Tag: the war of terror

Israel, the US, and the Endless War on Terror

In a New Yorker piece published five days after the attacks of Sept.11, 2001, American critic and public intellectual Susan Sontag wrote, “Let’s by all means grieve together. But let’s not be stupid together. A few shreds of historical awareness might help us understand what has just happened, and what may continue to happen.” Sontag’s desire to contextualize the 9/11 attacks was an instant challenge to the narratives that President George W. Bush would soon deploy, painting the United States as a country of peace and, most importantly, innocent of any wrongdoing. While the rhetorical strategies he developed to justify what came to be known as the Global War on Terror have continued to this day, they were not only eagerly embraced by Israel in 2001, they also lie at the heart of that country’s justification of the genocidal campaign that’s been waged against the Palestinian people since Oct. 7, 2023.

On Sept. 20, 2001, President Bush delivered a speech to Congress in which he shared a carefully constructed storyline that would justify endless war. The United States, he said, was attacked because the terrorists “hate our freedoms — our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.” In that official response to the 9/11 attacks, he also used the phrase “war on terror” for the first time, stating (all too ominously in retrospect): “Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.”

“Americans are asking,” he went on, “why do they hate us?” And then he provided a framework for understanding the motives of the “terrorists” precluding the possibility that American actions prior to 9/11 could in any way have explained the attacks. In other words, he positioned his country as a blameless victim, shoved without warning into a “post-9/11 world.” As Bush put it, “All of this was brought upon us in a single day — and night fell on a different world, a world where freedom itself is under attack.” As scholar Richard Jackson later noted, the president’s use of “our war on terror” constituted “a very carefully and deliberately constructed public discourse… specifically designed to make the war seem reasonable, responsible, and inherently ‘good.’”

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Judge orders release of ‘Newburgh Four’ defendant and blasts FBI’s role in terror sting

A man convicted in a post-9/11 terrorism sting was ordered freed from prison by a judge who criticized the FBI for relying on an “unsavory” confidential informant for an agency-invented conspiracy to blow up New York synagogues and shoot down National Guard planes.

U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon on Friday granted James Cromitie, 58, compassionate release from prison six months after she ordered the release of his three co-defendants, known as the Newburgh Four, for similar reasons. The four men from the small river city 60 miles (97 kilometers) north of New York City were convicted of terrorism charges in 2010.

Cromitie has served 15 years of his 25-year minimum sentence. The New York-based judge ordered Cromitie’s sentence to be reduced to time served plus 90 days.

Prosecutors in the high-profile case said the Newburgh defendants spent months scouting targets and securing what they thought were explosives and a surface-to-air missile, aiming to shoot down planes at the Air National Guard base in Newburgh and blow up synagogues in the Bronx. They were arrested after allegedly planting “bombs” that were packed with inert explosives supplied by the FBI.

Critics have accused federal agents of entrapping a group men who were down on their luck after doing prison time.

In a scathing ruling, McMahon wrote that the FBI invented the conspiracy and identified the targets. Cromitie and his codefendants, she wrote, “would not have, and could not have, devised on their own” a criminal plot involving missiles.

“The notion that Cromitie was selected as a ‘leader’ by the co-defendants is inconceivable, given his well-documented buffoonery and ineptitude,” she wrote.

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UNDERCOVER FBI AGENTS HELPED AUTISTIC TEEN PLAN TRIP TO JOIN ISIS

HUMZAH MASHKOOR HAD just cleared security at Denver International Airport when the FBI showed up. The agents had come to arrest the 18-year-old, who is diagnosed with a developmental disability, and charge him with terror-related crimes. At the time of the arrest, a relative later saidOpens in a new tab in court, Mashkoor was reading “Diary of a Wimpy KidOpens in a new tab,” a book written for elementary school children.

Mashkoor had gone to the airport on December 18 to fly to Dubai, and from there to either Syria or Afghanistan, as part of his alleged plot to join the Islamic State. The trip had been spurred by over a year of online exchanges starting when Mashkoor was 16 years old with four people he believed were members of ISIS. According to the Justice Department’s criminal complaintOpens in a new tab, the four were actually undercover FBI agents. As a result of his conversations with the FBI, Mashkoor could face a lengthy sentence for attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization.

