Reports: Terror Attack From Southern Border ‘Imminent’

**AirborneSapper7** · 08-29-2014, 10:08 PM

Reports: Terror Attack From Southern Border ‘Imminent’

August 29, 2014 by Sam Rolley

VERITAS

The conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch issued a statement Friday, claiming that government sources have confirmed that Islamic State terrorists are operating in Mexico and planning terror attacks on the U.S.
Via Judicial Watch:

Islamic terrorist groups are operating in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez and planning to attack the United States with car bombs or other vehicle born improvised explosive devices (VBIED). High-level federal law enforcement, intelligence and other sources have confirmed to Judicial Watch that a warning bulletin for an imminent terrorist attack on the border has been issued. Agents across a number of Homeland Security, Justice and Defense agencies have all been placed on alert and instructed to aggressively work all possible leads and sources concerning this imminent terrorist threat.
Specifically, Judicial Watch sources reveal that the militant group Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) is confirmed to now be operating in Juarez, a famously crime-infested narcotics hotbed situated across from El Paso, Texas. Violent crimes are so rampant in Juarez that the U.S. State Department has issued a number of travel warnings for anyone planning to go there. The last one was issued just a few days ago.

Read the full statement here.

Fox News reports that it has obtained a three page law enforcement bulletin released Thursday, entitled “ISIS Interest on the US Southwest Border,” which notes that ISIS militants are aware of the U.S.’s lax border security.
“A review of ISIS social media messaging during the week ending August 26 shows that militants are expressing an increased interest in the notion that they could clandestinely infiltrate the southwest border of US, for terror attack,” the document says, according to Fox.
“Social media account holders believed to be ISIS militants and propagandists have called for unspecified border operations, or they have sought to raise awareness that illegal entry through Mexico is a viable option,” it continues.

http://personalliberty.com/reports-t...rder-imminent/

**AirborneSapper7** · 08-29-2014, 10:11 PM

A Tale Of Two Leaders: ‘Don’t Have A Strategy’ And ‘Poisonous Ideology Of Islamist Extremism’ Threatens All… Guess Which One Isn’t An Obama Quote

August 29, 2014 by Sam Rolley

FILE

Following President Barack Obama’s brazen announcement that his administration has yet to come up with a strategy to respond to the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists gaining ground in the Middle East, British Prime Minister David Cameron called the ISIS gains a “greater and deeper threat to security than we have known” in an address to his countrymen.
“I don’t want to put the cart before the horse: we don’t have a strategy yet,” Obama said of how the U.S. would respond to ISIS advances in Syria. “I think what I’ve seen in some of the news reports suggest that folks are getting a little further ahead of what we’re at than what we currently are.”
The statement quickly caused a political uproar.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Thursday urged the president to “exercise some leadership” and present a regional strategy to Congress.
“The President needs to present this plan to the Congress, and the American people, and where the President believes he lacks authority to execute such a strategy, he needs to explain to the Congress how additional authority for the use of force will protect America,” McConnell said in a statement.
Others took the president to task on social media.

Michele Bachmann ✔ @MicheleBachmann Follow Not having a strategy perfectly sums up the foreign policy approach of President Obama's entire presidency.
5:00 PM - 28 Aug 2014

John McCain ✔ @SenJohnMcCain Follow “We don’t have a strategy yet” -President Obama, 8/28/14. #ISIS is largest, richest terrorist group in history & 192,000 dead in #Syria
4:48 PM - 28 Aug 2014

