston, the Boston police commissioner, and the head of the Boston FBI office all proclaimed on Saturday morning that the danger had passed and Boston and its suburbs could return to normal. Yet the attorney general in Washington told his FBI agents in Boston to disregard those officials and instead pretend that the public safety was still jeopardized and then expand a 10-second window to 72 hours.

The Constitution was written to preserve freedom by restraining the government. The courts from time to time have required the government to respect the natural law, as well. But when the attorney general arbitrarily changes the law to suit the demands of the people when they are weeping, it fundamentally undermines our freedoms. And a pact with the devil is the most dangerous of all, because his appetite can never be sated.

--

 

Mexico Moves Against US Security Agencies

http://news.yahoo.com/mexico-ends-open-access-us-security-agencies-022203123.html

 

Mexico ends open access for US security agencies

By E. EDUARDO CASTILLO and KATHERINE CORCORAN | Associated Press – 16 hrs ago

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico is ending its unprecedented open relationship with U.S. security agencies that developed in recent years to fight drug trafficking and organized crime.

All contact for U.S. law enforcement will now go through "a single window," the federal Interior Ministry, the agency that controls security and domestic policy, said Sergio Alcocer, deputy foreign secretary for North American affairs.

Alcocer confirmed the change to The Associated Press on Monday, three days before U.S. President Barack Obama visits for his first bilateral meeting with his Mexican counterpart, Enrique Pena Nieto, who took office Dec. 1.

The new policy is a dramatic shift from the direct sharing of resources and intelligence between U.S. and Mexican law enforcement under former President Felipe Calderon, who was lauded by the U.S. repeatedly for increasing cooperation between the two countries. FBI, CIA, DEA and border patrol agents had direct access to units of Mexico's Federal Police, army and navy and worked closely with Mexican authorities in major offensives against drug cartels, including the U.S.-backed strategy of killing or arresting top kingpins.

Alcocer said the changes are in the interest of Mexico.

"The issue before is that there was a lack of coordination because there was not a single entity in the Mexican government that was coordinating all the efforts," he told the AP in an interview. "Nobody knew what was going on."

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies deferred comment to the State Department, which said it looks forward to "continued close cooperation."

Security and the economy will be the top themes for the meeting between Obama and Pena Nieto on Thursday in Mexico City, as Mexico seeks to change its message from drug trafficking and violence to its emerging status as a world economic player.

Mexico says it will expand its bilateral agenda with the United States and change the security strategy to one emphasizing crime prevention.

"For us the security theme is one of our top priorities, but it's not the only one," Alcocer said. "The relationship has issues such as the economy and trade, advanced manufacturing, infrastructure, energy."

Mexico and the U.S. share one of the world's longest borders and a history of distrust, even as the two countries' economies are intimately intertwined.

Relations opened up under Calderon, who took office in 2006 and waged a six-year offensive on organized crime. Some 70,000 people were killed in drug violence during his term, and at least 25,000 disappeared, according to government estimates.

 

GOP Wants AMMO Act, DHS Waffles Over Huge Ammo Purchase,

DHS Spokesman Waffles Over Huge Ammo Purchase,GOP Wants AMMO Act

 Jason Howerton @ Breitbart

Credit: Getty Images

Republicans in the Senate and House are expected to introduce a joint bill Friday that would limit the amount of ammunition that federal agencies are allowed to buy and stockpile over the next six months, the Washington Free Beacon reports.

The bill, titled the Ammunition Management for More Accountability or “AMMO” Act, is being proposed after several lawmakers have voiced concerns about some federal agencies, like the Department of Homeland Security, seemingly stockpiling large quantities of ammo.

“DHS, for instance, has placed two-years worth of ammunition, or nearly 247 million rounds, in its inventory,” the Free Beacon notes.

In a statement provided to the Washington Free Beacon, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), said federal agencies must provide more “transparency and accountability” in regards to its “stockpiles of ammunition.”

“President Obama has been adamant about curbing law-abiding Americans’ access and opportunities to exercise their Second Amendment rights...One way the Obama administration is able to do this is by limiting what’s available in the market with federal agencies purchasing unnecessary stockpiles of ammunition,” the statement adds.

