They let an Al-Qaeda blogger on a CIA base without checking him for bombs(?)

The suicide bomber who killed 7 CIA agents ran the Al-Qaeda website Al-Hesbah.
The suicide bomber who killed 7 CIA agents in Afghanistan last week was a Jordanian doctor and an Al-Qaeda blogger.
The Telegraph reported:
The bomber, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, was a 36-year old doctor from Zarqa, Jordan, the home town of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the late head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, accordign to a report on NBC News.
Balawi was arrested over a year ago by Jordanian intelligence for suspected terror activities, but was thought to have been turned to support US and Jordanian efforts against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
He detonated a suicide bomb that killed the seven CIA employees – four officers and three contracted security guards – and a Jordanian intelligence officer, Ali bin Zaid, who was a member of the country’s royal family.
Some of the officers had flown in to Camp Chapman near Khost from Kabul for what was billed as an important meeting that could yield information on the whereabouts of Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy to Osama bin Laden.
The base coordinates CIA operations and intelligence gathering in Khost, a hotbed of insurgent activity that borders Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas, former CIA officials said.
NBC said the head of the CIA operation in Khost was among the dead. It was one of the darkest days in the agency’s 62-year history. In April 1983, eight CIA personnel were killed when the US embassy in Beirut was hit by a Hizbollah suicide bomb.
Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, known online as Abu Dujanah al-Khurasani, ran the terror website Al Hesbah in 2008. On October 17, 2008, it was reported that four of Al Qaeda’s five main websites were dismantled, and that Al Hesbah had become the only major Al Qaeda-linked website still in existence on the web.
Newsweek calls this a huge screw up.
ADVERTISEMENT
Published May 23, 2012 at 11:51 pm - 66 Comments
Marsh commented:
Our security officials really need to get educated about islamofascist ideology. Too many people have their heads in the sand.
Kevin commented:
It’s probably best not to critique the CIA’s actions here. We certainly know less than them about deciding who to trust in that region. For example, most of us armchair cia operatives wouldn’t trust anyone over there (at least I wouldn’t). So we’d get no intelligence data either.
It’s tragic, but who claims to do a better job?
Thumper commented:
Not all Muslims are terrorists but all terrorists are Muslim.
Boogy commented:
reformed Jihadis? Just like Obummer allowing Gitmo releases to go to Yemen and re join Al Qaeda. It is because Obummer is anti-U.S.A. and pro -Jihadi. Some believe Obummer is the long awaited Mahdi who will destroy the evil Christians. He supposedly has some bizarre name attached to his identity. Obummer’s name is really common, in fact almost all mothers’ name their children Obummer. lolz.
bg commented:
++
again i feel the need to post these excellent reads..
“The Arabs Have Stopped Applauding Obama”
Weakening Islamism is Vital to Improve US Image in the Muslim world
On the Job Training
A Cold-Blooded Foreign Policy
as was/is this..
It’s not over until it’s over
According to John Brennan, head of the White House’s homeland security office, the war on terrorism is over. From now on, the administration will never use terms like “jihadists” and “global war” because doing so, as Mr. Brennan said, “risks giving these murderers the religious legitimacy they desperately seek but in no way deserve.” He insisted that the U.S. is at “war with al Qaeda” (“U.S. no longer at war with ‘terrorism’ ,” Page 1, Friday).
Could we be more blind? Acts of terror are rooted in the aspirations
of Islamists to create an Islamic state and impose their version of Shariah law.
As a devout Muslim who, like many others across the world, is dedicated to fighting Islamism and its radical offshoots, I believe there is nothing more dangerous to our security in the long term than the leader of the free world remaining in categorical denial about the essence of this ever-so-real contest of ideas.
Al Qaeda had nothing to do with the string of radical Islamists arrested across the country — from North Carolina to New York, Oregon and New Jersey (to name but a few) — in the last year alone. The only thing these radicals have in common is their belief in a militant version of political Islam.
I certainly can understand the concern of making this a clash of religions, but that should not lead to outright misinformation. There is a civil war happening within the Muslim consciousness — between those who advocate for the Islamic state (Islamists) and those who believe in secular liberal democracies.