The White House has since been engaged in damage control, with press secretary Josh Earnest claiming that the White House does have a broad “comprehensive strategy” for fighting ISIS, just not Syria-specific plans.
“The reason for that is simply that the Pentagon is still developing that plan and (Obama) is still reviewing it,” Earnest said Friday.
Meanwhile, Britain’s prime minister said that the ISIS advances are a direct threat to UK and other western countries.
“The ambition to create an extremist caliphate in the heart of Iraq and Syria is a threat to our own security here in the UK,” he said.
Cameron announced that his country raised its terror threat level to “severe,” its second highest spot.
The British actions contrast sharply with the stance that American officials have taken with regard to the ISIS threat. Earlier this week, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that there was no indication that ISIS is plotting attacks against the U.S.
“I can tell you with great clarity and certainty that if that threat existed inside of Syria that it would certainly be my strong recommendation that we would deal with it,” he said. “I have every confidence that the president of the United States would deal with it.”
Officials at the U.S. State Department have taken a similar stance, claiming that there was no indication that ISIS—a group bent on forming an Islamic caliphate— is religiously motivated or bent on attacking the U.S.
“This is not about [ISIS] versus the United States,” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said. “They are killing anyone who gets in their way: Sunnis, Shia Muslims, Christians, Yazidis, Iraqis, Syrians, anyone who gets in their way — and now an American.”
“So this is not about what the United States is or isn’t doing,” Harf continued. “This is about [ISIS] stated a commitment to murder, rape, enslave people who don’t agree with their ideology and who get in their way.”
She later added, “[T]hey can say whatever they’d like, but what I am making clear is that’s not what ISIL represents. And they don’t represent any religion. They are at war with everybody they come into contact with.”
Compare that with what Cameron said Friday: “The terrorist threat was not created by the Iraq war 10 years ago. It existed even before the horrific attacks on 9/11, themselves some time before the war.
“This threat cannot be solved simply by dealing with perceived grievances over Western foreign policy,” he added. “Nor can it be dealt with by addressing poverty, dictatorship or instability in the region – as important as these things are.
“The root cause of this threat to our security is quite clear. It is a poisonous ideology of Islamist extremism that is condemned by all faiths and faith leaders.”
Someone is getting it wrong— and we’re guessing it’s the guy whose administration hasn’t come to terms with the fact that radical Islam breeds terrorists and hasn’t worried over a strategy to stop them.

http://personalliberty.com/tale-two-...snt-obama-quo/

**AirborneSapper7** · 08-29-2014, 10:22 PM

Human Events

P.R. Nightmare: There is no way to spin Obama's latest epic failure.

Obama concedes victory to ISIS in Round One of the new great war | Human Events
Obama has no trouble coming up with strategies when he WANTS to get...
humanevents.com

Obama concedes victory to ISIS in Round One of the new great war

By: John Hayward
8/29/2014 08:18 AM

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John Kerry Says ISIS ‘Will Be Crushed’ — But Does President Obama Agree?

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Secretary of State John Kerry took to Twitter Wednesday to talk tough about the terrorist group the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Kerry’s tweet comes in the aftermath of ISIS’s gruesome murder of American journalist James Foley and goes beyond what President Barack Obama said on Wednesday from Martha’s Vineyard. In his speech, Obama said "There has to be a clear rejection of this kind of nihilistic ideologies. One thing we can all agree on is that a group like ISIL has no place in the 21st century.” Overall, Obama did not exactly say America would make sure it doesn’t by “crushing” and “destroying” the terrorist group. So was Kerry speaking for Obama with his tweet — or just winging it???

You can save your breath, frantic Obama apologists. There is no way to spin the unmitigated disaster of this hapless President toddling to the podium yesterday and announcing to the world that he doesn’t have a strategy for defeating ISIS yet. The pants-wetting terror that immediately gripped everyone in the White House, and every dead-ender Obama-worshiping pundit, tells the true tale of how epic a blunder this was.

It wasn’t just a “gaffe.” It was nothing less than Barack Obama conceding victory to ISIS in Round One of the new great war. Get it through your skulls, kids: the President of the United States just ratified the existence of the Islamic State, admitted they’re going to get away with murdering American hostages, and threw in the towel on any hope of reversing their invasion of Iraq. He just told the enemy, which most certainly does have strategies and is not shy about advertising them, that they have the initiative. They’re calling the shots. The Golfer-in-Chief is still reacting, spinning, and fidgeting like a little kid stuck in detention, because he really wants to get back to the fun stuff - like handing out amnesty to illegal aliens, maneuvering unconstitutional “climate change” treaties past Congress, picking fights with his domestic political opponents, raising money for his Party, and hanging out with his fawning admirers in the press corps. He’s really bummed out that he has to keep dealing with head-chopping terrorists and Russians who like to go for joyrides in armored fighting vehicles.
Watch the visibly stunned folks at CNN wonder what three-dimensional chess game Obama might have been playing by telling the enemy he’s got no plans to defeat them:

