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Am I lucky or what? Made it through Heathrow, UK airport security, and onto the plane headed back for the US a measly 48 hours before a British-born Islamic extremist of Nigerian extraction drove his car over a British soldier outside the Woolwich Artillery Barracks and then tried to hack the victim’s head off with a rusty meat cleaver. Across the pond, before the UK went into shock, and Cameron’s government into an emergency meeting designed to address what common-sense suggests might be the response of the British people: rage and retaliation. . .

I like to write my own blogs, and too often have too much to say to readers who want it short and sweet. But the push to attribute past and future attacks on U.S. citizens on U.S. to “self-radicalization” is the kind of linguistic legerdemain too sweet not to invite …

But the obfuscation, or confusion–it’s your call–in the Boston Bomber case is masterful. Now we hear reports that Ali Alharbi the young Saudi national in Boston on a student visa, the same young man authorities released after questioning him so he could ‘get back to classes’(and who issued the order to release him is still unknown)is under a DHS-issued deportation order based on an investigation that determined he has ‘suspicious terrorist ties’ and has been determined by the US government to be ‘a security risk.’ (Please see my blog of February 26–”ICE Agents Claim Napolitano Forcing Them to Violate U.S. Law–New Immigration Directives Invitation to Terrorists and Cartels.”

QED: let’s assume enforcement officials used the fact that Ali Alharbi had been investigated and was scheduled for deportation, and that it was this information, that the young man had already been tagged as a ‘national security risk,’ that helped authorities convince a judge that a search warrant was in order.

So what’s happening now? Will the Saudi student with the black backpack be retained in the US while enforcement officials continue to work with him to obtain more information? Keep him around, look for connections, leads, associations? Makes sense, don’t you think?

Not to the FBI, apparently, nor to Janet Napolitano, who heads the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). DHS, it is rumored, is said to be following through with Alharbi’s deportation and getting ready to send him back home to Saudi Arabia.

The administration wants that boy gone.

Bostonians are stunned by the marathon “pressure cooker bombings” that killed three people, including an eight-year-old boy, and injured hundreds of others — spectators and participants — with the kinds of battlefield injuries we’ve only read about until now in reports about Afghanistan and Iraq — shrapnel injuries, amputations, burns …

Not so long ago, after twelve hours in the air, I found myself stranded at an international airport at 2 in the morning. The flight had been delayed—my pre-arranged pickup had abandoned his mission or just not shown up, and there was one taxi about to pull out and head home for the night. I was still 90 miles from my room for the night, and offered him twice the normal rate to take on one last fare, which he pointed out, wasn’t even close, direction-wise, to his own waiting bed. But for twice the money, and for Allah, he would do it.

The irony, of course, is that the FSA is just an umbrella term for a loose aggregation of Sunni militias whose best units–and consequently the fighters awarded the most money and the most lethal weapons– are, according to its own reports, puritanical Islamic jihadists, shouting ‘death to the United States and the West’ even as these targets scramble to comply with strategies the Saudis clearly believe are in their own best and immediate interests.

Staying alive at DHS is a full-time occupation. One slip-up, the chain quivers, the blame starts its downward flow, and if you’re an agent, you’re pulling duty in Pembina, ND, or spending the rest of your working life doodling on a yellow legal pad in an empty room at HQ/DC. So believe me when I tell you that it takes more than a fit of pique to file a legal complaint against DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, as the National Ice Council has done on behalf of eleven agents who believe that recent policy directives on prosecutorial discretion and the Dream directive on deferred action—are forcing them to choose between enforcing immigration and deportation laws passed by the US Congress in 1996 and their professional careers. Christopher Crane, head of the Council, reports that agents who continue to enforce laws currently on the books—ignoring policy directives from the top instructing them neither to apprehend, arrest, or depart aliens who’ve entered the US illegally or who’ve overstayed their visas (even illegals serving time in US prisons for felonies and misdemeanors)—are targets for disciplinary action….

The Syrian rebels, or opposition, or the Syrian National Coalition (the name this motley assembly of Sunnis, Salafists, jihadists, and foreign insurgents) agreed to take on in Doha as a prerequisite for U.S. support (money PLUS guns), successfully launched a surface to air missile

When you’re right, you’re right. I’m talking about Fast and Furious, the gun-walking operation the US Department of Justice used (illegally if the Export Control Act still carries any weight) to funnel more than 2000 fully operational combat-ready guns and other serious weaponry across the US-Mexico border and into the hands of cartel gang members.

The ‘covert op’ nobody in Washington knew anything about but which, nevertheless, allowed cartel assassins to use these weapons to gun down hundreds of innocent people, including US law enforcement agents like Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

Almost ten months ago, in this very blog (Brian Terry, Jesus Diaz, Dakota Meyer: Justice in 2012?), this writer suggested that, the nearer we came to the election, the less would be said, and done, in regard to the plight of the Terry Family and their hope that, in the case of Fast and Furious, ‘justice would be done.’

