Category Archives: The War at Home

Cell Phone Chatter on U.S. Flights

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Bill Would Ban Cell Phone Chatter on U.S. Flights

by Chloe Albanesius

For many of us, the opportunity to power down the cell phone or disconnect from the Internet during an airplane ride is a welcome respite from being constantly connected, but technologies that will soon allow for Web browsing and cell phone service from 35,000 feet could disrupt those moments of solitude.

Several members of Congress want to ensure that your domestic flights are not interrupted by one-sided cell phone chatter. They introduced a bill on Tuesday that would ban passengers on U.S. flights from talking on their mobile phones, should that technology become available.

Text messaging and surfing the Web would be permissible, according to the bill.

The measure, H.R. 5788, comes a week after the European Union voted to allow cell phone use on commercial flights.

“Last year was one of the worst on record for flight cancellations, delays and lost luggage,” bill co-sponsor Rep. Jerry Costello, R-Ill., said in a statement. “Now is not the time to consider making the airline passenger-experience any worse and using cell phones in-flight would do just that.”

“The free market wasn’t adequate to regulate smoking on planes and it won’t be sufficient to regulate cell phones either,” said Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore.

“This bill will ensure a relative amount of peace for the American public as they take to an increasingly crowded sky,” said Rep. John Hunter, R-Tenn.

Bill sponsors cited a poll sponsored by the Association of Flight Attendants and the National Consumers League that found only 21 percent of passengers in favor of removing restrictions on airplane cell phone use.

CTIA, which represents the wireless industry, did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

Here’s a thought: make those calls automatically subject to intercepting without recourse to the FISA rules, and provide the results on a fast track to the homeland security people.

Second Mistrial in Miami Terrorism Case

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Judge orders mistrial in Miami terrorism case

MIAMI (AP) — A federal judge has declared another mistrial against six men accused of plotting to spark an anti-government war by toppling Chicago’s Sears Tower and bombing FBI offices.

U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard ordered a mistrial when jurors reported they were deadlocked after 13 days of deliberation in the case of the so-called “Liberty City Seven.” The first trial ended in a mistrial in December because of a hung jury for the same six defendants and the acquittal of a seventh.

Lenard set an April 23 hearing on whether a third trial would occur. U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta said in a statement a decision on whether to try the men a third time would be announced at that hearing.

The six could have faced up to 70 years in prison if convicted of four conspiracy charges.

Defense lawyers indicated in court they would seek to have the men released on bail at next week’s hearing.

Jurors in this trial first reported a stalemate last Friday and sent out a second note reporting an impasse on Tuesday. Each time, Lenard ordered the seven-man, five-woman jury, whose names are secret, to keep trying.

“They’ve deliberated. They’ve discussed this case inside and out,” said Rod Vereen, who represents defendant Stanley Phanor. “At this point, enough is enough.”

Read the rest here.

Trial: Eight Bombers

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British Muslims ‘planned to kill thousands by bringing down SEVEN transatlantic airliners in one go with liquid bombs’
By CHARLOTTE GILL and SAM GREENHILL

A gang of British Muslims planned to blow up seven planes within hours in the biggest terrorist atrocity since 9/11, a court heard yesterday.

Two thousand passengers would have died in the plot by eight fanatics working “in the name of Islam”, the jury was told.

It could have involved up to 18 suicide bombers. And they were almost ready to strike.

The jets they targeted would all have been bound from Heathrow to cities in the U.S. and Canada, it was claimed.

Once the first had exploded the authorities would have had to watch, powerless, as the six others were downed.

Plastic soft-drink bottles were to be the murder weapon – filled with explosive and connected to a detonator.

The alleged plot led to a ban on liquid containers bigger than 100ml which is still in force at UK airports.

Had it been successful, the death toll would have far eclipsed the 52 killed on July 7, 2005, when four suicide bombers detonated their rucksacks on the London transport system.

And if the conspirators chose to blow themselves up over land, the number of casualties in the air and on the ground could have exceeded the Twin Towers attacks in which nearly 3,000 died.

