Al Qaeda: Weakened, Not Defeated

By W. Thomas Smith, Jr. (more by this author)

Is Al Qaeda in its death throes? Hardly, say terrorism experts: The Al Qaeda network has been temporarily weakened on a few fronts, to be sure, but it is far from defeated.

Nevertheless, the authors of a recent spate of end-of-terror essays would have us believe otherwise. Paul Cruickshank writing for the New York Daily News, even goes so far as to suggest that the likelihood of "terror returning to New York’s streets" may be "significantly lower" within a few years.

We all hope so. But the prediction, some say, is either wishful thinking or perhaps a bit of politics.

The essays -- written by Cruickshank and his compatriots Peter Bergen, Lawrence Wright, and others -- come on the heels of CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden’s recent statements that "Al Qaeda is on the verge of a strategic defeat in Iraq," and suggesting (though in broad, cautious terms) that the international terrorist network is suffering setbacks elsewhere in the world.

Al Qaeda is suffering numerous setbacks on specific fronts -- like Iraq and Saudi Arabia -- and for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the network’s human brutality factor (terror-weary Muslims have suffered at the hands of Al Qaeda as much as non-Muslims) and the fact that U.S. and allied counterterrorism forces have beaten the enemy senseless on a number of sub-fronts. Rarely will we ever hear of those operations because those forces, of necessity, do their jobs in secret. [more...]

Family Security Matters Briefings - Week of 6/2/08

Doing Business with the Devil
By W. Thomas Smith, Jr.

In a segment last week on Fox News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor," host Bill O'Reilly continued hammering away at General Electric over its ongoing business dealings with Iran.

According to O'Reilly: "GE has about $50 million on the table in business dealings with Iran. Doing the math, that means $250 million could have been derived since Iran began killing Americans in Iraq about five years ago."

Amazing that a home-grown American company like GE would even consider doing business with terrorists or state sponsors of terrorism - much less be permitted to do so - but it's apparently true. The relationship between GE and the Iranian mullahs has existed for years. GE agreed to pull out of Iran in early 2005. It is now 2008, and GE is still there. [more...]


Exclusive: How Dangerous Is Jihad Terror?
Newsweek Columnist's Bizarre Statistical Gymnastics
By Joel Himelfarb

"Are we safer" because of the Bush Administration's post-September 11 efforts against Islamist terror and its state sponsors? The political Left asks this question constantly and concludes that America couldn't possibly be - even though terrorists haven't attacked the American homeland in almost seven years. Elsewhere in the world, however, violent Jihadism and its backers appear to be ascendant. All one has to do is see the rise of Sunni and Shi'ite terrorist networks in Iraq since 2003; Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; Hezbollah's rise in Lebanon; Hamas' creation of a terror state in Gaza; the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Some, if not all, of these problems have worsened during the presidency of George W. Bush. So, the world seems to be getting more dangerous. How, then, can Bush (or John McCain, for that matter) possibly claim to be succeeding in the war on terror? [more...]


The Network Behind the Bush-bashing Book
By Cliff Kincaid

Publisher Peter Osnos, who admits to personally working with former Bush White House press secretary Scott McClellan on his new book, What Happened, began his career as an assistant to I.F. Stone, the pro-communist "journalist" named as a Soviet agent of influence who was the uncle of Weather Underground communist terrorist Kathy Boudin. But the connections don't end there. Boudin's son Chesa was raised by Barack Obama associates Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who were Boudin's comrades in the communist terrorist group, after Kathy Boudin went to prison for her involvement in an armed robbery and assault that took the lives of two policemen and a security guard. Dohrn later served jail time for refusing to cooperate in an official investigation of the crime. [more...]


Exclusive: The New GI Bill
By KT McFarland

For the next few weeks Washington will be drawn into a battle over a new GI bill and like most things in Washington these days, it will be heavily politicized. The original GI bill received almost unanimous bipartisan support when it was enacted in 1944, and provided combat veterans returning from Germany and Japan with a free college education. Called the "Servicemen's Readjustment Act", the World War II GI bill covered college tuition, books, room and board. Millions of Americans got a college education they would otherwise never have had; it let them live the "American Dream." The original idea was it would stretch out the reentry of 8 million military personnel into the job market, reward them for their service, and lift the education standards of the nation. Experts have argued that the GI Bill "reinvented America" after World War II. Subsequent studies showed that every dollar spent on the GI bill's education benefits added seven dollars to the US economy. It was never intended as a recruitment tool - the attack on Pearl Harbor and the draft took care of that. [more...]


Criminal Networks in West Africa: An Emerging Security Challenge
By J.Peter Pham, PhD

On April 30th, Sidi Ould Sidna, a.k.a. Abou Jendel, an al Qaeda-linked militant who escaped earlier in the month from the courthouse in Nouakchott, Mauritania, where he was being tried for the Christmas Eve 2007 killing of four French tourists, was recaptured in a predawn police raid on a residence in the capital city's Arafat district. Captured with Sidna was another militant, Khadim Ould Semane, who had been sought for a February 1st attack on the Israeli embassy in the Mauritanian capital, one of only three members of the Arab League to host a full-fledge diplomatic mission from the Jewish state. Both men have admitted their association with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and its predecessor organizations (see my May 8th update on AQIM). [more...]

Brigitte Gabriel on Terrorist Takeover of Lebanon

Brigitte Gabriel, renowned Middle East expert, author of the New York Times Bestseller "Because they Hate" and founder of ACT for America.org knows firsthand what Lebanon is going through: "What is happening in Lebanon is an Iranian takeover and submission of Lebanese democracy using its proxy terrorist army Hezbollah (party of Allah). Iran is preparing a base from which to attack Israel aided and abetted by Syria in a common goal of confronting Israel.

300 Iranian top military trained fighters landed in Lebanon the day the airport was shot down to aid in the fighting as Syrian wings joined with them and Hezbollah in West Beirut. [The violence was triggered by the government's attempts to ban a telecommunications system used by Hezbollah.] Both Iran and Syria, as well as the terrorists are laying the groundwork for a major offensive against Israel in the near future, that are the beginning stages of a confrontation that will engulf the Middle East."

At least 58 people have been killed and 189 have been wounded since the clashes broke out on Thursday. The violence is the worst to hit Lebanon since the end of its civil war in 1991. For the past 17 months, Lebanon's elected, pro-Western government has been locked in a power struggle with Hezbollah. Lebanon's presidency has been vacant since pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud's term ended in November. Despite general agreement on army chief Gen. Michel Suleiman to fill the post, political wrangling among Lebanon's political factions has kept the issue from coming up for a vote. Parliament is scheduled to convene Tuesday to try to elect a new president for the 19th time. It is unclear if the latest fighting will force the government to postpone the session. [more...]