As a member of Cobra, the UK national crisis management committee, I was involved in British efforts to rescue our citizens kidnapped by Islamist terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan. No modern-day military action is so fraught: the odds are stacked against the captives, the whip hand is with the captors, it is a race against time, and it becomes extremely personal.

So the admirable Colonel Richard Kemp, former  Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan, writes at Gatestone.

The world has undergone gut-churning revulsion this week at the videos of rows of kneeling young Iraqi men callously gunned down by Al Qaida terrorists in Mosul. But time and again, in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, Hamas has shown itself to be just as capable of such brutal cold-blooded killing. That knowledge has galvanized Israel’s desperate hunt for those who abducted teenagers Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach as they hitchhiked home from their school in Gush Etzion a week ago. …

Nothing – nothing – stands in the way of our efforts to bring them back. Although we hope for the best, we prepare for the worst.

From the outside, it is difficult to read the realities of a kidnapping. Those with the responsibility of saving lives are forced into a cat and mouse game in which they must both reassure the public and sow seeds of disinformation among the captors. So far, for Naftali, Gilad and Eyal, the signs are not encouraging. As far as we know a week later, there is no proof of life, no demands, no negotiations.

Yesterday, June 19, the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency apparently reported that Hamas leader Salah Bardawil said that the “Palestinian resistance” (Hamas — the acronym for the “Islamic Resistance Movement”) had carried out the kidnapping.

The first priority is always to establish the identity and the motive of the captors. Early on, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asserted that Hamas was guilty. [Even] US Secretary of State Kerry agreed, and this seems to be the view throughout Gaza and the West Bank.

Hamas leader Mohammad Nazzal, for his part, described the kidnapping of three teenage civilians as “a heroic capture”, and “a milestone” for the Palestinian people. He said that every passing day in which the Israelis failed to find the teenagers was “a tremendous achievement”. 

The sheer sadism of the Palestinian Arab leadership, though bloodily demonstrated over and over again for nearly 100 years now –  and so is fully expected –  still shocks and revolts, and shows no sign of abating.

Nazzal’s comments reflect long-standing views on the abduction and butchering of Israelis by the leadership of Hamas, the internationally proscribed terrorist group responsible for firing thousands of lethal rockets indiscriminately against the civilian population of Israel from the Gaza Strip, the latest salvoes only this week.

It is the same terrorist group that the United Nations, the United States and the European Union – in a display of moral bankruptcy and betrayal – have all endorsed as a legitimate partner in a unity government for the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Just the day before the three boys were kidnapped, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, welcomed Hamas into the PA government while lambasting Israel for detaining terrorists and taking action to prevent Hamas terrorist attacks from Gaza and the West Bank.

Ashton, though never slow to condemn Israel, took five days to denounce this kidnapping. Both her words and actions have legitimized and encouraged Hamas. Her inaction in the face of repeated terrorist assaults has bolstered Hamas’s convictions.

The kidnapping will find favor with Ashton’s new best friends in Iran. Also desperate to appease the ayatollahs, British Foreign Secretary William Hague this week announced the re-opening in Tehran of a British embassy, closed in 2011 after being ransacked on the orders of the Iranian government. There are even reports of US military intelligence-sharing with Iran over the crisis in Iraq – where only a few short years ago, large numbers of American and British soldiers were being slaughtered — using Iranian-supplied munitions by terrorists trained, directed and equipped by Tehran and its terrorist proxy, Lebanese Hizballah.

As Ashton and the West cozy up to the ayatollahs, the ayatollahs are again cozying up to Hamas. A few weeks ago, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizballah, met with Hamas leaders to resolve the differences between Iran and Hamas that arose over the Syrian conflict. Hamas – isolated from Egypt following the demise of the Muslim Brotherhood regime – seems desperate to restore full relations with the Iranian tyrant. Iran is equally enthusiastic to bring Hamas back into the fold: Hamas remains an important instrument of the ayatollahs’ overriding, stated goal of destroying the State of Israel.

