Children at risk
I have one more school children post I want to do today, and this one is scary and depressing. It’s also not new, because it’s an issue that’s been around and about which I’ve blogged before: the possible terrorist threat to our children. Danny Lemieux gave me the heads up about the latest column on this subject, this time from Jack Kelly. He spells out, first, some disturbing factual trends:
• U.S. forces seized in 2002 an al Qaida training tape of a practice assault on an abandoned school in Mir Bach Kot in Afghanistan. The terrorists were barking commands in English.
• U.S. forces in Iraq found on a captured al Qaida computer building plans for schools in six states.
• In May of 2006, two Saudi students at the University of South Florida boarded a school bus. They were “cagey and evasive” in explaining why they boarded the bus, said a spokesman for the Hillsborough County sheriff.
• In March, the FBI issued a bulletin to law enforcement warning that Muslims “with ties to extremist groups” were signing up to be school bus drivers.
• A Houston television station reported in August that 17 large yellow school buses have been stolen.
Al Qaida prefers middle schools because the girls are old enough to rape, but the boys aren’t big enough to fight back, says retired Army LtCol. Dave Grossman, who runs a private security firm.
Kelly believes that Al Qaeda’s goal, if it does attack schools, is to turn the American people into slavering anti-Muslim monsters, who can then be used for propaganda value to unite Muslims into a global jihad.
Kelly also thinks that, with the situation in Pakistan so inflammatory, this is a window of time in which Al Qaeda will act, since it wants to tip the balance on the global scene.
The rest of Kelly’s article looks at whether the Democrats can stand before voters and credibly claim to have protected them from this kind of threat, or to have thought through a response in case, God forbid, something does happen. It’s the weakest part of his article, but you should read it anyway and draw your own conclusions.
