9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America

The Associated Press reports the charges against the alleged 20th 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Mani Ahmad al Kahtani, a.k.a. Mohammed al-Qahtani, were dropped without prejudice by a military judge at Guantanamo yesterday, meaning the charges can be filed later. The AP’s breathless headline ‘US drops charges against Saudi in Sept. 11 attacks’ left the last part out.

A search of immigration service records after 9/11 revealed that Mohamed Mani Ahmad al Kahtani landed in Orlando International Airport on August 4, 2001. Yet, according to the 9/11 Commission, “Upon arrival … Kahtani was denied entry by immigration officials because he had a one-way ticket and little money, could not speak English, and could not adequately explain what he intended to do in the United States.”

While their interrogations were obviously conducted separately, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh both confirmed al Kahtani was to become the 20th hijacker and that Mohamed Atta went to meet his arrival in Orlando. In addition, a later review of intercepted communications that occured on August 3, 2001, indicate why al Kahtani travelled to America:

In addition to the operatives who eventually participated in the 9/11 attacks as muscle hijackers, Bin Ladin apparently selected at least nine other Saudis who, for various reasons, did not end up taking part in the operation: Mohamed Mani Ahmad al Kahtani, Khalid Saeed Ahmad al Zahrani, Ali Abd al Rahman al Faqasi al Ghamdi, Saeed al Baluchi, Qutaybah al Najdi, Zuhair al Thubaiti, Saeed Abdullah Saeed al Ghamdi, Saud al Rashid, and Mushabib al Hamlan. A tenth individual, a Tunisian with Canadian citizenship named Abderraouf Jdey, may have been a candidate to participate in 9/11, or he may have been a candidate for a later attack. These candidate hijackers either backed out, had trouble obtaining needed travel documents, or were removed from the operation by the al Qaeda leadership. Khallad believes KSM wanted between four and six operatives per plane. KSM states that al Qaeda had originally planned to use 25 or 26 hijackers but ended up with only the 19.
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A week after he returned from meeting Binalshibh in Spain, Atta traveled to Newark, probably to coordinate with Hazmi and give him additional funds. Atta spent a few days in the area before returning to Florida on July 30.The month of August was busy, as revealed by a set of contemporaneous Atta-Binalshibh communications that were recovered after September 11.

On August 3, for example, Atta and Binalshibh discussed several matters, such as the best way for the operatives to purchase plane tickets and the assignment of muscle hijackers to individual teams. Atta and Binalshibh also revisited the question of whether to target the White House. They discussed targets in coded language, pretending to be students discussing various fields of study: “architecture” referred to the World Trade Center, “arts” the Pentagon, “law” the Capitol, and “politics” the White House.

Binalshibh reminded Atta that Bin Ladin wanted to target the White House. Atta again cautioned that this would be difficult. When Binalshibh persisted, Atta agreed to include the White House but suggested they keep the Capitol as an alternate target in case the White House proved too difficult. Atta also suggested that the attacks would not happen until after the first week in September, when Congress reconvened.

Atta and Binalshibh also discussed “the friend who is coming as a tourist”- a cryptic reference to candidate hijacker Mohamed al Kahtani (mentioned above), whom Hawsawi was sending the next day as “the last one” to “complete the group.” On August 4, Atta drove to the Orlando airport to meet Kahtani. Upon arrival, however, Kahtani was denied entry by immigration officials because he had a one-way ticket and little money, could not speak English, and could not adequately explain what he intended to do in the United States. He was sent back to Dubai. Hawsawi contacted KSM, who told him to help Kahtani return to Pakistan.

During his own interrogation, Mohamed Mani Ahmad al Kahtani (ISN 063) further corroberated he was sent to the United States to become a martyr and arrived in Orlando on August 4, 2001.

The U.S. military command in Iraq confirmed yesterday that Abdullah Saleh Ali al-Ajmi conducted one of several suicide attacks that took place in Mosul, Iraq, last month. The attacks killed 7 Iraqis and injured 31 more:

Navy Cmdr. Scott Rye, a spokesman for the Multi-National Force-Iraq, said one of the three recent suicide bombers in Mosul was al-Ajmi, “a former Guantanamo Bay detainee.”