In these circumstances it is certainly not beyond probability that the three boys’ kidnapping was a goodwill gesture from Hamas to the ayatollahs.

It is hard to not be chilled to the bone by the thought of three teenage boys – who might easily be our own sons or brothers – spending night after night in the hands of ruthless terrorists… or worse. The anguish of the boys’ parents must be unimaginable.

Yet among the Palestinian Arab population of the West Bank and Gaza, including children, a new symbol has emerged – the three-fingered salute, signifying joy at the kidnapping …

Such celebration, including the handing out of sweets in the street, has been widespread. …

Both the US and the EU have paid the salaries of Palestinian terrorists by means of grants to the PA; they also fund this propaganda and incitement, no doubt including some of the imagery applauding the boys’ kidnapping.

The Israeli security operation has so far focused on finding the three boys. Over 330 Hamas suspects have been arrested, and illicit weapons and ammunition seized. Echoing the code-name of the rescue operation, “Brother’s Keeper,” the IDF Chief of Staff, Benny Gantz, has encouraged his troops to apply the same vigour to their task as if they were searching for their own brothers or members of their own platoon. He has also reminded them that most people in the areas they are searching are not connected to the kidnapping, and to treat them with care and humanity.

Concurrently, the IDF is taking steps to weaken and dismantle Hamas in the West Bank. In some quarters these have been criticized as an unnecessary and opportunistic widening of the operation. It is nothing of the sort. With this latest kidnapping, Hamas has confirmed its continued intent to abduct, attack and murder Israeli civilians in the West Bank. Like every government, Israel has an absolute duty to protect its citizens, and undermining this terrorist threat is an essential part of that responsibility.

All military operations are unpredictable; it is possible that Operation Brother’s Keeper could lead to an escalation of violence. Incidents have already occurred. It is unlikely that Israel will expand the current operation into Gaza, unless there is a serious upsurge in violence from there or a connection between Gaza terrorists and the kidnapping comes to light.

Whichever way this operation develops, the international community should avoid the same response to the current defensive actions that they have so often displayed whenever Israel has sought to defend itself from missile attacks from Gaza. The international community usually ignores repeated volleys of rockets fired at Israeli civilians, and then condemns Israel for taking defensive action to prevent further attacks. It is these responses from the international community that have encouraged Hamas, and amounted to nothing less than support for terrorism. And it is these responses, along with the endorsement of Hamas’s inclusion in a Palestinian unity government, that have led to the kidnapping of the boys in the West Bank.

We could not put it better ourselves.

For the first time in the 1,000-day civil war, the Americans find themselves in greater sympathy with Russia, Iran, Assad and Hizballah than the rebel cause.

According to DebkaFile, Bashar Assad is winning the civil war (or uprising against his dictatorship). So the Obama administration has stopped supporting the rebels to the extent, and in whatever way they ever did, and is now romancing Bashar Assad.  The new policy follows naturally from the exciting new love-in Obama is having with the Shia tyrants of Iran.

The conquest Sunday, Dec. 8, of Nabuk in the Qalamoun Mountains on the Syrian-Lebanese border is a signal strategic breakthrough for Bashar Assad’s army, climaxing a row of battleground successes that have cast the rebel forces into deep disarray. Nabuk fell after a two-week siege by the combined forces of Syria, Hizballah, Iraqi Shiite units and the Iranian Al Qods Brigades. The Qalamoun range which separates central Syria from central Lebanon is at their mercy.

Assad and his allies, Hizballah’s Hassan Nasrallah and Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, can chalk up four major war gains:

1. The highway from Damascus to Syria’s two port towns, Latakia and Tartus on the Mediterranean coast, is now open through the wayside town of Homs.

2. The last remaining rebel supply routes from Lebanon are cut off. Syrian rebels can no longer use Lebanon as a supply base for reinforcements and new recruits or as a destination for their casualties to receive treatment.

