Jennifer's Blog

What is it about pro golfer Tiger Woods’ recent car crash that has cap­ti­vated the world? Is it because he is one of the great­est ath­letes of all time? Or because he has gone to great lengths to keep his pri­vate life pri­vate? Is it because tabloids are spread­ing rumors that he’s involved in a love tri­an­gle with two hot­ties (his wife and the alleged mis­tress)? Or is it because this story oozes sex appeal, adul­tery, drugs, domes­tic bliss gone wrong and feeds on the hid­den desires of a sex­u­ally bored society?

What­ever it is, shouldn’t we just get over it? I mean the guy hit a fire hydrant and a tree in his own neigh­bor­hood. Isn’t that embar­rass­ment enough? Woods now has the daunt­ing task of not only fend­ing off the police that con­tin­u­ally attempt to inter­view him but also the press that will no doubt hound him for months to come. Then there is his wife, Ellen Norde­gren, to deal with. Woods has a lot of dam­age con­trol to do if the reports are true that Norde­gren bashed the rear win­dow of this Escalade out of anger.

Repair­ing an SUV rear wind­shield can occur in no time with the right body shop. But there are no quick fix to regain­ing trust in a mar­riage. In most cases, reestab­lish­ing trust takes months, even years. Unlike a dam­aged vehi­cle, in a mar­riage, both par­ties have to want to reconcile.

Given this, I say we as a soci­ety should do as Woods has asked and respect his pri­vacy. Who cares that the alleged mis­tress, Rachel Uchi­tel, has hired high-powered celebrity attor­ney, Glo­ria Allred? This is just more of the media-circus that no self-respecting indi­vid­ual should pay homage to unless you’re into the antics of the Col­orado bal­loon boy or the White House din­ner crashers.

Instead, con­sider how lucky you are. What about the 13 peo­ple killed and 31 injured in the Ft. Hood ter­ror­ist attack? Or what about the 57 peo­ple mas­sa­cred — includ­ing 12 jour­nal­ists— in the Philip­pines as they sought to add a new can­di­date to an upcom­ing governor’s race. Or how about the 26 peo­ple killed — includ­ing 18 peo­ple still miss­ing— that were on the elite pas­sen­ger train that derailed after a ter­ror­ist act in Rus­sia? Or even the US tanker car­ry­ing a crew of 28 that was just hijacked by Soma­lian pirates? It is with these peo­ple that our hearts, thoughts and prayers should go out to. Their fam­ily mem­bers will no doubt expe­ri­ence the lousi­est hol­i­day sea­son ever.

It’s a shame that sto­ries of sub­stance become pass­ing blips on our news chan­nels while sto­ries that lack sub­stance hog our head­lines. I think it’s high time we as a soci­ety adjust our moral com­pass. Do we want to be a soci­ety that divides or unites? A soci­ety dom­i­nated by voyeurism or altru­ism? I don’t know about you, but I vote for the lat­ter. In Judaism, we call this tikkun olam –repair­ing the world. So don’t sit this one out. From the looks of things, we have a lot of repair­ing to do.

The Philip­pines is one of the most west­ern­ized coun­tries in Asia with strong ties to the US and the United Nations. Yet a local war­lord that dou­bles as a gov­er­nor, Andal Ampat­uan, just mas­sa­cred 57 peo­ple —12 of which were jour­nal­ists — to pre­vent a guber­na­to­r­ial can­di­date from fil­ing his papers.

Sound crazy? I’ll say. What’s cra­zier is what we know about this highly mil­i­ta­rized, clan-led coun­try that makes you won­der why the US or the United Nations ever befriended it. It’s com­mon knowl­edge that the Philip­pines grants impunity for polit­i­cal vio­lence. Why? Just ask Philip­pine Pres­i­dent Glo­ria Macapagal-Arroyo. Under her reign, the Arroyo admin­is­tra­tion has ignored reports by jour­nal­ists of mil­i­tary abuses and turned its back when war­ring fac­tions assas­si­nated envi­ron­men­tal­ists and church workers.

