Latest terrorist scare should be a wake-up call

It’s obvious from the recent events at our diplomatic outposts in parts of the world that the war on terrorism is far from over.  Notice that we did not close embassies in predominantly Christian countries or predominantly Jewish countries.  We closed embassies in Muslim countries.  Perhaps a bit of unintended profiling from an administration that keeps trying to sell us on the idea that we’re not really at war with Muslim terrorists.

Make no mistake about it.  We’re at war with radical Islam.  We can pretend that’s not the case but it doesn’t change the facts.  When a nation is at war with a certain people it just makes sense to look at people who fit the profile a little more closely.  It was that head-in-the-sand approach that got us killed on 9/11.  Then Secretary of Transportation Norm Mineta strictly forbade any type of profiling.  One airline ticket agent said he checked a man in at his counter and a chill ran down his spine.  He said everything about the man told him he was a terrorist but he had to “mentally slap” himself and process the ticket anyway.  That man turned out to be Mohamed Atta, the ringleader of the 9/11 hijackers.

It’s this continued naiveté that continually makes us vulnerable.  The Fort Hood terrorist attack by Maj. Nidal Hasan is still officially logged as a “workplace shooting.”  The mainstream media, in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing when we knew the suspects were Muslim, continued to caution us not to jump to conclusions.  It’s conclusion-jumping that makes us safer.

Apparently, the Obama administration jumped to a conclusion when it closed embassies in Muslim countries.  They had intelligence indicating another “9/11-style” terrorist attack and, to their credit, they acted accordingly.  Which raises the interesting question of why we still allow people who fit the profile from countries known to sponsor or encourage terrorism into our country?  We can debate the NSA snooping and its merits in keeping us safe but much of it would be totally unnecessary were we to simply take some common sense steps to ensure that those most likely to kill us aren’t allowed into the country.

That’s not even counting the possibly hundreds of thousands of people from terrorist-sponsored nations who have slipped into this country under the cover of darkness across our southern border.  While Congress is fixated on an amnesty program they are completely ignoring the biggest threat to our country.

Hopefully, the all-out alert recently at our embassies will be a wake-up call to the nation.  We cannot let our guard down.  And we cannot tip-toe around the political correctness of the threat.  Not all Muslims are terrorists but most of the terrorists these days are Muslim.  To ignore that fact is to leave us wide open to another attack.

We need to, first and foremost, secure our borders and stop this nonsense about amnesty.  We also need to cancel visas from anyone who might fit the profile of a terrorist.  The risk is just too great. It’s time we got serious about this terrorist threat.  We’re never going to kill it completely, especially overseas, but we certainly need to be taking every precaution here in the U.S.  Closing embassies is one thing but what about the threat that’s already here?  What do we do about that?  In some senses it’s already too late.  The back door has been left open for too long. Sleeper cells are already here.  At the very least we should be profiling those who might already be members.

We ignore the truth at our own peril.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Let the Benghazi fireworks begin

I can hardly wait until tomorrow (5/8/13).  That's when all hell is set to break loose in the House Oversight and Government Reform committee chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA).  Mr. Issa has invited President Obama's number two guy in Libya at the time of the terrorist attack last September in Benghazi.  Of course, according the White House mouthpiece Jay Carney that was so long ago.  Sorry, Jay, but the loss of four of our citizens is still fresh on our minds and people want answers.

We're sure to get them from Greg Hicks, a 22-year foreign service diplomat who said his "jaw hit the floor" the morning he watch UN Ambassador Susan Rice make the Sunday talk show circuit with the concocted story that some video no one had ever heard of caused a demonstration at the consulate in Benghazi to become violent.  Hicks says everyone involved knew it was a terrorist attack "from the get-go."  Hicks told investigators - and will presumably tell Issa's committee - that Ambassador Chris Stevens, who lost his life along with three others in the terrorist attack, reported to him, 'Greg, we are under attack.'

Hicks said, "I've never been as embarrassed in my life, in my career, as I was on that day," referring to Susan Rice's fabricated story shortly after the Benghazi terrorist attacks.

History tells us that most of the great political scandals become scandalous not because of the original act but because of the cover up.  After tomorrow there will be no doubt left that there was a cover up.  The only questioning remaining will be what were they covering up?

