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Trump Is Right, Mainstream Media Is Wrong on Terrorist Threat From Migrant Caravan

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What could go wrong with a raucous group of predominantly males from the most violent Latin American countries headed for our southern border? Well, drugs, gangs, crime, and a fiscal drain on our economic resources are a few reasons to fear this invasion. But there is also an extra national security concern that Middle Easterners, who are already traveling independently to our border, are mixed in with this caravan. It’s a general concern that we should take very seriously both with the caravan and the broader waves of illegal immigration.

Yesterday, Trump tweeted that “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in” with the caravan. Clearly, Trump has been getting briefings on this issue and is paying attention.

During the waning months of the Obama administration, none other than former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson sent out a memo to law enforcement agencies with the subject line, “Cross-Border Movement of Special Interest Aliens.” According to DHS’ official definition, Special Interest Aliens (SIAs) are individuals from 35 countries that “have shown a tendency to promote, produce, or protect terrorist organizations,” aka countries from the Middle East or those in Africa and Asia with a presence of terrorist networks. The Johnson memo called for the creation of a “multi-DHS Component SIA Joint Action Group” designed to “counter the threats posed by the smuggling of SIAs” and “the increased global movement of SIAs” in order to eventually “bring down organizations involved in the smuggling of SIAs into and within the United States.” As Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies observed, the memo was “unusual in the sense that they demanded the ‘immediate attention’ of the nation’s most senior immigration and border security leaders to counter such an obscure terrorism threat.” Bensman is a former intelligence officer for Texas Department of Public Safety.

Of course, this plan never came to fruition, but the fact that someone as liberal as Jeh Johnson found a need to warn about “the increased global involvement of SIAs” should be very concerning to all of us.

Reporters who don’t bother to study issues in the long term and merely react to the mindless soap opera of the day are acting shocked at Trump’s concern about the Middle East migrants coming through the border. CNN’s Jake Tapper wants Trump to provide him with proof of such a phenomenon. To anyone who has studied Latin America, this is a long-standing concern that is always present, irrespective of whether we have a smoking gun in every particular caravan. It certainly ranks among the top reasons to deter these incursions. There is a trail of both governments and Arab diaspora communities in numerous South and Central American countries that are facilitating this smuggling network.

Here’s the current reality:

Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales publicly said last week that he deported 100 Middle Easterners in his country, some with suspected ties to terror. Guatemala has become a hub for international migration of all sorts, including from the Middle East and south Asia, because that is the transit point from all directions into America.

In the Laredo, Texas, border sector, a record 668 Bangladeshi nationals were caught in fiscal year 2018. Over 3,000 SIAs were apprehended in total. One can imagine how many we didn’t apprehend. Also, 9,000 Indian nationals were apprehended this year. While India is not an official SIA country, it has a massive Muslim population of 172 million with a lot of terror groups operating on the ground, particularly in the north. Men make the majority of migrants apprehended in all border sectors, but this percentage has been exceptionally high in Laredo, where 88 percent of those apprehended in FY 2017 were men. That should be a bright red flag.

Venezuela is the single biggest country of concern when it comes to SIAs mixing with Latin American migrants. Remember, not all migrants who gather in the northern triangle of Central America originated there. There are hundreds of thousands of migrants pouring out of Venezuela, as it completely crumbles into a failed state. Not only is Venezuela Hezbollah’s main base of operations in South America, with direct ties to the country’s vice president, who is of Syrian descent, but there are hundreds of thousands of Lebanese and Syrian expatriates living there. Some 37,000 Venezuelans cross into Colombia every day, and there are signs that some of the two million refugees have already headed north. This could become our Syria.

Perhaps reporters like Tapper ought to speak with people who are actually involved in Latin American affairs. Joseph Humire, who served as an expert witness in a first-of-its-kind anti-Hezbollah trial in Peru, told me that he’d be surprised if Middle Easterners aren’t coming in with the caravan simply because they are already traveling these same routes on their own. “The #CaravanHonduras has exposed an important yet underreported issue — the presence and activity of radical Islamist terrorist movements in Central and South America,” said Humire, executive director of the Center for a Secure Free Society. “The movement of irregular migrants cannot be separated from the increase in SIAs in recent years, especially as we correlate the routes and chokepoints used by the Caravan in Guatemala and Mexico. The Aguas Calientes (Guate-Honduras) to Tecun Uman (Guate-Mexico) border crossings are a known SIA route used in the past, as recently as this past April-June when unidentified Palestinians with suspected terror ties took this same route.”

