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Newly-Retired CENTCOM General Asks Why Iran was Allowed to Get Away With Assassination Attempt on US Soil (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTubeThe U.S. made a serious mistake by not responding more assertively to an alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States in a bomb attack on a popular Washington restaurant, just-retired CENTCOM commander James Mattis said Saturday.

At an October 2011 press conference Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller announced that Iran’s government had attempted to use a Mexican drug cartel to arrange the killing of the Saudi official, Adel Al-Jubeir, while dining at Cafe Milano in Georgetown. An Iranian-American living in Texas, Manssor Arbabsiar, and Iranian al-Quds force offifical Gholam Shakuri were charged with conspiring to carry out the bombing—which the U.S. officials said was headed off with the help of an undercover Drug Enforcement Agency informant.

“When we finally caught them in the act of trying to kill Adel, we had a beleaguered attorney general, a fine man but beleaguered politically, stand up and give a legal argument that frankly I couldn’t understand,” Mattis said at the Aspen Security Forum. “We caught them in the act and yet we let them walk free.”

Without being specific, Mattis suggested Iran should have suffered some more serious consequence for being behind the alleged plot.

“Frankly, I‘m not sure why, again, they haven’t been held to account,” he said. “They have been basically not held to account….I don’t know why the attempt on Adel wasn’t dealt with more strongly.”

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Man in Wheelchair Sets Off Bomb at Beijing Airport (+video)

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Photo Credit: APA man in a wheelchair set off a homemade bomb in Terminal 3 of the Beijing International Airport on Saturday evening, injuring himself but no one else, Chinese state media reported.

Order was quickly restored and no flights were affected by the explosion, state-run China Central Television said on its microblog.

The official Xinhua News Agency said a wheel-chaired Chinese man set off the device outside the arrivals exit of Terminal 3 at around 6:24 p.m. It said the man was being treated for injuries, but that no one else was injured in the explosion.


A reporter for Sky News tweeted a photo originally posted on the Chinese site Weibo that was said to capture the moment the blast happened.
Photo Credit: Mark Stone/Twitter @Stone_SkyNews
CCTV, which also reported that no one else was hurt, identified the man as Ji Zhongxing, born in 1979 and from the eastern province of Shandong.

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Car Bombs Kill Dozens in Center of Turkish Town Near the Syrian Border

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Photo Credit: European Pressphoto AgencyTwo powerful car bombs killed at least 43 people in this town near Turkey’s border with Syria on Saturday, transforming downtown office blocks into smoldering husks in one of the deadliest attacks on Turkish soil in at least a decade.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the attacks, which came 15 minutes and barely a mile apart. Hours later, officials with Turkey’s government, which has backed the rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, said they had identified the suspects in the bombing. The attackers, officials said, belonged to an organization linked to Mr. Assad’s intelligence services, though they did not name the organization or the suspects, or provide a detailed explanation of how they reached that conclusion.

Turkey’s swift accusation raised the possibility of an escalating conflict with Syria and the broadening of the war. A senior Turkish Foreign Ministry official said the government had not reached the point where it was considering a military retaliation, but added, “No crime will be left without a response.”

In blaming Mr. Assad’s government, Turkish officials seemed anxious to stave off any possible backlash against thousands of Syrian refugees in Reyhanli or its allies in the Syrian opposition for the bombing. The town is in a region of southern Turkey where some Turks have bristled at their government’s willingness to make Turkey a party to the war, putting it at risk.

After the bombings on Saturday, angry residents smashed the windows of cars from Syria, and a Turkish newspaper reported that protests against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan later erupted in Reyhanli’s streets.

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Man Arrested After Trying To Return Pipe Bomb At Gun Buyback

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Photo Credit: ROBYN BECKA man was arrested during the city’s sixth gun buyback event over the weekend after showing up at a drop-off location with a homemade pipe bomb.

KNX1070′s Claudia Peschiutta reports that the man wanted to turn in the explosive.

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said the man “told the officers in the line that he had spoken to God that day, and God no longer wanted him to use that bomb to blow up the Hollywood sign, now he wanted him to turn it in.”

“This is not a pipe bomb buyback; this is a gun buyback,” Beck said. “Pipe bombs are illegal to possess, illegal to manufacture.”

Police said they were able to safely detonate the device.

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Nuclear Saber Rattling: Russian Bombers Buzz Alaska Again

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Photo Credit: APRussian strategic bombers conducted flights within the U.S. defense zone close to northern Alaska and the Aleutian Islands last week in Moscow’s latest incident of nuclear saber rattling against the United States, according to defense and military officials.

Two Bear H nuclear-capable bombers were detected flying into the military’s Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) near the Aleutians, where a strategic missile defense radar is located, and Alaska’s North Slope region by the Arctic and Chukchi Seas on April 28 and 29, military officials told the Washington Free Beacon.

Lt. Cmdr. Bill Lewis, a spokesman with the U.S. Northern Command, confirmed the fighter intercept of the latest bomber incursion but declined to provide details.

“Two U.S. F-22′s from Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska, were launched and visually identified Russian aircraft on the night of April 28, as the Russian Air Force flew standard out of area flights near Alaska,” Lewis said.

The bombers did not enter U.S. airspace, he said.