At an initial court hearing, family members said that Mashkoor, who had turned 18 just a few weeks prior to the arrest, had intellectual difficulties and been diagnosed with autism. Despite acknowledging Mashkoor’s family support and his young age, the judge ordered that he be detained while awaiting trial.

“It’s not lost on this court that Mr. Mashkoor is a young man with possible mental illness and the diagnosis of high-functioning autism. It is clear he has a sea of familial support,” the judge said. “But based on this evidence, there’s no reasonable assurance here that the court can simply chalk all this up to the defendant simply being a young man.”

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Colorado teenager is charged with trying to join ISIS when he was 16: Boy was arrested trying to board a flight in Denver after undercover FBI agents found him posting on social media

A Colorado teen has been charged with providing support to ISIS after allegedly planning to fly and join the terrorist organization from when he was just 16 years old. 

Humzah Mashkoor, who is now 18, was arrested on Monday at Denver Airport, where he was trying to fly to the UAE en route to Afghanistan, prosecutors said.

He has since been charged with knowingly providing or attempting or conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

His arrest is the culmination of a two-year investigation after the FBI first became aware of Mashkoor expressing support for the terrorist group on social media in 2021 and even sharing videos of executions. 

Mashkoor was born in the US but spent time in Afghanistan and allegedly desperately wanted to return to fight for the Islamic State. 

In September 2022, he began talking to an undercover FBI employee online who was posing as a ISIS supporter. 

The complaint says he ‘repeatedly expressed his intent to travel in order to join ISIS as a fighter, to provide money to ISIS to support their efforts, and to recruit others to also support ISIS through travel and/or financial contributions.’ 

He also ‘expressed frustration that he was unable to travel to join ISIS or provide money to ISIS to support their efforts because he was not yet 18.’ 

In one of the most serious incidents, he allegedly ‘indicated, using coded language, that an ISIS contact suggested to Mashkoor that he (Mashkoor) conduct an attack in the United States.’ 

At one point, he told the agent: ‘I am prepared to do anything which they require me to do … I just want to be used as soon as possible, gun attacks.

‘I have no training, I used to have some practice with guns with I was younger. But that is it.’ 

As his 18th birthday in November approached, he allegedly started making concrete plans to travel to join ISIS and discussed a plan to get married. 

According to the complaint, he told one undercover agent: ‘Once we go there’s no turning back… We leave behind everything… Our family’s… Our homes… Our friends… For the sake of Allah swt… And pleasing him…

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CATFISHED BY COPS

HOW’S THE BACKYARD, Jason? Is there somewhere we can talk?”

It was May 20, 2020, at the height of the pandemic, and an FBI SWAT team had raided the house Jason Fong shared with his parents in Orange County, California. Fong, a 24-year-old Chinese American who, until recently, had been a U.S. Marine Corps reservist, sat handcuffed in the back of a police cruiser outside.

“Just a couple of chairs at the back table,” he told the Irvine police detective and FBI agent questioning him.

Fong led the two lawmen to the backyard, where all three sat at a table near the pool. A body camera worn by FBI Special Agent Thuan Ngo recorded the conversation. Fong, still handcuffed, wore a blue button-down shirt and a white face mask. The family dog wandered around, happily wagging its tail.

“How long have you had this dog?” the detective, Michael Moore, asked.

“Since I was 16,” Fong answered.

Moore read Fong his Miranda rights; Ngo advised him that making a false statement to a federal agent is a felony.

“Let’s back up a little bit,” Moore said. “What are some big changes that have occurred in your life? You converted to Islam?”

“Yeah,” Fong answered.

The detective asked Fong how he became a Muslim, how many guns he owned, and how he used social media.

“I followed a couple of pages that were just mainly Muslim, like, shitposting, kinda just like —”

“Muslim what?” Ngo interrupted, apparently stumped by the word “shitposting.” “I’m sorry?”

“Kind of just, like, meme pages,” Fong answered. “A lot of them make jokes about stupid stuff, like extremism and all that stuff — things I do not condone. … They make memes about extremism in a joking manner.”

Fong described how he communicated with like-minded people on the internet, mostly in the joking or ironic ways of the extremely online. “It’s just satire,” he said, adding that he tried to dissuade anyone who appeared to take a genuine interest in extremist ideologies and groups.