3. The Damascus-Beirut highway is now under Hizballah control, providing its Beirut headquarters vitally direct access to the forces posted to Damascus, and easing liaison and communications among Iranian, Syrian and Hizballah military units in the field.

4. Pushing the rebels out of their Qalamoun strongholds was the last step before loosening their two-year grip on the eastern suburbs of Damascus. Under relentless Syrian army siege, many rebel commanders holding on to those suburbs are crossing the lines and handing sectors over to Syrian army officers.

The Assad regime has reached a stage in the civil war at which the rebels no longer pose a military threat to his hold on power and have lost the capacity for more more than terrorist attacks or sporadic mortar shelling.

The Syrian rebel movement has lost its coherence as a fighting force. In desperation, they are releasing a stream of false claims of successes and unfounded accusations that Assad has reverted to chemical warfare. …

Since the only anti-Assad forces still in fighting shape are the two Al Qaeda affiliates, Jabhat al Nusra and the Iraqi branch, Washington is turning its back on the Syrian rebel movement as a whole and instead [is] ready to talk indirectly to Syrian army elements loyal to Assad as well as Hizballah. …

Indeed, in consideration of Hizballah’s military kudos and rising political clout in Beirut, the Obama administration has opened up a back channel to its leaders, mostly through British diplomats.

It turns out that the same coalition which contrived the nuclear deal in Geneva on Nov. 24 – the US, Russia and Iran – is going into action again on the Syrian issue with a favored spot for Iran’s Lebanese Shiite pawn [Hizballah].

We think this DebkaFile report  is likely to be true in its main thrust: that US policy has changed, and America is now in alliance with Russia and Iran and in negotiation with one of the world’s most savage terrorist organizations.

And if it is true, it is an enormity – an extreme wrong.

It is not that the rebels are any better than Assad. Both sides are evil. Both sides seem to be peopled by vicious murdering torturing cannibals. Neither should be supported. But Assad is Iran’s client. Hizballah is Iran’s creation. What matters here is the colossal boost to Iranian power. The US has conceded the territory to the mullahs.

Under a pretense by their traitorous leaders that it is better to negotiate than risk a war with belligerent enemies, the American people are being led into capitulation.

Iran will be nuclear armed. Hizballah can claim legitimacy, and the cost to Lebanon and Israel is dreadful to think of. Russia’s power and prestige is being enhanced with each disastrous move Obama makes in the region of the Middle East.

And the US is no longer the protector of the free world. The erstwhile free world no longer has a protector.

This is interesting, but more than interesting, it is important.

It is interesting because it shows how an Obama administration’s think-tank works for it – with a rather naive and transparent cunning, which they must mistake for  brilliant deception.

It is important because it confirms that Obama wants to join hands not only with hostile Muslim states like Iran, but also with actively inimical Muslim terrorists like Hizballah.

Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, writes:

Can things get worse with the Obama Administration’s foreign – and especially Middle East – policy? Yes, it’s not inevitable but I have just seen personally a dangerous example of what could be happening next. In fact, I never expected that the administration would try to recruit me in this campaign, as you’ll see …

First, a little background. One of the main concerns with the Obama Administration is that it would go beyond just engaging Syria and Iran, turning a blind eye to radical anti-American activities throughout the region.

To cite some examples, it has not supported Iraq in its protests about Syrian-backed terror, even though the group involved is al-Qaida, with which the United States is supposedly at war. Nor has it launched serious efforts to counter Iran’s help to terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan or even Tehran’s direct cooperation with al-Qaida. …

Beyond this, though, there has been the possibility of the U.S. government engaging Hizballah. It is inadequate to describe Hizballah as only a terrorist movement. But it is accurate to describe it as: a Lebanese Shia revolutionary Islamist movement that seeks to gain control over Lebanon, is deeply anti-American, is a loyal client of Iran and Syria, uses large amounts of terrorism, and is committed to Israel’s destruction. Hizballah engages in Lebanese politics, including elections, as one tactic in trying to fulfill these goals.

