A Thought On Friday: Keep This List

I responded to a comment in my Wednesday post and it compelled me to expand upon its primary thought. Gayle penned a comment and I wrote:

One BZ Prediction on which you can hang your hat: There WILL be an upcoming massive WMD event, possibly even nuclear, occur on domestic continental US soil. And until this day, this hour, this second, we will PURPOSELY have not enabled us to defend ourselves because we will have been alternately crouching or taking the fetal position due to political fear or a head-in-the-sand-this-really-can't-occur mindset. Mind you: this prediction WILL see fruition. We ARE that weak."

More reasons I feel this way:

First: WE CHOOSE NOT TO PROTECT OUR BORDERS (north and south):

President Bush, American politicians and many citizens still do not "get it."

Second: WE CHOOSE NOT TO RECOGNIZE THE THREAT TO WESTERN CIVILIZATION THAT ISLAM POSES:

Islam and its Middle Eastern adherents are still culturally lost in the Middle Ages.

Third: WE REFUSE TO RECOGNIZE THE INTENT OF ISLAM:

To convert all persons to Islam, and kill all those infidels or nonbelievers who refuse to convert.

Fourth: WE IGNORE HISTORY:

1. In 1972, Carlos the Jackal helped finance and planned the hijacking of a Lufthansa airliner, with one of the 172 passengers taken hostage being Joseph Kennedy, son of the late Robert Kennedy.

2. In 1973, U.S. Ambassador to Sudan Cleo A. Noel and other diplomats were assassinated at the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Khartoum.

3. In 1980, eight rescuers died after the U.S. embassy in Iran was taken over in 1979 and 52 American hostages were held.

4. In 1982, a Palestinian terrorist planted a bomb on a Pan Am flight to Honolulu; A 15-year-old Japanese boy was killed in the blast and 15 people were injured. In 1998, Mohammed Rashid was finally tried by the USA, also implicating him in two other airline bombings--one on a Pan Am jet in 1982 in Brazil, and another on a TWA airliner over Athens in 1986. Attacks were perpetrated under the auspices of an Iraqi-based terrorist group called the May 15 Faction.

5. In 1983, a suicide car bombing at the U.S. embassy in Beirut killed 63, including 17 Americans, and wounded 120.

6. In 1983, a suicide car bomb attack against the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut killed 241 servicemen and another attack on a French base (killing 58 paratroopers) was sponsored by Iran (Ayatollah Khomeini).

7. In 1983, the French and U.S. Embassies in Kuwait were bombed, killing 6 and injuring over 80 people.

8. In 1984, CIA Beirut station chief William Buckley is kidnapped and killed after prolonged torture, with his body hidden until 1991. 8(a) In 1984, the president of the American University of Beirut was killed.

9. In 1984, a truck bomb explosion outside the U.S. Embassy annex near Beirut, injured the US and British ambassadors, and resulted in 24 people killed (two U.S. military personnel).

10. In 1984, 18 U.S. servicemen were among 83 people injured in a bomb attack on a restaurant in Spain near a U.S. Air Force Base. 10(a). In 1984, Abu Nidal followers killed Grace Cutler, 66, and Ann Van Zaten, 31, in a Paris Café.

11. In 1985, TWA flight 847, a Boeing 727 hijacking, forced the pilots to fly to Beirut, Lebanon, where a U.S. Navy diver was killed and 39 Americans hostages were held.

12. In 1985, an Egypt Air airplane bound from Athens to Malta and carrying several U.S. citizens was hijacked, killing one American and 60 others.

13. In 1985, the cruise ship Achille Lauro was hijacked, and a 70 year old, wheel-chair bound American passenger was murdered and thrown overboard by Palestinian fugitive, Abu Abbas, detained 04/15/03 by US forces in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad; Abbas was a member of the Palestinian Liberation Front.

14. In 1985, suicide attacks are carried out against U.S. and Israeli check-in desks at Rome and Vienna international airports killing 61 others besides killing 7 & wounding 12 Americans.

15. In 1985, US journalist Terry Anderson, US academic Thomas Sutherland, and then American businessman Edward Tracy are successively kidnapped in Lebanon and not released until 1991.

16. In 1985, a car bomb at a U.S. military base in Frankfurt, Germany killed two and injured 20.

17. In 1986, a bomb was detonated as TWA Flight 840 approached Athens Airport, killing four U.S. citizens. 17(a) In 1986, Pan Am Flight 73 in Karachi, Pakistan, was hijacked and the attack resulted in 22 people -- including two Americans -- being killed.

18. In 1986, two US soldiers were killed and 79 were injured in a Libyan bomb attack on a nightclub in West Berlin.

19. In 1987, American citizens Jesse Turner and Alann Steen were seized in Beirut and held until 1991.

20. In 1988, U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Col. W. Higgins was kidnapped and murdered while serving with the United Nations' (UNTSO) in southern Lebanon.

21. In 1988, the explosion of a car bomb outside a USO Club in Naples, Italy, killed one U.S. sailor.

22. In 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 while over Lockerbie, Scotland, was bombed, with 189 Americans and 167 others murdered.

23. In 1991, Iraqi agents planted bombs at the U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia's home residence and at the USIS library in Manila.

24. In 1992, A bomb exploded in a hotel in Aden, Yemen, targeting U.S. troops but killing two Austrian tourists.

25. In 1993 the World Trade Center was bombed the first time, killing six and wounding over 1000 people; Iraq may also have contributed to the murders (along with involvement in the assassination attempt of the Pope) with two suspects finding sanctuary in Iraq for this atrocity.