But the federal agent kept pushing. He asked if anyone Fong knew via the chat group claimed to support terrorists. He asked for usernames.

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US Terror List Hit 2 Million People, Nearly Doubling In 6 Years

The federal government’s terrorist watchlist has hit approximately 2 million people worldwide, and includes thousands of Americans, CBS News reports. This revelation, derived from an extensive review of court records, government documents, and interviews with intelligence community leaders, paints a complex picture of national security measures and civil liberties.

The Terrorist Screening Dataset, a consolidated watchlist of individuals deemed as known or suspected terrorists, has seen a dramatic increase in numbers. Launched in 2003 with approximately 120,000 individuals, it ballooned to 1.6 million individuals by 2017. As of the end of 2023, this figure has reached an astonishing 2 million, including, as we noted, thousands of Americans.

The Criteria for Listing and Its Implications

According to Russ Travers, a four-decade veteran of the U.S. intelligence community who helped create the watchlist: “It doesn’t mean they’re a terrorist. It means there’s something that has led a department or agency to say, ‘This person needs a closer look.’” However, the criteria for adding individuals to this list remain shrouded in secrecy, with the government neither confirming nor denying an individual’s presence on the list.

Monte Hawkins, overseeing watchlisting policy for President Biden, claims that “those 2 million people who are on the list are on there for a reason,” with a majority being non-U.S. citizens or legal residents. Yet, the lack of transparency and accountability in this process raises significant concerns.

National security officials acknowledge that there are people listed in the consolidated terrorist database whose names should probably be removed, but that there isn’t enough staff to audit every person’s file regularly.

“I’m sure that there are a lot of people that are in the database that are dead, that we don’t even know it,” said Travers.  

The interagency group that oversees the watchlist also administers a second list targeting primarily American gangs with international ties. That other watchlist, known as the Transnational Organized Crime Actor Detection Program, contains another 40,000 individuals, according to a recent audit obtained by CBS News. -CBS News

People on the watchlist have faced various challenges – from being prevented from flying, to failing background checks for employment. The Department of Homeland Security acknowledges that 98% of complaints filed were due to “false positives,” often caused by name similarities.

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Trad Catholic Family Dragged Out of Home at Gunpoint, Locked in Van After FBI ‘Goaded’ Teen to Post Offensive Memes, Dad Says

Atraditional Catholic family was allegedly “dragged out of their home at gunpoint, handcuffed and locked in a van” earlier this year after the FBI “goaded” their 15-year-old son to post  “offensive memes” online. The teen, a volunteer firefighter and altar boy, was then hospitalized on mental health pretenses, according to his father, Jeremiah Rufini.

The FBI’s aggressive “investigation” only resulted in a misdemeanor conviction against the boy for breach of peace, but financially devastated the family with substantial legal expenses.

The FBI targeted the boy as part of a sting operation catfishing traditionalist Catholic teenagers with “extreme political content,” Rufini explained in the family’s GiveSendGo crowdfunding site. 

The family’s difficulties began early in 2023 when Rufini’s father became too ill from chemotherapy to work at the family business or care for his 93 year-old grandmother who lives in an in-law apartment at his home.

The home-schooled 15 year-old took on the responsibility of caring for his great grandmother until his father got home from work each day.

“It was a very stressful time, compounded by several unrelated deaths in the family that happened in the same time period,” Rufini explained. The long hours alone with his grandmother led the boy, equipped with a brand new cell phone, to become ensnared in an FBI scheme targeting trad Catholics.

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THE “TERRORIST,” THE RAPIST, AND ME

THE FBI STING had elements of a B-movie production. Federal agents used a car chop shop in Seattle that was an FBI front, placed a prayer rug and a copy of the Quran inside the office, and designated it the scene for the final bust. The FBI’s informant was a registered sex offender named Robert Childs, who had told agents that his friend Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif had a vague plan for a terrorist attack on a military base in Washington state. The FBI furnished Childs with weapons, including assault rifles and grenades.

At the chop shop, Childs met with Abdul-Latif and his friend Walli Mujahidh, who had a mental illness, and showed them the weapons he’d acquired for their supposed attack. The guns and grenades had been disabled, and hidden FBI cameras captured Abdul-Latif and Mujahidh holding rifles, even though neither man knew how to use them. “He didn’t even understand how to work the breech,” Childs would later tell me, referring to Abdul-Latif’s inability to load the firearm.