It certainly is not the role of any administration to determine who are “good” and “bad” jihadists. Not calling them exactly what they call themselves makes the White House the arbiter of who is and who is not a Muslim. This avoidance behavior allows American Islamists, like the Muslim Brotherhood’s front groups in Washington, to continue to deny their responsibility to lead the Islamic reform effort against Islamism and its role in radicalization — the real existential threat to the West.
The last administration used a term far too vague, labeling the tactic of terror as the enemy rather than the ideology of militant Islamism. Now
we have swung the other way, targeting a single group that is but one manifestation of a global movement. The movement radicalizes Muslims and remains an ever-present danger to our citizenry and it should be identified as such.
M. ZUHDI JASSER
President
American Islamic Forum for Democracy
Phoenix
==
mbabbitt commented:
I’m sorry, but the Military and CIA screwed up here Big Time. This is a War with a very determined enemy and I don’t care how trusted anyone is, how much they love to hang out with each other — you check everyone out for explosives and weapons at all times. I think they might have finally gotten this message but at the cost of such dear, precious lives. The Military mind of today is too soft, has been perverted by humanistic concerns and have forgotten their mission: Protect your own; watch out for and subdue the enemy. No one is too trustworthy not to check out.
David R. Graham commented:
Zuhdi, please give it the proper name. Label it, please. To make your case you have to provide the accurate label, the actual denomination of this demonic phenomenon. Islamism? I know what you mean, but it doesn’t differentiate sufficiently in the minds of most non-Muslims and may not even in the minds of Muslims. Give a phenomenological label, not a theological one.
I call it Afro-Mohammedan Imperialism for several reasons, all inflective.
Afro because it is linked with African Centrism, long standing, by the likes of Wilmot and Fannon.
Mohammedan to distinguish it from Muslim. Muslim/Islam holds God as ultimate concern. Mohammedan/Mohammedanism (your Islamism) holds Mohammed and Koran/Sharia as ultimate concern. i.e., Islam is religion, Mohammedanism is idolatry.
Imperialism because that is their motivation — one-world caliphate. That is imperialism.
What do you think?
David
Redwine commented:
This is a prime example of extreme stupidity on the part of the CIA, of all organizations. It is well-known that Zarka, in Jordan, is a hotbed of radical Islamofascist ideology. Absolutely everyone in Zarka is a supporter of active jihad. They can’t be “turned”. That the CIA trusted this “Jordanian doctor” is totally insane and shows just how naive and gullible our security forces are.
This calls to question US security policy regarding the active jihad at home. If this is a massive security failure in the field, imagine how much more dangerous the so-called security organizations have made it for US civilians over the years.
The active jihad on US soil has been going on for a very long time: the first WTC bombing, Oklahoma City, Egypt Air, TWA 800, the DC sniper, quite a number of attacks on shopping centers and Jewish institutions, a hush-up event at a plant in Apex, NC. Excuses are made. Documents are buried. Events are ignored.
And we carry on, bringing in more and more Somalis, Saudis, Egyptians, Palestinians, Jordanians, etc., as if nothing is amiss. Prisoners are being radicalized and converted by Muslim chaplains and recruited for jihad. Islam is allowed to be spread like poison in our schools, making our children dress up and “play” Muslim, when the separation of church and state is rigorously enforced against Christians, Jews, Buddhists and other religions. The demand for foot baths, special prayer dispensations, multifunction prayer rooms turned into Islamic prayer rooms – these are serve to demoralize American citizens and degrade American culture.
Our students and citizens have been in a process of being “dumbed down” for a long time. When the top echelon of our security system fails so intensely, it’s time to change the game. Please read and be informed about the jihad now taking place in America. Parent groups and communities should protest and put a stop to the Islamic propaganda that is written into our children’s schoolbooks, the rubbish rammed down our throats by terror-and jihad-supporting groups like ISNA and CAIR, the infiltration of our communities, hospitals and organizations of fanatical Muslims parading as moderates and “tolerant” individuals. Like the jihadi Jordanian doctor on his mission to murder our brave men and women in the service to our country, the same walks among us, everyday, everywhere.
