Back in July, I stated that something stunk about the case against seven Miami, Florida men the government claimed was plotting to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago. The issue that I saw was that these men had neither the talent or the means to carry out this plot. In fact, their so-called weapons training involved going paintball shooting. They had so little money that the FBI agent who “infiltrated” them had to buy them boots. The agent says that the swore allegience to al Quaeda but the only “contact” they had with anyone in al Quaeda was the agent himself, who claimed to be tied to al Quaeda.

So, today, the Bush administration got egg on its face. They and a lot of right-wing talking heads spoke about breaking up this plot justified all the Bush administrations actions in its so-called war on terror. Today, a jury acquitted one of the men involved and had a hung jury on the other six:

The mistrial means prosecutors will have to decide whether to retry the six men.

The outcome was a setback for the Bush administration, which had seized on the case to illustrate the dangers of homegrown terrorism and trumpet the government’s post-Sept. 11 success in infiltrating and smashing terror plots in their earliest stages.

Lyglenson Lemorin, who was not the alleged ringleader, was acquitted.

The jury gave up on the other defendants after nine days of deliberations on four terrorism-related conspiracy charges that carry a combined maximum of 70 years in prison. The jury of six men and six women twice sent notes to the presiding judge indicating they could not reach verdicts but were told to keep trying. The mistrial came after their third note.

To this, I quote what I wrote in July:

“…hyping up cases like this makes me question if we are serious about battling terrorism or if it’s more like our war on drugs — just occasionally bust a few people to make it seem like something is really being done and keep your political office for another term.”

Popularity: 23% [?]

I don’t know much about Malcolm Nance. For all I know, we may be polar opposites on a lot of issues but, at least, we agree on one issue — torture doesn’t work.

Why should his opinion matter? Well, a quick read of this bio might cause one to pay attention. It reads, in part:

Malcolm W. Nance is a 25-year veteran of the US intelligence community’s Combating Terrorism program. He is a combat veteran who has served as an intelligence collections operator, cryptologist and interrogator. He has spent 17 years deploying on anti-terrorism and counter-terrorism intelligence operations in the Balkans, Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa in direct support to the Special Operations Command as well as assignments at the principle agencies of the Intelligence Community. In the Global War on Terrorism he served in Afghanistan where he conducted intelligence operations in Nangahar province (Jalalabad-Tora Bora) and 14 months in Iraq as a security director at the headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. There he studied the Iraqi resistance and Al Qaeda’s involvement in the insurgency. He is a FOX News analyst on Al Qaeda and the Insurgency.

Additionally, he has authored five books on counter-terrorism, actually instructed aspiring Navy Seals on how to resist torture and served as Director of a D.C.-base counter-terrorism consultants group.

So, needless to say, the brother knows his stuff.

He testified today in a House Judiciary Committee hearing on torture and he, along with Colonel Steve Kleinman (who is also a veteran interrogator), are giving certain Republicans heartburn. TPMMucraker.com has been following this story as it develops and it seems that this has struck a serious blow against the right-wing spin on supporting torture. Nance stated that, as a result of what the U.S. is doing, we have virtually “guaranteed” that our own troops will be tortured. He went on to state that foreign nations now have “a legal standard to subject American soldiers to enhanced interrogations.”

Kleinman went on to deal another blow by saying that “enhanced interrogation techniques” (torture) do not work because they actually impair his ability to read body language and gestures, which help him determine if a suspect is lying, being cooperative or telling him the truth.

Up until now, Republicans have tried to silence torture critics by impugning their credibility on the issue but, when you have two experts, with long resumes and an impressive body of knowledge of and experience in counter-terrorism and interrogation, it wasn’t possible for Republicans to shoot holes in their testimony. Of course, it could also be a tinge of fear on their part about being aired out publicly by at least one of these experts.

Malcolm Nance warned would be “swiftboaters” on attacking him:

“You will see a spectacle on C-Span. I’ll impugn [my attacker's] credibility in public. Let’s see him give 20 years in the military, give up his family life, and then he can come talk. If not, shut the hell up.”

So, the hearing ending with expressions of respect for their perspective.

At least for today, Malcolm Nance is my hero.