Read the rest here.

And here.

‘We’re not safe, but we’re safer’

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America’s top spy fears cyber-terror against U.S.

Greenville native says, ‘We’re not safe, but we’re safer’

By Ben Szobody
STAFF WRITER

Mike McConnell, President Bush’s director of national intelligence, told The Greenville News on Friday that the country’s cyber networks pose a national vulnerability “probably unprecedented in our history,” and he hopes to create a robust federal program to prevent an attack that he said would have “an order of magnitude global impact greater than 9-11.”

He also pushed for three key provisions in a controversial surveillance bill pending in Congress, saying passage is crucial because a “significant — some would even say majority” — portion of what the U.S. knows about terrorists and their plans comes from listening to their communication.

In an hour-long speech at Furman University, the country’s top spy traced his career from modest childhood roots in Greenville through his first semester sleeping in a gym closet at Furman, and later to jobs as intelligence director during the Gulf War and director of the National Security Agency.

Asked to assess U.S. intelligence since 2001, McConnell, whose Cabinet position was created in part to increase sharing between intelligence agencies, said, “We’re not safe, but we’re safer.”

He urged Furman students to consider a life of public service and said he’d like to build a house on a lot he owns in The Cliffs at Glassy.

Read the rest here.

Connecting the Dots

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Connecting the Dots

That’s the central idea about the kind of intelligence work we have to do at the federal level.

That doesn’t sound hard. In fact, when you put it that way, most people ought to be good at it.

Most efforts of this sort have two parts, the collection (of the dots, if you will) and the analysis
(connecting the dots). That sounds easy enough, if you get all the dots.

But if somebody runs the dots through a strainer, and thereby holds back some of the dots, the resulting analysis will be wrongly, perhaps fatally, biased.

Suppose connecting the dots was my job.

If you don’t give me all the dots, you change the model we must then use to deploy our defenses, determine the shape the lines of defense and support will take, where and how the first responders will be trained and deployed, and where to stage reserves.

All of these could, of course, be wrongly defined by our biased model.

Wrongly prepositioned caches of medical supplies and hazard gear may be useless or undeliverable.

And it would have a definite effect upon my testimony if I survived the attack and had to answer the investigative committees and panels that will follow.

It might be hard to avoid comparisons with Jamie Gorelick and the Gorelick Wall.

Toledo Mayor to Marines: Leave downtown

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Mayor to Marines: Leave downtown.
He says urban exercises scare people

By JC REINDL
BLADE STAFF WRITER

A company of Marine Corps Reservists received a cold send-off from downtown Toledo yesterday by order of Mayor Carty Finkbeiner.

The 200 members of Company A, 1st Battalion, 24th Marines, based in Grand Rapids, Mich., planned to spend their weekend engaged in urban patrol exercises on the streets of downtown as well as inside the mostly vacant Madison Building, 607 Madison Ave.

Toledo police knew days in advance about their plans for a three-day exercise. Yet somehow the memo never made it to Mayor Finkbeiner, who ordered the Marines out yesterday afternoon just minutes before their buses were to arrive.

“The mayor asked them to leave because they frighten people,” said Brian Schwartz, the mayor’s spokesman.

“He did not want them practicing and drilling in a highly visible area.”

So after a brief stop at a friendly base in Perrysburg Township, the Marines by early evening were back on their way home to Grand Rapids.

“I wish they would have told us this four hours ago,” Staff Sgt. Andre Davis said. Read more here.

How Long Will It Take?

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Bin Laden Cell Phone
Somewhere, perhaps on the other side of the world, some techie friends of bin Laden have been poring over all the daily web reports of our so-called FISA Court issue.

They are dissecting the various tortuous descriptions and piecing together where and how we work to monitor the communications throughout his far flung network.

How long will it take them to map it all out in sufficient detail?

Then how long will it take them to bring it to the next logical level?

First move the actual phone paths to another venue.