We have seen steps by the current British government toward engaging Hizballah. And the rationale for doing so is based partly on the fact that Hizballah is now part of the Lebanese governing coalition. Of course, in playing a role in that coalition, Hizballah tries to ensure Syria-Iranian hegemony, threatens the lives of American personnel, and other activities designed to destroy any U.S. influence in the region.

And let’s remember that Hizballah may well have been involved in the murder of courageous politicians and journalists in Lebanon who opposed Syria-Iran-Hizballah control over their country. True, direct involvement hasn’t been proven but they are accessories since they have done everything possible to kill the international investigation into the matter. And the trail certainly leads back to their Syrian patrons.

Here’s where I come in. I have received a letter asking me personally to help with a research project. … The letter says that this is a project for the Center for American Progress and that the results “will be presented to senior U.S. policymakers in the administration.”

I am asked to participate by giving my opinions on how the United States can deal with Hizballah “short of engagement” and “would Israeli leaders see benefit in the U.S. talking with Hizballah about issues which are of crucial importance to Israel?”

Answer to first question: Oppose it in every way possible.

Answer to second question: What the [insert obscene words I don’t use] do you think they would say!

The letter continues:

“As you’ve noted, some like John Brennan [advisor to the president on terrorism] is already thinking about a more flexible policy towards Hizballah and it would be extremely useful to get your views on this to ensure anything decided is done properly.”

I read this letter … as saying that the Center for American Progress is going to issue a report calling for U.S. engagement with Hizballah, and that it has been encouraged to do so by important officials in the Obama Administration.

The phrase “to ensure anything decided is done properly,” I take as a give-away to the fact that they are going to push for direct dealing with Hizballah but want to be able to say that they had listened to alternative views. They merely, I am told by those who know about this project, intend to talk to some who disagree for appearances’ sake and throw in a sentence or two to give the report the slightest tinge of balance.

The person heading this project has already endangered the lives of brave Lebanese. For example, he claimed without foundation that Christians were planning to launch a war on Hizballah, providing a splendid rationale for Hizballah to murder opponents on the excuse of doing so in self-defense. Accepting Hizballah rule is defined as the Christians recognizing they are a minority and trying to get along with their Muslim neighbors.

In other words, those opposing Hizballah are presented as aggressors while Hizballah is just the reasonable party that wants to get along. Moreover all this leaves out the community, about the same size as the Christians and Shia Muslims, that has been leading the resistance to Syria, Iran, and Hizballah: the Sunni Muslims.

In short, the person directing the project talks like a virtual agent of Hizballah and its allies, basically repeating what they tell him.

Aside from the fact that Hizballah is not and will not be moderate there are two other problems that these silly people don’t comprehend.

The first is the signal that such statements send to Arabs and especially Lebanese. Concluding that the United States is selling them out and jumping onto the side of the Islamist revolutionaries (an idea that sounds implausible in Washington but very easily accepted as true in Riyadh, Beirut, Amman, and Cairo), Arab moderates will be demoralized, rush to become appeasers, and seek to cut their own deals with what they perceive as the winning side.

The second is the signal that such statements send to the radicals themselves. Concluding that the United States fears them and acknowledges their moral superiority and strategic success, they will be more arrogant and aggressive. …

The last time I was in this situation, it involved a government-funded report about Islamist movements. What I didn’t know is that the word had been passed to the project director from the government agency that he was supposed to urge engagement with Islamists. The intention was to keep out anything critical of the idea. At first, then, I was told to my surprise that my paper would be responded to by another paper written by a supporter of engaging Islamists.

