You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Home Front: WoT
America's Homegrown Troop Killers
2008-07-29
War On Terror: It's bad enough that Americans are bad-mouthing American troops fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. But an alarming number of Muslim-Americans are plotting to kill them.

It's a story you don't like to hear from the mainstream media: U.S. soldiers increasingly are the prime targets of terrorism, both at home and abroad. And those who want to do them harm include fellow citizens. Thanks to the anti-war crowd, the trend may only worsen. The ACLU recently pressured the Pentagon to shut down a domestic counterterror unit set up after 9/11 to protect troops and bases. And a new congressional report finds that the U.S. government has no "coordinated strategy" to deal with grass-roots jihadists who more and more are meeting, training and conspiring to kill troops over the Internet.

In the most recent case, a federal jury last week convicted three Toledo, Ohio, Muslims of plotting to attack U.S. military personnel in Iraq and elsewhere. Mohammed Amawi, Marwan El-Hindi and Wassim Mazloum were learning to shoot guns and make explosives while raising money to fund their plans to wage jihad against U.S. troops. Amawi and El-Hindi are U.S. citizens, and Mazloum immigrated to the U.S. legally from Lebanon. In addition, El-Hindi's two cousins from Chicago face trial next year for conspiring to kill American soldiers. The Toledo case is just the latest in a string of troop-killing plots by homegrown terrorists.

• Earlier this month, Muslim convert and al-Qaida trainee Christopher Paul, a U.S. citizen also from Ohio, pleaded guilty to planning to use bombs to blow up U.S. military bases overseas.

• In March, Hassan Abu-Jihad, a Muslim convert and former U.S. sailor, was convicted on federal charges of sending classified information on naval ship movements to an al-Qaida Web site, and arranging to obtain weapons to attack U.S. military installations.

• Last year, six Muslim men, including a naturalized U.S. citizen from Jordan, were charged with plotting to attack troops stationed at Fort Dix in New Jersey.

• In 2005, three black Muslim converts from Torrance, Calif., were jailed for planning to attack Army recruiting stations.

• In 2003, a group of Virginia jihadists, some of whom were born in the U.S., were busted for training to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

• Last week, a student in Tampa, Fla., pleaded guilty to terror charges after police found him and a co-defendant with pipe bombs near a South Carolina naval brig holding enemy combatants. His plea deal says he produced terror videos "to be used against those who fight for the United States."

Homegrown American jihadists are waging a battle against U.S. troops right here at home — not in Anbar province or Kandahar — but right here, in Torrance, Toledo and Tampa.

The Pentagon ought to make force protection a priority over the privacy concerns of the ACLU crowd, who by turning the military into the enemy has put the lives of troops at risk on American soil. It shouldn't apologize for monitoring Islamists who pose a threat to facilities.
Posted by:tu3031

#7  U.S. government has no "coordinated strategy"

Maybe not, but then the track record for an 'uncoordinated strategy' is looking pretty good so far.
Posted by: Glenmore   2008-07-29 20:35  

#6  ...while raising money to fund their plans to wage jihad against U.S. troops.

From the CAIR encyclopedia: Wage jihad: the peaceful inner struggle to earn more money.
Posted by: xbalanke   2008-07-29 16:42  

#5  One additional please, don't forget the FBI and intelligence analyst Ms. Linda Franklin and a host of others back in Oct of 2002:

March 9 (Bloomberg) -- John Allen Muhammad, one of two men accused in the sniper-shooting deaths of 10 people in the Washington, D.C., area in 2002, was sentenced to death by a Virginia judge today for murdering a man at a gas station.

A jury in Virginia Beach, Virginia, convicted Muhammad of capital murder, terrorism, conspiracy and firearms violations in November for the death of Dean Harold Meyers, 53, who was gunned down in Manassas, Virginia, in October 2002. Meyers was the seventh sniper victim.

The same jury a week later recommended a sentence of death for the crime. Prince William County Judge LeRoy F. Millette Jr. today accepted the jury's recommendation and formally imposed the death penalty, county sheriff's Captain Brenda Perkins said in a telephone interview with Bloomberg News.

Muhammad's execution is scheduled for Oct. 14, pending appeals, Cable News Network said. Muhammad, 42, a U.S. Army veteran, and Lee Boyd Malvo, 18, a native of Jamaica, are accused of 13 shootings in Washington, Maryland and Virginia during a three-week period in October 2002.

A jury in Chesapeake, Virginia, in December convicted Malvo of murdering a woman outside a suburban shopping center and recommended a sentence of life in prison. Both sniper trials had been moved from the Washington area because of publicity about the case.


Posted by: Besoeker   2008-07-29 10:25  

#4  Not to mention the recent statement that the FBI, Homeland Security and local and state police are keeping watch on 20,000 active jihadis at this time.
Posted by: trailing wife    2008-07-29 10:22  

#3  Surprise meter?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2008-07-29 10:15  

#2  Trying to kill people that have been trained to kill and fight and have little restraint in doing so in that situation.

Well, no one ever claimed orcs were bright.
Posted by: DarthVader   2008-07-29 10:07  

#1  This certainly bolsters the case for those who beleive that Islam is a mental disorder, not a religion.
Posted by: OldSpook   2008-07-29 09:55  

00:00