Let me help you out, CNN folks: the problem here is not a lack of strategic planning at the Pentagon. The problem is political - the howling void of leadership at the White House. The Pentagon has plans for defeating ISIS. It has plans for defeating just about everyone tucked in electronic filing cabinets, but rest assured the ISIS plans are spread out on the table at the moment. The problem is that Obama doesn’t want to take responsibility for any of them. His primary concern is the political damage he and his Party will suffer if his Bush-hating kook base has to watch him commit American ground forces to combat in Iraq. He won’t do that until ISIS hits us harder, and leaves him with no choice.

Once again: the enemy has the initiative. They already knew that, but it’s profoundly unhelpful to have the President of the United States admit it to the entire world in a press conference.
When Obama wants to do something, he’s got his huge staff of retainers working through the night to hammer out elaborate strategies. There’s nothing but political cost involved in fighting ISIS, especially since the intelligence community is looking pretty dour about the possibility of using a few airstrikes to back up proxies – the Iraqi army, the “moderate” Syrian rebels, the Kurds – while they mop up the Islamic State for us. Notice how Obama rambled on about how he’s willing to order a few zero-risk bombings here and there, when the “opportunity presents itself” (a hilarious way to describe how globally-tramsitted footage of an impending genocide finally brought Obama off the links to do something.)
That seems like a far cry from the big speech he gave after his good friend “Jim” Foley was murdered on video, a speech where he spoke in terms of erasing the Islamic State from history, blowing them out of a 21st Century in which they have no place. But remember, all of Obama’s ostensible “anger” in that speech was passive. He thinks the caliphate will implode on its own, or be wiped out by its enemies, perhaps with a little American support. His comments on Thursday were the ultimate humiliation of the Obama supporters who insisted he gave a magnificent speech after Foley’s killing. Like hell he did. He didn’t put an enemy on notice and seize the initiative against them. He punted. And he just told the world he’ll punt again, if the enemy lets him have the ball back.
Josh Rogin at the Daily Beast writes about the behind-the-scenes drama that led to Obama’s astounding declaration of non-strategy:

After a week of talk of eliminating the “cancer” of ISIS, President Obama said Thursday that he was not planning to significantly expand the war against the Islamic extremist movement anytime soon.
His remarks came after days of heated debate inside the top levels of his own national security bureaucracy about how, where, and whether to strike ISIS in Syria. But those deliberations – which included a bleak intelligence assessment of America’s potential allies in Syria — failed to produce a consensus battle plan. And so Obama, who has long been reluctant to enter into the Syrian conflict, told reporters Thursday that “we don’t have a strategy yet” for confronting ISIS on a regional level.
Those inside the administration advocating for going after ISIS in both Iraq and Syria were sorely disappointed – and lamented their boss’s lack of urgency in rooting out a threat that only days before was being described in near-apocalyptic terms.
“Senior strategists in the U.S. government have been working hard all week to gather multiple options that the president had asked for to strike ISIS in Syria. There was a deep rooted belief among many — especially among military circles — that the ISIS threat can’t be kicked down the road, that it needs to be confronted now, and in a holistic way,” said one Obama administration official who works on the Middle East. “This press conference is going to lead to even more doubt by those that thought that this White House was ready to take meaningful action against ISIS across the board.”