Then leave behind a “false” network on the old paths. It should look and feel like the old network, but only feed us what they want us to get.

You don’t believe that?

We’ll probably see soon enough, one way or another.

Coming To A Screen Near You?

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What kind of a war is this? Ask our British cousins.

British children targeted with sing-along DVD for would-be suicide bombers

A Hamas TV show in March has made its way on DVD to Britain:

(From the Daily Mail and Jerusalem Post):

A children’s sing-along DVD for would-be suicide bombers is being investigated by police after being found on sale in one of Britain’s terrorist hotbeds.

The disturbing disc of music videos – part of an Egyptian-made series – shows a young girl singing about following in the footsteps of her suicide bomber mother.

A group of self-proclaimed orphans also turn against the West over the plight of the Palestinian people.

The shocking DVD was purchased in Bradford, West Yorks, and full details of the Leeds-based UK distributors are contained on the back of the cover.

The West Yorkshire Police specialist counter terrorism unit are investigating the contents – which contain three tracks sung by children in Arabic with English subtitles.


The first song is about two children who lose their mother when she becomes a suicide bomber.

The song is believed to be a reference to Reem al-Reyashi, a 22-year-old Palestinian mother-of-two who blew herself up on January 14, 2004, at a crossing, in the Gaza Strip, killing four Israelis.

Four-year-old girl vows to be suicide terrorist in Hamas TV dramatization

The video begins with an Arab woman playing with her two children, then leaving her home with dynamite tucked in her dress, blowing herself up after being challenged by uniformed soldiers, and her children and husband finding out about her death on TV.

After finding out about the suicide on television, her small daughter finds a stick of dynamite in her mother’s wardrobe and turns to the camera with the subtitles: “My love will not be by words. I will follow my mother’s steps.”

Where next? Chicago? Denver? San Francisco?

Links:
Jihad Watch
Daily Mail

DOD Furloughs?

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SEC. GATES: Good afternoon. I have a statement, and copies of it will be available after the — after the press briefing.

Yesterday Secretary Rice and I, General Cartwright and Deputy Treasury Secretary Kimmitt met with members of Congress to discuss ongoing operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. We reviewed the real security gains being made in Iraq as well as the political and economic situation.

I also strongly urged the Congress to pass a global war on terror funding bill that the president would sign. With the passage of the Defense Appropriations Act, there is a misperception that this department can continue funding our troops in the field for an indefinite period of time through accounting maneuvers, that we can shuffle money around the department. This is a serious misconception.

The fact is, the department has significantly less funding flexibility than it had last spring. In the fall of 2006, Congress provided us with a bridge fund of $70 billion until passage of the full war supplemental. The full supplemental did not pass Congress until late May.

This fall, the department has been operating under a continuing resolution. Now that the regular appropriations bill has been enacted, we are left with no bridge fund and only our base budget to support normal war operations. Further, Congress has provided very limited flexibility to deal with this funding shortage. We can only move a total of $3.7 billion under general transfer authority, which only amounts to a little over one week’s worth of war expenses.

All this leaves the department only with undesirable options to continue operations in the absence of a bridge fund. The path we believe is least undesirable fiscally and militarily would involve the following.

The military would cease operations at all Army bases by mid-February next year. This would result in the furloughing of about 100,000 government employees and a like number of contractor employees at Army bases.

These layoffs would have a cascading effect on depots and procurements. Similar actions would follow for the Marine Corps about a month later. By law, we’re required to notify certain union employees 60 days in advance, so appropriate notices would have to go out starting in mid-December.

If the Congress does not provide bridge funding this week on a bill that the president will sign, and given the uncertainty of future action in December, by the end of this week, as a prudent manager, I will be obliged to take a series of anticipatory steps.

First, submit an urgent reprogramming request to the Congress. And second, direct the Army and Marine Corps to develop a plan to furlough employees, terminate contracts and prepare bases for reduced operations.