More from the Free Beacon:

[T]he legislation would prevent all government agencies except for the Defense Department from purchasing and storing what lawmakers say is an excess amount of ammunition.

The bill’s reach would include DHS and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), two agencies that have found themselves at the center of the ammo controversy.

“As the public learned in a House committee hearing this week, the Department of Homeland Security has two years worth of ammo on hand and allots nearly 1,000 more rounds of ammunition for DHS officers than is used on average by our Army officers,” Inhofe said. “The AMMO Act of 2013 will enforce transparency and accountability of federal agencies’ ammunition supply while also protecting law-abiding citizens access to these resources.”

An agency covered by the legislation would not be permitted to purchase or store more ammunition than that agency retained on average between 2001 and 2009, according to an advance copy of the legislation provided to the Free Beacon.

Additionally, the AMMO Act would encourage the Government Accountability Office to audit federal agencies’ ammo purchases.

“The Comptroller General of the United States shall submit to Congress a report regarding the purchasing of ammunition by agencies, which shall include an assessment of the effect of the purchasing of ammunition by agencies on the supply of ammunition available to the public,” the bill reads, according to a copy reviewed by the Free Beacon.

There have been more concerns over reports of DHS’s plan to purchase another 750 million rounds of ammunition over the next five years, despite having a two-year stockpile saved up. Meanwhile, gun shops across the country are reporting ammunition shortages.

 

DHS Spokesman Waffles Over Huge Ammo Purchases

Written by  Bob Adelmann @ TheNewAmerican

At a hearing at the House of Representatives on Thursday a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did his best to defuse growing concerns about excessive purchases of ammunition for its 72,000 agents. These purchases were necessary, insisted Nick Nayak, because of training needs not only for his agency, but also for the U.S. Coast Guard (41,000 employees) and other federal, state, local, and tribal enforcement personnel (70,000) who train at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) of the DHS, located at the former naval air station in Glynco, Georgia.

Nayak said that one million law enforcement officers and agents have been trained at FLETC since 1970 and that by buying in bulk, the agency is just being good stewards with taxpayer monies:

DHS maintains a highly trained workforce to fulfill its mission for the American people in the most effective and efficient way possible. While DHS spending on ammunition represents less than one tenth of one percent of the DHS budget, we continue to pursue measures that leverage all of the Department’s resources in order to best make use of taxpayer dollars.

Nayak noted in his prepared testimony that DHS purchases around 100 million rounds every year for training purposes and currently has 250 million rounds in its warehouse, about a two-and-one-half year supply.

Those remarks didn’t satisfy Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security, which held the hearing. Chaffetz noted that the DHS is using roughly 1,000 rounds of ammunition more per person than the U.S. Army: While the Army goes through roughly 350 rounds per soldier, the DHS is burning through between 1,300 and 1,600 rounds per officer. Chaffetz declared, “It is entirely ... inexplicable why the Department of Homeland Security needs so much ammunition.... Their officers use what seems to be an exorbitant amount of ammunition.”

When questioned about reports that the DHS had placed orders to buy more than a billion additional rounds of ammunition, Nayak replied that those reports were “simply not true,” adding that the agency needs reasonable quantities for training purposes and that it usually buys in bulk to save money.

This assertion contradicts a statement Alex Newman of The New American received from another DHS spokesman, Marsha Catron, who said that there were two separate contracts to purchase ammunition: one for up to 750 million rounds for FLETC, and another one for 450 million rounds to be used separately by DHS “components,” who include Border Patrol agents, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers, Secret Service agents, uniformed division officers, physical security specialists, federal air marshals, Federal Protective Service officers, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and officers.

She downplayed the size of the contracts, characterizing them as “a part of the Department’s strategic sourcing efforts to combine multiple contracts in order to leverage the power of the entire Department to efficiently procure equipment and supplies at significantly lower costs.”

Both of those statements contradict the Associated Press announcement on February 15 that the DHS contracted to buy “more than 1.6 billion rounds” of ammunition over the next four or five years. The announcement included the now-familiar refrain that all of this is strictly routine. FLETC spokesman Peggy Dixon said these contracts were “strategic sourcing contracts” while at the same time noting that FLETC uses 15 million rounds a year in its training sessions.