Oh, I don’t know about that, unnamed Obama Administration official. I don’t think anyone really has any more doubts about whether this White House is going to take “meaningful action against ISIS across the board.” The terror state Obama permitted to take root in Iraq is well-equipped, well-funded, and highly effective on the battlefield, thanks to a combination of combat experience in Syria and tactical support from former officers in Saddam Hussein’s military who have joined up. (Imagine what ISIS would be like if Saddam was still in power, and could put the full might of his military and economy behind their efforts.) This is the most battlefield-capable jihadi force ever assembled. That’s why serious planners are throwing cold water on the idea of trashing them with a local military coalition and modest American air power. The “moderate” Syrian rebels have no appetite for abandoning their fight against Bashar Assad to serve as Obama’s foot soldiers; their leaders have openly stated they don’t trust American leadership. The Iraqi army hasn’t evolved into a force that can beat ISIS yet, if it ever will. The Kurds are serious players, but they’re understandably more interested in defending their home ground than launching an invasion.
The fourth potential proxy against ISIS is Bashar Assad himself, and he’s got rather obvious reasons to place little value on Obama bluster about red lines and the “wrong side of history.” None of those potential proxies is going to be inspired by the spectacle of Obama dressing up like a Century 21 realty agent and giving a speech where he admits he doesn’t have a plan for victory. Assad would like ISIS out of Syria, to be sure, but it’s debatable how urgently he wants them gone, since they serve the useful function of keeping his regime’s opponents divided, and supporters grateful for his protection.
The only strategy Obama was willing to accept – helping other people wipe out the Islamic State – appears to be a non-starter, so he’s going to roll the dice and hope the enemy doesn’t do anything that would force him to act. They win the first battle against Obama walking away; arguably they won on the day he recklessly pulled American forces out of Iraq and refused to heed warnings that a dangerous new enemy was coming across the border, a moment when American air power very well might have prevented the Islamic State from taking root. As much as anything else, Thursday’s press conference was Obama telling the enemy they can have the field for now, as long as they don’t back him into a corner. In the weeks to come, we’ll learn if they want to shove him into that corner anyway.

Update: The United Kingdom is elevating its defensive posture and warning of a “severe” terror threat this morning. Hopefully the terrorists will have the good manners to hold off on doing anything until Barack Obama wraps up his fundraisers of the day.

Update: I’d suggest modifying the Obama Excuse-o-Meter to say that if the spinner lands on a black line, it means “No strategy.”

http://humanevents.com/2014/08/29/ob...paign=heupdate

**AirborneSapper7** · 08-29-2014, 10:28 PM

UK terror threat level raised to “severe”

By: John Hayward
8/29/2014 01:37 PM

Cameron Explains Heightened UK Terror Threat

British Prime Minister David Cameron pledged Friday to plug gaps in Britain's armory to combat terror, describing the extremist threat posed by the Islamic State group as being more dangerous than even that of al-Qaida....

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British Prime Minister David Cameron pledged Friday to plug gaps in Britain's armory to combat terror, describing the extremist threat posed by the Islamic State group as being more dangerous than even that of al-Qaida. Cameron's remarks came just moments after authorities raised Britain's terror threat level to severe, the second highest level. The decision was related to developments in Iraq and Syria, but there was no information to suggest an attack was imminent. "What we are facing in Iraq now with ISIL is a greater threat to our security than we have seen before," Cameron said, using an abbreviation for a longer name the Islamic State previously used: the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant.

The morning after U.S. President Barack Obama told the world he has “no strategy” for dealing with the Islamic State, the United Kingdom raised its terror threat level to “severe,” which means the authorities believe an attack is “highly likely.” The next highest level, “critical,” would mean a specific attack was considered imminent. If you’re going to have verbal descriptions for threat levels, I don’t know why you wouldn’t simply call them “Attack Likely” and “Attack Imminent.” Then again, we went with an even more inscrutable color-coding system in the United States. I sometimes wonder if all of these systems aren’t designed to give bureaucrats some degree of butt coverage without being clear enough to unduly alarm the populace, or get the bureaucrats criticized for issuing specific warnings that didn’t pan out.
At any rate, the U.K. doesn’t raise its threat level very often – this is the first time in three years it has been elevated to “severe” – so this is a big deal. Prime Minister David Cameron did not seem inclined to drop a quick statement full of poll-tested talking points and knock off for the rest of the afternoon by playing golf with his buddies. Cameron made it clear the new alert posture is related to the continuing adventures of what Western leaders have apparently agreed to refer to as “ISIL,” although I still find that name unbearably clunky, so I stubbornly insist on using “ISIS.” I get the impression the head-choppers prefer ISIL, which is another reason not to use it. If the leaders of the West switch over to the more descriptive name “Team Evil,” I could get on board with that.

