Confirm Errol Southers, NOW!

Last week's attack on a Detroit-bound flight that originated in the Netherlands (and was thankfully stopped in progress by quick-reacting passengers) could have, as we have been told ad nauseum, been prevented by better communication between American and Dutch authorities.

A month ago Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's father told the American consulate that his son had taken up with radical Islamists. The Homeland Security Department did what they should have done and placed him on a terrorist watch list, meaning that he would be subjected to additional security measures if he tried to board a plane. Only the TSA didn't communicate with the Dutch authorities, who failed to detect explosive material on Abdulmutallab when he passed through a security inspection in Amsterdam.

Why didn't the TSA do it's job? MAYBE BECAUSE THERE IS NO ONE AT THE HELM? That's right, the position of TSA director is vacant.

There is a nominee, and a counter-terrorism expert at that. The person the Obama administration nominated for the job is Errol Southers, who is eminently qualified to deal with terrorism, as a former special agent with the FBI, the Los Angeles airport assistant chief for security and intelligence, the associate director of the University of Southern California's Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events and most recently the deputy director of homeland security for the state of California.

Two Senate committees have already approved Southers by a bipartisan vote. This should be a no-brainer.

Enter DeMint, one of the most combatative conservatives in the Senate. He has single-handedly blocked the nomination over the specific issue of preventing TSA workers from exercising their right to vote on whether they want to be represented by a collective bargaining agreement.

So thanks to DeMint, instead of having a highly qualified expert on terrorism running the TSA, someone who certainly would have attended to the detail of letting the Dutch know who they should pay closer attention to during an inspection, we instead have a vacancy in this critical position.

Thankfully, no one lost their life in this attack. But had 279 passengers and crew in the plane, and perhaps hundreds more on the ground died in the attack, it would be fair to ask whether Jim DeMint was at fault.

The Senate should vote to confirm Errol Southers IMMEDIATELY!

Terror alert level raised for political reasons, says the man who raised it

Today, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge admitted that the reason why the terror alert was raised a level before the 2004 election had nothing to do with terrorism.

Instead, it was part of a strategy devised by the Bush campaign to help ensure his re-election that year. Apparently the campaign pressured Ridge to find an excuse to raise the terror alert level in the weeks before the 2004 election until he went along with it, despite having no intelligence suggesting that an attack was any more likely than it had been.

Remember that Mr. Ridge, a former Republican Governor or Pennsylvania who earlier this year was still being courted by national Republicans to run against Arlen Specter in the Senate race next year, was President Bush's hand-picked first Secretary of Homeland Security. Hardly the bomb-throwing liberal that some on the right would suggest must make this kind of accusation. But he was a Bush White House insider and as the person who actually did raise the alert level he certainly knew very well why he was raising it.

Let's also remember that when liberals dared to suggest that any kind of national security policy might be political, the Republicans would always wave the bloody flag of 9/11 and impugn their patriotism.

This wasn't all that long ago, after all, even an elephant can remember a few years back.

Homeland Security memo twisted out of shape by the right

This week the Homeland Security Department released a memo outlining ongoing terror threats and new ones that are developing.

Within hours the right was all over the document, and distorting it in misleading and terrible ways.

Well, let me defend the memo and the department and its chief, former Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano.

First, let's address the whole issue of domestic versus foreign terrorism. Despite what you may have heard, nowhere does the memo suggest that we should be any less vigilant on the issue of foreign terrorists. We still live in a world containing people outside the United States who want to kill Americans and the memorandum says nothing to downplay that fact.

It does however highlight domestic terrorism as the fastest growing terror threat at this time. If anything, I'd think the right would be taking plaudits and repeating their oft-repeated assertion that this shows that the Bush administration's policy against foreign terrorists worked, at least inside the United States. And while I may feel that some of the tactics employed by the Bush administration may have been unnecessarily intrusive and a violation of civil rights (such as the right to search your home when you are not present and without presenting a warrant) I'm willing to give them credit in that attacks by foreign terrorists since 9/11 have all occurred outside rather than inside the United States.

But the right chooses to go after the whole 'domestic terrorist' argument as an attack on them. Where does it say that? The memo is about growing terrorist threats, and nowhere does it suggest that anyone who speaks out peacefully against the administration is a threat.

It does go into some detail about the profile of people that domestic terror groups are looking to recruit. One sentence states that returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are more likely to be recruited by these groups because they value their weapons training and combat experience. Unfortunately the right has turned this on its ear and said that the memo claims that veterans are now being called terrorists. House Republican Leader John Boehner called the language 'offensive' and demanded an apology. The commander of the American Legion demanded that that section of the document be retracted. Napolitano has contacted him to set up a meeting to discuss the issue. However the interpretation that the memorandum calls veterans domestic terrorsts is a gross distortion. For one thing, the memo says that these groups are looking to recruit returning veterans. Obviously if you are recruiting someone they are not yet a member of your organization. Further, it is a fact that all terrorist organizations (foreign or domestic) need to recruit people and if you know who they want to recruit then you can take advantage of that knowledge (for example if the FBI wants to infiltrate a domestic terror group then they would probably start by looking for agents that fit the profile of who the group is recruiting.) Saying that domestic terror groups look to recruit veterans is no more an indictment of veterans than for example the statement that al-Qaeda likes to recruit young unemployed muslims is an indictment of all young unemployed muslims (at least not to any rational person-- maybe the right does read it that way since some of them actually do believe that all young unemployed muslims are therefore terrorists.)