Indeed, these are the routes being taken by the current caravan. Keep in mind that the caravan is working through the Chiapas district of Mexico right near cities like San Cristobal that have populations of recent Muslim converts, a growing phenomenon in the region. None other than open-borders advocate and former Mexican President Vincente Fox accused some of them of having ties to al Qaeda. There are very strong reasons to be concerned with the caravan traveling a known SIA route and passing by such a community.

Humire’s sources in the Morales government also tell him that “at least 44 Syrians have been detained in Guatemala since 2016, all with forged or irregular documents and one with possible ties to ISIS.” Also, many other SIAs “have been moving through Guatemala with fraudulent documents from other countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia,” whom “local authorities believe are connected to Hezbollah.”

What about from this caravan? Humire sent me reports he’s received from Guatemalan law enforcement that Guatemala apprehended 100 individuals who were not from Honduras over the past 72 hours. On Friday, Guatemalan police claim to have apprehended seven Bangladeshis, two individuals from Sri Lanka, and one from Nepal. They are being processed for deportation. On Monday, they caught 11 Cubans and three more from Bangladesh. There have also been individuals from Angola, Congo, and Cameroon apprehended by local authorities.

Yesterday, the Daily Caller reported that a Univision reporter on the ground has confirmed the presence of Bangladeshis and that they were apprehended by Guatemalan authorities.

Could the Morales regime and his officials be exaggerating? Perhaps, but I think we ought to take Guatemalans seriously when they are warning of Middle Easterners traveling through the human smuggling routes headed north. Morales has every reason to cooperate with us now that Trump is threatening to suspend foreign aid.

Broadly speaking, it’s shocking how ignorant the elite media is about the growing threat of terrorism in Latin America at both the state level and the grassroots level. Not everything revolves around the Middle East, believe it or not.

Perhaps Tapper and his ilk should heed the words of Michael Braun, former chief of operations with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Braun sent Conservative Review the following statement regarding the president’s concern over Middle Easterners traveling along the Latin American migrant routes:

The President is justifiably concerned about Middle Eastern terrorist organizations exploiting our borders. Hezbollah and Iran’s IRGC Quds Force, which is responsible for clandestine foreign operations, to include assassinations, have significantly increased their footprint throughout Latin America and Mexico over the past decade … Hezbollah’s growing involvement in the global cocaine trade over the past decade has resulted in the formation of alliances with Colombian and Mexican drug trafficking cartels, the most sophisticated transnational organized crime syndicates law enforcement has ever faced.

Braun was responsible for oversight of all of the DEA’s foreign offices during the Bush years and has testified before Congress many times on the confluence of drug trafficking and terror networks, illicit finance, and other national security topics.

It’s important to remember that although the caravan is a big concern, there are hundreds of thousands of others crossing our border every year, quietly smuggled in by the cartels. This must be stopped as well. Thanks to our judicial amnesty, DHS incompetence, and congressional ineptitude, we have family units coming in record numbers. The Arizona Sherriff’s Association warned in a letter last week that Border Patrol “is currently using up to 40% of their available staff to monitor family units.” Congress and the courts have turned them into babysitters while MS-13, drugs, and yes, Middle Easterners, are crossing the border.

Typically the interdiction rate at the border is about 50 percent, but you have to imagine, given that the SIAs pay up to $30,000 for successful smuggling, that the border cartels, which control the entirety of the flow of movement across the border, are orchestrating the family unit crossings in a way that will ensure more of the high-value targets successfully cross un-interdicted. “The coyote is interested in one thing only — collecting his money and moving his illicit customers across that border as quickly as possible,” warned Braun. “Anyone believing for a moment that foreign terrorist organizations like Hezbollah don’t exploit situations like this simply don’t understand how the real underworld operates.”

As a man who combated human and drug trafficking in South and Central American jungles for decades, Braun would know how this world works. (For more from the author of “Trump Is Right, Mainstream Media Is Wrong on Terrorist Threat From Migrant Caravan” please click HERE)

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FBI Director Reveals Terrifying Detail About Possible U.S. Terrorist Attacks

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By The Daily Caller. FBI Director Christopher Wray warned Wednesday that the odds of terrorists using civilian drones in the U.S. to attack “mass gatherings” is “steadily increasing.”

Wray offered the dire warning in testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.