Alec Rawls commented:
Shades of Nidal Hasan, whose emailed expressions of desire to slaughter his fellow soldiers was not followed up on grounds that it was constitutionally protected speech, i.e. that the speech itself was not a crime. (Set aside the fact that Hasan’s speech might well have been a crime, treason being the only crime defined in the Constitution). If the CIA knew about al-Balawi’s terror-blogging, it seems crazy to think that the CIA could have ignored this self-expression of jihadist intent on the grounds that holding his not in itself criminal speech against him would violate his speech rights (what Obama calls a “failure to live up to our ideals,” as Obama distorts and perverts our ideals). But crazy as it sounds, this is EXACTLY what they did in the Hasan case, where even more died.
The only difference is that the CIA would have been imperiling itself instead of the Army, which would go against basic self-preservation, but all it would take is one Obamaton (an Obombaton?) to make the crazy call.
Surely the question has to be raised, since we know they did it in the Hasan case: did some Obama political appointee declare that Balawi’s terror-blogging should not be taken into account when assessing how he was likely to behave?
My far-from-certain guess is yes. Insane as it would be, we KNOW from the Hasan case that this was a newly instituted Obama policy, not just an incident, a policy.
According to the 2008 Brennan interview that A.J. Strata dug up, the policy idea was to only connect dots or act on dots that indicate “probable cause” of criminal conspiracy. The Hasan case proves that in this scheme they decided that speech that is not in itself criminal was not to be followed up or acted upon.
Such a policy–which we already know has been in place–explains what otherwise is pretty inexplicable: “Yahoo, we turned Osama bin Laden! He wants us all to meet. Just everyone please be respectful of his burka.”
If you think it is WRONG to distrust a Muslim, just because he happens to embrace jihad ideology (the known standard from the Hasan case), then you say, “sure, I look forward to respecting his burka.”
manateespirit commented:
I thought Obama’s theory was if we reduce the poverty, good things will happen to the US in terms of Muslim relations.
The CIA bomber was an educated man and the failed Christmas bomber was a young man of entitlement.
Any response to your theory, Mr. President? Care to revisit it again?
Redwine commented:
Yep, manateespirit.
I heard the most ridiculous discussion the other day on BBC World radio. A historian, someone who did some research on terrorism in Yemen and wrote a book about it and the commentator were all busily agreeing with each other that the cause of terrorism, aside from the West’s foreign policies, was poverty!
They, like so many ignorant, do-gooder liberals, think that if you throw gobs of money at the right institutions and create jobs in Muslim countries, there will be no inclination to do violent things. The reality is that the jihadis bent on slaughtering infidels are generally better educated and better off than your average, poverty-stricken Muslim.
Well, the Bin Laden family is one of the wealthiest and best educated families in Saudi Arabia – with origins in Yemen, no less. The 9/11 killers were quite well off and educated, as were the Jordanian doctor, Major Hasan and so many others.
It’s the Islamofascist, jihadist ideology. Period.
squeaky commented:
OT definately – but after racking my memory.
what a difference a decade makes…..” rules of engagement” a movie from 2000 that is fictional
and deemed racist at the time for it’s portrayal of arabs. the military being vindicated then and
how hollywood portrays them now…….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_of_Engagement_(film)
Richard Aubrey commented:
The military and other US operations in Viet Nam hired huge numbers of locals for various work, from laundry to maintenance.
Somebody’s got to do it.
The current practice of hiring third-country folks is probably better, but we’re not going to be 100% Turkish truck drivers, Ugandan inside guards, and Filipino food service people.
Every local is a risk.
Considering their familiarity with the situation, perhaps the net is positive, since some of them might tell our guys something important, or if most of them simply failed to show one fine morning….
But every local is a risk, and that particularly includes people sharing numerous characteristics with the enemy. Like this clown, and Hasan.
Old Rebel commented:
Uh-oh! This means they’ll start profiling all bloggers — a volatile and opinionated sub-species of humanity.
Rick Neibel commented:
To Thumper:
Thanks for the info! Was not previously aware that Timothy McVeigh was a muslim.