My theory is they had scaled down security in Libya to appease the newly-minted Muslim Brotherhood regime and Obama was wanting to demonstrate our good will.  Having been educated part of his young life in a Muslim madrasa I think Obama is bending over backwards to demonstrate that not all Muslims are terrorists.  That's all well and good but in the process he leaves us vulnerable to those who are.

This seems to be a common thread on the left.  Remember after the Boston bombings how NPR was cautioning its listeners not to jump to any conclusions about the brothers' religion?  Even after the younger brother was captured hiding out in a boat CNN was wondering aloud as to what could possibly have been their motivation.

Not all Muslims are terrorists but most of the terrorists these days are Muslim.  It's just common sense that we'd be paying a little more attention to them than anyone else.

I believe what happened in Benghazi was political correctness at its very worst.  This administration wanted so much to prove that stereotyping Muslims is wrong that they allowed our consulate to let its guard down.  I also believe the so-called annex was the true target of the attack.  Whether real or imagined, the terrorists believed the CIA was using it as a black site.  That's why operatives there were told to stand down when they first heard gunfire several blocks away at the consulate.  They ignored orders and ran to the rescue only to have the terrorists follow them back to the annex and lay waste to the site.

Another interesting aspect of this story is Hillary Clinton's involvement.  At least one person is scheduled to testify that Hillary circumvented the State Departments own counterterrorism unit to keep it out of the decision-making chain.  Hillary's people have vehemently denied this but one has to wonder if Hillary will continue to take the heat if, in fact, she was covering for the administration.

I'm not ready to use the "impeach" word yet but I will remind you that in Watergate no one died.

Boston bombing - Ignoring the obvious

We’ve all be captivated by the events that transpired in Boston since the Marathon bombings took place.  I know it sounds cliché but it was like something out of a movie.  Almost immediately news outlets like MSNBC were leaning toward a right-wing nut theory.  After all, it was tax day and, to be sure, this was the work of some government-hating tea party type.

One commentator even went so far as to publicly wish it would turn out to be a tea partier.  As the week unfolded and the pictures of the two suspects were released speculation began to swirl.  They were young white males.  Could it be the left-wing media’s dream was coming true?

But soon those dreams were dashed with the revelation that the two brothers were Muslim.  I happened to be traveling from Washington, DC to Pennsylvania by car as the dramatic events were breaking.  The only source of news I could find was NPR.  The hosts were constantly reminding us that just because we had learned they were Muslim didn’t mean their religion had anything to do with the bombings.  Of course, common sense told us otherwise.

NPR invited on various experts and reporters who had discovered more and more details about the brothers.  The older one, we learned from his aunt, had become deeply religious over the last four or five years.  We learned they were both Chechen. We learned the older brother had traveled to Russia, specifically Dagestan, which is known as a hot bed of radical Muslims, for six months. 

Then there were the details of his domestic abuse charge for slapping around a girlfriend.  We were told he had posted anti-American and pro-radical Muslim videos to YouTube.  Still the commentators warned us not to jump to any conclusions about his religion.

Had the two brothers been middle-aged white guys from the South and had ever voted for a Republican and even taken a sip of sweet tea they would immediately have been labeled as tea party terrorists yet we were constantly urged not to connect the dots between their religion and the terrorist acts they committed in Boston.

There was plenty of misinformation during the course of the week.  CNN at one point reported that an arrest had been made.  Later, red-faced, they were forced to retract.  NPR was reporting the two held up a 7-Eleven in Cambridge.  That, too, turned out to be false.  The left-wing news outlets had no problem going to air with flimsy intelligence about breaking news – or what their sources were telling them was news – but they could never bring themselves to state the obvious: This was the work of Muslim terrorists.

Even after the younger brother was captured hiding in a boat, CNN continued the search for a motive.  It seems the network, that had desperately tried to regain relevance with a breaking news story that ended up being false, couldn’t even bring itself to report the one piece of news that, by then, was obvious to everyone.

Even as of this writing, some are still feigning an attempt to “understand” why these brothers did what they did.  Even as the FBI was raiding terrorist sleeper cells some news outlets were still begging us to believe the two acted alone and we still don’t know why.

What go unreported are the stories of immigrants – legal and illegal – who have no business in America.  There are people sent here to kill us and still some news outlets are in denial.

The trouble with media bias is not so much what they tell you, it’s what they don’t.