Blinded Prison Guard: Don't House Terror Suspects in NYC

Saturday, November 14, 2009
By Joseph Abrams

The high-security prison in New York City where 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is expected to be sent to await his trial has a supermax wing to keep even the most notorious criminals quiet — but it isn't perfect. Just ask Louis Pepe.

Ten months before Al Qaeda in 2001 struck a deathblow in the heart lower Manhattan, one of the terrorist group's founding members plunged a sharpened comb through Pepe's left eye and into his brain, blinding the 42-year-old prison guard and causing severe brain injuries that plague him to this day.

Pepe told FoxNews.com he worries that sending Mohammed and four of his alleged fellow 9/11 conspirators to New York could compromise the safety of the guards at the MCC prison. Keeping the prisoners in one location, he said, was especially dangerous.

"Could you imagine over there what they're gonna do, God forbid?" asked Pepe, now 52, who lost feeling in the right side of his body and most of his ability to speak. "After all these years, you'd think they should know."

On Nov. 1, 2000, Pepe was ambushed in the cell of Mamdouh Mahmud Salim — an alleged top aide to Usama bin Laden. Salim's cellmate, another Al Qaeda suspect, joined in the attack, which prosecutors say was an attempt to steal Pepe's keys to the cell block to free other prisoners and take hostages.

The two had been granted permission by a federal>>>

Justice Denied

Posted 11/13/2009 07:14 PM ET

In this March 1, 2003 file picture, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is seen shortly after his capture during a raid in Pakistan. Attorney General Eric Holder...View Enlarged Image

War On Terror: Eric Holder's move to try the 9/11 masterminds in Manhattan makes it official: This administration has reverted to pre-9/11 "crime" fighting.

Amid all the talk during the attorney general's surreal press conference of the "crime" committed eight years ago, the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon wasn't even mentioned.

Lest anyone forget, the military headquarters of the United States was attacked that day along with the Twin Towers.

An entire wedge of the Ring was gutted when the Saudi hijackers slammed American Airlines Flight 77 into it. Nearly 200 military personnel were killed, along with the passengers and crew of the hijacked jet.

The jet was a weapon used to attack the very center of our military. That was not a "crime," as some say. It was an act of war.

And 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, along with the four other al-Qaida terrorist co-conspirators Holder wants to try, are no mere criminals. They are enemy combatants — and should be treated as such.

Yet this administration has adopted the same crime-centered mentality as the last Democratic administration. The one that treated al-Qaida's first World Trade Center bombing as a "crime." And al-Qaida's attack on the U.S. embassies in Africa as a "crime." And even al-Qaida's attack on the USS Cole as a "crime."

All were prosecuted in U.S. courts. A lot of good that did.

While President Bill Clinton was busy preparing indictments against the terrorists, al-Qaida was already plotting its next move. It hit the Pentagon just nine months after Clinton and his crime-fighters left office.

Maddeningly, this administration>>>

And Then He Sang !

NOTE: You've just got to take the time to hear this young man sing; it will make you proud to be an American, and to know there's hope for the future; you'll be the loser IF you don't!! Just click on video.aol below!!

This young man sings the National Anthem prior to a college basketball game. Notice two of the players in tears HE IS ONLY 7 YEARS OLD! http://video.aol.com/video-detail/7-year-old-sings-national-anthem/40945200

Ralph Scott’s Gunnery Sergeant Stripes Fit

By DAVID HOGBERG, INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILYPosted 10/30/2009 05:43 PM ET

Gunnery Sgt. Ralph Scott spent 7,361 days in the Marine Corps.

Nov. 12, 2004, was the most dangerous.

During the Battle of Fallujah in Iraq, Scott rescued a wounded buddy by creating a distraction — in the heat of enemy fire.

"Anybody from that platoon, seeing what he did," said Scott's platoon sergeant, Michael Chambers. "My words can't do him justice."

For that, Scott was awarded the Bronze Star Medal with Valor.

Scott became a Marine in large part because his stepfather was one.

