May 31, 2004

Without Border Controls, The War On Terror Is Failing

By Sam Francis

In the unlikely event you might have considered taking seriously last week's warnings by the Attorney General and the Director of the FBI that Al Qaeda is planning another terrorist attack on the United States, Homeland Security czar Tom Ridge was able to put you at your ease.

Don't let a little terrorism spoil the Memorial Day weekend, Mr. Ridge urged.

"America's job is to enjoy living in this great country and go out and have some fun," he pronounced on CBS's Early Show.

Meanwhile the seven Al Qaeda operatives whom he says are planning the attack are nowhere to be found, leading the director and the Attorney General to beg Americans to give them a tip. [FBI Seeks Tips on 7 Linked to Al Qaeda, By Susan Schmidt and John Mintz Washington Post May 27, 2004]

Actually, I have a tip for them.

I don't know where the terrorists are, but I have an idea as to how they might get into the country if they're not already here. If pregnant Mexican women can cross what we still merrily call our "borders" illegally and with impunity, I'll bet trained Al Qaeda terrorists can.

For all anyone (including the FBI and Homeland Security) knows, the terrorists may be serving Big Macs in your neighborhood today.

Largely because of President Bush's foolish amnesty proposal in January, illegal immigration has increased ever since. Aliens hope they can get inside the country to take advantage of what they hope will soon be law. The Border Patrol reports that detentions of illegals, which it uses to estimate how many aliens have actually entered the country, rose 25 percent in the six months before March 31, to a modest 535,000. That's 535,000 illegals caught. The number that actually got through is much greater.

How many terrorists were among them? The Un-Magnificent Seven for whom the FBI is looking, or 7,000?

Perhaps we will find out this summer.

Then again, maybe the seven are already here, as some of them have a right to be under the immigration and naturalization laws that allowed them to come. Consider who they are.

Adnan G. Shukrijumah, a native of Saudi Arabia who, as the Washington Post reports Attorney General Ashcroft's description, "has made repeated attempts to get back into the United States using false passports." If Mr. Ashcroft knows that, why wasn't this immigrant arrested for carrying the fake documents?

Aaifa Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman who holds a doctorate from M.I.T., Amer El-Maati, a "Canadian citizen born in Kuwait," and Abderraouf Jdey, "a Canadian citizen born in Tunisia," are others sought by the FBI who are not exactly home-grown terrorists.

As for the other three, it's not clear if they have ever been in this country or not, let alone whether they might be here now.

As to why Mr. Ashcroft and Director Mueller think they are planning a terrorist attack, you probably don't have to be James Bond to figure it out.

As the Attorney General remarked, "al Qaeda's public statements indicate its intentions. Just after New Year's Day, al Qaeda announced that plans for an attack on the United States were 70 percent complete." After Madrid, they said the plans were 90 percent complete.

It was predictable at the time of the Madrid bombing (in fact I predicted it), if not before, that al Qaeda had every reason to plan a similar attack here. If one attack in Madrid could knock Spanish forces out of the war in Iraq, imagine what one in the United States just before the election could do.

Finally, it might be safer for everyone if the FBI didn't try to locate the suspected terrorists or do much of anything about the threat.

Since they have arrested an innocent man, Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield, for involvement in the Madrid bombing, issued enough sinister insinuations about scientist Steven Hatfill's supposed role in the 2001 anthrax attacks to lose him his job, harassed Atlanta security guard Richard Jewell for a 1996 Olympic Games bombing he didn't commit and managed to kill the innocent wife and son of (also innocent) white separatist Randy Weaver in a 1992 sniper attack in Idaho, it might be a good idea if the FBI just went back to doing something harmless like chasing bank robbers.

Having launched two wars and conquered (sort of) two countries in the "war on terrorism," the Bush administration now solemnly informs us what every schoolboy already knows—the terrorists are still out there (or, worse, maybe even in here), and are planning another attack.

Apparently unable to find much of anyone except innocent people, the FBI and the vast federal "internal security" labyrinth pleads for average citizens to help them out, while the government does nothing about the ever-escalating invasion and colonization of the country by illegal aliens.

And the best Mr. Ridge can tell us is, Go out and have some fun.

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