South American Terrorists May Have Uranium

Just what we need, terrorists in our own hemisphere, supported by totalitarian dictator Hugo Chavez, with the makings of a nuclear device.

(CNN) -- Evidence found in computers seized in a raid over the weekend suggests that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez recently gave the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia $300 million, Colombia's national police chief said Monday.

Speaking at a news conference, Gen. Oscar Naranjo also said evidence in the computers suggests FARC had given Chavez 100 million pesos when he was a jailed rebel leader.

FARC has fought to overthrow the Colombian government for 40 years.

Chavez had no immediate response to the allegations involving him.

Naranjo said other evidence in the computers suggests FARC purchased 50 kilograms of uranium this month.

But we can rest easy... President Obama plans to bomb Pakistan.

The Jihad Is Over

At least according to one Al Qaeda imam:

WASHINGTON — One of Al Qaeda's senior theologians is calling on his followers to end their military jihad and saying the attacks of September 11, 2001, were a "catastrophe for all Muslims."

In a serialized manifesto written from prison in Egypt, Sayyed Imam al-Sharif is blasting Osama bin Laden for deceiving the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, and for insulting the Prophet Muhammad by comparing the September 11 attacks to the early raids of the Ansar warriors. The lapsed jihadist even calls for the formation of a special Islamic court to try Osama bin Laden and his old comrade Ayman al-Zawahri.

The disclosures from Mr. Sharif, also known as Dr. Fadl and Abd al-Qadir ibn Abd al-Aziz, have already opened a rift at the highest levels of Al Qaeda. The group's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, a former associate of the defecting theologian in Egypt, personally mocked him last month in a video, remarking that he was unaware Egyptian prisons had fax machines. Meanwhile, leading Western analysts are saying the defection of Mr. Sharif indicates the beginning of the end for Al Qaeda.

So who is this guy?

Mr. Sharif, currently serving a life sentence in an undisclosed Egyptian prison, wrote in the 1980s two of the modern seminal texts for Sunni jihadism and in particular Al Qaeda, in "Fundamental Concepts Regarding Jihad" and "The Five Ground Rules for the Achieving of Victory or Its Absence." Those books are scholarly justifications, citing the Koran and Hadiths, for joining a war against Muslim apostates such as the Egyptian ruling class and for a broader jihad against the far enemy of America.

Oh, Senator Reid... do you still think the war is lost? Senator Edwards, is the war on terror still a bumper sticker?

More on Chavez and the Marxist Terrorists

I pointed out in this post how close Hugo Chavez is with the Marxist FALN terrorists in Columbia... here's some more data for you to ruminate on:

In theory, a mediator should persuade two sides to each give up something to achieve a common end. The only one who gave up anything, however, was [Colombian President] Uribe, who watched Chavez cavort with terrorists before TV cameras, giving them a legitimacy in Caracas they never had known.

Even worse, Chavez proved to be acting as an agent of the terrorists. Uribe's sudden cutoff of the mediation effort at a hastily organized press conference last Wednesday suggested disturbing new information.

On Sunday, Chavez confirmed it: "I think Colombia deserves another president, it deserves a better president," he said.

That followed a discussion in a U.S. prison between extradited FARC terrorist Ricardo Palmera, aka "Simon Trinidad," and another mediator and Chavez ally appointed by Uribe, Senator Piedad Cordoba. They discussed "a transitional government" with the terrorist as a bargaining chip for the hostage swap.

On Monday, Chavez repeated what he had in mind to make sure Uribe understood. "Reconciliation is impossible," he said. "We have to wait for a new government in Colombia we can talk with. I hope it arrives sooner rather than later."

Sure sounds like he's supporting the terrorists... what they want is a new government in Colombia, too, one patterned on Marxist ideals... like Chavez's Venezuela, for example.

Good thing his stock seems to be falling, as people like Uribe get wise to him.

Columbia Reborn

Speaking of Columbian President Uribe, NRO has a great article (link in the title) about him and his progress in rebuilding the nation after the drug wars of the 90s. Maybe the Iraqis should pay attention.

In what was once the most dangerous neighborhood of this, the world’s most notorious city, a Sunday afternoon is a bustling, joyful affair. The scampering children and people sitting at tiny sidewalk cafes on the narrow streets would be fit subjects for a Colombian Norman Rockwell.

“Look,” says New York Democratic Rep. Gregory Meeks, part of a congressional delegation visiting from the United States, “they’re cooking pizzas, they’re eating ice cream, boyfriends and girlfriends are holding hands — this is amazing, this Medellin! We’re supposed to be dodging bullets.”

