The U.S. Government: Willfully Blind to the Jihad

They knew. Two years before the Fort Hood jihad massacre, the Army knew of jihadis in its ranks — and did nothing.

Investigative reporter Bill Gertz has revealed: “Almost two years before the deadly Fort Hood shooting by a radicalized Muslim officer, the U.S. Army was explicitly warned that jihadism — Islamic holy war — was a serious problem and threat to personnel in the U.S., according to participants at a major Army-sponsored conference.”

Over 350 Army officials involved in counterterror efforts attended this February 2008 conference. One of the speakers, Lt. Colonel Joseph Myers, explains the topic of his lecture: “I noted that because of our lack of understanding of Islamic doctrines, Islamic Jihad and my view that our counterintelligence function is broken, outdated and being usurped in some cases by public affairs and equal opportunity officials, we were going to get soldiers killed in America, on our own bases for that professional ignorance.”

And that’s just what happened at Fort Hood.

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Tags: bill gertz, CIA, dar al islam, FBI, fort hood
Posted Feb 10th 2010 at 2:31 pm in Culture, Defense, News | 73218197 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/pgeller/2010/02/10/the-u-s-government-willfully-blind-to-the-jihad/The+U.S.+Government%3A+Willfully+Blind+to+the+Jihad2010-02-10+22%3A31%3A20Pamela+Geller

Exclusive Book Excerpt: “Speech-Less: Tales of a White House Survivor”

THE STORY ANN COULTER SAID SHOULD BE REQUIRED READING FOR EVERY BUREAUCRAT IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

Many of the people mentioned still work at the Department of Defense. They are civil service employees who are almost impossible to fire, demote, or shift to other jobs. In my book, SPEECH-LESS: Tales of a White House Survivor, I show how nameless big government bureaucracies can treat America’s heroes.

The Pentagon’s press operation was run by a very large staff of civil servants and military personnel.  Maybe twenty or thirty public affairs specialists sat among a maze of carrels while the director of the room sat in a glass cage and watched over them.  It was reminiscent of a secretarial pool from the 1950s or ‘60s, without the Smith-Corona typewriters. I sometimes expected to see Lucille Ball walk in with a steno pad looking for Mr. Mooney. 

Most of the press officers were probably Democrats, but the problem was not that they were partisans. The problem was that those who wanted to help were given no direction and the rest were mostly inert. Many would come in around 8:30 or 9 and breeze out by 4:59 pm.  Nothing would prevent their on-time departure – not some major crisis abroad, not even a war.  At night, that giant room was so deserted that tumbleweeds blew by desks. A sizable number of them lacked any sense of urgency or interest in what the administration was doing.  One Pentagon reporter compared prying information from them to going on an Easter egg hunt..  Sometimes you’d want to put a mirror under their noses to see if they were breathing.

Forget about their being proactive.  They rarely, if ever, came up with an interesting new story to pitch to a reporter.  Their job was to wait for the phone to ring and hold morale-building events.  There was almost always a party going on with cakes and cookies and people telling jokes and giving each other awards.  There was an annual chili cook-off. If ever you needed a sugar fix, you could find something almost any day in the press room….

(more…)

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Tags: Ann Coulter, bureaucracy, Defense Secretary, Don Rumsfeld, Joint Chiefs of Staff
Posted Oct 27th 2009 at 8:30 am in Defense, Politics | 2085836 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/mlatimer/2009/10/27/exclusive-book-excerpt-speech-less-tales-of-a-white-house-survivor/Exclusive+Book+Excerpt%3A+%22Speech-Less%3A+Tales+of+a+White+House+Survivor%222009-10-27+15%3A30%3A26Matt+Latimer

The Pork Report: October 19, 2009

Free golf carts available from federal stimulus program

Annual U.S. federal budget deficit reaches an all time high of $1.42 trillion in 2009; Government spending jumped to more than $3.5 trillion, increasing over 18% in one year

The Pentagon pays an average of $400 to put a gallon of fuel into a combat vehicle or aircraft in Afghanistan

As AIDS patients die in the streets of our nation’s capital, millions of dollars in federal AIDS funds misspent by the city on nepotism, ghost employees, and executive travel and pay

No punishment for National Park Service employee, paid $145,000-a-year, who used his government computer to view thousands of sexually explicit images?

National Science Foundation pays to develop a reverse karaoke application for iPhone

As Florida’s jobless rate reaches 11 percent…

… More than $2.3 million in federal economic stimulus grants go to Florida cosmetology and massage schools to pay tuition for the hairdressers, masseuses and nail technicians of tomorrow

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Tags: Afghanistan, AIDS, AIDS funds misspent, cosmetology, federal deficit
Posted Oct 19th 2009 at 1:20 pm in Congress, Politics | 180348 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/porkreport/2009/10/19/the-pork-report-october-19-2009/The+Pork+Report%3A+October+19%2C+20092009-10-19+20%3A20%3A26The+Pork+Report

Coburn: Senate Votes to Prioritize Pork Over National Defense

October 6, 2009

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK) today released the following statement after the Senate rejected Coburn amendments that would have forced Congress to shift earmark funds back toward vital operations and maintenance. By a vote of 25 to 73, the Senate rejected an amendment offered by Dr. Coburn that would have restored to the troops $165 million earmarked within the Defense appropriations bill’s maintenance and operations accounts for congressional earmarks.