“Al-Ajmi had returned to Kuwait following his release from Guantanamo Bay and traveled to Iraq via Syria,” Cmdr. Rye said.

A Pentagon spokesman confirmed that al-Ajmi is far from the first al Qaeda terrorist to go back to attacking U.S. forces and murdering his fellow Muslims:

Al-Ajmi is not the first former Guantanamo detainee to reportedly return to the battlefield after being released. Pentagon officials say there are more than 10 people once held by the U.S. at Guantanamo who have been killed or captured in fighting after being released from the detention facility.

“Our reports indicate that a number of former [Guantanamo Bay] detainees have taken part in anti-coalition militant activities after leaving U.S. detention. Some have subsequently been killed in combat,” said Cmdr. Jeff Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman.

Documents provided by the Pentagon show other former detainees returning to the battlefield, including Abdullah Mahsud, who was released from Guantanamo in 2004. He returned to Afghanistan, where he became a militant leader in the Mahsud tribe in southern Waziristan, the documents said.

“We have since discovered that he had been associated with the Taliban since his teen years and has been described as an al Qaeda-linked facilitator.

“In mid-October 2004, Mahsud directed the kidnapping of two Chinese engineers in Pakistan. During rescue operations by Pakistani forces, a kidnapper shot one of the hostages. Five of the kidnappers were killed. Mahsud was not among them,” the documents provided by the Pentagon said.

“As these facts illustrate, there is an implied future risk to U.S. and allied interests with every detainee who is released or transferred from Guantanamo,” Gordon said.

Reports of former detainees returning to the battlefield show they are dedicated to their cause and have been trained to be deceptive, the Pentagon officials said, but such factors will not prevent the release of other detainees from Guantanamo Bay.

Released Guantanamo detainee Sami al-Haj faked weakness and the inability to walk off the US Air Force plane once it landed in Khartoum.

According to DoD spokesman Navy Commander Jeffrey Gordon, the aircrew who brought him to Khartoum on a military transport said he was relaxed, standing up, walking around during the entire flight. When they landed at Khartoum, he looked out the window, saw all the media, and immediately collapsed in a chair. “I can’t walk,” said the former cameraman for Al-Jazeera, demanding an ambulance. He can be seen being carried off the plane on a stretcher, wincing as if in pain. In another video shot the same day, he’s seen reuniting with his family, walking, standing, smiling, miraculously healed. Gordon reports that the man who said he engaged in a 16 mos hunger strike “left Guantanamo four pounds lighter than when he arrived.”

Here is Al-Jazeera’s report. Note that 39 seconds into it the video shows Sami al-Haj, only minutes after arriving at a Khartoum hospital, walking unassisted and hugging his son.

Sami al-Haj looked pretty healthy to me for a man held in a “concentration camp” for six years.

The Associated Press reports:

A Sunni fundamentalist from Kuwait who has been linked by the United Nations and the United States to al-Qaida, said in an interview published Wednesday that Iran is supporting Sunni Arab insurgents fighting American troops in Iraq. The comments by Mubarak al-Bathali came just days after reports surfaced here that three Kuwaitis recently carried out suicide bombings in Iraq, including a Kuwaiti who was a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner. Kuwaiti authorities have not confirmed those reports.

The U.S. has accused Iran — which is predominantly Shiite like Iraq — of supporting Shiite militias in Iraq. Iran denies this and blames the U.S. troops presence for the violence in Iraq.

The accusations by al-Bathali were a rare occasion that a Sunni fundamentalist claimed Tehran also backs Sunni extremists, linked to al-Qaida. In the battlefields of Iraq, Sunnis and Shiites are archenemies.

In the interview in Kuwaiti Al-Qabas daily, al-Bathali said that Tehran is supplying al-Qaida fighters and other Jihad movements in Iraq with “weapons and money” and claimed he has personally sent fighters to Iraq by way of Syria.