When my paper was submitted, however, it was apparently too strong, it was quickly rejected in an insulting way, and I wasn’t paid for my work. The fix was in and those involved were richly rewarded for saying what was wanted, though the actual implementation of such a policy would be disastrous for U.S. interests, as well as for millions of Arabs as well as Israelis.

Friends of mine have had similar experiences recently regarding papers arguing, for example, that engaging Syria is a great idea and that Damascus can be made moderate and split away from Iran. This is all nonsense, but honors and money are to be gained by saying such things.

So I’m not going to help provide a fig leaf for something masquerading as a serious study but set up to advocate a dreadful policy. It would be the equivalent of participating in a mid-1930s’ project designed to show that Germany had no more ambitions in Europe, a mid-1940s’ project that the USSR wanted to be friends, or a late 1970s’ project that Ayatollah Khomeini was a moderate and that an Islamist Iran would pose no threats.

It’s bad enough to live through an era of dangerous and terrible policy decisions, it’s much worse to be complicit in them.

The Ethiopian plane that crashed shortly after taking off from Beirut on January 25 was blown up. It’s mid-air destruction was planned and carried out by al-Qaeda, according to this report:

This was an al-Qaeda operation timed for one month to the day after its failed attempt to destroy an American Northwest airliner bound for Detroit.

It is becoming clear that either a bomb was planted on the Ethiopian flight with a timer or a passenger acted as suicide bomber.

Western security agencies in the Middle East involved in combating al Qaeda believe that its planners picked on the Ethiopian flight for more than one reason apart from the date: they had been tipped off that a group of French undercover agents, including Maria Sanchez Pietton, wife of the French ambassador to Beirut, and top Hizballah operatives, including secretary general Hassan Nasrallah, would be aboard.

Mme Pietton lost her life in the crash, while the Hizballah travelers were saved by switching to another flight at the last minute.

The first bodies recovered from the Mediterranean off the Lebanese town of Naama showed all the hallmarks of explosion victims: They were found strapped to their seats with their heads, hands and feet blown off and scattered, typical effects of an explosive blast.

Eye-witnesses at the time heard a loud explosion and saw the plane enveloped in a ball of fire as it gained altitude after takeoff from Beirut international airport.

Both France and Hizballah have denied they were targets.

Lebanese officials, led by prime minister Saad Hariri, have spent two weeks trying to hide the fact that the Ethiopian airline disaster was caused by terror. But Lebanese health minister Jawad Khalifeh gave the game away by a slip of the tongue Tuesday, Feb. 9: “The plane exploded during flight and the cabin, as well as the bodies of those on board, were dispersed into the sea, in different locations,” he said, trying to explain why some of the corpses were found dismembered.

He then tried to correct himself by saying he “didn’t mean a military explosion.”

More confirmation of a terrorist hand behind the attack is found in the deep involvement of US intelligence, including the FBI, in the investigation of the disaster from the first moment. The US survey ship Ocean Alert was dispatched to the area of the crash and dropped a miniature submarine into the depths to retrieve fragments of the airliner from the seabed.

A US intelligence and naval headquarters was set up at Beirut harbor to coordinate the salvage of the plane from the sea. Treating the crash as terror-related, Washington ordered the plane to be reconstructed from recovered fragments to establish the site of the explosion and its cause.

US officials are also shy of discussing the case in public and admitting the crash was caused by an act of terror. It took place on January 25, shortly after President Barack Obama said “Al-Qaeda has been weakened“, in an address to the American people to calm their anxieties after the Nigerian would-be bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had failed to detonate explosives carried in his underwear.

Al Qaeda’s success in blowing a civilian airliner out of the sky over the Middle East proved the opposite. It therefore became the subject of a comprehensive cover-up, joined by France. Before the black box, recovered Tuesday, had even been examined, French sources announced that human error by the pilot was the cause of the Ethiopian airliner crash. …

Six years ago, on January 8, 2004, an Egyptian charter blew up after takeoff at Sharm al-Sheikh for Cairo, killing all 148 French citizens aboard on their way back to Paris from a Red Sea vacation. Neither Cairo nor Paris ever admitted that the disaster was caused by terrorists

While it is true that all the signs point to a deliberate blowing up of the aircraft, the explanations as to why this particular flight was targeted give rise to more questions than they answer.

