Lack of Translators Hurts U.S. War On Terror

U.S. national security agencies remain woefully short of foreign-language speakers and translators nearly eight years after the Sept. 11 attacks resulted in a war on an enemy that often communicates in relatively obscure dialects, current and former officials say.

The necessary cadre of U.S. intelligence personnel capable of reading and speaking targeted regional languages such as Pashto, Dari and Urdu “remains essentially nonexistent,” the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence wrote in a rare but stark warning in its 2010 budget report.

The gap has become critical in the war effort, especially in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater, where al Qaeda and Taliban operatives text message, e-mail and talk in languages that the intelligence community had largely ignored before 2001.

Intercepting phone and radio calls in the region’s native tongues is critical to monitoring terrorist camps and movements in Pakistan’s tribal areas, officials said.

The National Security Agency (NSA), based at Fort Meade, Md., channels the calls to translation centers, where linguists are supposed to quickly translate the words into English so that they can be distributed in reports and raw transcripts to commanders and policymakers. But such quick follow-through does not always happen.

Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the senior Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told The Washington Times that U.S agencies remain “behind the eight ball” in catching up to dialects not deemed important during the Cold War.

Read Full Article

War On Terrorism, Global War, Fighting Jihadists Over – White House

It’s official. The U.S. is no longer engaged in a “war on terrorism.” Neither is it fighting “jihadists” or in a “global war.”

President Obama’s top homeland security and counterterrorism official took all three terms off the table of acceptable words inside the White House during a speech Thursday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

“The President does not describe this as a ‘war on terrorism,’” said John Brennan, head of the White House homeland security office, who outlined a “new way of seeing” the fight against terrorism.

The only terminology that Mr. Brennan said the administration is using is that the U.S. is “at war with al Qaeda.”

“We are at war with al Qaeda,” he said. “We are at war with its violent extremist allies who seek to carry on al Qaeda’s murderous agenda.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in March that the administration was not using the term “war on terror” but no specific directive had come from the White House itself. Mr. Obama himself used the term “war on terror” on Jan. 23, his fourth day as president, but has not used it since.

Read More

Cheney: Obama Doesn’t Recognize Terrorism Threat

Former Vice President Dick Cheney says the Obama administration no longer believes that America is threatened by terrorists and is making dangerous mistakes in lowering U.S. defenses.

The threat is there. It’s very real and it’s continuing, Cheney told Fox News Sean Hannity in the second part of a two-part interview Tuesday night. And what the Obama people are doing, in effect, is saying, well, we don’t need those tough policies that we had.

That says either they didn’t work, which we know is not the case — they did work, they kept us safe for seven years — or that now somehow the threat’s gone away. There’s no longer a threat out there, we don’t have to be as tough and aggressive as the Bush administration was.

It,s that post-9/11 mindset that most concerns him, Cheney said.

Barack Obama and his administration are no longer going to ask our guys tough questions when they are captured. Now, maybe we won’t behead their people when they capture them. I mean, it’s just — it says something about a mindset that I worry about very much, Cheney said.

And I think there’s a problem out there nationally in the sense that we are 7.5 years, almost 8 years now, away from 9/11, Cheney continued. And a lot of people would like to forget it and believe that the threat is gone, it’s diminished, it’s disappeared.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case. And one of the worst things we could do is start to act now as though the attack of 9/11 is a thing of the past and will never be repeated. That’s just not true.

Read Full Article

Overseas Contingency Operation Is The New Global War on Terror

The end of the Global War on Terror, or at least the use of that phrase, has been codified at the Pentagon. Reports that the phrase was being retired have been circulating for some time amongst senior administration officials, and this morning speechwriters and other staff were notified via this e-mail to use “Overseas Contingency Operation” instead.

“Recently, in a LtGen [John] Bergman, USMC, statement for the 25 March [congressional] hearing, OMB required that the following change be made before going to the Hill,” Dave Riedel, of the Office of Security Review, wrote in an e-mail. Read more

Official – Saudi Arabia Prevented US Terror Attack In 2003

Saudi Arabia foiled a terror attack against the United States five years ago, a Saudi official said Sunday.

The official said the 2003 plot, which was first reported Sunday in Al-Watan newspaper, was one of 160 foiled terror plots the kingdom announced last month that it had foiled. At the time, authorities provided no details about the alleged plots.

It was unclear why Saudi authorities never publicly revealed the alleged 2003 plot previously and why it first surfaced in Al-Watan, which is government guided, on Sunday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the 2003 plot involved militants who planned to hijack a plane and blow it up over a densely populated city in the United States.

The militants planned to transit through the U.S. to another destination, according to the official. That way, they could avoid applying for the hard-to-get U.S. visas, a requirement for Saudis, the official added.

The official said the militants were preparing to execute the alleged plot when it was halted.

The official would not provide more details about the alleged plot including what city the militants planned to target and whether any arrests were made.

Over the past few years, the Interior Ministry has said the militants it has arrested had been planning to carry out attacks inside and outside the kingdom.

The issue of al Qaeda operatives in the kingdom has been in the news recently following Interior Minister Prince Nayef’s announcement last month that authorities indicted 991 suspected militants on charges that they participated in terrorist attacks carried out in Saudi Arabia over the last five years.

Full Article

Terrorists Believe Now Is Time To Strike – Brigitte Gabriel

The “war on terror” theme has receded during the 2008 election battle as the Wall Street economic crisis is raising alarms across the nation, but author Brigitte Gabriel, an expert on terrorism, is warning that for Americans not to pay attention to the threat – and act now – the future will include a price tag no one wants to pay.

“Some [terrorists] are talking that this is the time to strike, while America is down,” she said during an hourlong interview with KSFO’s Barbara Simpson that addresses Gabriel’s new book, “They Must Be Stopped.

She warned that war with radical Islam is inevitable and, “Things have not gotten any better since Sept. 11, 2001.”

The “war on terror” theme has receded during the 2008 election battle as the Wall Street economic crisis is raising alarms across the nation, but author Brigitte Gabriel, an expert on terrorism, is warning that for Americans not to pay attention to the threat – and act now – the future will include a price tag no one wants to pay.

“Some [terrorists] are talking that this is the time to strike, while America is down,” she said during an hourlong interview with KSFO’s Barbara Simpson that addresses Gabriel’s new book, “They Must Be Stopped.

She warned that war with radical Islam is inevitable and, “Things have not gotten any better since Sept. 11, 2001.”
Full Article – Listen To Interview

Brigitte’s Website American Congress For Truth