Comey didn’t say “jihad,” of course. That would have been “Islamophobic.”
“The problem is that as they have wanted to dial back, the threat has persisted in places like Syria, Yemen and East Africa.” Indeed. And in the United States as well. And as long as Comey and his Bureau persist in not daring to speak its name or investigate its motives and goals, the threat is going to keep on persisting, and growing. “At F.B.I., Change in Leaders Didn’t Change Focus on Terror,” by Michael S. Schmidt, New York Times, May 18, 2014:
WASHINGTON — When James B. Comey was nominated last June to be director of the F.B.I., it seemed to herald the beginning of a new era at the bureau.
His predecessor, Robert S. Mueller III, began the job just days before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and Mr. Mueller’s years leading the F.B.I. had one overwhelming focus: fighting terrorism. Mr. Comey was appointed a month after President Obama delivered a sweeping speech on the future of the fight against terrorism and said the United States was at a “crossroads” and needed to move off its wartime footing.
As deputy attorney general in the George W. Bush administration, Mr. Comey had questioned the legality of a National Security Agency surveillance program regarded as a major component of the president’s counterterrorism strategy. And given Mr. Comey’s earlier experience in the Justice Department prosecuting gun cases, the F.B.I. seemed likely to shift resources into more traditional criminal prosecutions.
By Mr. Comey’s own account, he also brought to the job a belief, based on news media reports, that the threat from Al Qaeda was diminished. But nine months into his tenure as director, Mr. Comey acknowledges that he underestimated the threat the United States still faces from terrorism.
“I didn’t have anywhere near the appreciation I got after I came into this job just how virulent those affiliates had become,” Mr. Comey said, referring to offshoots of Al Qaeda in Africa and in the Middle East during an interview in his sprawling office on the seventh floor of the J. Edgar Hoover Building. “There are both many more than I appreciated, and they are stronger than I appreciated.”
Based on what he now knows, Mr. Comey said, he is convinced that terrorism should remain the main focus of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The agency he inherited from Mr. Mueller had roughly half its 16,000 agents and analysts working on national security issues, and Mr. Comey made it clear that he would not be changing those priorities.
In his speech at the National Defense University a year ago, Mr. Obama could also not have been clearer. He said that the United States was entering “a new phase,” and that “we have to recognize that the scale of the threat resembles the types of attacks we faced before 9/11.”
But for his administration, translating that vision has proved difficult. The National Security Agency has resisted demands that it change after its secret surveillance programs were disclosed in documents released by Edward J. Snowden, a former contractor. The C.I.A. has continued to operate a drone program that Mr. Obama said would be transferred to the Pentagon, and it is likely to face renewed criticism when a long-awaited report on its secret prison program is finally released.
Critics say that, at the F.B.I., Mr. Comey has chosen to continue a strategy that is no longer appropriate for the way the terrorist threat has evolved.
“The F.B.I.’s evolution since 9/11 into a domestic intelligence agency is troubling both from a civil liberties standpoint and its effectiveness,” said Mike German, a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security program at New York University, “and in the face of evidence that it is ineffective, it’s troubling that Comey would embrace it.”
Mr. Comey’s defenders say he has simply accepted the reality that it still is a dangerous world.
“The problem is that as they have wanted to dial back, the threat has persisted in places like Syria, Yemen and East Africa,” said Rick Nelson, a former senior counterterrorism official with the F.B.I. “There’s still a legitimate threat and we can’t stop what we have been doing and change the model, and that has limited what Comey can do at the F.B.I.”
In briefings with senior administration officials, testimony before Congress and interviews with the news media, Mr. Comey has said that while the United States has “dramatically reduced” the “primary tumor” of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, “that threat has metastasized” in places like North Africa, Yemen and the United States.
The metaphor has personal meaning for Mr. Comey, who had a malignant tumor removed from his colon eight years ago and whose mother died of cancer. Just as the United States believed it had diminished Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, he said, doctors believed they had defeated his mother’s cancer.
For Mr. Comey and the F.B.I., the Boston Marathon bombings in April 2013 and the scrutiny that followed have illustrated the conundrum the bureau faces 12 and a half years after planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
After the inspectors general who oversee the American intelligence and law enforcement agencies released a report on whether warning signs had been missed before the bombings, a diverse group of critics seized on its findings, but for different reasons.
Local officials and congressional Republicans criticized the F.B.I. as not having done enough, saying that it should have more closely investigated Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the bombing suspects, after he returned to the United States from a 2012 trip to Dagestan. Civil libertarians said that it was the latest example of how the F.B.I.’s traditional approach to terrorism — deploying large numbers of agents to gather information — had failed.
“What we learned in the Boston Marathon bombing is that it wasn’t that the F.B.I. didn’t have enough information — it was drowning in information,” said Carol Rose, the executive director of the Massachusetts A.C.L.U. “If the F.B.I. and the police had done investigative work like they should be doing, they would have looked more closely” at a triple murder in 2011 that the F.B.I. now says Mr. Tsarnaev was involved in, she said.