French undercover agents may be a threat to al-Qaeda, but are Hizballah ‘operatives’ and their leader? Iran, the state patron of Hizballah, has not been inimical to al-Qaeda, despite the everlasting antagonism between Shia and Sunni. The report implies that the presence of Hizballah personnel on the plane was a reason to blow it up: but they switched flights, so were they tipped off? Were they targeted or were they saved?

Was the wife of the French ambassador really an ‘undercover agent’? How does the reporter know? How many French agents were there on the plane? What had they found out in Lebanon that was so damaging to al-Qaeda?

Isn’t the evidence on which ‘Western security agencies in the Middle East’ are said to be basing their assumption that the act of terrorism was carried out by al-Qaeda rather thin? That the act was carried out ‘one month to the day’ after the failure  of the attempted blowing up of an American plane over Detroit by an al-Qaeda jihadist isn’t in itself a convincing proof.

President Obama’s saying that al-Qaeda has been weakened may have prompted al-Qaeda to blow up a plane to show that he’s wrong, but why that particular plane? And what if it wasn’t an al-Qaeda action?

Why does France insist that it was not a target? How can it be sure?

Why is the Lebanese government anxious to deny that this was an act of terrorism?

The plane was blown up. Among  the possible perpetrators is al-Qaeda. Among the possible reasons is that the plane was carrying French intelligence agents and the French ambassador’s wife. Little more than that seems sure. Much remains to be disclosed. But perhaps never will be.

There is another interesting question. Why, up to this hour, have there been no mainstream media reports that the plane was deliberately blown up?

Shocking information on how US homeland security and anti-terrorism policy has been designed by the Islamic jihadist enemies themselves, is provided by Clare M. Lopez, a professor at the Center for Counterintelligence and Security Studies, who writes this plain-speaking article for Human Events:

Counterterrorism policy is being formulated under the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), the lead international jihadist organization charged with “eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers…” It’s important to note that the objectives of the Muslim Brotherhood coincide exactly with those of al Qaeda and every other Islamic jihadist organization in the world today: re-establishment of the caliphate/imamate and imposition of Shari’a (Islamic law) over the entire world. …

Former North Carolina State Senator Larry Shaw, elected CAIR Board Chairman in March 2009 stated that he “looks forward to partnering with the Obama administration…” In case anyone failed to notice, CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) terror funding case and an acknowledged affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood. So, just how close is that partnership?

The policy implications of Brotherhood influence are both startling and evident. For example, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano sets the tone for the Obama administration view of Islamic jihad, but in April 2009, she rejected any notion that the enemy is either Islamic or a jihadi. Absurdly, she even refused to even use the word “terror,” instead preferring the inane “man-made disaster.” She was joined in planting the collective U.S. national security leadership head firmly in the sand by senior counterterrorism advisor to the president, John Brennan, who, apparently oblivious of Islamic doctrine and law, claimed in August 2009 that the meaning of jihad is to “. . . purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal.”

Following the foiled Christmas Day airliner bombing, Brennan made a frenzied round of the Sunday talk shows, shocking most of us with the off-hand announcement that a plea deal was “on the table” for Abdulmutallab (who lawyered up and shut up the moment he’d been Mirandized). Treating Islamic jihad as a legal problem or as though it doesn’t exist cripples U.S. national security policy making. 

Where did such ideas come from? How could our most senior officials entrusted with the defense of national security be so far off the tracks? It matters critically, because policy executed in ignorance of the essential linkage between Islamic doctrine and terrorism is bound to miss warning signals that involve Muslim clerics, mosques, teaching, and texts. A key indicator about our counterterrorism officials’ failures may be found in their advisors: their jihadi and Muslim Brotherhood advisors.