Al-Bathali alleged that Iran’s motivation for backing both the Sunnis and Shiites opposed to Washington, was because Tehran is eager to “place hurdles in front of America” so that the U.S. would be “too busy to fight” Iran. He also said Iran facilitates the entry of fighters into Iraq and Afghanistan. “Any person who wants Jihad (holy war), is of age and responsible and honest in his intent, I send him and prepare him,” al-Bathali said. “I guarantee passage into Syria and reception there, until he finds himself in Iraq carrying a weapon and fighting.”

Al-Bathali, whose remarks were unusually bold, said he has also sent Kuwaitis to fight in Kosovo and Chechnya.

He gave no evidence of his claims and provided no further details. But he mentioned his son, Abdel Rahman, who was captured in Iraq in 2004 and sentenced there to 10 years for working with al-Qaida.

“If I had sons other than Abdel Rahman, I would have sent them to fight the Americans until doomsday,” he said in the interview. Al-Bathali could not be reached by The Associated Press for comment.

In January, the U.N. Security Council added al-Bathali and two other Kuwaitis to a list of about 480 individuals and businesses linked to al-Qaida and its sponsor the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The U.S. Treasury Department has said al-Bathali is a fundraiser and recruiter for Osama bin Laden’s terror network and has facilitated travel for extremists planning to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Al-Bathali told Al-Qabas that he doesn’t send fighters to Iraq through the Iraq-Kuwait border because the area beyond the boundary in southern Iraq is controlled by “Shiites and British forces.” Instead, the “easiest borders have been the Syrian and Saudi,” he said.

The U.S. has chastised Syria for allowing foreign fighters to cross into Iraq. Syria denies the charges and claims it’s impossible to seal its border completely.

Small oil-rich Kuwait has been a major Washington ally since the U.S.-led 1991 Gulf War that liberated it from a seven-month Iraqi occupation. However, some of its fundamentalist Muslims disapprove of U.S. forces being based in their country or any other in the area.

Media reports have said that three Kuwaitis, including Abdullah al-Ajmi who was released from the U.S. detention facility at Guantnamo Bay in 2005, carried out suicide bombings in Iraq recently [Ed. — emphasis added mine]. The families of al-Ajmi and another alleged bomber, Bader al-Harbi, said they received anonymous calls informing them the men died in Iraq.

Al-Bathali told Al-Qabas the three left Kuwait “only after a martyrdom operation was prepared for them in agreement with coordinators” in Iraq. He did not say if he had a role in sending them himself.

Kuwait’s Arab Times reports:

A third Kuwaiti, identified as Bader Al-Harbi has reportedly carried out a suicide attack in Iraq according to knowledgeable sources. The sources told the Arab Times unlike the two other Kuwaitis — Abdullah Al-Ajmi and Nasser Al-Dousari — who are also said to have carried out suicide attacks in Iraq, Al-Harbi was not an ‘inmate’ of the infamous X-Ray Camp in Guantanamo, Cuba [Abdullah Al-Ajmi, aka Abdullah Saleh Ali al-Ajmi, was detained at Guatanamo from 2002 to 2005]. However, he reportedly was in Afghanistan and on his return at the Kuwait International Airport, he was whisked away, imprisoned and released. The sources added when the security authorities felt he was dangerous and tried to arrest him, he gave the securitymen a slip and left for Syria with the two other Kuwaitis from where he left for Iraq and was killed in a suicide attack. Although the details of the operation are sketchy, the sources said Al-Harbi alone drove a bomb laden vehicle while Dousari and Al-Ajmi were reportedly in another car [Ed. — emphasis added mine].

Al-Harbi is believed to be 36 years old and survived by two wives and seven children. The youngest is believed to be just five days old. The sources quoting Al-Harbi’s brother said he left Kuwait about 45 days ago to perform Umra, a minor pilgrimage, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. However, the family later discovered he had left for Syria. The brother added the family received a phone call from an unidentified person who said he was calling from the Islamic State of Iraq. He informed the family that Bader died a martyr in a suicide operation.