26. In 1993, UN troops were sent into Somalia to maintain order in the face of civil unrest that was causing widespread famine and interfering with international aid relief; 18 USA based troops were killed.

27. In 1993, authorities prevented a plot to bomb various New York landmarks by eleven men.

28. In 1995, A car bomb goes off at the U.S. military headquarters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing seven people, five of them Americans, with 37 other Americans wounded. In their confession, the four terrorists accused of the crime claim to have read bin Laden communiqués.

29. In 1995, two gunmen killed two U.S. diplomats and wounded a third in Karachi, Pakistan.

30. In 1996, 14 Iraqis were indicted on charges of murder and conspiracy for the bombing that killed 19 American servicemen in Saudi Arabia (directed by Iranian government officials).

31. In 1997, two gunmen shot to death four U.S. auditors from Union Texas Petroleum Corporation and their Pakistani driver in Karachi.

32. In 1997, a Pakistani militant randomly opened fire near CIA headquarters in McLean, VA killing two and wounding seven.

33. In 1997, two bombers, Mezer and Khalif, were about to bomb the New York subway system and were captured.

34. In 1998, 12 US citizens were murdered and 7 injured when the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed – (murder total was 224 people and thousands injured); the convicted murderers were Mohamed Rashid Daoud al-'Owhali and Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, assisted by Wadih El-Hage and Mohamed Saddiq Odehby.

35. In 1998, Yemini militants kidnapped western tourists, including 2 Americans; four victims were killed during a rescue attempt.

36. In 1998, Iraq's plot to use a car-bomb in Prague to blow up Radio Free Europe was thwarted. Jabir Salim, at the Iraq embassy in Prague, was the Iraq intelligence officer Saddam Hussein entrusted with the mission, with $150,000 to recruit terrorists who would not be traceable back to Iraq.

37. In 1999, a series of attacks involving rockets, explosives, and car bombs was directed at U.S. installations in Islamabad, Pakistan a few hours before UN sanctions against neighboring Afghanistan were due to take effect.

38. In 1999, Ahmed Ressam, was caught in December, crossing the U.S.-Canadian border with a trunk-load of explosives and detonators intended for the Los Angeles airport "millenium bombing"; his leader was Amar Makhlulif, also known as Haydar Abu Doha, referred to as "the Doctor" who supervised training camps in Afghanistan run by Osama bin Laden.

39. In 2000, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan took four U.S. citizens hostage; the Americans escaped.

40. In 2000, the USS Cole explosion killed 17 and wounded 33 sailors.

41. In 2001, a plot to bomb the U.S. embassy in Sana'a, Yemen was narrowly averted with the arrest of 15 people; eight of the group were believed to be connected with the plot.

42. On 9/11/2001, three thousand people were murdered and many more injured when four USA airliners were hijacked and destroyed.

43. In 2001, the homicide shoe-bomber was thwarted by flight attendants and passengers in his attempt to blow up American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami with 197 people on board.

44. In 2002, reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped; at least one witness says Pearl's throat was slit by a top al-Qaeda terrorist, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a key organizer of the Sept. 11 hijackings.

45. In 2002, while in the Phillipines, missionary Martin Burnham of Wichita, Kan. was murdered and Burnham's wife, Gracia was wounded.

46. In 2002, a carbomb blast outside the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan killed at least eleven people and wounded more than 40.

47. In 2002, an attacker at a LA airport ticket counter killed two people and wounded three others.

48. In 2002, bombers who "hate Americans" said their real targets were U.S. citizens in the nightclub attacks that killed nearly 200 people on the resort island of Bali, Indonesia.

49. In 2002, an assassination by Al Qaida of a US diplomat, Laurence Foley, occurred in Jordan; the two killers were captured.

50. In 2002, a gunman shot dead an American woman missionary (with three bullets to the head) at a charity clinic in southern Lebanon.

51. In December 2002, three American medical workers were shot and killed, and another critically wounded inside a Southern Baptist missionary hospital in southern Yemen.

52. In January 2003, Saudi border guards arrested a Kuwaiti sniper suspected of killing one American civilian, Michael Rene Pouliot, and critically wounding another, David Caraway, in an ambush in Kuwait.

53. In February 2003, North American leader Dr. Sami Al-Arian and seven other men were charged in a 50-count indictment with operating a criminal racketeering enterprise, since 1984, that supported Palestinian Islamic Jihad; among the 100 people allegedly killed by the terror group are two U.S. citizens: Alisa Flatow, 20, and Shoshana Ben-Yishai, 16.

54. In March 2003, one American missionary was killed and three Americans injured by a bomb blast at an airport terminal in the southern Philippines; the bomb killed 21 and injured 148 people.

55. In March 2003, a killer shot and killed two oil workers from the United States and Canada and then killed himself in an oil field near Sanaa, Yemen.

56. In October, 2003, the seven arrested members of the Popular Resistance Committees, bombers of a diplomatic convoy in Gaza (killing three and wounding one American security guard) were militant Islamist Extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 41.

For these reasons (and some others) I expand on the first sentences:

• We will witness a massive NBC event on US soil;
• There will be thousands of casualties;
• This will have occurred not because we could not prevent it but because we chose not to prevent it;

We have charted a lethal course and destiny for ourselves that I fear we have not the will, the intelligence or the common sense to deter or deflect.

BZ