“The FBI assesses that, given their retail availability, lack of verified identification requirement to procure, general ease of use, and prior use overseas, [unmanned aircraft systems] will be used to facilitate an attack in the United States against a vulnerable target, such as a mass gathering,” Wray testified.

Wray said terrorist groups like ISIS and al Qaeda, as well as Mexican drug cartels and MS-13, have made “repeated and dedicated efforts” to use commercial drones as weapons. (Read more from “FBI Director Reveals Terrifying Detail About Possible U.S. Terrorist Attacks” HERE)

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‘22 July’ Reveals Pain of Norway Terror Attack

By Boston Herald. Writer-director Paul Greengrass, of “United 93,” “The Bourne Supremacy” and “The Bourne Ultimatum” fame, returns to a real-life event in the gut-wrenching “22 July,” a fictionalized account of the 2011 lone wolf terrorist bombing of a government building in Oslo and follow-up mass shooting on a nearby island, resulting in 77 fatalities, many adolescents, by the neo-Nazi gunman Anders Behring Breivik (actor, musician and medical doctor Anders Danielsen Lie).

This a ticking bomb movie, a countdown to events you are probably familiar with and probably dread re-experiencing. Using his you-are-there hand-held camera technique and a Norwegian cast speaking English, Greengrass methodically takes us back to the hours before the attacks, when a pseudo-military-like Breivik can be seen making a fertilizer bomb in some idyllic yet spooky woods near Oslo. At the same time, we see nearby Utoya Island, a property in a lake near Oslo associated with the liberal Norwegian Labor Party. The island is the location of a yearly summer camp. Breivik, who lives with his frightened mother in a small Oslo apartment, plans to kill as many of the children of “the elite” and cause as much pain as possible. (Read more from “‘22 July’ Reveals Pain of Norway Terror Attack” HERE)

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Family of Teen Who Murdered American-Israeli to Receive Monthly Payment From Palestinian Authority

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The family of a Palestinian teenager who killed a U.S.-Israeli citizen will be paid almost $400 a month by The Palestinian Authority, the Times of Israel reported.

On Sunday, Ari Fuld, 45, was stabbed to death outside of a West Bank shopping mall. Khalil Jabarin, 17, was arrested after Fuld was able to shoot and wound him.

The grandson of a Holocaust survivor, Fuld was a father of four and served in Lebanon as an IDF soldier.

During a chapel service, Fuld’s brother Moshe called him a hero.

“Who else could manage upon sustaining a fatal (stabbing) injury, to draw his pistol, jump a fence and shoot his attacker to make sure that his attacker would not hurt anyone else; only my brother, only my brother,” Moshe said.

“If there is one word to describe my brother, it was a hero.”

The Palestinian Authority denied an Israeli TV report that said the PA had already sent money to the killer’s family but confirmed that once all the paperwork is completed, money will start to flow.

Prisoner Affairs’ Commission spokesman Hassan Abd Rabbo said that the authority, which gives money to the families of Palestinians held for crimes in Israel, usually needs a few weeks to process paperwork.

“We are not bashful or secretive about our support for our prisoners,” he said. “The (Jabarin) family would be eligible to receive a monthly salary of NIS 1,400 ($390), if their son is not freed by Israel and it completes all the necessary documents.”

That amount will increase the longer Jabarin is held by Israel, he said.

Earlier this month, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said the way the Palestinian Authority spends money is one reason the U.S. is leery of giving it more aid, the Times of Israel reported.

“Since 1994, the United States has thrown more than $10 billion in humanitarian aid to the Palestinians,” Friedman said.

“Without minimizing the importance of medical treatment and quality education for children — and we don’t minimize that, not even for a minute — we found that these expenditures were bringing the region no closer to peace or stability, not even by a millimeter,” he said.

“To spend hard-earned taxpayer dollars to fund stipends to terrorists and their families, to expend funds to perpetuate rather than to mitigate refugee status, and to finance hate-filled textbooks — I ask you, how does that provide value to the United States or the region?” he added.

Friedman took aim at the Palestinian Authority on Twitter, calling its practicing of paying murderers and criminals “unconscionable.”

“The Palestinian Prisoner Affairs Commission has confirmed that the family of the terrorist who murdered Ari Fuld is ‘eligible to receive a monthly salary’ as compensation for his incarceration. This practice is unconscionable and must stop if there is to be any hope for peace,” he tweeted.

Israel adopted the “Pay for Slay” law which seeks to discourage the practice by deducting “the amount of money that the Palestinian Authority gives to terrorists and their families from the taxes and tariffs Israel collects for the authority,” according to the Jerusalem Post.

