Hamas-Linked CAIR Freaks Over Pamela Geller's New Book: Stop Islamization of America

And Pamela laughs, "The review is a badge of honor. My favorite one yet!"

See, "PRESS TV: LEADING SPOKESMAN FOR ISLAMIZATION HAMAS-LINKED CAIR RIPS GELLER'S NEW BOOK: STOP THE ISLAMIZATION OF AMERICA: A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO THE RESISTANCE."

Taliban Shoot Down U.S. Copter in Afghanistan

At Los Angeles Times, "31 U.S. troops, 7 Afghans killed in Taliban attack on NATO helicopter."

In a rare event, Taliban insurgents shoot down a Chinook helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade near Kabul. It's the largest single-incident loss of military lives since the war's start.

And at New York Times, "31 Americans Killed as Taliban Shoot Down a Copter." (Via Memeorandum.)

Fjordman Interviewed at Norway's VG Tabloid

Ander's Breivik's idol, Peder Jensen, talks to the press.

He claims he rejected Breivik's importunings. See, "Breivik's political idol «Fjordman» emerges from anonymity - I am Fjordman."

The interview should be in English, although Google Chrome translates from Norwegian, so try that if there's a problem.

And at Diary of Daedalus, "Rescued from Memory Hole: The Lost LGF “Fjordman” Articles."

New York Times Downplays Muslim Fort Hood Terror Plotter

Well that's a surprise.

At Fox Nation (via Memorandum).

I checked the Times' homepage Friday morning, and there was no mention of Naser Abdo on the front page. In hard-copy, the paper's report appeared on Page A11, "Soldier Held Amid Claim of Terror Plot at Fort Hood." Had Private Abdo successfully carried out an attack, the Democrat-Media-Complex would have provided cover, minimizing Islamist influence and attacking counter-jihad bloggers as bigots.

Note: The Times has a report in its Saturday hard-copy edition on Page A15, "Soldier Arrested in Suspected Bomb Plot Had Series of Disputes With Army." I just caught this linked prominently at the homepage, so I guess that's progress.

Army Private Naser Jason Abdo, in Court Appearance, Shouts Name of Fort Hood Shooter Major Nidal Hasan

At LAT, "Accused plotter shouts out name of Ft. Hood killer at hearing."

See also Right Truth, "Naser Jason Abdo." And Ironic Surrealism," and Ironic Surrealism, "Muslim Soldier Turned Jihadist Naser Abdo Part II: Yelled “Nidal Hasan Fort Hood 2009″ In Courtroom -Under Investigation For Making Anti-American Comments While on Duty [Updated]."

RELATED: at Christian Science Monitor, "Accused Fort Hood plotter got bombmaking recipe from Al Qaeda."

PFC Nasser Abdo and Iraq Veterans Against the War

Hmm, the antiwar left's got some splainin' to do, and here's the hot-under-the-collar denial of ties to Private Naser Jason Abdo: "IVAW STATEMENT ON NASER ABDO ARREST":

Abdo is not now and has never been a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War.

Shoot, he didn't need to be. The folks at IVAW were happy to set up Abdo as another Bradley Manning, and now they're throwing him under the bus. See Weasel Zippers, "Anti-War Group Scrubs Website of Involvement With Muslim Soldier ."Arrested For Plotting Second Ft. Hood Terror Attack…"

See also Alana Goodman, "Fort Hood Suspect Had Left-Wing Fan Base."

And the main reporting on this is at This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here. See, "IVAW and Abdo," "IVAW release, and Mother Jones," and "Abdo’s accomplices." (Via Memeorandum.)

Private Naser Jason Abdo, AWOL Muslim Soldier, Arrested with Explosive Bomb-Making Materials in Killeen, Texas, Home of Fort Hood

A huge report at Atlas Shrugs, "FORT HOOD JIHAD II: MUSLIM SERVICEMEN ARRESTED IN ALLEGED ATTACK ON FORT HOOD, CAPTURED WITH POSSESSION OF LARGE QUANTITIES OF AMMUNITION, WEAPONS AND THE EXPLOSIVE MAKINGS OF A BOMB."

Additional video at CNN, "Official: Soldier said he wanted to attack Fort Hood troops."

And at New York Times, "Soldier Held Amid Claim of Terror Plot at Fort Hood":

An Army private who had been absent without leave since earlier this month was arrested this week near Fort Hood with a gun and suspicious materials, in what local law enforcement officials described on Thursday as a “terror plot” to kill other soldiers.

The police in Killeen, Tex., arrested the soldier, Pfc. Naser Jason Abdo, in a motel room near the southern edge of the base on Wednesday, one day after a clerk at a local gun store alerted the police about a suspicious purchase, the police said.