As Ralph Benko noted in his Forbes magazine article (that has since gone viral with more than 880,000 views in the last 30 days):

At 15 million rounds (which, in itself, is pretty extraordinary and sounds more like fun target-shooting-at-taxpayer-expense than a sensible training exercise) ... that’s a stockpile that would last DHS over a century. To claim that it’s to “get a low price” for a ridiculously wasteful amount is an argument that could only fool a career civil servant.

During the hearing Nayak continued to be pressed hard by both Chaffetz and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Issa exclaimed:

There’s a serious question of waste and lack of accountability. The idea you have to have excess rounds in excess of what can be justified for training ... flies in the face of common sense.

What does not make sense in the information you provided is that Customs and Border Control used around 14 million rounds for operational purposes when they rarely fire their guns. It seems like it’s just walking out the door. There doesn’t seem to be accountability because of the exorbitant usage here.

Nayak countered, insisting that reports from the Associated Press were completely untrue. “We have not purchased 1.5 billion rounds of ammo. I have no idea where the billion or over [number] ever came from.”

House member Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) jumped in:

You said you have no idea where the one billion rounds number came from? You’ve got to have some idea!

You’ve got four news agencies reporting this number. And here you are under oath [and saying that] you have no clue. Are they just making it up?

Nayak than clarified that the contracts did exist but that they were only to allow the agency to purchase “up to” the amounts specified by the AP, not that they were actually going to be fulfilled.

On Friday, Senator Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Representative Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) introduced a joint bill, called the Ammunition Management for More Obtainability Act, or the AMMO Act, to limit the amount of ammunition agencies such as DHS could purchase to the significantly lower averages they had on hand between 2001 and 2009. In explaining his sponsorship of the measure, Lucas said:

I was surprised to find out the DHS has the right to buy up to 750 million rounds of ammunition over the next five years, while it already has two years’ worth of ammo....

This is an issue that must be addressed and I am pleased [that] this legislation gives us the opportunity to do so.

The lack of clarity and consistency, and the blatant display of disingenuousness in the DHS’ defense of its large purchases of ammunition, successfully skirted answering the real questions behind those purchases: What danger is the agency preparing for? What risks to national security inside the United States do they perceive that warrant such purchases? What requires the type of ammunition outlawed by the Geneva Convention to be sought in such massive numbers? What risks require 72,000 armed DHS agents in the first place?

The AMMO Act, even if it is passed into law, does nothing to answer those questions. The only thing that will reduce Americans’ anxiety over the determination of the DHS to purchase ammunition in such large quantities is to reduce the department’s budget — or abolish the post-9/11 bureaucracy entirely. Otherwise the DHS will merrily continue to arm itself to the teeth, all in the name of “homeland security” and “training” — while claiming “fiscal responsibility.”

 

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Straight-Arrow Tamerlan Tsarnaev, a Mama's Boy

Straight-Arrow Tamerlan Tsarnaev, a Mama’s Boy

Posted By Robert Spencer On April 29, 2013 7 Comments

Editor’s Note: Starting today, Robert Spencer’s weekly PJ Lifestyle article analyzing stories on Jihad terror from a cultural perspective will appear on Mondays, our day focused on family, parenting, motherhood, fatherhood, and relationships. With this shift in publication date also comes a change in angle. A broader picture of the motives behind the 4/15/13 Boston terror attack is beginning to come into greater clarity. Who radicalized these once American young men? The picture that has emerged is one common throughout the Muslim world: sons drink in the hate and anti-Americanism as they would mother’s milk. The disturbing proclamations of mama and papa Tsarnaev make clear that these were not two sons led astray by malevolent outside influence.

So on Mondays Robert will explore the relevant Jihad stories of the week through a family-centric lens, considering male-female dynamics in the Muslim world and the Koran’s influence on defining the ideals of masculinity and femininity. What does Islam proscribe for how to raise children and maintain a family? What can Muslim parents in America do to make sure their sons do not become Tamerlans and Dzhokhars? And what are other parents like the Tsarnaevs secretly doing right now to prepare their children for the glory of martyrdom? How does one raise a future Jihadist who loves death more than Americans love life? I look forward to seeing Robert explore these subjects and hope you will join us each week at PJ Lifestyle.