“An effective war on terror is also waged via the pocketbooks of the terrorists and their families,” Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said. (For more from the author of “Family of Teen Who Murdered American-Israeli to Receive Monthly Payment From Palestinian Authority” please click HERE)

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Obama Knowingly Funded Designated Al-Qaeda Affiliate

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By Daily Wire. A new report released on Wednesday revealed that the Obama administration knowingly provided an Islamic terrorist-financing organization with hundreds of thousands of dollars despite the fact that the group had been designated as a terrorist-financing organization for a decade by the U.S. government.

Obama officials approved the release of well over $100,000 even after they were informed that the Khartoum-based Islamic Relief Agency (ISRA) was affiliated with Osama bin Laden and Maktab al-Khidamat (MK), which eventually became al-Qaeda.

ISRA, also referred to as the Islamic African Relief Agency (IARA), received a $200,000 taxpayer-funded grant from the Obama administration, which released at least $115,000 to the terrorist-financing organization. . .

World Vision had informed the USAID in 2014 that ISRA was on the designated terrorist organization list and subsequently had to wait for an assessment from the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) before they could receive the money.

OFAC confirmed in January 2015 that ISRA was a designated terrorist organization and rejected World Vision from obtaining “a license to engage in transactions with [ISRA].” (Read more from “Obama Knowingly Funded Designated Al-Qaeda Affiliate” HERE)

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Obama Administration Knowingly Funded a Designated Al-Qaeda Affiliate

By National Review. The Middle East Forum has discovered that the Obama administration approved a grant of $200,000 of taxpayer money to an al-Qaeda affiliate in Sudan — a decade after the U.S. Treasury designated it as a terrorist-financing organization. More stunningly, government officials specifically authorized the release of at least $115,000 of this grant even after learning that it was a designated terror organization.

The story began in October 2004, when the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated the Khartoum-based Islamic Relief Agency (ISRA), also known as the Islamic African Relief Agency (IARA), as a terror-financing organization. It did so because of ISRA’s links to Osama bin Laden and his organization Maktab al-Khidamat (MK), the precursor of al-Qaeda.

According to the U.S. Treasury, in 1997 ISRA established formal cooperation with MK. By 2000, ISRA had raised $5 million for bin Laden’s group. The Treasury Department notes that ISRA officials even sought to help “relocate [bin Laden] to secure safe harbor for him.” It further reports that ISRA raised funds in 2003 in Western Europe specifically earmarked for Hamas suicide bombings.

The 2004 designation included all of ISRA’s branches, including a U.S. office called the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA-USA). Eventually it became known that this American branch had illegally transferred over $1.2 million to Iraqi insurgents and other terror groups, including, reportedly, the Afghan terrorist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. In 2010, the executive director of IARA-USA and a board member pled guilty to money-laundering, theft of public funds, conspiracy, and several other charges. (Read more from “Obama Administration Knowingly Funded a Designated Al-Qaeda Affiliate” HERE)

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Records Sought to Reveal Whether Carter Center Funding Terror

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The American Center for Law and Justice is asking the State Department for records related to former President Jimmy Carter’s Carter Center, to determine whether the activist organization channeled taxpayer funds to terrorist organizations.

Carter, whose support for the Palestinians’ ruling Fatah and Hamas movements is well known, may have violated federal law, according to ACLJ.

It is a federal crime to “knowingly provide material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization,” ACLJ explained, noting Hamas has been designated a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department.

Carter, a Democrat, was president when the U.S. sustained one of its worst foreign policy failures ever, the Islamic revolution in Iran and the hostage-taking of American government workers at the U.S. Embassy. The 52 diplomats, held by the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam’s Line, were released after 444 days when Republican President Ronald Reagan was inaugurated.

“The Carter Center has also been open about the fact that that it maintains close contacts with both Fatah and Hamas,” ACLJ said. (Read more from “Records Sought to Reveal Whether Carter Center Funding Terror” HERE)

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It’s ‘Crime’ Not to Teach Children Terrorism

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The Palestinian Authority says it’s a “crime” to use Israeli materials in Arab schools in Jerusalem, instead of Palestinian books, because the Israeli publications don’t teach children to demonize Jews, glorify terrorism and become “martyrs.”

