IN DEFENSE OF COMMON SENSE
By Hetty Gray
# 156
“Crying Wolf”
August 5, 2013
We’ve all heard the story — a little boy cried, “Wolf!” just to get attention. Then, when a real wolf came, nobody paid any attention to the boy.
There is no way to know what the current threat from Al-Qaeda means. I wonder, however, if it is a new rendition of the “test pattern” aired by early television networks. You remember it if you are over 60. A target shape, in black and white of course, aired with no sound just to discern if a station signal was being broadcast.
What better way to (1) assess just how many of your cohorts are being monitored by the message uncovered by your enemy and (2) to judge the level of reaction to the purported threat deliberately “leaked” through known channels.
Ah, yes. There was chatter before the onslaught of terrorists on September 11, 2001. Men like FBI Special Agent John O’Neill saw the danger, but he left the FBI. Known as a “maverick”, he didn’t toe the line of his establishment supervisors. A “Front Line” piece run shortly after 9/11 explained the whole situation in detail. O’Neill’s superiors made sure he would not be promoted to a position he clearly had earned. One of the people quoted was Fran Townsend, who worked for several administrations. During some of John O’Neill’s travails, she worked closely with Attorney General Janet Reno.
Townsend works for the current administration bringing a lot of experience to an undoubtedly thankless job. John O’Neill and Townsend were good friends and understood the underpinnings of the FBI as an organization.
O’Neill knew that something was up. He knew something “big” was coming and mentioned it to a friend the night of September 10th. The next morning he went back to work at his new job — a job he took after leaving the FBI during the summer of 2001. The job? Chief of Security at The World Trade Center. He died in the South Tower on 9/11, and all his knowledge and expertise died with him.
A very knowledgeable figure, O’Neill had studied Osama Bin Laden in depth over years and knew more about the “Saudi terrorist financier” than any other person in the FBI. O’Neill, in the FBI’s New York Office under James Kalstrom, headed the investigative unit that probed the bombing of the USS Kohl in Yemen. When he wanted to return to Yemen after a brief trip home for Thanksgiving, Ambassador Barbara Bodine refused his Visa. Why? She said his presence might have upset some of the Yemeni politicians.
So, let’s get that one straight. The feelings of foreign nationals in a country where terrorists attacked a US Naval Vessel and killed servicemen took precedence over lives lost and the possibility of uncovering plots yet unhatched. “Front Line” explained that O’Neill earned the respect of locals. They called him “the brother”. “Front Line” intimated that O’Neill was determined to see if there was more afoot in the area than bombing the Kohl. Those close to him knew he would have been relentless in that effort.
And what of his intense devotion to duty? It was thwarted. To take “Front Line’s view, it looked as if woman put her own job as an ambassador ahead of her country’s security. While she denied the claim in a newspaper article, she would not grant “Front Line” an interview.
If you have followed my column over the years, you know that I’m no fan of woman’s liberation. If you are a woman, you’re a woman — not a man. There are differences, despite what some wish you to believe. More than physical or mental gender differences, there are cultural considerations. I’ve never understood why any administration, Republican or Democrat, would appoint a woman as either a Secretary or State or a Middle Eastern Ambassador. It flies in the face of common sense.
Those cultures have no respect for women. What’s more, I’m not so sure that the leaders in the Middle East don’t consider the appointment of a woman to either of these slots as an insult. If they cannot respect a woman in any equal role within their own culture, how can they respect a Western woman in a position of authority?
And just where did the current threat information originate? Did it come from “our” official sources, or theirs?
Forewarned is forearmed. You can take that for a fact, but what if this is simply a trial run to see if they have a leak on their end that is not plugged? If this is a true leak from the terrorists, woe be it to the person responsible. I’m sure they will be read their rights and provided ethnically or religiously appropriate meals while awaiting trial. Right….
Only time will tell if we slip through unscathed. Remember, it only took 19 men to wreak havoc on the USA when they flew those planes into The World Trade Center and The Pentagon. Folks on Flight 93 spared some other target in the nation’s capitol and gave their lives in the process. The fact that several Middle Eastern men scurried from other grounded flights without being questioned should prompt some reflection, too. Just how many planes WERE highjacked that day? The sad answer is that we will never know.
Ingest this. (InSerbia News – July 22, 2013):
“Hakim Abbas Mousa al-Zamili, member of the security committee in Iraqi parliament, said at the press conference in Baghdad on Monday that between 500 to 1000 prisoners escaped the Baghdad Central Prison after gunmen opened fire at the facility on Sunday night (July 21, 2013).
Most of the escaped were al-Qaeda linked detainees, Zamili said.
Gunmen attacked two prisons near Baghdad – Taji and Baghdad Central Prison, killing at least 25 members of the security forces.
The prison attacks were launched at about 9:30 pm local time (1830 GMT) on Sunday night. Gunmen fired mortar rounds at Taji prison, 20 km north of Baghdad, and a suicide car bomber then attacked the main gate. Similar attack was made on the Central Prison in Baghdad.
Fighting continued throughout the night, and the military deployed aircraft around the two prisons.”
We know what 19 did. What could hundreds do?
It will be interesting to see how time sorts out the serious, specific threat that closed our embassies and consulates. Meanwhile, we are left to mull over precisely how this administration continues to omit the words Muslim terrorist from its vocabulary. How can we fight an undefined enemy?
The answer, far from a moot point, is not in sight. The leaked information regarding this imminent threat may be “crying wolf” or it may be a very well orchestrated test of terrorist communication channels and our foreign intelligence capabilities.
As for me, I have a real problem with the constant reportage of anything discovered just to get a headline. That could cost more than getting “one up on the competition,” it could cost us our heads. This threat may be the “dry run.” If it is, we had better prepared for the real thing. Think about it.