The memo goes on to discuss a number of specific issue-indentified terror threats, most notably militant anti-abortion groups or individuals. From this, the right has twisted it to claim that anyone who expresses a pro-life opinion on abortion is therefore being tarred as a terrorist. Which is of course ridiculous. Nothing in the memo says any such thing, but it is a fact that we live in a nation in which several doctors have been murdered and numerous abortion clinics have been bombed. This is terrorism, plain and simple, and if the right can't figure out the difference between a pastor who uses his First Amendment right to speak out against abortion and Eric Robert Rudolf, then they are either stupid or are being wilfully ignorant. The Homeland Security Department is concerned with preventing acts of violence, and if there is an increased potential for violence from anti-abortion extremists then it is the responsibility of the deparment to recognize that and take action to prevent it. The memo isn't about shutting anybody up, it's about stopping terrorists before they strike.

And that is the crux of the problem. If this memorandum was never issued and a terrorist attack occurred then the department would be attacked for never delving into the groups that carried it out (just as the right used the occasion of the Oklahoma City Bombing to jump all over the Clinton administration for supposedly weakening domestic surveillance and not looking closer at those kinds of groups after Waco.)

Incidentally the same memorandum suggests that left-wing extremists are more likely to be involved with cyberterrorism. I'm not sure how come computer literate people on the left are more likely to engage in malicious hacking than computer literate people on the right, but I am throwing that in to show the contrast-- for the most part the righties are assuming this memo targets them and are ignoring that section of the document, except for a couple of talk radio heads who have instead jumped on it as what they claim is 'the only thing in it that is true.' You can't win with this paranoid, xenophobic crowd.

I would like to conclude that I believe that it was a mistake to put FEMA under the auspices of the Homeland Security Department. DHS is tasked with stopping terrorism before it happens, not picking up the pieces afterward. That is what FEMA does, but if DHS does its job well then FEMA will be able to concentrate on natural disasters.

But instead of 'you're doing a great job, Brownie' apparently the reaction of the right to the memo put out by DHS is that they are baking something into the brownies.

Palin sat and listened to an anti-semitic sermon two weeks ago. Did she condemn it?

Politico's Ben Smith suggests that Sarah Palin's nomination may have helped Barack Obama with Jewish voters, and then raises a very troubling comment made just two weeks ago, on August 17 in a sermon at Sarah Palin's church.

The transcript of the sermon is here.

Pastor Larry Kroon, who has been Palin's pastor since she and her family joined the Wasilla Bible Church in 2002, introduced David Brickner, the national director of a group called Jews for Jesus. Brickner then gave a sermon, which included an assertion that terrorist attacks in Israel are God's judgement against Jews for not accepting Jesus Christ as their God. Brickner said at one point,

"Judgment is very real and we see it played out on the pages of the newspapers and on the television. It's very real. When Isaac [Brickner's son] was in Jerusalem he was there to witness some of that judgment, some of that conflict, when a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment — you can't miss it."

Also in the Politico article, we see this snippet:

Palin was in church that day, Kroon said, though he cautioned against attributing Brickner’s views to her.

Now I agree that what someone else says in church are their words and don't necessarily reflect the views of people sitting in the pews (though that hardly dissuaded the right from trying to suggest that Jeremiah Wright's sermons reflect Barack Obama's views.)

But it is fair to ask, since we have the word of her own pastor that she was present in church two weeks ago, whether this reflects her own view of the reason why there is terrorism in Israel. Barack Obama has been very clear in laying out which statements by Jeremiah Wright and Michael Pfleger he disagrees with, so it is time to ask Sarah Palin to do likewise.

Rudy already making political hay out of Glasgow attack

Though Glasgow Airport's main terminal is still closed as police search for clues among the smouldering remains of a Jeep, it apparently isn't too soon for GOP Presidential contenders to start making hay out of it, in a misguided attack at that.

Touching on a theme which is popular with GOP primary voters, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani attacked immigrants and said the attack shows we need a strong immigration policy.

You mean, like for example an immigration policy that actually would let us know who is in the country? That is one thing that would have come out of the immigration bill that was defeated this week, since one provision would have required that immigrants who entered the country wanting work permits would have to register and notify authorities of where they were from and where they were going. Undocumented residents currently in the U.S. -- people we know so little about that even the number is only estimated to be between 12 and 20 million-- would have to pay a fine and could then obtain a permit to work legally-- and hence we'd have a record of them.

Or is Rudy trying to appeal to the more extreme elements in his party, you know the folks who like to talk about building a wall around the country, mass deportations and throwing people in prison for trying to get a job?