In a report by the Gatestone Institute, Bassam Tawil, a Muslim in the Middle East, wrote that Palestinian Authority Minister of Education Sabri Saidam is fretting because of a decision to use the Israeli curriculum in Arab schools in Jerusalem, a move he called an “ugly crime of counterfeit.”

“Why are the minister and the Palestinian Authority so truculently opposed to Arab schoolchildren studying according to the Israeli curriculum? Is this curriculum really an ‘ugly crime of counterfeit,’ as the minister says?” Tawil asked rhetorically.

“The main reason the PA leadership is opposed to the Israeli curriculum is because it does not promote hatred. The curriculum also does not demonize Arabs in parallel to the way the Palestinian curriculum demonizes Jews.”

He said a recent study, “Palestinian Elementary School Curriculum 2016-17: Radicalization and Revival of the PLO Program,” found Palestinian children were being taught, using Palestinian texts, “to glorify and value terrorism and violence.” (Read more from “It’s ‘Crime’ Not to Teach Children Terrorism” HERE)

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Major City Gets Muslim Mayor, Now Tops in Acid Attacks

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London Mayor Sadiq Khan is infamous for his declaration terrorism is simply “part and parcel of living in a big city.”

And under Khan’s leadership, there’s another part of living in a big city that has become routine – soaring crime rates.

For example, gun crime in London is up 15 percent, homicides are up 25 percent, including an explosion in youth homicide of 70 percent, and robbery is up by more than a third.

The year 2017 ended with four fatal stabbings in London, with one man dying in the early hours of 2018 and becoming the first victim of the new year. Khan claims he will work “tirelessly in 2018 and beyond to stamp out this scourge,” but his past record is not encouraging.

According to statistics from the London government itself, crime soared from 2016 to 2017, including in the categories of theft, robbery, burglary, knife crime and gun crime. Khan was elected mayor in May 2016. (Read more from “Major City Gets Muslim Mayor, Now Tops in Acid Attacks” HERE)

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FBI Director: Terrorist Drones ‘Coming Here Imminently’

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FBI Director Christopher Wray warned Congress on Wednesday that terrorist groups are looking to use drones to wage attacks in the U.S.

“I think we do know that terrorist organizations have an interest in using drones,” Wray testified in a hearing for the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.

“We’ve seen that overseas already with growing frequency. I think the expectation is that it’s coming here imminently. I think they are relatively easy to acquire, relatively easy to operate, and quite difficult to disrupt and monitor,” Wray added.

Nicholas Rasmussen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center echoed Wray’s concerns.

“Two years ago this was not a problem. A year ago it was an emerging problem. Now it’s a real problem. So we’re quickly trying to up our game,” Rasmussen testified during the hearing. (Read more from “FBI Director: Terrorist Drones ‘Coming Here Imminently'” HERE)

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REALLY MSM!? It’s Not Terrorism If Trump Says So?

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It’s not terrorism if Trump says so … Last night, NBC Nightly News reminded the American people – during an attack against our strongest ally – that Donald Trump is the real enemy. Trump tweeted about the jihadi attack in London, highlighting “fears of a new terror attack” before NBC could “independently confirm.” Note, the president didn’t say it WAS a terror attack – he said there were “fears of a new terror attack.” Instead of just not using Trump’s tweet in their coverage, they went out of their way to attack the president, saying, “Pres. Trump has used Twitter to share news report on London incident. We aren’t relaying president’s retweet, as the info is unconfirmed.” VIVA LA RESISTANCE!

A host on the Boston NBC station … A host (whose program I have been on) stood up for the network, saying it’s because they can’t trust, under their ethics, unconfirmed information from Donald Trump. Which is odd, because at last check, Brian Williams still worked for NBC News.

Media hate Trump’s solution … Donald Trump is the duly elected president of the United States, under the process outlined in the Constitution. As such, he is responsible for national security. Unsurprisingly, after yet another jihadi attack, Trump shared his solution for preventing them in the U.S.: the travel ban. That the two are related seems to be too much for Ben Jacobs, who covers U.S. politics for U.K.-based Guardian. Even more so for Jon Passantino, the deputy news director for BuzzFeed, who tweeted, “Trump immediately uses London tragedy for political purposes.” Or, you know, maybe just to outline his plan to combat radical Islamic jihad in the United States.

ALL ABOUT THE TRUMP

Main story is Trump, not jihad … Instead of focusing on the media’s blatant bias in the wake of the London jihad attack, CNN media “critic” Brian Stelter had Carl Bernstein on to discuss how they don’t like President Trump’s travel ban. Here watch.