The inability of the National Counterterrorism Center (“NCTC”) to connect the dots is no accident. It is not meant to connect the dots. In the summer of 2008, the NCTC organized a conference on U.S. Counter-Radicalization Strategy. According to a 4 January 2010 posting by Patrick Poole at Pajamas Media, one of the leading speakers at that conference was Yasir Qadhi, a featured instructor at the AlMaghrib Institute in Houston, Texas. But by his own public admission, Yasir Qadhi was on the U.S. terror watch list! 

Yes, a key speaker for an NCTC discussion about Counter-Radicalization Strategy is on the terror watch list. He’s obviously there for good reasons. For one thing, Qadhi’s Ilmquest media company featured audio CD sets of sermons by al Qaeda cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, on its website and for sale at Ilmquest seminars. Yes, that al-Awlaki — the one linked to both Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Muslim Ft. Hood shooter, and Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian Muslim would-be Christmas airline bomber. 

To be sure, enemy influence within the Intelligence Community didn’t begin in 2009. In fact, the blueprint for the Muslim Brotherhood information warfare operation against the West goes back to a 1981 MB document called “The Project” that was discovered in a raid in Switzerland. More recently, the FBI discovered the MB’s 1991 U.S. Manifesto in a 2004 raid, a manifesto that not only confirmed the existence of the Brotherhood in the U.S., but outlined its organizational structure and agenda in this country.

The dozens of groups listed as associates in that document include a number who’ve succeeded in forging close relationships inside the structures of U.S. national security. One of them is the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA, another unindicted co-conspirator in the HLF trial). The FBI itself has maintained a longstanding liaison relationship with ISNA officials and placed ads in its monthly publication seeking Muslim applicants to become agents. A top FBI lawyer named Valerie Caproni joined senior ISNA official Louay Safi on a 2008 panel discussion at Yale University for a discussion entitled “Behind the Blindfold of Justice: Security, Individual Rights, & Minority Communities After 9/11.” Worse yet, in the wake of the horrific November 2009 military jihad assault at Ft. Hood that took fourteen lives and left dozens injured, it was revealed that Louay Safi was at Ft. Hood providing seminar presentations about Islam to U.S. troops about to deploy to Afghanistan. That’s an amazing record of successful penetration. And it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

As noted above, the influence of the enemy extends to the very words we use to describe that enemy and his campaign of conquest. … Back in 2008, the National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued lexicon guidance to their employees, counseling avoidance of words like “jihad” or “ummah” or “Caliphate” when describing the enemy. They refused to identify the Muslim American sources who’d advised them on their decisions.

But it is enlightening to note the list of Muslim Brotherhood front groups that endorsed the vocabulary list once it had been issued: the Muslim American Society (MAS — founded by the Muslim Brotherhood); Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC — which lobbies to remove Hamas, Palestinian Jihad, and Hizballah from the U.S. Foreign Terrorist Organizations list); ISNA; and CAIR. When Republicans on the House Permanent Select Committee, led by Congressman Peter Hoekstra, proposed an amendment to the 2009 Intelligence funding bill that would have prohibited the Intelligence Community “from adopting speech codes that encumber accurately describing the radical jihadist terrorists that attacked America and continue to threaten the homeland”, the Democratic majority rejected it outright.

Congressional Democrats would appear to be thoroughly influenced by the MB …

These are the Jihad wars, and they are nearly 1400 years old. The U.S. has only been confronting Islamic jihadis since our 18th century naval campaigns against the so-called Barbary pirates but liberal democracy will not see the 22nd century if we do not acknowledge and confront this enemy here and now in the 21st. Until and unless the United States proves capable of appointing and electing officials to the top ranks of our national security leadership who both understand and reject the influence of Islamic jihad groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, our country will be incapable of effective defense against either kinetic or stealth jihad attack.