According to a law enforcement official, among the items found in Private Abdo’s room at the time of his arrest were a military uniform with Fort Hood patches, a pistol, shotgun shells and an article on “how to make a bomb in your kitchen” from the English-language Qaeda magazine Inspire. He also had more than one wall clock, a cellphone, duct tape and a shopping list for what appeared to be explosive components, the official said.

The police said that they had interviewed Private Abdo in the city jail and that his statement “leads us to believe that military personnel were targeted,” said Dennis M. Baldwin, the Killeen chief of police. He said Private Abdo did not appear to be part of any larger plot. “As far as we know, he did act alone,” Chief Baldwin said.

It was unclear what connection Private Abdo had to Fort Hood. He had been absent without leave from his own base, Fort Campbell in Kentucky, since early this month.

And check the roundup at Memeorandum.

VIDEO: Terrorist Attack in Oslo, Norway

A report at New York Times, "Big Blasts at Government Buildings in Oslo; 1 Dead."

And Michelle has a big report, "Terror blast in Oslo – “massive vehicle bomb;” Update: Norway had taken action against jihadi cleric who threatened to kill politicians."

Added: At The Other McCain, "BREAKING: Explosions Blast Government Buildings in Norway; Terrorism Suspected UPDATE: Video Shows Damage in Oslo UPDATE: Two Explosions, ABC Says."

Also video at BBC, "Oslo: Bomb blast near Norway prime minister's office."

9:35am PST: A Memeorandum thread is here.

11:00am PST: At Pajamas Media, "First hints of Islamic connection in Oslo attack." And at Outside the Beltway, "Oslo Bomb Blast and Shooting Spree: Al Qaeda Suspected."

11:30am PST: Another video:

And at Astute Bloggers, "OSLO JIHADTERROR? UPDATE: 7 DEAD; BLAST FOLLOWED BY SHOOTING ATTACK NORTH OF OSLO."

Taliban Militants Killing Civilians Policemen at Pakistan Border — UPDATED!!

Via Bare Naked Islam, "Barack Hussein Obama’s favorite negotiating partners, the Taliban, dish out Taliban justice to 16 civilians in the Swat area of Pakistan."

Content Warning: Extremely graphic.

I don't see a date on this at Live Leak, but Bare Naked Islam links to Bivouac-ID, "Shock Video: The Afghan Taliban execute 16 civilians with machine guns at the border of Pakistan Shaltalu (July 16)," and from there to Himal Southasian, "From across the border (June 28)."

The insurgents are likely Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a militant organization allied to Mullah Omar, who was the Supreme Leader in Afghanistan prior to the initial rout of the Taliban during Operation Enduring Freedom. Mullah Omar in turn was closely linked to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. Today, speculation is that Pakistan's ISI provides safe haven for Mullah Omar, as it was with Bin Laden. Americans are fighting these insurgents. U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan will be a victory for the terrorists. Obviously, this is precisely why I've opposed the administration's drawdown from the region. It's been a long time, ten years since September 11, 2001. And we're all tired of this war. But we'd been doing well with the Petraeus surge in Afghanistan staring in 2009. Some argue that Obama's withdrawal agenda will cancel out all that we've gained. See Robert Kagan, at the Washington Post, "Military leaders know Obama’s decision is a disaster." Also, Max Boot, at Los Angeles Times, "Staying the course in Afghanistan."

*****

UPDATE: Okay, more information coming in on this. See Long War Journal, "Video of brutal Taliban execution of Pakistani policemen emerges." (At Memeorandum.)

The Taliban videotaped the brutal execution of more than a dozen Pakistani policemen who were captured during last month's raid in a remote area of northwestern Pakistan.

The graphic video, which shows 16 Pakistani policemen who are lined up and then gunned down by Taliban fighters wielding AK-47s, was taken in early June in the Shaltalu area of the district of Dir in northwestern Pakistan, a Pakistani official and US intelligence officials who track the region told The Long War Journal. The executions were filmed after the policemen were captured during several days of heavy fighting.

So these were apparently police units and not civlians. Be sure to RTWT at Long War Journal.

See also New York Times, "Taliban Video Shows Execution of 16 Pakistanis":

Stratfor's Reva Bhalla on Yesterday's Mumbai Bombings

Reva Bhalla is interviewed at the Dylan Ratigan show. She's Director of Analysis at Stratfor. It's good:

RELATED: At Los Angeles Times, "Relief and worry after slaying of Hamid Karzai's half brother."

Nidal Malik Hasan to Face Death Penalty

At The Western Experience, "Islamist Shooter in the Fort Hood Massacre Will Face Death."