Meanwhile the Al-Anba daily said Bader left for Saudi Arabia three weeks ago to perform Umra but he called his family from Syria and sent them a picture posing with Abdullah Al-Ajmi. After his death the family received condolences at their home in Jahra. Mesfer Al-Ajmi, Abdullah’s brother said unidentified persons lured his brother to fight against the US forces in Iraq. He also criticized the State Security police for failing to monitor the activities of the so-called al-Qaeda ’sleeper cells.’

In case you have not heard, the trial judge for the Military Commission of Osama bin Laden’s chauffer-bodyguard has decided to let Salim Ahmed Hamdan pass notes to his follow Guantanamo detainees. Henry Mark Holzer suggests:

Perhaps Hamdan could write: “Khalid, this is me, your ‘ole terrorist buddy from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Waziristan. I’m just down the road here in another detention facility, eating well, praying to Allah, confounding my military guards, consulting with my America lawyers, having the Court rule military commissions illegal. We’re asking for all kinds of stuff the infidels can’t give us, and when they don’t that will really gum up these proceedings. What a country!”

What can’t the infidels give them and why it matters.

Leadership, training, and improved relations with the local populace brought Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 23rd Marines home last month from a full tour in Haditha, Iraq, without a single combat death or injury; you make your own luck.

Consider this headline and opening paragraph from an October 7, 2005, report:

Marines find insurgency’s deadly tools in Haditha Weapons cache found buried in courtyard of mosque:

HADITHA, Iraq (CNN) — While the insurgents in Haditha may have faded away for the time being, they left their mark behind. U.S. Marines and members of Iraqi Special Forces on Thursday uncovered a sizable weapons cache hidden in a shrine and yard adjacent to a mosque in east-central Haditha, close to the Euphrates River, and continued to uncover deadly buried roadside bombs. The city itself is almost literally an improvised explosive device (IED) field.

I doubt that Lima Company’s Commander, Major Kevin Jarrard, believes we should time-table the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq:

He is a complex man. He is a solid soldier who treats a day of hunting for terrorists and explosive devices in an Iraqi city as just another day at the office. A father of four, Jarrard also is a man with a special place in his heart for children. Deeply grounded in his Christian faith, Jarrard quotes Moses, someone who knew a thing or two about leading people in the desert.

“Take heed to yourselves, lest you forget what your eyes have seen,” Jarrard said, repeating the words of Moses from a verse from the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy.

He saw a lot in Haditha, an Iraqi town of about 90,000. However, nothing touched him more than ailing children, whose lives were in jeopardy without surgery not available in Iraq. At Christmas, Jarrard began contacting friends at home about the plight of Amenah, a little girl who was born with a severe heart condition. He thought of the example his father, Tom, a Gainesville attorney who died of cancer just as Kevin was preparing to leave for Iraq last year. “Dad didn’t talk about helping folks, he just did it,” Kevin said. “It was always a family affair. We’d just get in the truck and just did stuff.” John Nadeau, a Navy doctor from Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn., arranged for Amenah to receive care there without cost. Money was raised for air fare for Amenah, her mother and a medical support person.

Jarrard, recognizing the severity of her condition, cautioned that she might not survive the trip or the surgery. “It was touch and go,” Jarrard said. He rode with the girl and her mother to the Iraqi border in a helicopter and was afraid the girl was dying. She required oxygen while in flight to the United States and was placed in an intensive-care unit upon arrival at Vanderbilt.

Doctors prescribed antibiotics for an infection she developed and it was more than a week before the surgery could take place. But the operation was a success and the little girl’s blue lips and fingers were suddenly turned a robust pink.

Her story was reported on network newscasts and even drew the attention of President Bush; he met the surgeon, Karla Christian, who performed the life-saving, open-heart surgery.

“Some of the Marines raised money, and they sent this little girl, whose heart was ailing, to America, right here to Nashville,” Bush said on a March 11 visit to Nashville. “And Karla and her team healed the little girl and she’s back in Iraq. And the contrast couldn’t be more vivid. We got people in Iraq who murder the innocent to achieve their political objectives — and we’ve got Americans who heal the broken hearts of little Iraqi girls.” … READ THE REST

Instead of just leaving Iraq in 2009 or 2010, perhaps we should stay there a 100 years making a difference in peoples’ lives as the “humanitarians” are always popping off about.

