"The knowledge that the bombers were British Muslims, living what were, to all appearances, respectable and unremarkable lives, has sent us a signal we can no longer ignore, that there is indeed an “enemy within”. The battle for the soul of the community has begun.
The stakes are high and the choice is stark: either we confront the voices of evil, or we sit back and allow wider British society to regard us as a community that condones such evil.
We must accept that the poisonous preachers of violence and hatred in the name of Islam, few in number though they may be, have to be halted in their actions. This means ending their access to, and their manipulation of, impressionable and vulnerable young men. "
"THE British-born mastermind of the London attacks had direct links with al-Qaeda, police sources confirmed yesterday.
He is believed to be connected to a senior figure who took part in an al-Qaeda terror summit in Pakistan 16 months ago where a list of future targets was reportedly finalised. ".........
"We have allowed a dangerous virus to infect the West. No nation, no people can survive if they think their way of life is no better than any other, or if they scorn and slight their national ideals and values. Ultimately, such people will always be vulnerable to those who do think their way is better — just as we see today with many Muslim immigrants in Europe. Indulging our multicultural fantasies, we have subsidized, coddled, and abased ourselves before people who, as the attacks in London demonstrate, are willing, on behalf of the culture that had failed their parents, to murder and terrorize the culture that has given them a freedom and opportunity that hardly exist in most Islamic countries.
To demand that immigrants assimilate and pledge allegiance to their new homes is not xenophobia or racism; it is rather to demand that those who choose to come to the West and enjoy its political and economic goods respect, honor, and embrace the ideals and principles that created those goods in the first place. And it is to recognize that yes, a price must be paid: the discarding of those old ways and ideals that contradict or compromise the new values. After all, by coming to the West the immigrant has already voted with his feet for the Western way. If he now finds that he made the wrong choice and that he believes the culture he left is in fact superior, then he is free to go back."
"The First Responder Community and Consequence Management
In recent years, many have called for allocating $10 billion to $20 billion in additional annual resources to the first responder community—police, fire, and rescue units--to provide them equipment and training to help mitigate the damage caused by any successful terrorist attack. These include protective gear against weapons of mass destruction, large-scale specializedtraining, more teams to handle possible building collapse, and radio systems that are interoperable between different types of responders within a given jurisdiction.3 Such ideas go too far. For example, it is not necessary to equip all three million first responders in the United States with state of the art chemical protective gear or interoperable communications systems. Equipping specialized teams within each major jurisdiction with such capabilities, and creating several mobile communications headquarters with interoperable technology, are less expensive and more quickly doable propositions.4 It is not necessary that every fireman’s radio can talk to every police officer’s radio; a certain number of mobile interoperable communications vans that can be quickly deployed to a problem site are a more cost-effective solution. They can allow quick coordination and cross-communication through the squad or team leaders of each type of organization (that would have been enough to save many firefighters on September 11, 2001 in New York). A large city could purchase several dozen, at $1 million each, for a reasonable cost of several tens of millions of dollars....."
"BBC output was not to describe the killers of more than 50 in London as "terrorists" although - nonsensically - they could refer to the bombings as "terror attacks". And while the guidelines generously concede that non-BBC should be allowed to use the "t" word, BBC online was not even content with that and excised it from its report of Tony Blair's statement to the Commons."
"And, while the struggle against terror financing is but one component of the broader war against terrorism, it is an absolutely essential component. Money is the lifeblood of terrorism. And the Middle East is ground zero for much of the money raised and moved in support of terrorist activities. It is not, however, the only place where money is raised and moved. The terrorist underground in London responsible for last week’s attacks and the breadth of terrorist fund-raising in the United States are broad and deep. It is my hope that the witnesses here today will help us to shed light on the extent of the continuing challenge and what we can and are doing to confront it."
"Last week's terrorist attacks in London underscore the need for Canada and its allies to take the fight to the enemy in failed states where "murderous scumbags" have room to thrive, says Canada's top soldier........"
"These are detestable murderers and scumbags," Hillier said. "They detest our freedoms, they detest our society, they detest our liberties........"
What happened to Cutler, MacAdam, Cpl. Read and Staff Sgt. Stenhouse says a lot how Canadians are governed. These were all travesties of justice despite how some would like to spin it. Imagine getting fired for actually doing your job of trying to protect Canadians! Apparently it was more important for the government to keep the public in the dark despite all the talk and assurances about transparancy.
The unsung heroes is the war on terrorism are those public servants—from FBI and DHS agents to Treasury analysts, from state law enforcement agencies to IRS accountants--who work out of the glare of publicity and who have tracked hidden terrorist assets around the world. But we are in constant need of self-improvement and must be intellectually honest about the war we are fighting. All of the ingredients for a more vastly successful war on terrorism are present but underutilized or artificially compartmented from one another—talented agents, analysts and prosecutors; a vast amount of data and open source intelligence; forensic expertise and unrelenting dedication. Yet, in the end, there is no rational allocation of resources nor is an integrated methodology that would insure that proper involvement of all agencies involved in tracking terrorist financing.