But there are more legs to this story that are sup­port­ing what has proved to be the dead­liest day for jour­nal­ists any­where. Offi­cials found a gov­ern­ment con­struc­tion vehi­cle parked at the site of hastily dug mass graves. Just to give you an idea of how hur­riedly these so-called “secu­rity forces” dug — offi­cials spot­ted a sin­gle grave with 17 bod­ies piled on top of each other.

Arroyo has released a num­ber of state­ments and her lat­est sug­gests that she is out­raged by these bar­baric acts. Really? This along with her other state­ments don’t coin­cide with her record of ser­vice (or what many deem disservice).

Arroyo’s vow to “per­son­ally over­see mil­i­tary action against the per­pe­tra­tors” is about as telling as ask­ing the wolf, “Who emp­tied the henhouse?”

Sound­ing more like a heinous mafia movie than real life? Yep. Think the inves­ti­ga­tion ordered by Arroyo will be fair and impar­tial? Nope. Besides her cor­rupt gov­ern­ment, she is still lick­ing wounds in the wake of the Octo­ber typhoon that killed hun­dreds. Arroyo’s lack of aid to typhoon vic­tims drew crit­i­cism world­wide. The world is get­ting a clear pic­ture that Arroyo is just as respon­si­ble as the crim­i­nal ele­ments she enables with the blood­shed of 57 peo­ple on her hands cou­pled with her administration’s record of tol­er­at­ing violence.

So let’s take a closer look at Arroyo. She has any­thing but a spot­less record. In fact, her 2004 elec­tion tal­lied more votes than reg­is­tered vot­ers. Then, there is her rela­tion­ship with Ampat­uan. Reports indi­cate that Ampat­uan is a staunch ally of Arroyo and he and his fam­ily helped Arroyo win the vast major­ity of votes in her 2004 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion (many of which belonged to no one). Ooops!

And it doesn’t stop there. Arroyo issued an exec­u­tive order in 2006 that allowed local offi­cials and the Philip­pine National Police to dep­u­tize vol­un­teer watch­man to fight insur­gent groups in the south­ern regions. This is exactly why local politi­cians (or in this case war­lords) wield the power that they do. And just how do they mis­use it? They use their posi­tions for per­sonal gain by gun­ning down any­one who will run against their can­di­date. In Ampatuan’s case, one of his sons.

Locals blame Ampat­uan for order­ing his army of 500 to stop oppos­ing can­di­dates at all cost. So his pri­vate mili­tia did what any army of thugs could: they kid­napped and bru­tally killed and pos­si­bly tor­tured, raped and beheaded Magudadatu’s mes­sen­gers. These mes­sen­gers were none other than the wife of the can­di­date, Ismael “Toto” Man­gu­da­datu, his sis­ter and a group of jour­nal­ists who went to file paper­work for Mangudadtu.

Sound­ing more like a spy thriller than real life? I’ll say.

There is no ques­tion that reform is needed to pre­vent atroc­i­ties like the griz­zly one that con­tin­ues to unfold in the Philip­pines. Maybe this is a good time for the Obama admin­is­tra­tion to focus on denounc­ing coun­tries with long-standing human rights abuses instead of dic­tat­ing where Israelis should lay their heads at night.

Mas­sive car bombs and sui­cide bombers. Rocket and orga­nized gun attacks. Sense­less killings of inno­cent civil­ians and city offi­cials. Take away the scenery and lan­guage, and the threat of ter­ror­ist attacks in North­ern Ire­land is not that much dif­fer­ent from those in Israel.

So what does the recent 400-pound car bomb that failed to det­o­nate out­side police-reform head­qau­rters in Belfast mean for Israel? Actu­ally, a lot. First, deadly attacks are ris­ing to a new level with a bomb this size. Sec­ond, while the police depart­ment and cit­i­zens of Belfast can count their bless­ings, it’s clear that next time they may not be so lucky. And third, it goes to show that no mat­ter how many peace agree­ments are in place between Israel and the Pales­tini­ans there will always be dis­si­dent Pales­tin­ian groups that form to elim­i­nate Israel.

