Assessing Terrorist Threats

[Racoon]

Don't worry, theres probably good explanation for occurences like this... Right??


http://www.nypost.com/news/regionaln...dan_mangan.htm

August 8, 2006 -- Eleven Egyptian students who were supposed to travel to a Montana university after flying to JFK airport late last month disappeared in New York, spurring federal authorities to issue a nationwide alert, officials said yesterday.
The students - who were traveling with six classmates from Mansoura University in Egypt - had their student visas revoked for failing to show up at Montana State University in Bozeman, the officials said.

The other six students made it to the college.

"The FBI and ICE [Immigration and Custom Enforcement] would like to locate these 11 students in order to speak with them," said FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko after the "be-on-the-lookout" alert was issued to all police in the United States.

Kolko said there is no reason to believe the missing students, all men around 20 years old, represent a threat.

"We have simply asked law enforcement's assistance in locating them so that the FBI and ICE may interview them."

Rep. Peter King (R-L.I.), who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, said the situation "has to be taken very seriously."

"Having a number of students from an Arab country arriving on student visas and disappearing is cause for concern," he said.

Montana State University Provost David Dooley said 17 Mansoura University students signed up for a 32-day cultural-exchange program to intensively study English, learn about Montana history and go on several field trips.

They arrived at JFK on a flight from Egypt on July 29, but only one managed to clear immigration in time to make a connecting flight, Dooley said.

By July 31, five others had arrived in Bozeman, but the rest were unaccounted for.

Dooley said the ones who showed up "were not certain about the status of their fellow students and why they haven't made it."

MSU alerted federal Homeland Security and Mansoura officials and notified the students via e-mail they had 24 hours to show up in Bozeman. None of them did, Dooley said.

[Eclogite]

Here is a perspective:
a) a group of young students arrive in a strange country
b) several, perhaps all, of these students have never travelled overseas before, and certainly not in the west
c) they are not only in a strange country, but a strange culture, where people speak a foreign language with an unfamiliar range of accents
d) they miss their connecting flight and lack the understanding/resources to easily resolve their problem
e) one week later many of them are still missing

Do the authorities in this country express concern for the safety and wellbeing of the young men? Have they fallen prey to muggers, or worse? Will the authorities seek to take action to ensure their safety?

No. The authority's only interest in them is as a potential terrorist threat.
Certainly interesting.

[Anyone heard of wish fulfillment?]

[Racoon]

Why Borders Matter
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Posted 8/9/2006

Homeland Security: The war in Lebanon is an object lesson in border protection. Hezbollah secretly beefed up its forces there as Israel lowered its northern guard. Then Hezbollah attacked. We should take note.

Lest Americans think this is "Israel's war," it's worth repeating that it was Hezbollah that bombed the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Lebanon, killing some 250 Americans. Hezbollah also kidnapped Americans Terry Anderson and Beirut CIA Station Chief William Buckley. Buckley died in captivity with nine others. Some of the masterminds are still at large.

Hezbollah (Party of Allah) is not just a faraway threat. Its leaders have infiltrated the U.S. by breaching our own porous borders.

The brother of no less than Hezbollah's chief of military security for southern Lebanon entered the U.S. illegally from Mexico in 2001 in a car trunk. Once inside the U.S., Mahmoud Youssef Kourani shaved his beard and tried to blend in like the 9-11 hijackers.

The feds caught him and he pleaded guilty last year to supporting Hezbollah.Unfortunately, a confederate of his managed to smuggle as many as 30 Hezbollah operatives into the U.S. from Canada before he fled back to Lebanon.

So now we have a Shiite enemy living among us, and it, too, has alarmingly widespread support. Terror experts say Hezbollah hot spots include Philadelphia, New York, Washington and Detroit — where the FBI is busy monitoring rallies for Hezbollah. Demonstrators have held portraits of the terror group's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, chanting his name along with Hezbollah.

This is really nothing new. Less than a year before 9-11, 17 national Muslim and Arab groups marched on Washington to protest support for Israel. The rally attracted more than 10,000 Muslims, who denounced Jews and, for the first time, openly supported Hamas and Hezbollah. Some of their leaders ominously warned America it would suffer a terrible fate if it did not divorce Israel.