MSNBC scared of overreaction … CRTV’s Steven Crowder highlighted some of the absurdity of the leftist media. Crowder shared video of MSNBC saying that we shouldn’t overreact to terror. Note on the chyron it also says a “van plowed into pedestrians.” Just like with guns, it’s the van that’s the real actor, not the person controlling the van.

WHAT HAVE YOU SEEN?

It’s impossible for one person to highlight all of the media insanity when there’s a story like this. That’s why I rely on you to help me out. Let me know what you’ve seen by emailing me at [email protected].

(For more from the author of “REALLY MSM!? It’s Not Terrorism If Trump Says So?” please click HERE)

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Reporter Searches for REAL Motive in Orlando Jihadi Attack

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A year later, there are still some in the mainstream media trying to figure out why jihadi Omar Mateen shot up the Pulse nightclub. Paul Brinkmann of the Orlando Sentinel searches for a motive in a lengthy report titled, “Pulse gunman’s motive: Plenty of theories, but few answers.” Wait, what?

The article provides a little clarity on what Brinkmann was trying to report, but not much. His focus seems to be on the question of why the Pulse nightclub, and not another venue. But that isn’t really motive; that’s location. Focusing on location obscures the real motive, which is the destruction of the West in the name of Allah.

Brinkmann grasps to understand a full motive, instead of the one staring him right in the face.

Then came the Pulse massacre on June 12, putting Florida on the map with 49 red dots. Not everyone killed at Pulse was gay, but ISIS, which claimed responsibility for the attack, noted the victims were all in “a nightclub for homosexuals.”

But there’s still no evidence that the Pulse killer intended to target gay people. A year after the massacre, the only confirmed motive is the shooter’s statements to 911 operators and hostage negotiators. He told them he pledged allegiance to ISIS and wanted people to know the pain that Syrians and Iraqis felt.

“At the end of the day, there are things we can learn from this, but we may not get a definitive answer that explains why the killer chose this target,” said Mary Ellen O’Toole, a former senior profiler with the FBI and an expert on mass shootings.

Occam’s razor is a principle in philosophy that posits the simplest answer is often the correct one. That is the case here. Despite what numerous “experts” cited in Brinkmann’s piece say, this wasn’t about Mateen finding ISIS as a justification for some other motive. Radical Islamic jihad was the motive.

Until policymakers and the media understand that there are a group of people that want to destroy the
West and instill a worldwide caliphate, we can’t confront the problem. Looking for other motives to describe why jihadis attack — beyond jihad itself — is frankly dangerous.

CR’s Nate Madden, after the Manchester jihad attack, outlined, “Why terrorists attack children.” The statement could switch out “children” and replace it with any other group of people. The answer fundamentally remains the same. Here’s what Madden wrote:

These phases, as explained by Trump advisor Dr. Sebastian Gorka in 2015, are:

1. Vexation.
2. Spread savagery.
3. Administer savagery.

A talk Gorka gave at the Heritage Foundation in 2015 further illuminates how this strategy works. Here’s a synopsis of the lecture from the Institute of World Politics:

Phase 1, “vexation,” is comprised of operations to distract and exhaust the infidel enemy and his allies. It puts emphasis on smaller dramatic operations (as opposed to dramatic transnational attacks) and is used to prepare fighting units for phase 2. Phase 2, as Dr. Gorka explained, is the “spread savagery” stage, which ISIS has already begun. In this phase, leaders of the insurgency coordinate unconventional warfare to “dislodge” nations from local control. Phase 3, “administer savagery/consolidate/expand,” is designed to out-govern the government. In this phase, the leaders stabilize held areas, unite the population as a fighting community, and implement sharia law and government as a means to establish a base-state. This base-state is a new type of hybrid caliphate used to attack and expand into neighboring countries.

This is the big picture that it is so important to keep in mind when it comes to these sorts of terror attacks. It’s vexing enough for people in the West to worry whether a small explosion will make their trip to the market a fatal one. It’s more vexing when those same kinds of attacks become a monthly occurrence. And it’s even more vexing when those attacks are focused on a society’s children.

A jihadi picks his target to “distract.” Brinkmann’s focus on some other, hidden, non-jihad motive behind Mateen’s attack feeds directly into the jihadi playbook.

Stop trying to rationalize what the jihadis do; take them at their word. Then work to stop them from having the means to attack again. (For more from the author of “Reporter Searches for REAL Motive in Orlando Jihadi Attack” please click HERE)

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