His­tory says it all. Even after the main­stream IRA signed a cease-fire agree­ment in North­ern Ire­land on April 10, 1998 known as the Good Fri­day Agree­ment, the fringe group who calls them­selves the Real IRA com­mit­ted its dead­liest ter­ror­ist act about four months later in a major car bomb­ing in Omagh that killed 29 peo­ple and wounded more than 300.

There’s no ques­tion that fringe group attacks in North­ern Ire­land have not reached the same scale as those car­ried out by the main­stream IRA, which is respon­si­ble for killing nearly 1,800 peo­ple in both North­ern Ire­land and Britain from 1970 — 1997. But the groups do present a seri­ous and present threat is esca­lat­ing in North­ern Ire­land and is likely to con­tinue. Their goal is sim­ple: to over­turn any peace agree­ments reached between larger groups.

Besides geog­ra­phy, a major dif­fer­ence sep­a­rates whether peace will endure in North­ern Ire­land opposed to Israel. Dis­si­dent groups in North­ern Ire­land want to unite it with the rest of Ire­land (North­ern Ire­land is cur­rently occu­pied by Britain) whereas Palestinian-backed fac­tions fight because they want to wipe Israel off the map. While North­ern Ire­land has a power-sharing agree­ment in place that many deem a mir­a­cle com­pared with decades of blood­shed, it might take more than a mir­a­cle to change the ani­mos­ity that fuels Pales­tin­ian and Arab hos­til­ity towards Israel. A two-state or one-state solu­tion is like slap­ping a ban­dage on a hem­or­rhag­ing wound. How can Israel live in peace with Arab fac­tions who con­tin­u­ally vow to anni­hi­late the Jew­ish state?

The sil­ver screen is infa­mous for fea­tur­ing bum­bling intel­li­gence agents who hoard sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion from local agen­cies. This is not too far from the truth when it comes to the blood­bath at Ft. Hood. Con­sider the FBI mon­i­tored email exchanges released Sat­ur­day in the Wash­ing­ton Post. True to Oscar Wilde’s quote, “Real­ity imi­tates art far more than art imi­tates real­ity,” the inves­ti­ga­tion was amiss.

Here’s why. An FBI-led task force in San Diego inter­cepted emails between late 2008 and June 2009 between Hasan, the alleged Ft. Hood shooter, and a rad­i­cal Islamic cleric, Anwar al-Aulaqi. These emails dis­cussed covert finan­cial trans­fers and other steps that could trans­late Hasan’s thoughts into actions, accord­ing to sources briefed by the Post.

Keep in mind, news sources pub­lished in the wake of the tragedy that the semi-automatic Hasan pur­chased with cop-killer bul­lets was in August of 2009. It also brings up the ques­tion of why a mil­i­tary offi­cer would need a per­sonal semi-automatic. While there are plenty argu­ments against gun con­trol and wait­ing peri­ods, it might cre­ate a safety net if the armed forces knew when the sol­diers they’re train­ing for com­bat pur­chase semi-automatics on their own dime (or this case just over $1,000 for the FM 5.7 mil­lime­ter semi-automatic pis­tol Hasan toted not to men­tion the addtional cost of the per­sonal revolver in his other hand).

Fail­ure to Con­nect the Dots

Fail­ure to for­ward infor­ma­tion regard­ing a home­grown jihadist might seem pass­able in a Hol­ly­wood thriller but it is incred­i­bly irre­spon­si­ble in real­ity. While the media has not released any reports of civil cases against gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies to my knowl­edge, I wouldn’t be sur­prised if they multiply.

The Post also reported that while Hasan’s emails to the Iman began as reli­gious queries, the tone became more spe­cific before he relo­cated to Texas. Besides killing 13 in cold blood and injur­ing 30 more, who knows what addi­tional dam­age he may have caused the enlisted men and women he coun­seled. There have been reports of a high sui­cide rate at Ft. Hood. Just how many attempted or suc­cess­ful sui­cides were under Hasan’s care?