Cameron’s speech is an interesting contrast with Obama’s Mad Lib “wrong side of history” boilerplate. He’s saying the same things the U.S. defense complex is saying, even though the White House is still mostly interested in changing the subject. For example, Cameron echoed U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel almost verbatim by saying, “What we’re facing in Iraq now, with ISIL, is a greater and deeper threat to our security than we have known before.”

Cameron didn’t just leave it at that. He spent some time explaining just how big the threat of the Islamic State is, from its regional territorial ambitions, to its recruiting successes in Western nations. ISIS isn’t just a cave-dwelling terrorist gang dependent on the protection of foreign hosts; they have their own nation, and they’re planning expansion into Jordan and Lebanon, leaving the world saddled with “a terrorist state on the shores of the Mediterranean and bordering a NATO member.” Sounds like those guys do have a strategy, huh?
They’ve also got tactics, and one of them is likely to involve terrorist attacks inside Western borders. Painfully aware that the man who sawed off American hostage James Foley’s head on camera was likely a British citizen, Cameron said Foley’s murder was “clear evidence – not that any more was needed – that this is not some foreign conflict thousands of miles from home that we can hope to ignore.” Which makes it odd that Britain seems to be more imminently alarmed about an attack than the United States, seeing as how the anniversary of 9/11 – Terrorist Fourth of July – is upon us.
“We’ve all been shocked and sickened by the barbaric murder of American journalist James Foley, and by the voice of what increasingly seems to have been a British terrorist on that video,” said Cameron, who canceled his own vacation plans and went into crisis mode after that horrid event, while Barack Obama was back in a golf cart less than 15 minutes after addressing it. In case you’ve forgotten, before he rushed off to keep his afternoon tee time, Obama did not call Foley’s murder sickening or barbaric. He said he was “appalled” and “heartbroken,” passive and moderate language that fit perfectly into a speech about how the Islamic State is so backwards and horrible that it will spontaneously cease to exist any day now.
And while Obama and his spin doctors have taken pains to pretend ISIS is something fundamentally different from al-Qaeda (which, as you’ll recall, Obama claimed was “decimated” and “on the run” during his horsefeather-encrusted 2012 re-election campaign) Cameron was blunt about how this is just a new mutation of an old enemy. “Let’s be clear about the source of the threat we face,” he said. “The terrorist threat was not created by the Iraq War ten years ago. It existed even before the horrific attacks on 9/11 – themselves some time before the Iraq War. This threat cannot be solved simply by dealing with the perceived grievances over Western foreign policy, nor can it be dealt with by addressing poverty, dictatorship, or instability in the region, as important as these things are.”
That’s just about a point-by-point refutation of the entire Obama platform on terrorism and the Middle East, isn’t it?
“The root cause of this threat to our security is quite clear,” Cameron continued. “It is a poisonous ideology of Islamist extremism that is condemned by all faiths, and all faith leaders. It believes in using the most brutal forms of terrorism to force people to accept a warped worldview, and to live in an almost medieval state – a state in which its own citizens would suffer unimaginable brutality, including barbaric beheadings of those who wish to convert to their warped version of Islam, the enslavement and rape of women, and the widespread slaughter of Muslims by fellow Muslims. And, of course, the exporting of terrorism abroad.”
This is a delicate moment for multi-culturalist sensitive in the United Kingdom. The mind-blowing horror of the Rotherham rape rings and the politically-correct ideological blindness of officials loom large over Cameron’s remarks. The British establishment still isn’t quite ready to face the role Islamic theology played in those “grooming” gangs, but part of Cameron’s purpose on Friday is doubtless to assure Britons that their government is now awake and mobilized, its eyes no longer unwilling to focus on threats because officials are worried they’ll be criticized for insensitivity. What he’s saying in this speech still sounds as mannered and nitpicky as the usual War on Terror rhetoric – no matter how many Muslims embrace the Islamic State with their Korans held high, rest assured we have officially determined that those jerks are not true Muslims in any sense whatsoever! But it’s tougher and clearer than what we usually hear. Cameron is admitting that his country has an internal problem.
It’s both reasonable and strategically wise to deny that ISIS is interpreting the Koran correctly, of course, or to insinuate that the majority of Muslims might be inclined to see things their way. The problem is that only the rest of Islam has the power to read these creeps out of their religion. It always sounds smarmy when non-Muslim politicians do it. The rest of the world should be encouraging an Islamic reformation – which will not be a gentle process – and openly siding with the good guys, rather than pretending the reformation already happened and people like ISIS, al-Qaeda, the mullahs of Iran, and Hamas just didn’t get the memo.
