Terrorist Suspects Residing Illegally In The U.S.
[posted by Justin Levine]
With all of the coverage over the latest terrorist suspects to be arrested in the U.S., it will be interesting to see how much the media will focus (if at all) on the fact that three of them were illegally residing in the United States.
Don’t hold your breath…
[Update: It’s also not every day that the Internet publishes the cell phone number of a terrorist suspect. Should I try calling him up to see if he wants to be on the Bill Handel Show? Or would that just be bad case of media sensationalism?]
I enjoy Justin Levine’s posts, and I listen to the KFI morning show with Bill Handel as well as some other programming. But how misleading is this contribution? OK, three of four alleged jihadist plotters were in the U.S. illegally. But you are questioning the COVERAGE? How about the obviously duplicitous administration claims — We are securing our borders. We are fighting the “war on terror.” How does this get turned around from an obvious executive branch (Department of Homeland Security) ineptitude and failure into some kind of indictment of the press?
Talk about trying to shoot the messenger. With a cheap shot.
nosh (de5a83) — 5/8/2007 @ 1:16 pmAlternatively, the focus could be on the fact that three of them were in fact, properly documented. That way, those who support making it harder to be documented can us it to make sure that even more of the people who come here looking for work will be undocumented for even longer, thus increasing the number of “illegals” in the country.
In either case, I do’t see the balance of potential terrorists to legitimate opportunity seekers will change.
But then again, I’m one of those naysayers who keeps pointing out that “illegal drugs” are way cheaper and more available then when they were first made illegal . . . I think the same principle applies to “illegal immigrants,” but I could be wrong.
Phil (427875) — 5/8/2007 @ 1:23 pmNosh –
The fact that the Bush administration doesn’t want to control the borders goes without saying. That’s why media pressure is needed to force it into action. But when both institutions don’t care about the issue, then nothing will happen. Many problems obviously end with government ineptitude. But its fair to blame the media since they are supposed to be watchdog against ineptitute. So I don’t see how that is a cheap shot.
You need me to ciriticize the Bush administation on this? Fine. Here we go: The Bush administration doesn’t want to fight the front on the war on terror as relates to securing our borders. We need to get rid of him and put in someone willing to fight this war on all fronts.
Ok?
Justin Levine (7ad338) — 5/8/2007 @ 1:26 pmNosh,
Technically, I think you should have said “Talk about shooting the non-messenger” since the media and the Bush Administration seem to be doing everything they can to act like we don’t have a border problem.
DRJ (8b9d41) — 5/8/2007 @ 2:06 pmSecond paragraph of the Washington Post front page story:
“The six — including three illegal immigrant brothers from the former Yugoslavia — planned to attack Fort Dix with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades to kill as many U.S. soldiers as they could, officials said.”
alphie (015011) — 5/8/2007 @ 2:35 pmThen they’re not terrorists. Saboteurs or “unlawful combatants” at worst since Fort Dix is a legitimate military target.
nk (db0112) — 5/8/2007 @ 2:50 pmI’ll take “saboteurs or “unlawful combatants”“…
We can line THOSE up and shoot them without a trial…
I like the way you think, NK…
Scott Jacobs (e3904e) — 5/8/2007 @ 2:53 pmNope!! ABC Evening News was just discussing this as “Home grown terrorism”
er (8fbf8b) — 5/8/2007 @ 2:54 pmI just listened to a BBC report on PBS television. They said the suspects were from other countries and “all have lived in the States for years” but that’s it. Nothing about illegal residency.
Hurricane Shirley (cd4aa7) — 5/8/2007 @ 3:08 pmEx Parte Quirin.
nk (db0112) — 5/8/2007 @ 3:10 pmnk… Can ya give that to me in english? Because the way I read it, it supports my beliefe we just lines these assholes up against a wall and shoot them…
Scott Jacobs (e3904e) — 5/8/2007 @ 3:33 pmAlphie – Thanks for pointing out the Washington Post’s dilligence here. Despite having the usual MSM biases, the Post has often been somewhat rational in its coverage on the war against Islamic radicalism.
Justin Levine (7ad338) — 5/8/2007 @ 3:53 pmThey can be tried by military tribunal instead of Article III courts.
nk (db0112) — 5/8/2007 @ 4:24 pmOk, here it goes:
Now, what you write may be somewhat rational, but, really, not so much. I dare you find a single news report that doesn’t mention that they were illegals.
