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Home Front: WoT
More on the probable traitor at Fort Lewis
2004-02-13
A member of the Washington State National Guard was taken into custody on Thursday to face possible charges that he tried to pass information to Al Qaeda terrorist network. Army officials said the soldier, Specialist Ryan G. Anderson, whose 81st Armor Brigade is scheduled to deploy to Iraq next month, is being held at Fort Lewis, near Tacoma, where the authorities will determine whether enough evidence exists to charge him. The arrest followed a brief investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Justice Department and Army officials after they said they learned that Specialist Anderson used a computer to try to contact Al Qaeda cells in the United States and, as one Army official said, "offer his services."

Specialist Anderson is a tank crew member of the 81st Armor Brigade, a 4,000-member unit headed for a one-year deployment in Iraq. The deployment is the biggest for the Washington Army National Guard since World War II. The Army now has several weeks for the unit commander and a military lawyer to determine whether there is probable cause for formal charges to be filed against Specialist Anderson. If probable cause is found, he would face the equivalent of a grand jury investigation, after which the commander would decide whether to initiate a court-martial.

The Army released only sketchy information about Specialist Anderson. But his hometown newspaper, The Everett Herald, reported on Thursday that he was 26 and was a member of a Fort Lewis tank crew. It also said he graduated from Cascade High School in 1995 and from Washington State University in 2002 with a degree in military history, specializing in the Middle East. The newspaper also said he converted to Islam five years ago. Aziz Junejo, who is the host of an Islamic talk show on public access television in Seattle, said Specialist Anderson joined a local Muslim e-mail group two years ago, using as his Internet names Abdul Rashid and Gunfighter. Mr. Junejo said Mr. Anderson bragged about being an expert marksman and said he wanted to teach other local Muslims to use assault rifles. Mr. Junejo said that he angrily confronted Specialist Anderson regarding his e-mail, and that eventually he stopped sending such messages. Specialist Anderson also made irregular visits to a mosque in Mountlake Terrace near Seattle, Mr. Junejo said. "The really careless thing was that his demeanor and behavior, whether in the e-mail or in the mosque, was noticeable, and it didn’t fit with the community," he said. "He mysteriously came into the community a couple years ago," Mr. Junejo said, "and then just as mysteriously disappeared."
So they thought he was a plant...
Dr. Marina Tolmacheva, a history professor at Washington State, said that Specialist Anderson took three classes from her in 1996 and 1997 focusing on Middle Eastern history and Islamic civilization and that his grades were substandard.
I’ve seen the photo floating around the net and the guy is almost certainly Caucasian, incidentally.
Posted by:Dan Darling

#20  If Al Queda is seen tromping around Afghanistan singing the Washington State fight song, they'll really have this bastard by the balls
Posted by: tu3031   2004-2-13 10:52:50 PM  

#19  Don't knock the Kansas plains until you have enjoyed the vast skies and the solitude on a hot June day :).
Posted by: whitecollar redneck   2004-2-13 8:02:59 PM  

#18  Dar thx for the link.
OP, the link for COS is http://www.topix.net/city/colorado-springs-co
Posted by: GK   2004-2-13 6:49:28 PM  

#17  If you read the requirements for being a good Muslim, then compare them with the first ten amendments to our Constution (the so-called Bill of Rights), you see that Islam is incompatible with US citizenship.

Dan, I've been through Manhattan a dozen or so times, and have a good friend that lives down near Lawrence, but nothing in Kansas calls to me. You need to scrape all those sand hills into one good mountain before I'd feel at home!
Posted by: Old Patriot   2004-2-13 5:52:04 PM  

#16  Jeeez.... Pear Buck's The Good Earth is number 3 in Tallahassee.... it's a small market so maybe American Lit semester II is kicking in or something.
Posted by: Shipman   2004-2-13 5:01:25 PM  

#15  There is a "generic" Las Vegas link... doesn't show on the main left menubar for some reason.