Critics like Ms. Rose said the bombings exposed a problem that existed before the Sept. 11 attacks: that the F.B.I. needs to better investigate the information it has, not simply collect more of it. They contend that the bureau’s buildup under Mr. Mueller did not solve the problem, but made it worse.
“You had all this information coming in, and nearly all of it wasn’t helpful,” said Mr. German, a former F.B.I. agent, “so agents became accustomed to leads going nowhere and everything they opened became an exercise in how quickly you can close it.”
In the case of the Boston bombing, Russian officials had previously told the F.B.I. that Mr. Tsarnaev had become radicalized and planned to travel to Russia to join underground groups. In their report last month, the inspectors general found that the agent who investigated that lead never questioned Mr. Tsarnaev or his family about his travels, and did not reopen an investigation of him after he returned to the United States.
“The year the F.B.I. investigated the older brother, it said it did 1,000 assessments,” Mr. German said. “There weren’t 1,000 terrorists in Boston that year, and a vast majority of resources were obviously going to things that didn’t matter.”
The F.B.I. has said that it did all it could, given the information it had from the Russian government and the legal restrictions on how it conducts its investigations….
Nonsense. The Russians told the FBI that Tsarnaev was a jihadist. German is quite right: they were too busy conducting outreach to Muslim groups with links to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood to track jihadists.
Beth says
“I didn’t have anywhere near the appreciation I got after I came into this job just how virulent those affiliates had become,” Mr. Comey said, referring to offshoots of Al Qaeda in Africa and in the Middle East during an interview in his sprawling office on the seventh floor of the J. Edgar Hoover Building. “There are both many more than I appreciated, and they are stronger than I appreciated.”
That’s because they gave Islam, at that time, conveniently, another name – “Al Qaeda”. It was all about “Al Qaeda” and not the real culprit – their koran.
I know it’s repetitious – but here goes, because it needs to be (especially with a report like this one)
Koran (chapter and verse given for proof)
047.004 – Beheadings
033.052 – Gang Rape of female ‘infidels’
005.033 – Crucifixions
008.067 – Treason
033.061 – Genocide “without mercy”
005.041 – Racism….
005.041 O Messenger! let not those grieve thee, who race each other into unbelief: whether it be among those who say “We believe” with their lips but whose hearts have no faith; or it be among the Jews,- men who will listen to any lie [[This is Racism – It is hate speech]]
This is what Al Qaeda, hezbollah, hamas, and the numerous other groups have in common – their Koran. And, for a person like me – who is far less knowledgable than these heads – it is shocking that they are not able to make the connection – even still – at this late stage.
Please allow me to say:
“It’s the Koran, dummy”
onisac says
I have tried very hard to follow Robert as he tries desperately to alert the world of the unset of world danger coming from Islam and Sharia Law.
While I believe Robert is the right man for the job. I also feel he is grossly ignored by his audiences. I (we) are not taking this seriously enough.
Partly because Islam’s best weapon is deception and stealth aggression. It is a very clever and workable 1400 year commitment of Islam and it’s Sharia Law. It continues to open wide, daily doors that other wise would have remained locked. It needs no help and motivation, it is 100% committed to cleansing the world of all non Muslim’s.
Why? Because the Qur’an, Muhammad, the Hadith, and centuries of total commitment to remaking the world as it wishes, is now behind them. A world of savagery, no tolerance, no civil right’s for women, and no infidels. And then Allah will bless them with paradise and virgins. Not because I say so, but because Muhammad, the Qur’an, the Hadith, and Sharia says so.
Which should motivate us all to read the Qur’an. Then and only then will we understand what we are up against, as a free and civil people.
Robert shouldn’t have to keep repeating himself, week after week. Each of us should learn all we can (on our own) about Islam. It is our country to lose, if we do nothing except appease Islam, we play right into Islam’s trap.
Walter Sieruk says
Of course the new FBI director may very not really understand the danger and threats posed by the forces the militant jihadism of Islam. One thing that need to be done ,just for starts, is to describe and define the the danger to freedom.
Thus ,as stated before, one of the many negative ways that Islam may be defined or described is that Islam is a religious/political system of mind control that has much power over lives of many people around the world. With that stated it is very fitting to site the wisdom of Thomas Jeffersom. For he did have a noble iea when he declared “I have sworn upon the alter of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the minds of man.”
EYESOPEN says
People who are making that kind of money in what used to be thought of as THE premier law enforcement agency in the U.S. had damn well better start doing their homework – regardless of what CAIR and the rest of the islamonazis want to push at them. If they don’t, they can look forward to more jihadi attacks with the FBI running around like the Keystone Cops playing catch-up.
tpellow says
And there’s the same sort of dangerous ignorance among U.K authorities about the real Islamic threat, as indicated in the case of imam Abu HAMZA:-
“We made a mistake treating jailed hate cleric Abu Hamza as a ‘ranter’ rather than a real threat, admits former chief prosecutor”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2634198/Hamza-We-mistake-treating-jailed-hate-cleric-ranter-real-threat-admits-former-chief-prosecutor.html#ixzz32IF5A4hi
Max Publius says
It’s worse than merely underestimating jihad. These miscreant feds also actively censor and defame real counterjihadists. If these feds have any honor, they would commit harikari for their betrayal of their sworn duty to protect the nation.