It would seem likely that if the intel­li­gence agen­cies had a pol­icy of open com­mu­ni­ca­tion and knew that high rank­ing offi­cials would hold them account­able then its plau­si­ble Ft. Hood could have expe­ri­enced another outcome.

A num­ber of peo­ple inter­viewed that knew Hasan said they observed warn­ing signs. How­ever, none of these com­plaints went to a sin­gle gate­keeper that could act on this infor­ma­tion. Sadly, if a sin­gle gatekeeper’s office tracked and assessed his actions there could have been an inter­ven­tion by authorities.

More than likely, no one is con­nect­ing the dots and iden­ti­fy­ing poten­tial human time bombs when they see them. Mil­i­tary per­son­nel from the high­est ranks down needs to know the poten­tial warn­ing signs that can lead to vio­lent acts like shoot­ing sprees,  sui­cides, etc. There are a num­ber of well-researched assess­ments that estab­lish sui­ci­dal and vio­lent behav­ior indi­ca­tors for adults as well as ado­les­cents. High schools on down have had to rely on such assess­ments after the Columbine case made know­ing the warn­ing signs manda­tory. It appears our mil­i­tary forces and national secu­rity agen­cies have some work to do to break away from their exist­ing silos, report warn­ing signs to a cen­tral assess­ment depart­ment, make trans­parency between agen­cies a real­ity and ulti­mately prac­tice mea­sures early-on that can save lives and pre­vent tragedies like Ft. Hood from ever occur­ring again.

Some neigh­bor­hoods grow flow­ers. Oth­ers grow gar­dens. And still oth­ers tend to a vir­u­lent crop: home­grown jihadists. Take John Allen Muham­mad for instance. Muham­mad is the noto­ri­ous DC sniper who mowed down at least 10 peo­ple in his path. He ter­ror­ized the greater part of DC, even turn­ing his .223-caliber Bush­mas­ter rifle (the civil­ian ver­sion of the mil­i­tary M-16) on school­yard chil­dren. But what do we really know about Muhammad?

The story may give you déjà vu. Muham­mad served in the Louisiana Army National Guard in 1978 and seven years later vol­un­teered for active ser­vice in the US army work­ing as a mechanic, truck dri­ver and spe­cial­ist met­al­worker. Just two years into his army ser­vice, Muham­mad joined the Nation of Islam in 1987.  Moham­mad soon qual­i­fied with the Army’s stan­dard infantry weapon, the M16, earn­ing the Expert Rifleman’s Badge. Guess what? The Army reserves this rat­ing as the high­est of three lev­els of marks­man­ship for a basic soldier.

At the time of Muhammad’s shoot­ing spree, he was iso­lated from his fam­ily, con­sid­ered a ‘loner’ and had adopted increas­ingly more mil­i­tant reli­gious beliefs.

Sound famil­iar? Hasan any­one? As we fight the war on ter­ror, we have an oblig­a­tion to con­trol the threat from within. We can no longer stay silent while we actively train Islamic Amer­i­cans to use our own train­ing against us. The most notable exam­ple of this is the Saudi ter­ror­ists who took up pilot train­ing in the US before turn­ing them­selves and our planes into human bombs.

Like the 911 ter­ror­ists, there is plenty of evi­dence link­ing Muham­mad and Hasan to jihad. Draw­ings by Muham­mad admit­ted that the killings were jihadist. Like­wise, Hasan emailed Anwar al-Awlaki, a Mus­lim cleric who had ties to the 9/11 ter­ror­ists. So how can we pre­vent home­grown jihadists in our midst? A buddy sys­tem that allows anony­mous report­ing to the high­est lev­els? Detain­ment of any­one remotely sus­pected of Jihadist under­pin­nings? A fail-proof sys­tem that results in an auto­matic court mar­tial for mil­i­tary per­son­nel who fail to detain sus­pected jihadists? It’s high time we all weigh in.