In any event, the goal of all leaders in a pluralistic republic which respects religious freedom should be firmly communicating the absolute demands of civilized society, not posing as the arbiters of theological authenticity in various faith traditions. What constitutes the proper practice of Islam is wholly and entirely up to Muslims, who should be cheerfully unconcerned with what anyone else thinks about the Koran. But what constitutes good British or American citizenship is the business of the British and American governments. It is not necessary to understand a word of sharia law to firmly communicate that the American principles of free speech will not in any way be compromised to accommodate it, for example. The way Western governments approach Islam is intended to be respectful, but it usually comes off as condescending and timid.
Cameron went on to say it is “absolutely vital” to make a distinction between “religion and political ideology.” The problem is that he’s talking about a religion that inherently includes political ideology. All of them can be invoked in political contexts, of course, but Islam has specific political ideas written right into its holy book. That can be overcome by Muslims of good will who wish to be good citizens of pluralistic democracies, but we really ought to stop pretending that it’s easily overcome, or that the Islamists who insist on applying Koranic political ideology to the modern world don’t know what they’re talking about. The boys from ISIS will be very happy to show you exactly which verses support everything they’re doing. We should give all possible friendship and support to other Muslims who challenge their ideology, but that’s different than pretending the beheadings, conquests, enslavements, grooming gangs, etc. are being pulled from thin air. It is possible to energetically support constructive Koranic scholars without pretending to be one yourself. Again, that attitude always seems condescending and querulous to me, much as it does when secular politicians lecture Catholics on what their Bible verses really mean.
It’s also a mistake to underestimate how thoroughly intimidated the “act of kindness” Muslims (to borrow Cameron’s phrase) can feel, when confronted with the bloody willpower of the Islamists. Throw in the confusion caused by opportunistic activists and the enforcers of political correctness, and it becomes impossible for Western leaders to speak plainly, when their good Muslim citizens desire plain talk as much as anyone else. At some point, the constant ritual assurance that we’re not talking about you, peace-loving Muslims grow annoying to the peace-loving Muslims, and make them worry about the constitutional fortitude of the Western governments they live under. Can we not take it as a given that everyone who isn’t into throat-cutting knows their Presidents and Prime Ministers aren’t talking about them when denouncing throat-cutters?
Cameron’s strong statement falters a bit at the end, when he says the vicious ideology of ISIS cannot be appeased, but comes up short on concrete proposals for doing anything else. “We need a tough, intelligent, patient, and comprehensive approach to defeat the terrorist threat at its source,” he declared, without getting into specifics about what sort of tough, intelligent, patient, comprehensive things we might be doing, or how they’d be different that what we have been doing since mid-September of 2001. He did, however, make it clear the British military would be part of the strategy, emphasizing that they were “vital in driving al-Qaeda from Afghanistan,” and expressing support for American air strikes against the Islamic State in Iraq.
But it’s a little melancholy to hear Cameron talk about how we must support the “building blocks” of sturdy democracy to clean up the political disasters that terrorists thrive upon – the rule of law, independent judiciary, the rights of minorities, free media, free association, “a proper place in society for the army” – because it’s hard to see any sign of those things taking deeper root in the rougher neighborhoods of the Middle East. Not even the nations most agreeable to the West display all of the qualities Cameron listed at healthy levels. The battle against ISIS is probably going to strengthen the likes of Iran and the Assad regime in Syria, which are not at all interested in any of those republican virtues. Turning the entire Middle East into cosmopolitan London would probably do wonders to drain away the toxins of terrorism, but frankly the most sustained effort to do that on a national scale was the operation in Iraq, and that’s exactly the sort of operation the electorates of the West have no further appetite for.
Still, the overall tone of Prime Minister Cameron’s speech was serious, engaged, and reassuring. He’s clocked in and on the job.

http://humanevents.com/2014/08/29/uk...sed-to-severe/