America - al Qaeda On Our Shores

Yesterday I posted about the alleged al Qaeda terror cell the FBI broke up in Lodi. I say alleged because those involved have not been convicted yet. However, it's important to point out what one of them has allegedly confessed to.

An FBI affidavit says Hamid Hayat first denied any link to terror camps, but then told agents he attended an Al Qaeda camp in Pakistan for six months. [...]

"Hamid advised that he specifically requested to come to the United States to carry out his jihadi mission," according to the affidavit. "Potential targets for attack would include hospitals and large food stores."

Of course it remains to be seen if he retracts his confession when it goes to trial.

This post prompted this comment:

Marc, can you point me in the direction of ANY evidence that any sleeper cells have been found? I mean real evidence here......not wingbat nonsense from NewsMax or similar right wing tabloid site. You know, criminal convictions or the like.

Odds on that absolutely nothing will come of the arrests you link to.

I presume he means post 9/11 as most people do. But why do people use 9/11 as the starting point for al Qaeda sleeper cells and why just focus on sleeper cells? It's as if nothing happened before 9/11 and the only evidence that al Qaeda wants to attack America on American soil, would be convicted members of sleeper cells. That is naive and dangerous.

The first World Trade Center bombing was carried out by an al Qaeda sleeper cell, headed by Ramzi Yousef, a Kuwaiti who entered the US on a fake Iraqi passport and began planning the attack in 1991, on February 26, 1993. The attack killed 6 and injured over 1000. Several members of the sleeper cell were convicted and remain in prison.

This tells us several things. First al Qaeda has long wanted to attack the US on American soil. Second, they are prepared to plan and wait - for years if need be.

The second attack was carried out by an al Qaeda sleeper cell in 2001. We know the results of that.

Then there is the case of the "Lackawanna six" or "Buffalo six" convictions. They confessed and were convicted of supplying material support to terrorists and not of being a sleeper cell. The left point to this as an "aha" case and proclaim they were not a sleeper cell. Well, by definition the cell "sleeps" till activated.

Let's look at the Buffalo six's recruitment, training and preparation.

The main recruiter of the Lackawanna Six, a Saudi born in Buffalo named Kamal Derwish, was killed in November 2002 by a CIA-launched Predator missile attack on al Qaeda operatives in Yemen.

A Derwish friend and al Qaeda recruiter who preached the religious obligation of training for jihad at the Lackawanna mosque, Juma al-Dosari, has been in custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since his capture by U.S. forces near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

These men were recruited by al Qaeda and trained by al Qaeda.

Al-Bakri and five other men in custody flew to Pakistan and drove to Afghanistan in the spring of 2001. During their six-week stay, they were instructed in the use of Kalashnikov and M-16 automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and taught to assemble explosives at Al Farooq camp near Kandahar.

The recruits heard al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden speak in person just a few months before he ordered the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in the United States.

So, before September 11, 2001, these men received arms and explosives training at an al Qaeda training camp and received guidance from bin Laden personally. If their role was merely to provide material support to al Qaeda why the training in arms and explosives? Remember, these me were recruited, trained and instructed that waging jihad was there "religious obligation" and they returned to the US after their training.

Then there is the case of Earnest James Ujaama who was indicted "on charges of conspiring to set up an al Qaeda terrorist training camp in rural Oregon in an attempt to further promote "violent jihad" against the United States." Note the charges date back to 1999, six years after the first trade center bombing and two years before 9/11.

Ujaama plea bargained, confessed to a lesser charge and was given some liency in exchange for his cooperating with authorities.

What's also interesting about Ujaama is that he studied at London's Finsbury Mosque, the same Mosque attended by confessed shoebomber Richard Reid and would be shoebomber Saajid Badat.

Finsbury Mosque is also where the so called "millennium bomber", so named for trying to blow up LAX airport in 1999, Ahmed Ressam studied.

Al Qaeda did and still has a determination to blow up aircraft due to the mass fear it spreads around the world.

What does all this tell us? That al Qaeda is dedicated to attacking America by any means necessary - including sleeper cells. To argue otherwise is naive and dangerous. Why would al Qaeda use every other means to attack the US and not employ sleeper cells? Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, as they say.

Both attacks on the Trade center were carried out by al Qaeda sleeper cells - 8 years apart. Are we to seriously believe that al Qaeda gave up on a plan, using sleeper cells to attack America, that worked so spectacularly?
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