Popularity: 29% [?]

A recent report released by two of NYPD’s counterterrorism experts should raise a red flag to anyone who actually cares about the Constitution. A byline in an article about this report tells it all. The report calls for “increased domestic surveillance and pre-emptive action against American Muslims who might become ‘homegrown terrorists’ by visiting Internet sites.”

Think about this…we need to go after Muslims for visiting web sites.

Okay, I know, this is where someone says “…but 9/11 changed everything.” However, read this passage from Nat Parry’s article, calling attention to the hypocrisy of it all:

Arguably, there has been more reason to fear right-wing militia types like Timothy McVeigh (who killed 168 people in the Oklahoma City bombing) or Cuban terrorists such as Luis Posada Carriles (now protected from deportation by the Bush administration despite his role in repeated terror attacks).

Yet, after angry white male McVeigh car-bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, there was no talk of suspending the Constitution or rounding up right-wing militia members for pre-emptive detention. Law enforcement simply tracked down the conspirators and punished them through the normal criminal justice system. (McVeigh was executed and his co-conspirators were sentenced to prison terms.)

Many right-wing extremists also have their hatreds fueled not just by like-minded Web sites but by talk radio and TV personalities, such as Michael Savage and Ann Coulter, who flippantly use hostile, even threatening, language against political enemies.

Indeed, if Silber and Bhatt based their report on actual killings by domestic terrorists – rather than concentrating on a handful of thwarted Muslim plans and even theoretical threats – they would have written a report that not only took aim at violent jihadist Web sites but at hate talk on right-wing radio and TV shows.

Tell the truth and shame the devil, Mr. Parry.

Popularity: 43% [?]

This, apparently, is the face of terror.

66-year-old Sarah Weiss is “responsible”, in part, for the recent terror scare in which we were told that terrorists were trying dry runs of terrorist attacks. A search of her bag yielded 2 old icepacks (The TSA identified them as ‘clay’), which she used for her bad back and a report from a survey of Muslim Americans, which she was reading for her outreach work for her faith-based group. This was July 5, 2007. Weiss was detained and questioned for three hours and was asked, among other things, if she knew Osama bin Laden. You can see the video here.

But, this is not a story about who the local TSA detained. They are tasked with looking into suspicious luggage, even if we don’t necessarily agree with what’s to be considered “suspicious” and they should not make assumptions about who could be involved in acts of terrorism.

No, there is another story here. Weeks later, as the Bush Administration is catching heat over the Attorney General, this report is leaked and a terror warning is issued. We were told about an incident involving clay (the incident above) and another one involving blocks of cheese, supposedly with wires and a cellphone near them. What we were not told was that these incidents, and two others, were explained away and no charges were filed in any of them. In other words, we get another bogus terror alert. In the end, this blew some of the heat off the AG story as we have yet another phony terror alert surfacing at a convenient time form Bush and Co.

Keith Olbermann has a series called The Nexus of Politics and Terror. The latest installment breaks it down quite nicely.

Popularity: 35% [?]

Bush has insisted that the fight for Iraq is THE fight against terrorism and that, even yesterday, still tried to link Iraq and 9/11 by saying, “Al-Qaida is doing most of the spectacular bombings, trying to incite sectarian violence..The same people that attacked us on September the 11th is a crowd that is now bombing people, killing innocent men, women and children, many of whom are Muslims.”

Okay, then how do you explain this?

According to U.S. counterterrorism analysts, Al Quaeda is regrouped and nearly back to pre-9/11 strength. But, they are amassing their strength in Iraq, right? No, in fact they are at the place that we took our collective eye off to pursue a war of choice in Iraq is where Al Quaeda is renewing its strength.

John Kringen, who heads the CIA’s analysis directorate, echoed the concerns about al-Qaida’s resurgence during testimony and conversations with reporters at a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Wednesday.

“They seem to be fairly well settled into the safe haven and the ungoverned spaces of Pakistan,” Kringen testified. “We see more training. We see more money. We see more communications. We see that activity rising.”

The threat assessment comes as the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies prepare a National Intelligence Estimate focusing on threats to the United States. A senior intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity while the high-level analysis was being completed, said the document has been in the works for roughly two years.