Greece Arrests Captain of Gaza-Bound 'Audacity of Hope'

At New York Times, "Greece Jails U.S. Captain in Gaza Flotilla."

At the video, Communist Party member Angela Davis and Professor Rashid Khalidi, former PLO advisor to Yasser Arafat. Oh, and anti-Israel propgandist Noam Chomsky, the intellectual rock star of today's Jew-murdering left. And so many more:

Israel is the only country in the world held out for this kind of visceral hatred. It's anti-Semitic. Prominent people, shilling for terrorism. It's perverted.

Obama Administration Seeks Warm Relations with Islamists

The Wall Street Journal reports, "U.S. Reaches Out to Islamist Parties":

The Obama administration is reaching out to Islamist movements whose political power is on the rise in the wake of Arab Spring uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa.

The tentative outreach effort to key religious political groups—the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Ennahdha in Tunisia—reflects the administration's realization that the spread of democracy in the region requires it to deal more directly with Islamist movements the U.S. had long kept at arm's length.

Speaking to reporters during a visit Thursday to Budapest, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the Obama administration is now seeking "limited contacts" with Muslim Brotherhood members ahead of parliamentary and presidential elections slated for later this year.

"It is in the interests of the United States to engage with all parties that are peaceful and committed to nonviolence," Mrs. Clinton said. "We welcome, therefore, dialogue with those Muslim Brotherhood members who wish to talk with us."

Seems to me some folks were rejecting the Muslim Brotherhood as a governing party in Egypt just a few months ago. I'll check for a link. Meanwhile, here's this from Frank Gaffney, "The Tipping Point: Embracing the Muslim Brotherhood":

The Obama administration chose the eve of the holiday marking our Nation's birth to acknowledge publicly behavior in which it has long been stealthily engaged to the United States' extreme detriment: Its officials now admit that they are embracing the Muslim Brotherhood (MB or Ikhwan in Arabic). That would be the same international Islamist organization that has the destruction of the United States, Israel and all other parts of the Free World as its explicit objective.

On Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to downplay the momentousness of this major policy shift by portraying it during a stopover in Budapest as follows:

"The Obama administration is continuing the approach of limited contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood that have existed on and off for about five or six years." In fact, as former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy points out in a characteristically brilliant, and scathing, dissection of this announcement, Team Obama's official, open legitimation of the Brotherhood marks a dramatic break from the U.S. government's historical refusal to deal formally with the Ikhwan.

Read it all at the link above. And see also, Andrew McCarthy, "The Obama Administration Opens Formal Contacts With the Muslim Brotherhood." And Big Peace, "No Evidence Muslim Brotherhood Is Committed To Democracy."

Joshua Treviño on Twitter!

You gotta follow this guy.

He tweets with the frequency of a man on a mission, and boy has he pissed off some of the pro-terror progressives on Twitter. Remember M. Jay Rosenberg from Media Matters, the guy who tweeted that Benjamin Netanyahu is a terrorist? Well, he's all up in a ruffle over Treviño. See, "Former Bush Speechwriter: Shooting People On Gaza Flotilla 'OK' Because Participants Are Like Nazis." And you can see why at the post. I scrolled through Treviño's feed to find some of his other tweets, but there were so many it was taking too long (a sample is here, though). And I'll tell you, if Americans are on board the flotilla ships, I won't weep if they're killed during an engagement. They're deliberately sailing into harm's way. We'll know more, of course, especially if there is a clash at sea. But last year the "human rights activists" on the Mavi Marmara beat Israeli soldiers and turned their own weapons against them. The IDF killed nine and injured dozens in self-defense. That's not the story one hears from the Israel-hating global media, but the truth doesn't matter to progressives and anti-Semites. Lies are their coin.

Israeli Actor Impersonated Activist in Video Attacking Gaza Flotilla

At New York Times, "Israeli Video Blog Exposed as a Hoax."

The funny thing about this is that for progressives to denounce what's apparently a hoax, they also have to reject the message at the video, and the Israel-hating left is all too ready to do that. Indeed, Max Blumenthal, that conspiracy-driven self-hating Jew extraordinaire, was the first to point out the discrepancies. Check the link, in any case. Progressives are eating this up, so you know they're jonesin' for some PR victories.

We Should Ban Muslims From All Airlines Flying into Western Countries

From Jason Bradley, at The Western Experience, "In the Spirit of Civility and Brotherhood, Let’s Ban Muslims."

The Implosion of Counterinsurgency

At the video is the fascinating exchange where General Petraeus endorses torture in the case of the ticking time bomb. Keith Olbermann, whose "Countdown" program has been resurrected, smeared Petraeus on this in a recent segment, with quotes from other top officials who essentially impugn the general's reputation.