Nikolay (939eb6) — 5/8/2007 @ 4:41 pmOk, here it goes:
Now, what you write may be somewhat rational, but, really, not so much. I dare you find a single news report that doesn’t mention that they were illegals.
Nikolay (939eb6) — 5/8/2007 @ 4:46 pmI wouldn’t recommend calling that phone number. Doing so is sure to put you on a few watch lists.
stoo (bfcda4) — 5/8/2007 @ 5:05 pmPlotting Against Fort Dix: UPDATES BELOW…
The fact that terrorists would try to lauch such an attack would send a variety of signals, not the least of which would be – hey the WoT is failing and we’re able to hit you anywhere and everywhere. It would be a recruitment bonus for terrorist grou….
A Blog For All (59ce3a) — 5/8/2007 @ 5:57 pmInterestingly enough, many Albanians were taken to Fort Dix when they came to the US as refugees in the late 1990’s.
DRJ (c6d1df) — 5/8/2007 @ 5:58 pmEven the US military noticed that the Albanian refugees liked Fort Dix and its soldiers. What happened to these Albanians? It’s reminiscent of the anti-Western attitudes attributed to 2nd generation Muslim immigrants in Europe.
DRJ (c6d1df) — 5/8/2007 @ 6:03 pmNikolay #14:
Here’s one: Breitbart.
DRJ (c6d1df) — 5/8/2007 @ 6:09 pm“With all of the coverage over the latest terrorist suspects to be arrested in the U.S., it will be interesting to see how much the media will focus (if at all) on the fact that three of them were illegally residing in the United States.”
The New York Times has it. Interesting?
ward (57aa5a) — 5/8/2007 @ 7:10 pmI’m deeply disappointed that warrantless wiretaps on innocent Americans completely missed the Dix Six.
It was a video store clerk, not Bush, who caught them.
Bush was busy listening in on Quakers. Too bad, he isn’t interested in terrorists.
steve (4b9a58) — 5/8/2007 @ 8:19 pmHas anyone discovered whether they:
a) entered the US illegally, or
b) entered legally, but overstayed their visa?
I’m guessing they didn’t come across the Rio Grande, but I suppose anything is possible.
LagunaDave (0bd906) — 5/8/2007 @ 8:49 pmJust something to help bolster Bush’s pathetic image, in my humble opinion. After all most Americans are realizing this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ty9HP_SWNw4
blubonnet (8d9f79) — 5/8/2007 @ 10:30 pmWAPO: Benign mention of illegal status of three of the terrorists in the 13th paragraph of a 24 paragraph story. Article concentrates on the relatively harmless, unaffiliated nature of the group. Not on front page (there is a teaser there on a feature about the health effects of high heels, however).
I wish Brent Bozell’s group would maintain a clock (similar to the armageddon at midnight clock) which projects out the time when the major print media will have lost 50% of their circulation from 2004, signifying their effective death as a leading source of news.
martin (9dc9db) — 5/9/2007 @ 5:01 am1. Only MSNBC refused to mention illegals til very late in the day. CNN and FOX did report it right away.
2. The “illegal” part is one which revolves around overstaying their visas or work permits, something neither Bush nor Congress wants to address. They did not “sneak” in by hiding in an empty crate or sneaking across a border.
I share the observation that this inept (negligent) Administration is responsible for allowing the illegals free access.
Howard Veit (4ba8d4) — 5/9/2007 @ 5:08 am1) Good luck on ‘securing’ the borders. Much of the left/center-left, not to mention the libertarian right and the cosmopolitan establishment right, rejects the notion of borders and is somewhat skeptical of the traditional nation state, preferring transnational government to national government, distrusting nationalism. Most big business interests are opposed to border enforcement, as a matter of marginal wages. Sure, not every business employs illegals. But 10 or 12 million illegals at the bottom end of the economy prevent wage inflation across the board. So it’s not in the Chamber of Commerce’ interest to lobby for greater enforcement. Then you have the church interests, like the Catholic bishops, inveighing against border enforcement as a human rights abuse. When the ‘leets are against it, so will the government bureaucrats.
2) The efforts to write these guys off as idiots and bumblers and boobs is gravely misguided. The whole point of AQ wasn’t to form an enormous centralized network, it was to form a distributed network of terrorists and their allies, working together loosely to achieve some common goals, not least of which is the overturning of western civ. While AQ still operates as a paramilitary / centralized terrorist outfit, much of their effort has been directed into making resources available to free lancers and ‘homegrown’ terrorists recruited in and activated in the country they will ultimately attack. You hear about Islamist radical web sites from time to time, containing manuals for committing terrorst acts – groups like this little cell are the focus of those efforts. This takes advantage of both Saudi-funded Islamic extremist mosques and lobbying groups, the tight knit nature of immigrant communities (I bet we find one of these guys recruited the others through interpersonal contacts) and the general sense of unease that a lot of people feel in the rapidly transforming global economy. If you think of these yutzes as a cross between bin Laden and violent anti-globalist protestors, you’re probably on the right track. The recent British terror arrests have focused on this type of convert to violent extremism. Get used to it, you’re going to be seeing more and more AQ 2.0 type activities, especially as it becomes harder and harder for AQ 1.0 to operate under the full court press of law enforcement, intel and military attacks.
3) It’s worth asking the question, what is the West doing to fight this kind of radicalization, on a broad-based level? What is being done to fight the ideological war? The answer is kind of dismal, and it’s about as dismal as the leftist idiots who are crowing this morning, “see, I told you we fight terror with law enforcement, not military action.” Fact is, it’s a full spectrum fight and failure to engage on any level cedes battlespace that we could and should control.
Al Maviva (89d0b6) — 5/9/2007 @ 7:41 amu f’n nuts, bluebonnet
Most americans are starting to realize that Soros is behind the whole anti-war anti-American lunacy like the video you linked to. How’s it feel to be a puppet of a rich, self-loathing, Hungarian anti-Semitic Jooooooo?
dubya (753723) — 5/9/2007 @ 8:43 amThere’s no way blubonet would know something like that, dubya. She’s just another ruminant in the DailyKook’s herd grazing on astroturf and thinking it’s grass.
nk (db0112) — 5/9/2007 @ 10:17 amI am having some trouble deciding whether Comment 27 is serious.
I must say, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Hungarian as derogatory before…the same can’t be said for Jew.
Andrew J. Lazarus (7d46f9) — 5/9/2007 @ 2:28 pmThis article reports the 3 brothers might have entered illegally in Brownsville TX in 1984.
DRJ (c6d1df) — 5/9/2007 @ 3:20 pmIf true, they would have been between 1 and 6 years old in 1984.
DRJ (c6d1df) — 5/9/2007 @ 3:21 pmFrom the last paragraphs in the link in comment #30:
Why are the best parts always buried at the end of a story?
DRJ (c6d1df) — 5/9/2007 @ 3:24 pmOf course wiretaps on innocent Americans missed them! Duh!
Uh oh! Steve is totally on to us! Better get a tap on his line.
Karl Rove (08e1e8) — 5/9/2007 @ 4:20 pmIt’s really most disturbing thing to read all that stuff about Soros from right-wing side. You know that you have a good company? The most hardcore Marxists/LaRouchists/fascists/Islamonazies hate Soros 100 times more than they hate “neocons”, who are just small pawns compared to his imperial majesty in their world. Just check this story how Soros sold Poland to the Jews — and there are dozens of similar theories on the net.
Nikolay (939eb6) — 5/9/2007 @ 5:14 pmIn a way, there’s a grain of truth to what they say. Soros was the guy that helped overthrow communism in Checkoslovakia and other Eastern European countries, kick Milosevic out of Yugoslavia, he was behind Yellow Revolution in Ukraine and Revolution of Roses in Georgia. Putin’s people in Russia are in a state of constant paranoia about Soros, thinking that he will also come for them. This is not likely to happen, but Soros and his model of political NGO’s action is virtually the only thing that Putin’s thugs are afraid of now.
So, believe me, O’Reilly’s rants against Soros would fit perfectly on Putin’s TV.
Nikolay,
The Soros you describe is an amazing fellow. Any idea why he does’t he use his power and ability to eradicate terrorism and, in his spare time, cure cancer?
DRJ (c6d1df) — 5/9/2007 @ 5:26 pmBill Handel’s a schmuck who softballs chicano-nationalist-socialists on his program when they spout that “El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan” is not MEChA’s “real” manifesto or stated purpose and it means nothing–which is why it is the group’s formal constitution at every college that it infects. How could a jew be responsible for glossing over America’s Hamas and giving such deference to its proponents like Gustavo “Ask a Mexican” Arellano?
While he criticizes his competition by calling them “Charlie Tuna,” he is also pathetically doomed to sell products to prevent male pattern baldness and pots and pans with Dom DeLouise. As a lawyer, aren’t you ashamed to be working for the broadcast equivalent of a used car salesman?
Also, Justin, please tell Michelle Kube to kiss my pimply white ass. What’s a flaming leftist like her doing as program director? Is everyone on the program a flaming zionist too?
I’ve said this before, but let me reiterate: I will never listen to that schmuck ever again. I’m hoping after he makes all of the buckets of cash from being a marginal lawyer off of us Americans he might relocate to his beloved holy land of Israel, where he belongs. If he loves it so much and has such ethnic ties and sentiment to his people, by all means he should get out of my country and go live there. He is about as American as Michael “The Skull” Chertoff–which isn’t saying much.
Petit Bourgeois (375601) — 5/9/2007 @ 10:07 pmSpeaking of border security and those in charge holding dual citizenship:
“When we met with Secretary Chertoff, he assured us there would be no action taken on the fence along the border without conferring with local officials… The Secretary told us that he believes that in some areas there does not need to be a fence, especially in places where there are natural borders like the ones we have here in Val Verde County. We told him that the only thing he is going to do by building a fence here is create a firestorm of controversy…”
…Jernigan said Chertoff told the border sheriffs their best route to quash the fence plan is to keep in close contact with their elected representatives in Washington.
“He told us, ‘I’m under mandate by that law that says I have to build a fence.’ And what he said was, that we need to start lobbying and we need to start informing our legislators so they can change the law…”
Petit Bourgeois (375601) — 5/9/2007 @ 10:29 pmI’m sure that some of his grants have to do with this as well. He certainly supports women rights groups in Iran and other Islamic countries. But, seriously, you probably have some legitimate reasons to hate the other side of Soros, but the side that I described is the side that does indeed exist and is much more important to him. I think I’ve read somewhere that all the money he spent trying to defeat Bush in 2004 is about half the money he spends every month fighting Putin in Europe. Here’s a typical news from Russia — Putin’s bulldog outlawing Soros’ grants.
Nikolay (939eb6) — 5/10/2007 @ 5:23 amThe right-wing problem with Soros is that (1) he’s effective and (2) he isn’t romantically inclined to blow stuff up. So, what sort of example is that? Snicker. (Oh, and he’s of Jewish ancestry, which would seem to bother Petit Bourgeois),
Andrew J. Lazarus (985420) — 5/10/2007 @ 6:06 amSpeaking of blowing stuff up,
Part one:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7143212690219513043&q=9%2F11+mysteries
blubonnet (8d9f79) — 5/10/2007 @ 11:22 amPart 2:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-999558027849894376&q=9%2F11+mysteries
blubonnet (8d9f79) — 5/10/2007 @ 11:24 amPart 3:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1162851149755261569
blubonnet (8d9f79) — 5/10/2007 @ 11:25 amHas LA taken over the mind of blu?
Scott Jacobs (a1de9d) — 5/10/2007 @ 11:48 amOh God.
Nikolay (939eb6) — 5/10/2007 @ 1:39 pmIt’s funny when I compare your employer to a used-car salesman, Justin, you don’t offer any defense. You are about as good of a lawyer as Mr. Handel himself.
Petit Bourgeois (375601) — 5/10/2007 @ 7:54 pmNikolay #38,
I agree George Soros gives away a lot of money but his own website acknowledges that his gifts are always politically motivated.
DRJ (c6d1df) — 5/10/2007 @ 8:47 pmNikolay #38,
I agree George Soros gives away a lot of money but his own website acknowledges that his gifts are politically, not philanthropically, motivated.
Link: http://www.sorostrading.com/art12_16_96.html
DRJ (c6d1df) — 5/10/2007 @ 8:49 pmAfter looking further at the website I linked above, I don’t think it’s a Soros’ site but the linked Judith Miller article is legitimate.
DRJ (c6d1df) — 5/10/2007 @ 8:56 pmWell, fighting communism, Putin, or for women rights in Iran is certainly a political thing and I can’t see any moral problem with that. Of course he’s not a regular philanthropist, but, that said, what political motivation can you see behind, for example, giving Russian scientists grants that helped them survive lean years of early 90-ies? Besides the fact that many of them later left the country thus helping ensure “Western domination”. Do you have problems with “Western domination”?
Nikolay (939eb6) — 5/11/2007 @ 2:11 amWith GWB being so accomodating to the big money corporations, the money in the hands of Republicans, I must say, I sure wish there was that much money on the Left. All the talk of George Soros, and no mention of the mega-bucks from Exxon, weapons industry, etc. from the Republicans.
Here is another documentary about 911:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7866929448192753501
blubonnet (8d9f79) — 5/11/2007 @ 8:21 am