The late drug lord Pablo Escobar made this city into one of the most violent on Earth. Men like Sergio Fajardo — the outgoing mayor, a mathematician who is a leader in a citizens’ movement that arose in opposition to the violence — made it into a city that belies its reputation. In 1991, 6,500 people were murdered here; in 2006, 700 were. Medellin’s murder rate is now lower than Baltimore’s.

Okay, I know, that's not specifically about Uribe... keep reading.

Medellin is a microcosm of Colombia. President Alvaro Uribe has forged extraordinary security gains by taking the fight to the country’s hellish brew of left-wing guerrillas, their paramilitary opponents and narco-traffickers. The strength of the main guerrilla group, FARC, is down an estimated 40 percent from its peak, and more than 30,000 paramilitary fighters have been demobilized. Murders have dropped 40 percent from 2002 to 2006, and kidnappings almost 80 percent from 2000 to 2006.

Notice... violence is decreased by taking the fight to the terrorists. Democrats should listen, and listen good... but they won't. Once again, Democrats are standing in the way of helping those in need, in favor of one of their preferred constituencies.

But security is not enough. Colombia is awash in displaced people, chased from their homes by dueling guerrilla armies, and young men who have to be resocialized after lives of violence. They need jobs. That’s why the Colombia-U.S. Free Trade Agreement is so important. It is pending in Congress, where Democratic leaders might let it die in the gravest act of strategic short-sightedness since their attempted rebuke of Turkey.

[snip]

The congressmen can’t help but be impressed. What holds Democrats back from supporting the trade agreement is union opposition back home. The unions hate the deal even though most Colombia exports to the U.S. already benefit from trade preferences, and the deal would remove duties on U.S. goods going to Colombia. They complain about violence against Colombian union leaders, but attacks against unionists have tracked with general trends of violence — as killings have declined since 2002, so have murders of union leaders.

Rep. Meeks, an advocate for Afro-Colombians, supports the deal. He calls progress in the country “nothing short of a miracle,” and blames the image of the “old Colombia” for limiting the deal’s support. “If you come here,” he says, strolling out into the streets of this revived neighborhood, “it’s a no-brainer.”

Yep, the party that claims to be the champion of the little guy, fighting a bill that would help raise the economic fortunes of people in a very hard-hit country.

Typical. So typical.

Another "Shup Up, Chavez" Moment

This one wasn't a direct "shut up" quote, but the meaning is pretty much the same:

The peace-at-any-price crowd is outraged by the way Colombia's president yanked the right of Hugo Chavez to talk with terrorists. But all Alvaro Uribe did was signal that in diplomacy, results matter.

Middle East peace-process negotiators, take note.

Colombia's president, at the urging of France's Nicolas Sarkozy, last August gave Venezuelan dictator Chavez a chance to mediate the release of 45 hostages held in Colombia's jungle dungeons by FARC, a brutal Marxist narcoterrorist group at war with Colombia since 1964. The French wanted FARC hostage Ingrid Betancourt, a Franco-Colombian citizen kidnapped in 2002, freed. Three American contractors are also on the hostage list.

Who better than the thuggish Chavez? Or so the wisdom went. The radical Venezuelan leader is a hero to the narcoterrorists, who've festooned their Web site with praises for his "revolution." If anyone could persuade them to release hostages, it would be him.

But it didn't take long for Uribe to realize talks with terrorists would go nowhere. So instead of going along, Uribe pulled the plug.

Uribe's move offers lessons in how to deal with terrorists in an era when peace talks go on, emboldening terrorists to act out.

(Colored emphasis mine.)

So, there we have it. Once again, Chavez has had an opportunity to do good, and when he couldn't or wouldn't deliver, he got told to be quiet.

It's also interesting, as I highlighted above, that Chavez is the poster boy for the kind of people who take hostages and keep them for years. Perhaps not the squeaky clean image some people have of him, but truth is truth.

Terrorists Support Hillary, Part II

Looks like it's more than just terrorists making pro-Hillary statements... they're also donating money to her, and she's taking it, not returning it as other Democratic campaigns have done.

Some of the donors, in fact, are under active federal investigation for supporting terrorism, money laundering and tax fraud. After the press reported their alleged terror ties in past elections, Democrat Reps. Jim Moran of Virginia and Cynthia McKinney of Georgia had to refund their donations, making national news.

But that hasn't stopped Hillary from pocketing their money. So much for her promise to fly-speck donations for criminal ties following her fund-raising scandal with fugitive donor Norman Hsu.