Suddenly, FBI agents, dressed in tactical uniforms, tossed in a smoke grenade and charged toward the men; they handcuffed Childs as part of the show.

“When the feds rushed in, I knew it was Robert Childs,” Abdul-Latif later told me. “I knew he’d set us up.” As Abdul-Latif saw it, Childs had manipulated and betrayed him for money. The FBI, meanwhile, described Childs as valiant. “But for the courage of the cooperating witness, and the efforts of multiple agencies working long and intense hours, the subjects might have been able to carry out their brutal plan,” Laura Laughlin, then the FBI’s special agent-in-charge in Seattle, said in a 2011 press release. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer later described Childs as “the unlikely hero” of the bust.

After years of talking to both men and sorting through conflicting claims, I can finally explain the origins of this high-profile case that the FBI and the Justice Department have misrepresented to the public and the courts. The FBI hired a convicted sex offender as an informant, even as a rape kit with his DNA sat untested on a shelf. They paid him $90,000 to set up his friend and his friend’s mentally ill buddy in a terrorism plot concocted from nothing more than an over-the-top statement by Abdul-Latif, landing both Abdul-Latif and Mujahidh in prison. A decade later, Childs is in prison as well, serving a life sentence for the crime documented by the rape kit that the Seattle Police Department left untested for 13 years.

Last winter, with nothing left to lose, Childs contacted Abdul-Latif and me to come clean about the FBI terrorism sting he’d helped engineer.

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The Pentagon Proclaims Failure in its War on Terror in Africa

America’s Global War on Terror has seen its share of stalemates, disasters, and outright defeats. During 20-plus years of armed interventions, the United States has watched its efforts implode in spectacular fashion, from Iraq in 2014 to Afghanistan in 2021. The greatest failure of its “Forever Wars,” however, may not be in the Middle East, but in Africa.

“Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated,” President George W. Bush told the American people in the immediate wake of the 9/11 attacks, noting specifically that such militants had designs on “vast regions” of Africa.

To shore up that front, the U.S. began a decades-long effort to provide copious amounts of security assistance, train many thousands of African military officers, set up dozens of outposts, dispatch its own commandos on all manner of missions, create proxy forces, launch drone strikes, and even engage in direct ground combat with militants in Africa. Most Americans, including members of Congress, are unaware of the extent of these operations. As a result, few realize how dramatically America’s shadow war there has failed.

The raw numbers alone speak to the depths of the disaster. As the United States was beginning its Forever Wars in 2002 and 2003, the State Department counted a total of just nine terrorist attacks in Africa. This year, militant Islamist groups on that continent have, according to the Pentagon, already conducted 6,756 attacks. In other words, since the United States ramped up its counterterrorism operations in Africa, terrorism has spiked 75,000%.

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Israeli Knesset Passes Draconian Amendment to the Counter-Terrorism Law Criminalizing “Consumption of Terrorist Publications”

“One of the most intrusive and draconian legislative measures ever passed by the Israeli Knesset which invades the realm of personal thoughts and beliefs and significantly amplifies state surveillance of social media use. Adalah will petition the Supreme Court to challenge this law.”

Today, 8 November 2023, the Israeli Knesset passed an amendment to the Counter-Terrorism Law introducing a new criminal offense, namely the “consumption of terrorist materials”, with a maximum penalty of one year’s imprisonment. The amendment passed by a 13-4 majority.

The law amends Article 24 of Israel’s Counter-Terrorism Law to include a new offense, specified as the “systematic and continuous consumption of publications of a terrorist organization under circumstances that indicate identification with the terrorist organization”. This offense carries a penalty of up to one year’s imprisonment. The “specific publications” referred to in the law encompass expressions of praise, support, or encouragement of terrorist acts, direct calls to commit an act of terrorism, as well as documentation of an act of terrorism. Additionally, the bill designates Hamas and ISIS (the Islamic State) as the terrorist organizations to which this offense applies. The amendment also grants the Minister of Justice the authority to declare additional terrorist organizations for the purpose of this article, with the concurrence of the Minister of Defense and the approval of the Knesset’s Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee. The law was passed as a temporary order valid for two years.

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