That “ungoverned space” is along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border — the same region that Osama bin Laden my very well be today.

So, when Bush is talking about fighting terror, does anybody besides the 29% of America who still support him actually believe that he knows what he doing?

Popularity: 27% [?]

Something about the story of the “Miami Seven”, who were allegedly plotting to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago, always stunk to me. Here you have a bunch of guys without a nickel to rub between them and without the expertise to pull of an attack being treated like some national security threat.

Now, obviously, you have seven people who, collectively, are not that bright. They supposedly vowed allegiance to al Quaeda. But, beyond that, this all seems flimsy. For example, check out the following excerpt from MSNBC.com:

Prosecutors say they discussed blowing up the Sears Tower and destroying FBI offices and other buildings in Miami, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Washington. Authorities have said their purported plot never moved beyond the preliminary stages and the group never possessed explosives or other weapons to carry it out, but insist the men were serious about their intentions.

But, even more interesting is the following:

Members of the group would often go paintball shooting as a form of military training, and once used a U.S. flag for target practice, defendant Burson Augustin, 22, told the FBI.

In other words, they didn’t have real guns to train with so, they used paintball guns. Anybody else questioning whether or not these guys were for real or just a bunch of dudes trying to be tough? I think that there are some real terrorist threats in the country, both domestic and foreign, but hyping up cases like this makes me question if we are serious about battling terrorism or if it’s more like our war on drugs — just occasionally bust a few people to make it seem like something is really being done and keep you political office for another term. I really believe that the latter is true.

Popularity: 25% [?]

A few days ago, I shared another story debunking the myth that terrorism is just an Arab/Muslim tactic. This story was about a militia group in Alabama that was caught in possession of about 200 grenades, a grenade launcher and 2500 rounds of ammunition, among other weapons.

According to a federal agent investigating the group, the group was planning a machine gun attack on Mexicans in the town of Remlap, AL, just north of Birmingham.

So, what happens to these men? They are accused of plotting a terrorist attack in the U.S. against people who, as far as we know, are U.S. citizens. Where is the flashy news coverage? We had seven black men in Miami, who couldn’t even afford boots, who were locked up for a supposed plot to bomb the Sears Tower in Chicago. But, you have a group of people who really had the means to carry out their plot and not much is being made of it.

But, we have been led to believe that you have to be a Muslim in order to want to commit acts of terror. Timothy McVeigh taught us all that this is a very bad and dangerous assumption.

Popularity: 45% [?]

As I have stated before, I wonder how hard it would be to sell the whole “war on terror” idea when when have to consider that all terrorists aren’t Muslim? There are elements in this country that claim Christian beliefs and are a bigger threat to us here because they live amongst us.

Read the following and ask yourself how big a deal the media would have made about this had this been Arab Muslims as opposed to white Americans?

Simultaneous raids carried out in four Alabama counties Thursday turned up truckloads of explosives and weapons, including 130 grenades, an improvised rocket launcher and 2,500 rounds of ammunition belonging to the small, but mightily armed, Alabama Free Militia.

Six alleged members of the Free Militia also were arrested by federal authorities and are being held without bond.

Investigators said the DeKalb County-based group had not made any specific threats or devised any plots, but was targeted for swift dismantling because of its heavy firepower. The militia, which called itself the Naval Militia at one point, had enough armament to outfit a small army.

This is part of the reason why I say this war on terror is a sham. We need to be real and admit that it’s not about religion — it’s about extremism and extremism comes in all religions and colors.

Popularity: 50% [?]

Though we are reluctant to help Africa and Africans, we too easily go along with the violation of human rights of Africans. The latest comes in the form of FBI and CIA agents interrogating so-called terrorism suspects in an Ethiopion prison notorious for its use of torture.

We may argue that, when we are dealing with grown men accused of terrorism, you can’t handle them with kid gloves. But, what happens when women and children are being detained?

More than 100 of the detainees were originally arrested in Kenya in January, after almost all of them fled Somalia because of the intervention by Ethiopian troops accompanied by U.S. special forces advisers, according to Kenyan police reports and U.S. military officials.

