Arabs: Obama ‘One of Us'

from NewsMax

While Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama “has tried to push his origins into the background, his ‘Islamic roots’ have won him a place in many Arabs’ hearts.”

That’s the observation of Iranian-born commentator Amir Taheri, whose column in Tuesday’s New York Post notes that many Arabs and other Muslims see Obama as “one of them.”

They see that Obama has Arabic-Islamic first and middle names: Barack means “blessed” and Hussein means “beautiful.” His last name is Swahili, an East African language based on Arabic, Taheri writes. His sister is named Oumah, Arabic for “the community of the faithful;” his daughter Malia bears the name of a daughter of the noted Caliph Othman; and his father and stepfather were both Muslims.

Although Taheri did not note it, Obama was raised partially as a Muslim when he lived in Indonesia with his mother and stepfather. While there, he studied at two schools and was registered at both as a Muslim student.

As such he received Islamic religious instruction, studied the Koran, and prayed with other students. He did attend mosque, albeit infrequently, with his stepfather.

Obama’s religious upbringing after Indonesia is somewhat of a mystery until his late 20s. At that point, Obama says he converted to Christianity after meeting the Rev. Jeremiah Wright in Chicago.

Still, Obama has maintained strong support from American Muslims, including Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam movement. Farrakhan has endorsed Obama and has called him the “messiah.”

These factors have made Obama a big hit in the Arab world, where he has received wide praise, including:

• The Syrian regime has indicated its preference for Obama. Buthaina Shaaban, an adviser to President Bashar al-Assad, has written: “The change suggested by Obama is essential not only for the U.S. but for the entire human family.”
  
  
• Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi called Obama “a Muslim” and said: “All the people in the Arab and Muslim world and in Africa applauded this man. They welcome him and prayed for his success,” although Qaddafi also expressed criticism of Obama’s comments on the future of Jerusalem.
  
  
• Hamas political adviser Ahmed Yousef said this year: “We like Mr. Obama and we hope that he will win the election.”
  
  
• Hezbollah’s second in command, Sheik Naim al-Kassim, urged Americans to vote for Obama as a step toward peace with Islam, and pro-Hezbollah columnist Amal Saad-Ghorayeb said there is “no doubt Arabs should welcome an Obama presidency,” according to Taheri.
  
  
• In Saudi Arabia, commentator Hussein Shobokshi wrote that an Obama presidency “would mark an important moral transformation in the superpower and is a healthy indicator of the long-awaited improvement in the international arena.”

Some columnists also have noted Obama’s close ties to several Palestinian radicals, including Columbia University Prof. Rashid Khalidi — former communications director for the Palestinian Liberation Organization — and another Palestinian political activist, the late Edward Said.

The “Arab street” also favors Obama. Recent surveys found that he is the preferred candidate in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Algeria, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

• Editor's Note: Check out the explosive new ad linking Obama and Rev. Wright — Go Here Now

Experts affirm: Ayers wrote Obama's memoir

Scientific analyses independently find radical's mark on 'Dreams From My Father'

Independent scientific analysis by a number of leading experts supports the literary detective work of WND columnist Jack Cashill that has led him to conclude unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers was the primary author of important sections of Barack Obama's highly acclaimed memoir and editor of the book as a whole.

Obama's 1995 book, "Dreams From My Father," won the 2006 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album and drew praise from Time magazine, which called it "the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician."

But since July, Cashill has unveiled in a dozen columns, summarized here, his compelling evidence that the co-founder of the radical Weather Underground group – dismissed by Obama as "just a guy who lives in my neighborhood" – shaped and refined the book with his exceptional writing skill and radical ideas.

The evidence, Cashill says, "severely tests Obama's claim of a superficial relationship with the self-declared 'communist' Ayers. This appears to be a conscious and consequential deception."

Cashill points out that in contrast to "Dreams," the Obama writing samples unearthed before 1995 "are pedestrian and uninspired."

"There is no precedent for this kind of literary transformation," he writes. "It is as if a high 90s golfer suddenly showed up with his PGA card -- with no known practice rounds in between."

In a new column today, Cashill reports four different stylometric analysts now have supported his extensive forensic evidence, and he awaits the results from a fifth.....

Taliban using children as human shields

'Brave' taliban hiding behind children.

From ISAF

Initially the Marines observed four adults and two children in a truck laden with burlap sacks and shovels. The adults began digging holes. Once the burlap sacks were removed from the truck and opened, the Marines were able to see IED materiel in the sacks and that the holes being dug in the road were for IEDs.

Marine snipers shot two of the positively identified insurgents as they emplaced an IED. After the initial shots were fired, the other two insurgents grabbed the two children they had brought with them and held them in front of them to use them as shields.

The Marines waited until the children were let go and ran away before snipers shot the remaining two insurgents.

More at ROA

Officials weigh creating domestic intelligence agency

By Katherine McIntire Peters

There is no easy answer as to whether the United States would be well-served by a domestic intelligence agency, a nonprofit research institution concluded in a new report.

"If America's counterterrorism-focused domestic intelligence, broadly conceived, is found wanting -- and how to do better while preserving civil liberties is the policy challenge -- changing organizations is one approach," said Gregory Treverton, director of the RAND Corp.'s Center for Global Risk and Security and author of the report, during a Capitol Hill briefing on Tuesday. But there are other ways of improving counterterrorism activities that should be considered, including revising laws, spending more money to enhance existing capabilities, and improving leadership or the means for sharing information, he said.