Remind me again why the fed­eral gov­ern­ment is dead set on pay­ing a fig­ure that could top$75 mil­lion in secu­rity mea­sures to pros­e­cute five alleged 9/11 co-conspirators, includ­ing mas­ter­mind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, when it just released our widest-ever deficit of $176.36 bil­lion in October?

This is just one of the shock­ers that occurred in Wednesday’s Sen­ate over­sight hear­ing on the upcom­ing 9/11 tri­als slated for New York. Dem. Sen­a­tor Charles E. Schumer of New York told Attor­ney Gen­eral Eric Holder that the New York police commissioner’s office, Ray­mond W. Kelly, gave him the fig­ure to mainly to cover over­time pay. Why? Schumer under­stand­ably wasn’t about to let New York­ers foot the bill so he amped the pres­sure until Holder promised to urge the fed­eral gov­ern­ment to reim­burse the city.

Guess what? That boils down to every Amer­i­can tax­payer in a coun­try that is quickly becom­ing as bank­rupt as some third world nations. Nice! Always  good to know our super­power sta­tus con­tin­ues to unravel.

Besides the fact that this is a finan­cially irre­spon­si­ble move, the logis­tics of mov­ing sus­pected 9/11 ter­ror­ists to New York from Guan­tanamo Bay is a major secu­rity risk. Why is it in America’s best inter­est to try these sus­pected mur­der­ers on our own soil? Why not save money and pros­e­cute them in a mil­i­tary court near their deten­tion facil­ity in Cuba?

Com­mon sense would indi­cate that doing so jeop­ar­dizes the safety of every­one in the heart of New York includ­ing those directly and indi­rectly involved like judges, jurors, lawyers, 9/11 fam­ily mem­bers, fed­eral employ­ees, cit­i­zens and sur­round­ing busi­nesses. Keep in mind that the fed­eral cour­t­house is 1,000 yards away from where the twin tow­ers col­lapsed. All together, 9/11 took the lives of 2,973 at the World Trade Cen­ter, the Pen­ta­gon and in Pennsylvania.

Watch­ing Attor­ney Gen­eral Eric Holder defend his deci­sion to move for­ward with the 9/11 tri­als in New York proved to be an eye-opener of the dog-and-pony show we can expect once the trial dates are set. It seems that we are tread­ing on a slip­pery slope —rebrand­ing the war on ter­ror from a mil­i­tary affair into a law enforce­ment affair. I just can’t help won­der who out­smarted who? My guess? Mohammed.

Rep. Sen­a­tor John Kyl took a few ver­bal jabs at Holder along these lines:

“Shaik Mohammed has already asked to plead guilty before a mil­i­tary com­mis­sion and be exe­cuted. How can you be more likely to get a con­vic­tion in an Arti­cle III Court than that?”

Holder replied, “The deter­mi­na­tion I make on where I think we can best try these cases is not depen­dent on the whims or the desires of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed,”

The high­light of Wednesday’s Jus­tice Depart­ment over­sight hear­ing came when South Car­olina Rep., Sen. Lind­sey Gra­ham put Holder on the spot by ask­ing: “Would U.S. offi­cials need to Miran­dize Osama bin Ladin if it cap­tured him, includ­ing telling the Al Qaeda leader that he had the right to remain silent?

Holder rebuffed the ques­tion with­out much con­vic­tion say­ing that it would depend on the direc­tion the U.S. gov­ern­ment decided to take after cap­tur­ing bin Ladin. Gra­ham pro­ceeded to put Holden on the hot seat by a long line of ques­tion­ing that vis­i­bly stumped Holden. One of the high­notes included:

GRAHAM: Can you give me a case in United States his­tory where a (sic) enemy com­bat­ant caught on a bat­tle­field was tried in civil­ian court?

ATTY GEN. HOLDER: I don’t know. I’d have to look at that. I think that, you know, the deter­mi­na­tion I’ve made –

SEN. GRAHAM: We’re mak­ing his­tory here, Mr. Attor­ney Gen­eral. I’ll answer it for you. The answer is no.