In the past several months, the Democrat front-runner has received at least $2,000 from M. Yaqub Mirza, M. Omar Ashraf and Omar Barzinji, records show. Federal agents raided the Virginia homes and offices of the Muslim donors after 9/11, as part of a counterterrorism investigation targeting the so-called Safa group, a Saudi-backed conglomerate of Muslim businesses and charities.

It's this sort of thing that makes me glad every time someone predicts that Hillary will be the Democratic nominee... she will not only be absurdly easy to beat, given stories like this, but she will drag the Party of MoveOn right down the toilet.

Body Counts

During his radio show Thursday, Boortz related that one of the questions raised during the conservative talkers meeting with President Bush was the lack of body count of dead terrorists in Iraq. As Boortz related it, body count of terrorists is something that the Administration has distinctly and adamantly refused to engage in.

I've heard this point of contention raised several times during the War in Iraq. The media, every anti-war group and democrat politician can tell us with almost up to the minute exactness how many U.S. servicemen have been killed in Iraq, but we don't know how many terrorists and al Qaeda have been killed in the fighting. Oh, certainly, we'll hear the occasional news report of a major operation and that a certain number of terrorists were killed in the fighting, but no running total. It seems inconceivable that we have the number of U.S. military dead shoved in our face day after day, yet we have no comparable number of enemy dead to use as a yardstick for measurement.

I'm with the President on this. I don't think a body count of dead terrorists is a good metric to use - especially in this kind of fight. If we were fighting a conventional standing army, or in pitched battle against a nation, then the number of enemy killed might be a useful measurement. In that type of fight you can use the number of enemy killed to gauge the deleterious effects it's having on their ability to fight effectively. You could use the number of enemy tanks or aircraft or ships destroyed to measure the ability of the enemy to attack or counter-attack.

In the fight in Iraq, we are not fighting a conventional force, nor a nation. We are fighting terrorists, a shadowy, non-cohesive enemy with no battle lines or fronts. There is no army to wage battle with, nor an entity that can surrender. All that will happen is they will melt away.

I think that many of the leaders of our military today are products of the Vietnam experience and it's aftermath. The body count was a much utilized measurement to indicate success or advancement in Vietnam. However, even if the North Vietnamese body count was ten times that of American forces, it didn't guarantee our success, nor popular support for the war. Part of this phenomenon can likely be found in the differences in our cultures and values. A loss of an American life in any effort is seen as a loss by Americans. In other countries, the loss of a soldier or fighter is just the loss of a soldier or fighter. This is probably more true of terrorists. The death of a terrorist is simply a martyr for jihad. Heralding and tallying their deaths probably only feeds their sense of martyrdom and can be used as a marketing tool for terrorism.

Yes, it would be nice if we had some distinct measurement of overall success in Iraq. It would make it much easier to debate with, and fight off, the anti-war hordes who can so easily hold up the number of American dead. However, this is a war that is different than a conventional war, and an enemy that is different than any we have met. A body count of dead terrorists to use as some artificial measure of success would be handy, but it would hardly be any measure of where we are at in attaining our goals in Iraq.

In reality, having a body count of the terrorists we have killed in Iraq would not sway the anti-war crowd one way or another. It might make us on the opposite side feel better if we had something to throw out there to counter their attacks. But, we can debate this war without an artificial measure of success like body counts. We can debate, and ultimately win this war, on the facts and the merits, and in the end, that's all that is going to count.

Comprehensive Immigration "Reform": Making It Easier for Terrorists

The Heritage Foundation took a good hard look at the current bill and finds some serious issues with the claim that it increases homeland security:

Under Sections 601 (h)(1) and (5) of the bill, if an ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agent apprehends any alien who appears eligible for the Z visa (in other words, just about any illegal alien), the agent cannot detain him. Instead, ICE must provide the alien a reasonable opportunity to apply for the Z visa. This stands in stark contrast to the status quo, in which ICE can place the alien in detention and immediately initiate removal proceedings.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. Read the whole thing (link in the title) to be really scared.

Former Terrorist Group Member on Islam

Simply put, if you want to understand what the terrorist groups teach about Islam, you have to read the article linked above. Here's a quick excerpt to whet your appetite:

It is vital to grasp that traditional and even mainstream Islamic teaching accepts and promotes violence. Shariah, for example, allows apostates to be killed, permits beating women to discipline them, seeks to subjugate non-Muslims to Islam as dhimmis and justifies declaring war to do so. It exhorts good Muslims to exterminate the Jews before the "end of days." The near deafening silence of the Muslim majority against these barbaric practices is evidence enough that there is something fundamentally wrong.

Now you see why I say ya gotta read it.