- David Swindle

In the movie Prizzi’s Honor, Jack Nicholson plays mafia hitman Charley Partanna, who is known as “Straight-Arrow Charley, the All-American Hood” for dutifully and unquestioningly carrying on the family business in which he was raised. And as more details emerge about the family of Boston Marathon jihad bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, it’s increasingly clear that they, too, were just carrying on the family business: jihad.

Zubeidat Tsarnaeva is proud of her boys. She insists that they didn’t set off the bombs in Boston, and that in fact, the whole thing was staged. The bombings, she said, were just a “really big play” featuring “paint instead of blood.” Consistency is not her strong suit, for she also said: “What happened is a terrible thing but I know my kids have nothing to do with this. I know it, I am mother.” She claimed that her sons were targeted because they were Muslim, and said: “America took my kids away from me. I’m sure my kids were not involved in anything.”

The bombers’ father, Anzor Tsarnaev, struck a tone more of grief than accusation. He assured the world: “I am not angry at anyone,” although he hinted that he also accepted his wife’s conspiracy theory when he added: “I want to go find out the truth.” Go, that is, to the United States, although plans for the trip have since been scrapped due to the possibility that he and/or his wife could be arrested if they do come here. “I want to say that I am going there to see my son, to bury the older one. I don’t have any bad intentions.” He added reassuringly: “I don’t plan to blow up anything.”

Just as Hitler loved his dogs, Tamerlan Tsarnaev loved his mama. Just before getting into a shootout with police in Watertown, Massachusetts, he called her on his cellphone and gave her the news:

The police, they have started shooting at us, they are chasing us….Mama, I love you.

But behind the parents’ protestations that their boys couldn’t have been behind the Boston bombings, there are numerous indications that Tamerlan and Dzhokhar were just carrying on the family business. It turns out that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had been listed in the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE), the government’s primary terrorist database — although his inclusion on it was vivid indication of its utter uselessness, since nothing was being done to monitor his activities even as he amassed the material to construct the bombs he used in the Boston Marathon jihad attack and in the bombers’ subsequent attempts to elude police. Even more interesting was the fact that his mother was listed as well.

Russian authorities were so concerned about the Tsarnaevs that they began tapping their phones, and in 2011 caught Mama Tsarnaeva discussing jihad with Tamerlan, advising him to go to “Palestine” to wage his jihad there. Tamerlan didn’t take her advice; he didn’t speak Arabic and thus thought it might be hard to get by in Gaza. Ultimately, he opted to wage his jihad in Boston instead.

The Tsarnaevs appear to be a crime family on the order of the most violent mafia clans, but they were also (like the cinematic Corleones, at least as far as appearances were concerned) religiously devout. It has been widely reported that several years ago, Tamerlan Tsarnaev became much more of an observant Muslim than he had been previously: a family friend noticed the change and said, “He started talking about religion. He grew a long beard.” Tamerlan would hector him about his own religiosity: “Why don’t you become a better Muslim? Why don’t you pray, why don’t you do your Islamic duties?”

Yet Tamerlan doesn’t seem to have grown more religious amid a family of secularists. Zubeidat Tsarnaeva has worn a hijab in all of her public appearances, and gives every indication of being a devout Muslim. Referring to Dzhokhar, she thundered to CNN:

“If they are going to kill him. I don’t care. My oldest son is killed, so I don’t care. I don’t care if my youngest son is going to be killed today. I want the world to hear this. And, I don’t care if I am going to get killed too. And I will say Allahu Akbar!”

And so it seems that she raised her boys well, and they didn’t rebel — or, after a period of rebellion, they returned to their roots and duly followed in their mother’s footsteps. While the mainstream media continues to posit ever more ridiculous theories as to how the Tsarnaev brothers became “radicalized” (the New York Times suggested Sunday that it was because a rule change had disqualified him from the Golden Gloves boxing tournament), the truth may lie closer to hand: the Tsarnaevs’ jihad was a family affair.


Article printed from PJ Lifestyle: http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/04/29/straight-arrow-tamerlan-tsarnaev-a-mamas-boy/