ATTY GEN. HOLDER: Well, I think –

SEN. GRAHAM: The Ghailani case — he was indicted for the Cole bomb­ing before 9/11. And I didn’t object to it going into fed­eral court. But I’m telling you right now. We’re mak­ing his­tory and we’re mak­ing bad his­tory. And let me tell you why.

If bin Laden were caught tomor­row, would it be the posi­tion of this admin­is­tra­tion that he would be brought to justice?

ATTY GEN. HOLDER: He would cer­tainly be brought to jus­tice, absolutely.

SEN. GRAHAM: Where would you try him?

ATTY GEN. HOLDER: Well, we’d go through our pro­to­col. And we’d make the deter­mi­na­tion about where he should appro­pri­ately be tried.

SEN. GRAHAM: Would you try him — why would you take him some­place dif­fer­ent than KSM?

ATTY GEN. HOLDER: Well, that might be the case. I don’t know. I’m not –

SEN. GRAHAM: Well, let –

ATTY GEN. HOLDER: I’d have to look at all of the evi­dence, all of the –

SEN. GRAHAM: Well –

ATTY GEN. HOLDER: He’s been indicted. He’s been indicted already. (Off mike.)

Gra­ham con­tin­ues on this path while Holder objects mildly, seems off guard and caps the dis­cus­sion by say­ing that our mil­i­tary makes a deci­sion every­day on the bat­tle­field on who should be Mirandaized. See­ing Holder, an attor­ney gen­eral and expe­ri­enced pros­e­cu­tor, get side­swiped shows what can hap­pen when you get a sharp defense attorney.

Crit­ics fear that a New York venue will give the alleged ter­ror­ists a pub­lic plat­form for legal pos­tur­ing and maneu­ver­ing not to men­tion a way to denounce the US while turn­ing the court­room into a cir­cus. They also worry that the detainees’ defense attor­neys will turn them into vic­tims. For instance, I wouldn’t be sur­prised if Mohammed’s attor­ney focuses on the fact that he’s been in cus­tody for 8+ years with­out due process. Another vehi­cle that can cause a wrin­kle in the pros­e­cu­tion is that the CIA admit­ted water­board­ing Mohammed by its intel­li­gence offi­cials who put him through sim­u­lated drown­ings 183 times.

The last thing 9/11 fam­ily mem­bers, friends and those con­cerned about seek­ing jus­tice want to see is the prosecution’s evi­dence get over­shad­owed by treat­ment given after the sus­pects were detained. Many believe that these detainees will incite their jihadist broth­ers around the world to deliver a sequel to 9/11.

While the Admin­is­tra­tion is down­play­ing secu­rity risks, one New York secu­rity guard knows all too well the jeop­ardy that the five detainees pose. Ten months before Al Qaeda crashed com­mer­cial jet­lin­ers into the heart of lower Man­hat­tan, one of the ter­ror group’s found­ing mem­bers, Mam­douh Mah­mud Salim, plunged a sharp­ened comb through Louis Pepe’s left eye and into his brain. At 42, he was blind with severe brain injuries that affect him to this day.

It’s too late to cast your vote over whether the 9/11 detainees should receive a mil­i­tary or fed­eral trial. Holder made it clear while tes­ti­fy­ing for the Sen­ate Judi­ciary Com­mit­tee that the New York venue is a done deal. And as the nation still mourns the Ft. Hood mas­sacre that claimed 13 lives and injured 30 oth­ers, it’s hard to ignore the lack of urgency over our nation’s secu­rity. It’s not as if we’re try­ing the shoe­bomber or oth­ers like him who failed their mur­der­ous attempt. These five detainees devel­oped the play­book for the war on ter­ror. They are with­out ques­tion the most dia­bol­i­cal mur­der­ers of our time.

There is spec­u­la­tion the trial will begin in 2011. With our declin­ing dol­lar and the eco­nomic rise of coun­tries around the world, some experts sug­gest that we’ve already lost our super­power sta­tus. On that note, let’s just hope the $75 mil­lion+ is enough to top­ple any attempts at a 9/11 sequel. The orig­i­nal was bad enough.