On December 4, 2006, in Iraq, Army Specialist Ross A. McGinnis gave his life to save four fellow soldiers:

President Bush is expected to award a Clarion County soldier the Medal of Honor in June, which would make Spc. Ross A. McGinnis the fifth soldier who served in Afghanistan or Iraq to receive the nation’s highest honor. McGinnis, 19, of Knox [Pennsylvania] died Dec. 4, 2006, from wounds he suffered when he threw himself on a grenade to save the lives of four other soldiers in his Humvee. Citing anonymous sources, the Army Times on Monday said the president has approved the award. Maj. Nathan Banks, a Pentagon spokesman, said the Defense Department can’t comment on the matter until the White House makes the announcement.

Black Five has more about SPC McGinnis.

In February 1970, John Murtagh was still a child when his father presided over a case where the defendants, members of the Black Panther Party, were accused of plotting to bomb a department store and landmarks in New York City. Mr. Murtagh vividly remembers the night the Weatherman firebombed his house:

I still recall, as though it were a dream, thinking that someone was lifting and dropping my bed as the explosions jolted me awake, and I remember my mother’s pulling me from the tangle of sheets and running to the kitchen where my father stood. Through the large windows overlooking the yard, all we could see was the bright glow of flames below. We didn’t leave our burning house for fear of who might be waiting outside. The same night, bombs were thrown at a police car in Manhattan and two military recruiting stations in Brooklyn. Sunlight, the next morning, revealed three sentences of blood-red graffiti on our sidewalk: FREE THE PANTHER 21; THE VIET CONG HAVE WON; KILL THE PIGS.
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As the association between Obama and Ayers came to light, it would have helped the senator a little if his friend had at least shown some remorse. But listen to Ayers interviewed in the New York Times on September 11, 2001, of all days: “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” Translation: “We meant to kill that judge and his family, not just damage the porch.” When asked by the Times if he would do it all again, Ayers responded: “I don’t want to discount the possibility.”

Though never a supporter of Obama, I admired him for a time for his ability to engage our imaginations, and especially for his ability to inspire the young once again to embrace the political system. Yet his myopia in the last few months has cast a new light on his “politics of change.” Nobody should hold the junior senator from Illinois responsible for his friends’ and supporters’ violent terrorist acts. But it is fair to hold him responsible for a startling lack of judgment in his choice of mentors, associates, and friends, and for showing a callous disregard for the lives they damaged and the hatred they have demonstrated for this country. It is fair, too, to ask what those choices say about Obama’s own beliefs, his philosophy, and the direction he would take our nation.

At the conclusion of his 2001 Times interview, Ayers said of his upbringing and subsequent radicalization: “I was a child of privilege and I woke up to a world on fire.”

Funny thing, Bill: one night, so did I.

At Pajamas Media, Annie Jacobsen writes that an Oklahoma doctor contracted by the Transportation Security Administration is disqualifying airline pilots from flying armed under the Federal Flight Deck Officer’s program.

I asked Dr. Hogan to speak about subjecting pilots — who are routinely drug-tested, by the way — to the Hogan Test. “There is a distinction between technical talent and emotional maturity. You can fly a plane and be crazy — or at least be a complete hot-head — which is what we find all the time,” Hogan said.
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Captain Mackett cited an example from the written part of the psyche test — since changed — that asked: “Would you like to be a fighter pilot?” Considering that many commercial pilots are and have been fighter pilots it’s natural that many would answer that question with a “Yes.” According to Mackett, the TSA concluded that these pilots “had overly aggressive personalities and disqualified them from the program.”

Thanks to this doctor and the loony leadership at the TSA, otherwise qualified pilots — who are licensed, trained, and willing to carry firearms — are allowed to fly yet denied the means to aggressively defend their passengers and planes.