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Officials: Boston Suspect had no Firearm when Barrage of Bullets Hit Hiding Place

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Photo Credit: Washington PostAlthough police feared he was heavily armed, the suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing had no firearms when he came under a barrage of police gunfire that struck the boat where he was hiding, according to multiple federal law enforcement officials.

Authorities said they were desperate to capture Dzhokhar Tsarnaev so he could be questioned. The FBI, however, declined to discuss what prompted the gunfire.

Other law enforcement officials said the shooting may have been prompted by the chaos of the moment and some action that led the officers to believe Tsarnaev had fired a weapon or was about to detonate explosives.

These new details emerged as investigators continued their examination of the movements and motives of Tsarnaev, 19, and his brother, Tamerlan, in last week’s coordinated bombing, which killed three people and wounded more than 250.

Law enforcement officials said they do not believe the brothers were connected with a terrorist organization, but they cautioned that the inquiry is at an early stage.

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GOP Senators Say Constitution Doesn't Apply to Bombing Suspect

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Photo Credit: Vjeran Pavic

By Jeremy Herb and Mike Lillis. Two powerful GOP senators are calling on the Obama administration to treat the captured suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings as an “enemy combatant” and deny him counsel even though he is reportedly an American citizen.

Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, captured Friday night outside Boston after a tense daylong manhunt, should be questioned for intelligence purposes and not read his Miranda rights.

“It is clear the events we have seen over the past few days in Boston were an attempt to kill American citizens and terrorize a major American city,” McCain and Graham said late Friday in a joint statement. “The accused perpetrators of these acts were not common criminals attempting to profit from a criminal enterprise, but terrorist trying to injure, maim, and kill innocent Americans.”

With Tsarnaev in custody, the lawmakers said, “the last thing we should want is for him to remain silent.”

“We need to know about any possible future attacks which could take additional American lives,” they said. “The least of our worries is a criminal trial which will likely be held years from now.” Read more from this story HERE.

ACLU calls for Miranda rights for Boston bombing suspect

By Mike Lillis. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is calling for the Obama administration to read the suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings his legal rights.

The Department of Justice indicated Friday that the administration would not read 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev his Miranda rights, citing a public safety exception.

But Anthony Romero, the ACLU’s executive director, said Saturday that the immediate threat is over and that Tsarnaev, an ethnic Chechen who became a naturalized U.S. citizen last year, should now be treated like any other suspected criminal.

“Every criminal defendant is entitled to be read Miranda rights,” Romero said in a statement. “The public safety exception should be read narrowly. It applies only when there is a continued threat to public safety and is not an open-ended exception to the Miranda rule.”

Tsarnaev was captured Friday night in the Boston suburb of Watertown after leading law enforcers on a tense, day-long manhunt that captured the attention of the nation and locked down much of Greater Boston. Read more from this story HERE.

Police Chief: Surviving Boston Bombing Brother Ran Over, Killed Older Brother

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Photo Credit: AP

Watertown police chief Edward Deveau said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 19-year-old suspected Boston Marathon bomber who was captured alive on Friday, killed his older brother Tamerlan by driving over him and dragging his body through the street with a carjacked SUV Thursday night.

Deveau, in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Saturday, said police officers were handcuffing Tamerlan, who had run out of ammunition, when Dzhokhar came at them in a carjacked SUV. Watertown officers were able to get out of the way.
The brothers were armed with pipe bombs, firearms, and explosives and had been in a firefight with officers on Thursday night after they reportedly “assassinated” an MIT police officer. Deveau said a pressure cooker bomb also went off during the firefight, causing a major explosion. The brothers threw explosives at the officers.

Dzhokhar eventually abandoned the SUV, fleeing on foot. He hid in a land-docked boat in a Watertown neighborhood, where law enforcement found him Friday evening.

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Obama on Bomb Suspect Arrest: Don't 'Rush' to Judge 'Entire Groups of People'

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Photo Credit: Getty

Following Friday’s capture of 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings, President Obama warned against rushing to judgment about “entire groups of people,” the Associated Press reported.

“In this age of instant reporting, tweets, and blogs, there’s a temptations to latch on to any bit of information sometimes to jump to conclusions. When a tragedy like this happens, with public safety at risk and the stakes so high, it’s important that we do this right. That’s why we have investigations. That’s why we relentlessly gather the facts, that’s why we have courts. That’s why we take care not to rush to judgement, not about the motivations of these individuals and certainly not about entire groups of people,” he said.

“Translation: don’t look behind the curtain at the Islamic radical connection,” said a post at Weasel Zippers.

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Home-Grown Terrorist Attack Threatens to Disrupt Obama Agenda

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The Boston Marathon terrorist attack allegedly hatched by two brothers from Chechnya is threatening to disrupt President Obama’s second-term agenda.

Opponents of immigration reform — the most promising priority of Obama’s second term remaining after the defeat of gun control — are already using the attack to try to slow progress on a bipartisan Senate bill.

More broadly, the attack is raising questions about how the administration should deal with 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was captured Friday after an exhaustive manhunt in Boston, and concerns over whether the FBI was too complacent in letting his older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev out of its sight after interviewing him in 2011.

The issues are expected to create political problems and distractions for Obama, whose fight against terrorism has largely been a political success highlighted by the killing of Osama bin Laden.

It is unclear how much oxygen the issue will consume in the coming weeks, but it seems certain it will shift the political debates in Washington.

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