Bite me. You might as well go outside and shout it loud, because there isn’t enough DEET in your medicine chest to fend off the bloodlust of Culex pipiens, Anopheles, Aedes vexans, and dozens of other species of infected mosquitoes blanketing the United States. And West Nile virus season has just begun—consider August 2012 a preview.

Don’t get me wrong. Health organizations, federal, state and local, have spent buckets of money on nice-looking, easy-to-understand websites that calmly advise citizens to douse ourselves with bug spray, wear light, long-sleeved clothing (think Out of Africa), eliminate standing pools of water, and, of course, just stay inside the damn house until the Center for Disease Control (CDC) sounds the all-clear.

All good. But hardly sufficient.

West Nile virus—how it got here, how it travels, how it kills, and how health officials could, but often fail to mount the most effective responses—is a complicated story, a cautionary tale, some would say, about power, ego, bureaucracy, preparedness, ignorance, incompetence, and disparate champions whose voices routinely go unheard and whose counsel is too often ignored.

Right now, the highbeams are on Dallas, Texas, ‘Ground Zero’ for West Nile—and Mayor Mike Rawlings has indeed declared a state of emergency in the municipality. As the number of victims escalates, however, so does the anxiety of state and local officials, as well as the complaints of constituents, who’ve begun to question and criticize the city’s response to the health crisis….

Given the criminal billions available to ambitious ‘private wealth handlers’ inside the world’s biggest banks, the historic willingness of financial institutions to ‘look the other way,’ and the paltry repercussions, fines and deferred prosecution, for AML (anti-money laundering) non-compliance—it’s clear that powerful incentives continue to drive (and reassure) high-wire account executives ISO under-the-table commissions from traffickers (1-2 percent), and big bonuses from appreciative employers…

For years, the US government, along with FATF (the talking head for the AML community), has told banks the key is to ‘know your customer.’

Wrong.

The message should be “Know your banker.”

Listen.

The easiest way for criminals to launder dirty dollars is simply to pay a banker to do it, someone who manages millions a year for a financial institution that will never look him in the eye and announce, no-punches-pulled, that money laundering is a criminal offense, the kind that can land you in jail.

Word is that ICE agents (now tagged HSI, or Homeland Security Investigation agents) have been instructed not to draw attention to themselves or any efforts they may mount to interdict drugs trafficked in the the US from Mexico–or to advertise just how audacious cartel drug runners have become, trafficking openly on US soil. Downplay conflict with the Mexican cartels.

Indeed, ICE insiders say the current ‘standing order’ to US drug interdiction agents along the SW border is to ‘turn and run’ whenever confronted by drug-toting cartel members–’Do not engage.’

ICE or HSI agents have even been advised not to wear identifying gear–hats or jackets marked ICE or HSI–while on surveillance.

Conversely, the orders issued to the Zetas, or whichever gang traffickers happen to be involved, is “lose a load and lose your life.’

Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted (255 to 67) to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt for his refusal to hand over thousands of documents subpoenaed by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee more than a year ago.
The documents, believes Darrell Issa (R-Calif), who heads the Committee, are …

Grumbles have been filtering out lately, from the CIA and other agencies running covert ops, that The Rule is lately being violated, sacrificed to the needs of self-promoting administration officials (Leon Panetta? 60 Minutes?) who simply cannot keep their mouths shut, cheerleaders jazzed by pre-election jitters who rush to claim kudos for their boss via contacts with the mainstream press–oblivious to the blowback suffered by US intelligence or the foreign nationals who do risk, despite the financial benefits, prison sentences or execution on their own turf.

Such is the case with Shakil Afridi, the 48 year old Pakistani physician recruited and paid (well, no doubt) by the CIA to help in the identification of Osama bin Laden prior to the assault on the dictator’s compound by US special forces. Clearly, Afridi did the US a great service. And the mainstream press recognizes this, all, without exception, on fire with righteous indignation about Pakistan’s decision to allow Afridi to be tried in Pakistan for treason and sentenced to 33 years in prison.

Isn’t Pakistan our friend?

Grow up…

Underwear bomber number 2 (still unnamed) isn’t the only one with his shorts in a twist over the latest attempt to bring terror to the sky over the Atlantic. The CIA, FBI, and MI6 are all scrambling to explain (or unexplain) their accounts of who did what when to take-down the would-be bomber and save a planeload of unwary infidels from mid-air incineration. US intelligence is blaming the administration for ‘leaks’ they say compromise a secret intelligence partnership, while other, perhaps less sanctioned leakers from each agency continue to spin the story in ways designed to claim victory for their team. Word is that someone at the White House leaked ‘the story’ to a national security advisor or some intel czar who then passed it on to three major networks.

The result? Alerts about the nefarious ‘underwear bomber’ have dominated the news for days, the mainstream media (getting it wrong again) rushing to attribute the just-in-time preemptive strike to the talents and skill of US intelligence. First reports indicated that the individal in charge of the entire operation was employed by the CIA, a ‘double agent’ in control of the whole operation from start to finish…