“In a time of war it is unconscionable for members of Congress to divert funds from vital operations to less-than-vital parochial pork projects. I regret the Senate voted today to protect their pet projects at the expense of our troops,” Dr. Coburn said.

The Pentagon has also expressed concern over the excessive amount of earmarks Congress has requested:

“Every dollar that we are forced to spend on things which we do not need requires us to take money from things which we do need. And the people who lose in that trade-off are our troops and the taxpayers,” said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon spokesman. (more…)

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Tags: Armed Forces, Congress, Defense, Geoff Morrell, O&M
Posted Oct 6th 2009 at 5:36 pm in Congress, Defense, Economics, Politics, Tax Reform | 1374677 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/publius/2009/10/06/coburn-senate-votes-to-prioritize-pork-over-national-defense/Coburn%3A+Senate+Votes+to+Prioritize+Pork+Over+National+Defense2009-10-07+00%3A36%3A58Publius

Global Warming: Your (Big) Government at Work

Even for those not paying very close attention to the news in recent months, this headline from today’s “Climate Wire” may strike you as a tad incongruent:

MILITARY: Coastlines plumbed for ancient data in Pentagon climate study

Possibly the Pentagon’s advice on this matter will find favor in the White House.

The hook for the $5.5 million boondoggle is “how rising seas and strengthening storms could affect coastal bases, perhaps causing facilities to be abandoned or moved over the next century.” Of course, the idea of shrieking press releases (and headlines soon thereafter) of a “Pentagon study predicts inundation” never entered anyone’s mind and are nothing we should look forward to, if history is any guide.

Yet, outside of certain hysterical quarters, sea level rise is not that great a mystery: it rises between coolings, particularly glaciations (ice ages) which we fortunately find ourselves in between. It does so at a fairly constant rate of about 8 inches per century. That remained true following the end of the Little Ice Age in the mid 19^th century until today, with no statistical change in the pace since then (unless you count the most recent years; read on). Then it falls. When things cool, as has been the case in recent years, sea level rise plateaus and even reverses depending on how great the cooling. Indeed, the satellites we already pay so much for – and which, like those measuring the (cooling) atmospheric temperatures, are being ignored – tell us that sea level rise peaked in 2005 (wow, this guy works fast!).

(more…)

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Tags: Al Gore, Alliance for Sustainable Energy, Catherine Zoi, CIA, Climate Wire
Posted Oct 6th 2009 at 8:47 am in Defense, Environment, Obama, Politics | 1335436 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/chorner/2009/10/06/global-warming-your-big-government-at-work/Global+Warming%3A+Your+%28Big%29+Government+at+Work2009-10-06+15%3A47%3A41Christopher+C.+Horner

Scrapbook Earmark Headed to the Scrapheap?

Well, not yet, but this is certainly encouraging. On Tuesday, we brought you the story of Sen. Bennett’s request to carve out $5 million from vital maintainance funds to provide ‘digital scrapbooks’ to National Guardsmen. Big Government was able to shine a spotlight on an earmark buried deep inside a Committee Report to the Defense Appropriations bill. On Thursday, CNN picked up our story and confronted Sen. Bennett on the Senate steps to ask about the ’scrapbook earmark’.

Watch the whole wonderful thing.

An amendment will be offered Tuesday to strip out this and several other earmarks. Capitol Confidential is getting results.

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Tags: CNN, Defense Appropriations, Earmarks, National Guard, Pentagon
Posted Oct 2nd 2009 at 11:24 am in Congress, Earmarks | 1155019 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/capitolconfidential/2009/10/02/scrapbook-earmark-headed-to-the-scrapheap/Scrapbook+Earmark+Headed+to+the+Scrapheap%3F+2009-10-02+18%3A24%3A39Capitol++Confidential

Pork Report: September 29,2009

Today’s edition of Sen. Coburn’s Pork Report identifies at least $108.4 million in wasteful Washington Spending.

Despite being in good condition, Hollywood’s Sunset Strip will get a $7 million face lift with federal stimulus funds

Employee misconduct investigations, often involving workers accessing pornography from government computers, grew sixfold last year at the National Science Foundation; The problems were so pervasive, the agency’s inspector general had to cut back on its primary mission of investigating grant fraud and recovering misspent tax dollars

Senior government executives earned higher raises and bonuses last year

Defense appropriations bill steers over $100 million to campaign donors for pork projects not wanted by the Pentagon

Pork Rx; Federal government would pay 100% of the cost of Medicaid expansion in the Senate Majority Leader’s state under new health care bill

(more…)

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Tags: cash for appliances, Harry Reid, Hollywood, Medicaid, National Science Foundation
Posted Sep 29th 2009 at 3:10 pm in Congress, Earmarks, Politics | 1037422 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/porkreport/2009/09/29/pork-report-september-292009/Pork+Report%3A+September+29%2C20092009-09-29+22%3A10%3A55The+Pork+Report