These plans would begin to be implemented in mid-December. It is a fact of life that even if we received a $50 billion bridge now, and the president signs it, it will fund war operations only through about the end of February. And so we would be back in this situation immediately after the Congress reconvenes in late January.

A final point, I make these comments solely as the person charged by the president and the Congress with administering the Department of Defense. The high degree of uncertainty on funding for the war is immensely complicating this task and will have many real consequences for this department and for our men and women in uniform.

(Read the whole transcript here.)

Lights! Action! Filibuster!

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Senate Dem leaders float plan for forced filibuster

Senate Democrats might force Republicans to wage a filibuster if the GOP wants to block the latest Iraq withdrawal bill, aides and senators said Tuesday.

That could set the stage for a dramatic end-of-the-year partisan showdown, which Democrats hope will help them turn voter frustration with Congress and the stalemate over Iraq into anger with the Republican Party.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.), the number two Democrat in the chamber, said a forced filibuster is “possible” and would “generate attention.”

“We want to go to the bill, and [Republicans] have to decide initially whether they want us to go to the bill,” Durbin said. “I wouldn’t call it theatrics.”

More like Rube Goldberg, perhaps?

Read the rest -> here.

Is Congress Broken?

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New Congress at war over everything

By: Patrick O’Connor

In a closed-door meeting before the last vote on the children’s health care bill, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer appealed for the support of about 30 wavering Republican lawmakers. What he got instead was a tongue-lashing, participants said.

The GOP lawmakers, all of whom had expressed interest in a bipartisan deal on the SCHIP legislation, were furious that the Democratic leader from Maryland had not reached out to them in a more serious way early on. They also criticized him and Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel of Illinois for failing to stop his allies outside Congress from running attack ads in their districts, while they were discussing a bipartisan deal.

The result was a predictable one for this bitterly divided Congress. The House vote for a second SCHIP bill was a healthy majority, but not the two-thirds needed to override another veto vowed by President Bush. Only one Republican switched his vote — to oppose the measure.

Democrats accused Republicans of hurting kids. Republicans howled about a heavy-handed, uncompromising Democratic majority. And another chance at bipartisan consensus slipped away.

Read the rest.

Rep. Stark’s Apology

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Rep. Pete Stark (D-Cal.) made some rather disgusting comments on the floor of the House last week about kids being sent “to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president’s amusement.”

On Tuesday, Stark apologized for his previous statement.

I want to apologize to my, first of all my colleagues, many of whom I have offended, to the President and his family, to the troops that may have found in my remarks as were suggested in the motion that was just voted on.

And I do apologize.

And, for this reason: I think that we have a serious issue before us: the issue of providing medical care for children; the issue of what we do about a war we are divided about ought to end.

I hope that with this apology I will become as insignificant as I should be, and that we can return to the issues that do divide us, but that we can resolve in a better fashion.

Did you see the apology on TV? If not, here’s the video of his apology.

2001 Yes, 2007 No

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Soldier photo tribute banned at U.S. post office in California
(h/t to Michelle Malkin)

Central coast post office is forced to take down photographs of local soldiers serving overseas.

Some are likening it to a wall of shame. Since 2001, pictures of men and women in the military have been a fixture of the Paso Robles Post Office until this morning.

“What happened to the pictures? Why were they taken down?” asked Shelley Reeger, who is a military wife.

All morning Paso Robles postal employees were answering tough questions.

That is because just before the post office opened its doors Friday morning, a board covered with pictures of local soldiers had to be taken down after a compliant was made to its Consumer Affairs Department…

…The wall of photos got its start after some post office employees wanted to show their support for local troops back in 2001.

But a spokesperson for the United States Post Office says regulations specify that only official postal announcements and other government notices can be put up on the walls.

“We just cannot put those photos back up, they should not have been up there to begin with,” said United States Postal Service spokesperson Richard Maher.

Policy or not, even the Mayor of Paso Robles has stepped in.

“I’m looking forward to hearing from the congressmen. They have indicated to me that they are looking into this,” said Paso Robles Mayor Frank Mecham.