I agree that the fact that there are still terrorists means that we need to do a better job, among other things, of policing the border, but that should be part of a comprehensive, not just 'tougher' immigration policy.

Terror war continues with attack in Scotland.

Three days ago, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has been in office for a decade, relinquished control of the office to fellow Labor party leader Gordon Brown.

And right on cue, two car bombs were apparently primed to go off in London (though both were found and defused) and today a Jeep Cherokee was set on fire and deliberatly rammed into the main terminal at Glasgow Airport (though so far none of the terrorist plots has resulted in any injuries, and two men were arrested in connection with the incident today.) Prime Minister Brown has raised the terror level in Britain in response.

This makes several things clear:

1. The war against terror is still being fought. While it is unforunate that Blair and Bush screwed up and invaded Iraq and thereby diverted our attention, resources and time from the matter of fighting terrorists, they are still out there and we still have to be vigilant.

2. The timing of these attacks-- obviously timed to send a message both to Blair (that he had failed to prevent them) and to Brown (that Britain remains a target) suggests that terrorists have learned to use the political calendar to their advantage (as we also saw in the Spanish train bombings) and as such we can probably expect some sort of effort made in the United States next year during the Presidential election season, or if they can't swing that, then perhaps shortly after the inauguration. Of course it took eight years between the first and second World Trade Center bombings, and so the first year of the next President's term would be pretty much on the schedule they've used in the past.

3. The fact that the first two attacks were thwarted and the third attack in Britain failed to produce any injuries or major damage is partly because citizens themselves have become much more vigilant, and notice what is going on before them.

4. 'If we are fighting them over there, they won't be able to launch attacks elsewhere.' Might have been true had we continued to make Afghanistan the number 1 priority, but obviously making Iraq a priority hasn't crimped them much.

As I've said numerous times, the U.S. conquest of Iraq was a huge mistake in the context of the global war on terror, but regardless of how anyone feels about Iraq, the real terrorists are still around, and we should not forget them or give them a break.

Tom the fruitcake enters the race.

The latest entrant in the Presidential sweepstakes is Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO).

Tancredo, if you don't know who he is, made headlines a couple of years ago when he suggested on a radio show that if the United States is attacked again by terrorists then we should 'take out Mecca.'

More recently, he guaranteed he will lose Florida by comparing the state to a third-world country.

Well, at least he is speaking what's on his mind. But I'm glad he's not running in my party.

Of course here in Arizona we have recent experience with Tancredo. He came down to campaign for his good friend Randy Graf in a race for an open Congressional seat along the border. Graf, like Tancredo, supports kicking out all undocumented aliens and then building a wall along the border, and he loves to verbally attack 'them Mexicans.' And the results of the race were pretty telling-- in a district that had not voted for a Democrat in well over a decade, he lost by double digits to new Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. People along the border, where trade with and through Mexico provides a significant source of income, just didn't buy into the rhetoric.

Tancredo however has always been popular with the same folks who used to idolize Helen Chenowyth; the black helicopter folks who have a xenophobic outlook and who believe (contradictorily) that America should not have anything to do with the rest of the world and that America should use military force to do whatever it wants, wherever and against whoever it wants. They are big supporters of the militias, and believe that people in other countries (especially people with dark skin in those countries) are out to 'get' America.

It will be interesting to watch Tancredo in the GOP debates. Not for the inevitable bombs he will hurl that may embarrass some of the other candidates. But to watch and see how often they agree with him.

Consider why a terrorst wanted Republicans in power in Washington.

We've by now seen the news reports that a terrorist donated large amounts of money to the Republican Congressional Committee. The man, Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari (who went by the alias 'Michael Mixon') has been indicted on, among other things, sending money to fund a terror training camp in Afghanistan.

But what is interesting is to look at the dates.

From April 2002 until August 2004, the man also known as "Michael Mixon" gave donations ranging from $500 to $5,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee, according to Federal Election Commission reports and two campaign donor tracking Web sites, www.politicalmoneyline.com and www.opensecrets.org.

Why would a supporter of terrorism in Afghanistan suddenly start supporting Republicans in April of 2002?

Well, that is almost exactly when the Bush administration and other Republicans started talking about shifting their focus away from Afghanistan to Iraq.

I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority...."

"I am truly not that concerned about him [in response to a question about bin Laden]."

Both quotes by George W. Bush, March 13, 2002

In other words, during the period in question, the Bush administration was specifically de-emphasizing the war in Afghanistan in order to change their focus to Iraq. Democrats (especially Al Gore, who in 2002 was considered likely to run again in 2004) were sharply critical and suggested pushing harder in Afghanistan.

I'm not suggesting that there was any quid pro quo with Mr. Alishtari's donations (which in the overall scheme of things probably did not make much difference). What I am suggesting is simply that a terrorist supporting other terrorists in Afghanistan saw that what the President and the GOP was doing was going to help his friends (those who attacked us on 9/11) and therefore did what he could to push the Republican agenda forward. The Republican party has claimed they had no idea who he was and I believe them. But they should heed the call to give back the money now that it is known.

And he was right, Bush policy has helped them.