1. Of Rats and Men by John L. Smith
2. Madam: Inside a Nevada Brothel --LOL! Go figure!
...
6. Mucusless Diet Healing System --I don't even want to know...
Posted by: Dar   2004-2-13 2:43:16 PM  

#14  Oops, they do have North Las Vegas...
1. Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
2. The Ultimate Weight Solution
3. Bleachers by John Grisham
4. Dude, Where's My Country? by Michael Moore
5. Who's Looking Out for You? by Bill O'Reilly
Uh, oh...

What a hoot!
Posted by: .com   2004-2-13 2:29:41 PM  

#13  "What do you suppose that suggests?!"
Wow! Rock-solid confirmation!

Hey, Thx for the link - that's actually very revealing. For some reason, they don't list Las Vegas, but do list Reno... High Altitude Baking is #1 -- and Horton Hears a Who! made the list. Guess it's a hotbed of normalcy! WoT? What's that? Are you gonna ride in the Sheriff's Parade this weekend? Lol!

Thx!
Posted by: .com   2004-2-13 2:25:26 PM  

#12  .com--One thing that I noticed on the new Topix news site is rather interesting. If you click on the news link for an area, like Seattle, you can scroll down that same page and get a listing from Amazon of the most popular titles delivered to that area. Seattle lists Al Franken and Micheal Moore as being #1 and #3 currently. What do you suppose that suggests?!
Posted by: Dar   2004-2-13 2:07:24 PM  

#11  The region's politics is the tip-over reason why I dropped Washington state from my list of potential places to live. I love the climate, the terrain, etc., but when I discovered that the atmosphere there was such that it had supported a Palestinian daily newspaper, The Palestine Chronicle (which today seems to be offline - demised, perhaps? one can hope...), I knew that ex-flippie + grunge + PaleoSymp was a combo I would not enjoy.
Posted by: .com   2004-2-13 1:02:38 PM  

#10  Michelle Malkin over at NRO has several of his postings from usenet. He's pretty pathetic.
Posted by: Steve   2004-2-13 12:04:11 PM  

#9  Dar: Nah, that would take too long. I'll get a team of horses, you bring a strong rope to tie to his cell window bars.

I saw it once in a movie, so that means it'll work...
Posted by: Carl in N.H   2004-2-13 11:50:24 AM  

#8  Dan--Oh, I'm sorry! I don't think any of us realized you were in there.

I'll FedEx the cake with the file this afternoon. Hopefully we'll spring you by tomorrow night! ;-)
Posted by: Dar   2004-2-13 10:04:55 AM  

#7   Yeah, what Jarhead said. The reason I brought it up was to point out that profiling is a fuzzy art at best and that jihadis come in many colors.

And speaking as one who lives there, Leavenworth does look quite charming this time of year ;)
Posted by: Dan Darling   2004-2-13 9:19:57 AM  

#6  Quana, you're right they are considered caucasian (at least the military categorizes them that way). Prolly shoud've said he looks anglo-saxon.
Posted by: Jarhead   2004-2-13 9:02:56 AM  

#5  Forgive my ignorance, but I thought Arabs are Caucasians. Do you mean he doesn't appear to be of Middle Eastern descent? But why is that important? Whether he's a Muslim is important. Not what he looks like.

I say this because I believe if we're thinking of "Muslims" within some particular visual parameter (i.e., dark, hairy, homely), we're not going to be as alert as we could be.
Posted by: Quana   2004-2-13 8:36:20 AM  

#4  The really careless thing was that his demeanor and behavior, . . . didn’t fit with the community

huh? so he should have simply been more careful?
Posted by: PlanetDan   2004-2-13 8:29:01 AM  

#3  I hear Leavenworth is pretty in the spring time.
Posted by: B   2004-2-13 7:15:55 AM  

#2   A photo has surfaced of Anderson wearing what appears to be a nazi-era German army field cap. This matches well with Anderson's high school yearbook photo as published by AP.

This is from a firearms website devoted to shooters of the British SMLE rifle which, oddly enough, was well-known for killing Muslims and nazis. (I own two SMLEs, including one of the rare "jungle carbine" versions)
Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy   2004-2-13 2:18:15 AM  

#1  he converted to Islam five years ago.

Ah yes, here's the kicker. Another disaffected youth. Let me guess, his heart became attached to AQ, shortly after 9-11.
Posted by: Rafael   2004-2-13 1:42:18 AM  

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