More video from the testimony at Gateway Pundit, "American Hero General David Petraeus: “I Disagree With Barack Obama… I’m No Quitter”."

Yeah. A hero. Not to Keith Olbermann.

Anyway, on the implosion of counterinsurgency, see National Journal, "Washington Losing Patience with Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan."

John Nagl is the kind of guy who brings to mind F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wicked line in The Great Gatsby about people who succeed at such an early age that “everything afterward savors of anticlimax.” A star at West Point and a Rhodes scholar, the native Nebraskan was only 37 when he landed on the cover of The New York Times Magazine in January 2004. In that article, Nagl offered an inside-the-Sunni-Triangle tutorial on what he came to call “graduate-level war.” Nagl’s mantra: “We have to outthink the enemy, not just outfight him.” In an era when small but wily bands of nonuniformed insurgents could stymie America’s mighty military machine with stealthy guerrilla attacks and roadside bombs planted in the night, the U.S. had to figure out how to hunt down the bad guys and cut off their support from the local population. Nagl, after studying the British and French colonial experience, as well as America’s handling of the Vietnam War, helped to develop what has since become famous as U.S. “counterinsurgency doctrine,” or COIN. As his celebrity grew, Nagl proselytized about it everywhere, even on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.

By the late 2000s, the precocious Army major had become part of a brain trust around America’s uber-general, David Petraeus, the commander who implemented the Iraq troop surge. Commissioned by Petraeus, Nagl helped to author the official counterinsurgency manual that has since reoriented American military doctrine, shifting the center of gravity from rough-and-ready conventional war fighters to cerebral specialists in irregular warfare and targeted response. After retiring from the Army as a lieutenant colonel in early 2008—even though he seemed to be on the fast track to four-star fame—Nagl took over a little-known think tank, the Center for a New American Security, and turned it into what journalist Tara McKelvey called “counterinsurgency central in Washington.”

Brilliant and brash as ever at the advanced age of 45, Nagl delivers a sober endorsement of the military’s current COIN strategy in Afghanistan, which, because it was adapted from Iraq, is partly his brainchild. It is a strategy that many experts believe is not working—and the skeptics may now include President Obama himself. “I think any sane person would be disillusioned,” Nagl says over a lunch of mussels and mozzarella salad at Finemondo, a lushly decorated restaurant around the corner from his office. Even some of those around Petraeus (who is retiring from the military to run the CIA) are losing heart. But Nagl says that the Janus-faced core of COIN strategy—winning over the Afghan population with kindness, aid, and a multibillion-dollar policy to “clear, hold, and build” towns and villages while ruthlessly killing off insurgents—is just starting to succeed. He laments that the debate in Washington is dominated by critics who complain that the war is almost 10 years long and already more hopeless than Vietnam.

RTWT.

Yet another reason I'm unhappy with the president. Cut-and-run is one thing, but running when the tide is turning is another. George W. Bush refused to abandon Iraq, and that's when the consensus from all quarters was that the war was a "fiasco." We persevered in Iraq, and it's a stable emerging democracy today. In Afghanistan, I'm not confident we'll be able to say the same thing a fews years from now.

'The Crush at the Afghan Exits'

An editorial at the Wall Street Journal.

The NATO allies will follow Obama's move and cut-and-run from the deployment: "France to gradually pull troops from Afghanistan."

I noted previously that it's not the Afghans who're forcing us out. Domestic political calculations are driving policy, and I pray the region doesn't deteriorate into a million Mumbais, but that's asking a lot from the Man Upstairs.

Two Men Arrested in Plot to Attack Military Recruiting Station in Seattle

At the Seattle Times, "Two men arrested in plot to attack Seattle military processing facility" (via PACNW Righty):

Two men have been arrested in Seattle in what federal agents say was a terrorist plot to attack a military recruit processing station in Seattle.

Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif, also known as Joseph Anthony Davis, 33, of Seattle, and Walli Mujahidh, aka Frederick Dominque Jr., 32, of Los Angeles were arrested Wednesday and charged in a complaint unsealed in U.S. District Court in Seattle.

Among the charges were conspiracy to murder U.S. officers, conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction and unlawful possession of firearms.

Both men appeared this afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge Mary Alice Theiler, who ordered them held pending a detention hearing next Wednesday. A preliminary hearing is set for July 7, which will be held only if the men are not indicted by a grand jury before then.

Both men face up to life in prison if convicted.

Okay, the system worked. Move along. Nothing to see here.

RELATED: At the DoJ, "Two Men Charged in Plot to Attack Seattle Military Processing Center" (via Memeorandum.)

Mavi Marmara Timeline

From the Israeli Defense Forces: