Americans bought it 218

The planning for 9/11 was done in Pakistan, not Afghanistan, it now transpires.

Here’s the report that reveals the facts of the matter:

A trial under way in Chicago could be the next nail in the coffin of Washington’s unholy alliance with Islamabad, which looks more like a state sponsor of terror.

The federal case involves terror suspect David Headley, a Pakistani-American who says he was recruited by Pakistani intelligence (known as the ISI) to help attack India’s business hub.

In graphic testimony, he has revealed ISI’s role in the murder of 163 people — including six Americans — in the Mumbai terror attack of 2008.

Headley, who pleaded guilty last year to casing targets in Mumbai and European cities, detailed meetings he had with the Pakistani military and ISI officials. He’s fingered a Pakistani intelligence officer, a former Pakistani army major and a navy frogman among key players behind the Mumbai massacre. He’s also testified that ISI hooked him up with al-Qaida in Pakistan.

FBI agents and U.S. attorneys prosecuting the case find him credible. Among corroborating evidence: emails between him and his ISI handlers.

Headley swears that Mumbai was “ISI jihad.” But there may have been another ISI jihad — 9/11. Scattered throughout the 9/11 Commission Report is overwhelming evidence the 9/11 operation was rehearsed in Pakistani safe houses and financed through Pakistani money-transfer networks.

“Almost all the 9/11 attackers traveled the north-south nexus of Kandahar-Quetta-Karachi,” the report said. In fact, the hijackers met with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Karachi, where the 9/11 mastermind instructed them on Western culture and travel.

He showed them movies depicting hijackings. He passed out brochures for flight schools, and phone directories for San Diego and other U.S. cities. He used game software to increase their familiarity of jetliner models and functions, and advised watching the cockpit door during takeoff and landing.

“To house his students,” the report said, “KSM (Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) rented a safe house in Karachi with money provided by (Osama) bin Laden.” KSM and other key plotters — including Ramzi Binalshibh and Mustafa al-Hawsawi — found refuge in Pakistani cities after the Twin Tower/Pentagon slaughter. Residual funds for the operation were wired back to Pakistan.

In short, the 9/11 plot was hatched in Pakistan. So it only follows that the man who gave the final order to attack us on 9/11 — bin Laden — was found hiding not far from Islamabad, right under the nose of the Pakistani military.

The 9/11 Commission concluded that the ISI introduced bin Laden to Taliban leaders in Afghanistan. Then, years later, they warned him U.S. missiles were heading his way. The rockets missed bin Laden, but killed ISI personnel. What were they doing there? Training jihadists at bin Laden’s camps to fight as proxies against India in the war over Kashmir.

The panel found that al-Qaida terrorists have been marshaling war against the U.S. from inside Pakistan since 1993.

On Jan. 25, 1993, Mir Amal Kansi, a terrorist from Pakistan, shot and killed two CIA employees at Langley. Kansi returned to a hero’s welcome in Pakistan. Only a month afterward came the World Trade Center bombing, which was hatched by Ramzi Yousef, who fled back to Karachi where he and his uncle KSM went back to the drawing board.

After 9/11, U.S. intelligence found KSM living in a villa in Rawalpindi — headquarters of the Pakistani army.

In preparing the 9/11 attack, al-Qaida enjoyed “the operational space” within Pakistan’s cities to gather and sift recruits and to indoctrinate them, according to the 9/11 report, which was published in 2003.

“It built up logistical networks running through Pakistan,” it said. “Within Pakistan’s borders are 150 million Muslims, scores of al-Qaida terrorists, many Taliban fighters and — perhaps — Osama bin Laden,” the report added.

How right it was. Bin Laden’s deputies are more than likely holed up there as well. We’ll find them — if the CIA and Special Forces are allowed to keep up the hunt.

Can this possibly mean that the war in Afghanistan, now obviously pointless, was never necessary?

And is American tax-payers’ money, given to Pakistan to buy its alliance, used there to train terrorists to attack America?

Seems so.

Why? 289

This warning is in today’s Investor’s Business Daily:

An unclassified Defense Department report says an Iranian missile could strike the U.S. by 2015. If only we were working as hard to defend ourselves as they are to destroy us.

In any discussion of the Iranian nuclear threat, the assumption is always that Tehran’s target is Israel. Iran’s quite mad president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has pledged to wipe Israel off the map as part of his grand scheme to usher in the age of the 12th Imam. Tehran may have a bigger fish that it wants to fry, namely us.

“With sufficient foreign assistance, Iran could probably develop and test an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of reaching the United States by 2015,” said the 12-page Defense Department report, released Monday, on the “Military Power of Iran” …

There is no shortage of such assistance. A recent report by the CIA’s Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control Center said production of medium-range missiles remains one of Tehran’s “highest priorities” and that China, North Korea and Russia are all helping Iran produce such missiles.

Iran has long worked with North Korea, particularly on intercontinental ballistic missiles. Iran’s cooperation with North Korea began in the 1980s, when Tehran financed Pyongyang’s production of Soviet-designed Scud missiles and received 100 of them. Later, North Korea shipped engines for Rodong midrange missiles to Iran. Pyongyang has also helped Tehran set up missile production facilities, and North Koreans are regular visitors to these plants. Iran’s Shahab-3, which can reach all of Israel, is simply the Islamic country’s enhanced version of the North Korean Nodong. Confirmed reports place Iranian scientists and engineers inside North Korea in 1993, when the Nodong-class missile was first tested and unveiled.

Iran is working hard to improve its missile capabilities. It has successfully test-fired the Sajjil-2, a solid-fuel, high-speed missile with a range of 1,250 miles. In February 2009, Iran demonstrated its global reach with the launching of its Omid satellite. Iran’s multistage Safir-Omid space launch vehicle owes much to North Korea’s Taepodong missile.

A country capable of orbiting a satellite is capable of putting a warhead anywhere on this planet. We forget that such a missile wouldn’t have to be accurate. A single nuclear warhead detonated over the American heartland would emit an electromagnetic pulse that would fry our technological infrastructure and catapult America and its economy back to the 18th century.

Iran has long been testing the in-flight detonation of its Shahab series over the Caspian Sea. Such tests would make no sense unless the Iranians were planning for the day when an Iranian missile with a nuke would detonate high over an Iowa cornfield and devastate the American nation.

Obama knows this. He  is doing nothing effective to defend America against it. He is actively taking steps to weaken America’s defenses.

Why?

Could the answer be that Obama wants Iran to be nuclear armed?

And here is another warning from the same source:

Now that the uptrend in homegrown terror is obvious, the FBI warns that American jihadists pose as big a threat as al-Qaida terrorists. And these bad guys may be living next door.

In a major switch from past rhetoric, authorities see an alarming rise in jihadist activity across the country. Radicalization is not confined to Europe, and it’s far more prevalent here than officials have been willing to admit.

Four years ago, FBI headquarters pooh-poohed concerns expressed by this paper that we had an internal security problem tantamount to Britain, which has far fewer Muslims. Following a PC script, the agency argued that our Muslim population is better assimilated and less extreme. That only lulled the American public deeper into a false sense of security about the homegrown threat.

“I don’t think al-Qaida is largely represented in the United States, or people that espouse violent extremism,” FBI Director Robert Mueller assured the public in 2006.

Now the nation’s top cop is singing a different tune.

Not only does al-Qaida still aim to strike inside the U.S., but “homegrown and lone-wolf extremists pose an equally serious threat,” Mueller warned lawmakers last week, citing the Fort Hood shootings. Many U.S.-born jihadists, such as Bombay attack planner David Headley of Chicago, are plotting terror overseas.

Mueller also pointed to the plot to bomb New York subways, hatched by three high school buddies from Queens. In the most serious terror plot in America since 9/11, the Muslim men planned to strap on explosives and hit the Grand Central and Times Square stations during rush hour.

From New York to the Denver suburbs, Americans have been shocked to find their own neighbors plotting or committing violence against them. In 2009 alone, 41 Muslim-Americans were involved in terror, accounting for almost a third of all the homegrown terror suspects since 9/11 (excluding terror-finance cases).

Even Muslim clergy are increasingly dangerous. U.S.-born imam Anwar Awlaki — who ministered to the 9/11 hijackers, inspired the Fort Hood terrorist and allegedly directed the Christmas crotch bomber — recently claimed jihad is “becoming as American as apple pie.” …

Another popular American-Muslim cleric — Detroit imam Luqman Abdullah — preached violent overthrow of the government before dying last fall in a shootout with FBI agents. He called cops “kaffir dogs” and exhorted his flock to shoot them in the head.

“America must fall,” he said, and be replaced by Saudi-style theocracy. “The worst Muslim is better than the best kaffir,” or infidel. Hardly fringe, Abdullah was embraced by the Muslim community. …

This is a powder keg ready to explode. Yet this administration remains focused on “right wing” militia groups and “anti-government extremists” as the top threats. It has even banned agencies from talking about “jihad” or “Islamic extremism,” as if that will defuse it.

Why?

Is it possible that Obama wants Islam to triumph?