RAND studied the issue at the request of the Homeland Security Department's Office of Intelligence and Analysis. Two years ago, Congress directed that office to conduct "an independent study on the feasibility of creating a counterterrorism intelligence agency." The request stemmed from the failure of U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials to anticipate the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The research institute was not asked to make recommendations or to evaluate the performance of any existing agencies or programs. Instead, RAND was asked to consider whether a new organization could improve current domestic intelligence operations. The concerns it was to examine centered around the perceptions that the FBI is dominated by a law enforcement and case-based approach to terrorism; the FBI and the CIA do not talk to each other; too much poor-quality information is collected, and collection efforts are uncoordinated; analysis is fragmented; and it's difficult to move information across the domestic intelligence enterprise.

One challenge RAND faced is that the FBI is undergoing its own transformation in the wake of Sept. 11. Its budget doubled from $3.1 billion in 2001 to $6.4 billion in 2008 and the agency created a National Security Branch to focus on prevention and intelligence in the counterterrorism mission. An evaluation of the effectiveness of those changes would be useful before considering a new approach, Treverton said.

The United States doesn't have a domestic intelligence agency devoted to counterterrorism, but there are a number of programs within agencies aimed at detecting and preventing domestic terrorist attacks. The FBI has both domestic intelligence and law enforcement responsibilities and the CIA, Homeland Security and National Counterterrorism Center all have roles, as do state and municipal organizations.

Treverton noted that domestic intelligence and law enforcement both involve the investigation of tips and other information about suspicious behavior, but while law enforcement is focused on specific cases, domestic intelligence also includes exploratory activities that serve a broader warning function by building a strategic understanding of the domestic threat environment. It's an area ripe for clashes with civil liberties and one that makes many Americans uncomfortable.

"What is it that we want from domestic intelligence for counterterrorism?" Treverton asks. "Do we want every tip pursued?" That's probably not realistic, and it's not clear that a new agency or even a new organization within an existing agency would address lawmakers' concerns about the current means for gathering domestic intelligence, he said.

Government reorganizations often fail because they reflect the competing interests and political goals of their creators, and there is little consensus about how a domestic intelligence agency should operate. "Clarity of mission is key," whether that mission resides in an existing organization or a new one, Treverton said.

Creating a new domestic intelligence agency could mean several different things. RAND's analysis focused on the two most obvious alternatives to the status quo. The first is to combine functions of existing agencies into a separate agency with a relationship to the Justice Department, similar to the one the FBI has now. The second is to create an agency within an existing agency, most likely within the FBI or perhaps within Homeland Security.

An agency within an agency may be less disruptive and less costly than creating a separate organization, but a separate agency may offer the kind of mission clarity that's needed to give rise to an effective culture of intelligence-driven prevention, Treverton said. A separate service also may be able to pull from a broader, more diverse recruitment pool. Officials in domestic intelligence services in other democracies told RAND analysts they felt they were able to attract talent not normally drawn to a law enforcement culture.

RAND sought to establish the framework for a break-even analysis that would examine how much a new agency would have to reduce the risk of terrorist attacks to justify costs, both tangible and intangible, such as the impingement on civil liberties. For example, if it costs $500 million to create a domestic intelligence agency, to break even, the new service would have to reduce the nation's risk of terrorism by 50 percent if the annual risk were assumed be $1 billion. If the terrorism risk were assumed to be $10 billion, then the new agency would have to reduce that risk only by 5 percent to break even.

"What this analysis shows is that the choice turns on what level of terrorism risk is assessed or assumed, topics on which experts and policy makers differ considerably," Treverton said.

Homeland Security launches program to find illegal immigrants in jails

By Chris Strohm

The Homeland Security Department will launch a program Monday aimed at identifying illegal immigrants held in county and city jails across the country, but critics worry that nonthreatening individuals could be ensnarled in confusing deportation proceedings or denied legal protections.

With an infusion of funding from the Congress, the department's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has started an aggressive effort to find illegal immigrants who are incarcerated and enter them into deportation proceedings. ICE says its initial focus is on finding and removing illegal immigrants who have been convicted of violent crimes or those convicted of major drug offenses.

The program will allow local law enforcement agencies to automatically compare the fingerprints of their prisoners against FBI criminal databases and Homeland Security immigration databases. When law enforcement officials run a check on fingerprints against the FBI's Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, a check will automatically be done against Homeland Security's Automated Biometric Identification System.

The program will begin with the Harris County Sheriff's Office in Texas, with the goal of being expanded to about 50 other local law enforcement agencies by the spring.

"It sounds rather simple but it really changes the way we do business and the way we go about identifying individuals for immigration enforcement," said David Venturella, director of ICE's Secure Communities program.

"We're going to be measured and careful in our rollout but we're going to do it as aggressively as possible," he added.

ICE will first focus on having the program operational with county jails and then at city jails. Venturella said reaching all jail booking sites will take three and a half years. But he said doing so will require much more funding from Congress to cover additional costs, such as more detention capacity and transportation services.

ICE estimates the total cost could be $3 billion a year, which is more than half the total annual budget of the entire agency. The total number of criminal illegal immigrants in U.S. jails who were charged with deportable offenses surged to more than 220,000 in fiscal 2008, according to statistics released by ICE last week. This compares to about 164,000 in 2007 and 67,000 in 2006. ICE estimates that federal, state and local prisons and jails hold between 300,000 to 450,000 criminal illegal immigrants who are potentially removable.

Immigration advocates agree that illegal immigrants who have committed serious crimes should be deported. But they fear noncitizens might not be given proper legal protections.

"Our concern is making sure that people have access to counsel or are advised of their rights," said Kerri Sherlock Talbot, associate director of advocacy for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. "Sometimes people are pressured into signing away their rights by basically stipulating that they are removable from the United States," she said.

Some illegal immigrants might qualify for visas, such as those who can legitimately claim asylum or those who have been victimized or trafficked, she said. Although ICE says it is only targeting illegal immigrants who have committed serious crimes, immigration advocates worry that nonthreatening individuals might get swept up in the process.