Those people were then deported in clandestine pre-dawn flights to Somalia, according to the Kenya Muslim Human Rights Forum and airline documents. At least 19 were women and 15 were children.

In Somalia, they were handed over to Ethiopian intelligence officers and secretly flown to Ethiopia, where they are now in detention, the New York-based Human Rights Watch says.

…

When contacted by AP, Ethiopian officials denied that they held secret prisoners or that any detainees were questioned by U.S. officials.

“No such kind of secret prisons exist in Ethiopia,” said Bereket Simon, special adviser to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. He declined to comment further.

A former prisoner and the families of current and former captives tell a different story.

“It was a nightmare from start to finish,” Kamilya Mohammedi Tuweni, a 42-year-old mother of three who has a passport from the United Arab Emirates, told AP in her first comments after her release in Addis Ababa on March 24 from what she said was 2½ months in detention without charge.

She is the only released prisoner who has spoken publicly. She was freed a month after being interviewed, fingerprinted and photographed by a U.S. agent, she said. Tuweni, an Arabic-Swahili translator, said she was arrested while on a business trip to Kenya and had never been to Somalia or had any links to that country.

She said she was arrested Jan. 10. Tuweni said she was beaten in Kenya, then forced to sleep on a stone floor while held in Somalia in a single room with 22 other women and children for 10 days before being flown to Ethiopia on a military plane.

Finally, she said, she was taken blindfolded from prison to a private villa in the Ethiopian capital. There, she said, she was interrogated with other women by a male U.S. intelligence agent. He assured her that she would not be harmed but urged her to cooperate, she said.

So, do we honestly think that, by arresting women and children and putting them in harm’s way, we can win the war on terror? I only see this as pouring gasoline on a fire. I do think that we need to fight terrorism but, we need to do it by addressing the needs/conditions that make it easier for a person to consider this course of action. In other words, we need to address the root causes and not engage in actions that on exacerbate the problem.

Popularity: 56% [?]

I have a very ordinary name. So, I couldn’t imagine going to buy a car or rent some property and be denied strictly because I share the same name as some person who’s a drug trafficker.

Well, imagine your name is Tom Hassan Kubbany, a middle-aged mental health worker from California. Kubbany has owned homes and has a credit history. However, he recently had a very bad experience when trying to obtain a mortgage. You see, in post 9/11 America, lists are generated, containing the names of suspected terrorists and drug traffickers and, if your name is somewhat similar to those on the list, too bad for you.

The Office of Foreign Asset Control’s list of “specially designated nationals” has long been used by banks and other financial institutions to block financial transactions of drug dealers and other criminals. But an executive order issued by President Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has expanded the list and its consequences in unforeseen ways. Businesses have used it to screen applicants for home and car loans, apartments and even exercise equipment, according to interviews and a report by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay area to be issued Tuesday.

So, why was Kubbany given such a hard time?

Reviewing his loan file, he discovered something shocking. At the top of his credit report was an OFAC alert provided by credit bureau TransUnion that showed that his middle name, Hassan, is an alias for Ali Saddam Hussein, purportedly a “son of Saddam Hussein.”

The record is not clear on whether Ali Saddam Hussein was a Saddam offspring, but the OFAC list stated he was born in 1980 or 1983. Kubbany was born in Detroit in 1949.

But it gets worse. Check out this case:

Saad Ali Muhammad is an African American who was born in Chicago and converted to Islam in 1980. When he tried to buy a used car from a Chevrolet dealership three years ago, a salesman ran his credit report and at the top saw a reference to “OFAC search,” followed by the names of terrorists including Osama bin Laden. The only apparent connection was the name Muhammad. The credit report, also by TransUnion, did not explain what OFAC was or what the credit report user should do with the information. Muhammad wrote to TransUnion and filed a complaint with a state human rights agency, but the alert remains on his report, Sinnar said.

So, if the name Muhammad gets one flagged, I wonder what Muhammad Ali’s credit report reads.

Instead of really fighting terrorism, we get lazy policies and enforcement tactics that get us nowhere. But, all you have to do is say “war on terror” and people are given a free pass for this kind of stupidity.

Popularity: 49% [?]