"During my impressionable years, I grew up on military bases," Scott told IBD. "I just fell in love with the Marine Corps. I had an up-close-and-personal exposure to it."

Teen In Uniform

Scott joined in 1989, in the middle of his senior year in high school in Tallahassee, Fla. Since he was still 17, his mom had to go with him to the recruiting office to give him permission to sign up.

While in uniform, Scott>>>

'NATO Has the Watches, We Have the Time'

• OCTOBER 26, 2009, 9:38 P.M. ET

By JAMES SHINN

Those of us in the Bush administration who were responsible for its "Afghan Strategy Review" kept our mouths shut when we handed over the document to the Obama transition team last fall. We didn't want to box in the new administration.

And when President Barack Obama and his advisers rolled out their own Afghanistan strategy on March 27, I was quietly pleased. It came to basically the same conclusion we had: The paramount goal was to squash terrorism through counterinsurgency and better governance in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs promised the press corps at the time that its strategy would be "fully resourced." Later, in August, Gen. Stanley McChrystal's assessment of the situation in Afghanistan was leaked. It was a road map to implement precisely the Obama strategy that was announced in March.

But one key element of both the Bush and Obama strategies is getting lost in the debate—that we must apply the military and economic resources for the time required to achieve our goals. As the Obama administration's March 27 White Paper notes, "There are no quick fixes to achieve U.S. national security interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan."

The average counterinsurgency war lasts>>>

Remains of Long-Missing WWII Airman Given to Family in California

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

HIGHLAND, Calif. — For two decades after her son's bomber went down in the Pacific Ocean during World War II, Vella Stinson faithfully wrote the U.S. government twice a month to ask if his body had been found — or if anyone was looking.

The mother of six strapping boys went to her grave without the answer that has finally reached her two surviving sons 65 years later: the remains of Sgt. Robert Stinson are coming home.

Military divers recovered two pieces of leg bone from the wreckage of a B-24J Liberator bomber found at the bottom of the ocean off the coast of the island nation of Palau. DNA testing showed the femur fragments belonged to the 24-year-old flight engineer who died in combat on Sept. 1, 1944.

Stinson's remains arrived under U.S. Air Force escort Wednesday and will be buried Friday at Riverside National Cemetery with full military honors. In between, the body will be kept at a mortuary less than 100 yards from the home where Stinson grew up with his brothers.

"He's not someplace on a little island or at the bottom of the ocean. He's home," said Edward Stinson, who was 9 when his brother died.

For Robert Stinson, the journey home was far from a sure thing.>>>

Flying Imams Victory

Posted 06:49 PM ET

Homeland Security: A suspect Islamist group is gloating that a cash settlement in the so-called Flying Imams case is a "victory for civil rights." If it's a victory, it's one for future hijackers.

Three years ago, six Islamic clerics sued US Airways and Minneapolis airport police for discrimination and false arrest after they were bounced from a Phoenix-bound flight for behaving much like the 9/11 hijackers.

Some yelled "Allah, Allah, Allah," and changed their seats while asking for seat belt extensions they never used. Though situated throughout the cabin, the six men appeared to be acting in concert. Witnesses also said they loudly cursed the U.S.

Also raising flags, half of them had no checked baggage and what appeared to be one-way tickets.

The imams didn't seem to have a case — until that is, they got liberal federal judge Ann Montgomery to hear it. A Clinton appointee, she denied the defendants' request for dismissal.

And her ruling, strongly worded in favor of the plaintiffs, made it clear law enforcement wasn't immune from being sued. Convinced they wouldn't succeed at trial, the defendants settled.

The imams' attorney — a board member of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which financed the case — says the deal involves an undisclosed amount paid to his clients by airport police. Details are sealed. The airport authority issued a statement saying insurance limits its liability to $50,000.

"The settlement of this case is a clear victory for justice and civil rights," said CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad.

These imams, whose leader admitted once supporting Osama bin Laden, are not the victims of discrimination. The victims are passengers who are now more vulnerable to terrorist attack.

The settlement threatens to have a chilling>>>