Many who attend such rallies are here illegally from the Middle East, yet the feds don't pick them up because their bosses are handcuffed by political correctness and don't want to look racist.

Sensitivity toward Muslims is so raw that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff this week felt compelled to express disappointment that the FBI put out an alert for 11 Egyptian students who failed to show up at Montana State University. They entered the country on visas, then vanished. Chertoff said not to worry, just a bunch of kids cutting class. No threat here.

Three were arrested Wednesday, but how can Chertoff be so sure the 11 weren't deployed to videotape skyscrapers or train for jihad?

With Hezbollah trying to infiltrate America, and teams of suspicious young men entering the U.S. under false pretenses, it's time to put more teeth in the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System that requires young men from the Middle East who arrived after 9-11 to check in with immigration officials during their stays — not kill the program, as some in Washington have proposed.

[Southtown]

Originally Posted by Eclogite

No. The authority's only interest in them is as a potential terrorist threat.
Certainly interesting.

[Anyone heard of wish fulfillment?]

Get a grip, dude.

Kolko said there is no reason to believe the missing students, all men around 20 years old, represent a threat.

"We have simply asked law enforcement's assistance in locating them so that the FBI and ICE may interview them."

As for being concerned, I guess it's fairly possible that they were abducted and held hostage by Right-wing Conservatives until all attacks on Israel are ceased.

[Eclogite]

Originally Posted by Southtown

Get a grip, dude.

Learn to read dude.
I clearly stated at the opening of my post 'Here is a perspective'. I did not state it was my perspective. I did not indicate any particular attachment to it. I posted it because I suspected that there would be a number of knee jerk reactions to the opening post that had a particular flavour. I wished to place on record an alternative perspective: preemptive balance.
Your rather rude 'get a grip dude' appears to be exactly the sort of apparently unthinking response I anticipated. Maybe I should have taken more heed of my own comment on wish fulfillment.
I trust any response you make will be measured and thoughtful. I see no need for this to descend in to an exchange of personal insults. In that regard please note the use of the carefully applied words appeared and apparently in the above paragraph.

[Southtown]

Sorry. I didn't mean that harshly, honest. More kinda like playful or boysterous.

My reply it appears would not be pointed at you anyway. Consider it a preemptive reply to those who own that perspective.

[Racoon]

Any thoughts on assessing these terrorist threats?


http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/08/10/us.security/index.html

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Terrorists planned to use MP3 players and sports drinks to blow up as many as 10 jetliners bound for the United States, authorities said Thursday.

A senior congressional source said it's believed the plotters planned to mix a British sports drink with a gel-like substance to make an explosive that they would possibly trigger with an MP3 player or cell phone.

British and Pakistani authorities joined forces to block the plot to bomb the airliners, officials said.

British police acted urgently overnight, arresting 24 people in what U.S. government officials said privately could have been the biggest terrorist attack since September 11, 2001.

Among those arrested were a Muslim charity worker and a Heathrow Airport employee with an all-area access pass, according to Britain's Channel 4

[Eclogite]

Originally Posted by Racoon

Any thoughts on assessing these terrorist threats?

I'll lay odds that none of them were missing Egyptian students.

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by Racoon

Don't worry, theres probably good explanation for occurences like this... Right??

The talk now about Muslim armageddon has moved from late night radio to prime time cable news. The short of it is they (experts in Muslim studies) say that Iran is planning to nuke Jeruselum on this August 22nd. Some anniversary of Mohamed flying through the air to visit Jeruselum & then on to paradise.
Off to find some links.

Oh...here's one:

Originally Posted by GlennBeck

Let me make this clear. This is not my theory, and I hope that it`s wrong. Princeton University`s Professor Bernard Lewis, this guy, look him up. He has been called the most influential post-war historian of Islam and the Middle East. He is suggesting that Iran`s Islamic end of times prophecies could be fulfilled on August 22. This August 22, 13 days from now.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIP.../09/gb.01.html

[Freddy]

Originally Posted by Eclogite

I'll lay odds that none of them were missing Egyptian students.

Most of the 21 arrested were British citizens of Pakistani desent and of course Muslims. Five years out bin Ladin is still out there plotting evil while we are bogged down in Iraq while he laughs at us for spending hundreds of billions instead of hunting him down. I thought he would have been job one!