Kasey says
Until all the free World understands the Islamic “mind-set” generated from the nature, intensity,content ,duration and compulsion of Islamic indoctrination, the continued appeasement and expansion of the Islamic threat to Western civilization will continue.
dumbledoresarmy says
It ain’t rocket science.
Where there is Islam – where there are Muslims, the allah gang, the Ummah or Mohammedan Mob – there is Jihad.
Jihad to achieve Muslim dominance over non-Muslims and to impose and maintain the sharia.
Jacques Ellul, French sociologist and all-round gadfly, understood Jihad, and puts the whole thing very briefly in his foreword to Bat Yeor’s “The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam” (early 1990s).
The brilliant Irish intellectual Conor Cruise O’Brien – another gadfly – understood Jihad, and stated, in a lapidary article in 1995, that “the Jihad is back”.
And a little-known American lawyer named Patrick L Moore *also* understood exactly what was coming, and wrote a brilliant little essay called “From Cold War to Guerra Fria”.
I’ll supply the links to these three classics, for anyone here who hasn’t yet read them.
I read Ellul’s mini-essay on Jihad at Bat Yeor’s dhimmitude website, *just before* I clicked on the link that took me to “jihadwatch” for the very first time. Ellul’s essay still is right up there as a brief, easy-to-read eye-opener. He covers all the bases except taqiyya; but Moore does that very well in *his* essay.
Ellul:
http://www.dhimmi.org/Foreword.html
O’Brien (two different links here, both usable):
http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/45600
Thursday, 10 January 2013
A Blast From the Past: Conor Cruise O’Brien, in 1995, Discussing the Jihad in Algeria
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/the-lesson-of-algeria-islam-is-indivisible-1566770.html
CONOR CRUISE O’BRIEN
Friday 6 January 1995
The lesson of Algeria: Islam is indivisible
HIs no-nonsense opening paragraph:
““Fundamentalist Islam” is a misnomer which dulls our perceptions in a dangerous way. It does so by implying that there is some other kind of Islam, which is well disposed to those who reject the Koran. There isn’t.”
If you ‘ve never read it, please, click on the link and read the rest.
Patrick L Moore:
(as presented at New English Review by his first finder, Hugh Fitzgerald)
http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/26087
Monday, 22 February 2010
From The Annals Of Serendip: Patrick L. Moore
and in a nice printer-friendly version:
http://www.ewtn.com/library/ISSUES/GUERRA.HTM
FROM “COLD WAR” TO GUERRA FRIA?
Patrick L. Moore
It’s a formidably scholarly article – the footnotes are a sort of “who’s who” of classic Islamic sources and the most astute of non-Muslim investigators past and present to that date (1994) – but it is also exceedingly well-written; it wears its learning lightly. Recommended. You’ll get a shock when you find out where and when the term “guerra fria” – resurrected as “Cold War” – originated.
Make copies of all three and keep them up your sleeves for future reference and sharing about.
And if you’re American, you may like to send FBI direct James B Comey copies of all three, with a brief, polite covering letter indicating that his statement about underestimating the danger facing the US – and the rest of the non-Muslim world, to boot – was no surprise to you, and that *none* of the jihad terror attacks that have taken place *anywhere* in the past ten years and more have been any surprise, simply because you have read these little background briefers and…you have read the Quran and enough of the other canonical Islamic texts to know what they are on about.
onisac says
I have tried very hard to follow Robert as he tries desperately to alert the world of the unset of world danger coming from Islam and Sharia Law.
While I believe Robert is the right man for the job. I also feel he is grossly ignored by his audiences. I (we) are not taking this seriously enough.
Partly because Islam’s best weapon is deception and stealth aggression. It is a very clever and workable 1400 year commitment of Islam and it’s Sharia Law. It continues to open wide, daily doors that other wise would have remained locked. It needs no help and motivation, it is 100% committed to cleansing the world of all non Muslim’s.
Why? Because the Qur’an, Muhammad, the Hadith, and centuries of total commitment to remaking the world as it wishes, is now behind them. A world of savagery, no tolerance, no civil right’s for women, and no infidels. And then Allah will bless them with paradise and virgins. Not because I say so, but because Muhammad, the Qur’an, the Hadith, and Sharia says so.
Which should motivate us all to read the Qur’an. Then and only then will we understand what we are up against, as a free and civil people.
Robert shouldn’t have to keep repeating himself, week after week. Each of us should learn all we can (on our own) about Islam. It is our country to lose, if we do nothing except appease Islam, we play right into Islam’s ideology.