In Defense of Profiling

By Chuck Hustmyre

Let's get one thing straight right up front: Profiling is an effective tool.

We do it with serial killers all the time. Why not terrorists? Because it's discrimination. Therefore, it must be evil.

Wrong.

According to my World Book dictionary, discriminate means "to see or note a difference; (to) make a distinction."

When I choose steak over fish, I discriminate. When I decide to see one movie and not another, I discriminate. We make discriminating choices all day, every day. Discrimination is nothing more than the implementation of personal experience.

I want airport security personnel to discriminate between terrorists and non-terrorists.

The reason discrimination has gotten a bad rap is because we, the silent majority of clear-headed, right-thinking Americans, have permitted the American Left to control our language. We have allowed the Left to imbue certain words with so much negative connotation that we have, in effect, added them to the late comedian George Carlin's list of words you can never say.

Discrimination and profiling are two of those words.

The attempted Christmas Day bombing of Northwest Airlines flight 253 by an al Qaeda-linked Muslim terrorist highlighted obvious weaknesses in airport security screening. However, instead of addressing the real security problems, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, under the direction of the woefully unqualified Janet Napolitano, is busy issuing a string of new directives that will harass and inconvenience millions of travelers but will actually accomplish nothing.

Already we know that international passengers will henceforth have to remain seated with nothing in their laps for the last hour of their flight. NOTE TO TERRORISTS: Initiate detonation 90 minutes before landing, or anytime after takeoff. The new rule sounds too stupid to be true, but it is just one of many coming to an airport near you.

Out of the billions of airport security screenings conducted in this country since 9/11, how many terrorist bombs or weapons have been found? I'd wager the answer is--not one. I certainly haven't heard of any bombs or guns being discovered during a routine bag or body search that were in the possession of an actual terrorist who was planning on blowing up or hijacking an American airliner.

I did hear about the failed attempt by shoe bomber Richard Reid, who successfully smuggled explosives onboard an airliner only to have those explosives fail to detonate. Now we've learned about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian with alleged ties to al Qaeda, who, but for an equipment failure and a quick thinking, aggressive Dutch passenger, would have downed another commercial jetliner and murdered the 288 other people aboard it.

Profiling may not have stopped Reid or Abdulmutallab, but one thing is certain: We are wasting our finite security resources by spreading them out equally over the approximately 700 million passengers who travel on U.S. airlines each year.

If we stopped treating terrorism as a social problem and instead treated it as a mathematical or statistical problem, the solution would be obvious.

It is an inarguable fact that the vast majority of terrorists operating today are young Muslim men of Middle Eastern descent. Even Richard Reid, a British convert to Islam, adopted the affectations of an angry young Muslim.

In the 1980s an anti-government, neo-Nazi group called The Order committed a string of deadly bank and armored car robberies in the Pacific Northwest. All of the members of the group were white men. Had the police and FBI squandered their investigative resources by including black men, Jews, and members of the Swedish bikini team in their search for members of the white supremacist group, the investigators could have rightfully been accused criminal negligence.

What is absurd is to pretend that profiling doesn't work at all and that the mere mention of it is racist.

While it is possible that a 50-year-old man in a business suit might pull a gun and rob a convenience store, it is much more probable that a 20-year-old man in a hooded sweat jacket will do it. And if a store clerk casts a more wary eye on the 20-year-old than on the 50-year-old, is he discriminating? Is he profiling? The answer to both is yes. But is it reasonable? Is it justified? Again, the answer to both questions is yes, because the collective experience of tens of thousands of convenience store robberies is that a young man in a hooded sweat jacket is much more likely to be an armed robber than an older man in a business suit.

Profiling isn't a panacea. It's a tool. And it works, especially if it's used in conjunction with other investigative techniques. The danger in profiling is that investigators may lean too heavily upon it, and may exclude, without further consideration, anyone who doesn't meet the profile's basic parameters.

Here's a situation. Two people are trying to pass through security to board a plane. One is a 60-year-old Danish woman carrying a Bible and traveling abroad for the first time. The other is a 28-year-old Muslim man carrying a Quran and a passport indicating he recently returned from Pakistan. Both are traveling alone on one-way tickets.

On whom do you cast a more wary eye?

If you don't believe that there exists a statistically higher probability that one of them is a terrorist and legitimately deserves more scrutiny than the other, then you are either grossly delusional or you believe that a certain number of deaths by terrorism is an acceptable trade off for not offending anyone.

If you believe the latter, then you are also qualified to be the director of Homeland Security.

Book Review -- SACRED by Dennis Lehane

By Chuck Hustmyre

Sacred by Dennis Lehane (HarperTorch, 1998).

I wanted to like this book. I really did. Mr. Lehane has a good reputation and I have enjoyed the two movies I have seen made from his novels. In the end, though, I just didn't like this novel.

Sacred is the third book I have read in Lehane's private eye series featuring Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro. Unfortunately, it will also be the last.

The novel opens with an improbable situation and then skips along to several unbelievable characters and developments, from the convicted felon arms dealer who rigs his own Boston house with pressure sensitive explosive booby traps, to the flawlessly beautiful evil mastermind, to the cardboard cops dug out of a Crackerjack box.

The plot was silly and the characters so cliched as to be funny, even when they weren't meant to be.

It's obvious Mr. Lehane hasn't spent much time with real private investigators or cops.

I did like Lehane's Shutter Island, everything except for the ending, which I found hopelessly confusing. I've heard the script for the movie has a better wrap-up.

The bottom line: Sacred is a waste of time.

"Legal" argument from a law student about my column on the SEALs

Unfortunately, too many people in this country think like this law student about terrorists captured on the battlefield. I received this email in response to my post "Stop prosecuting our American heroes."

Dear Mr. Hustmyre,

I respect your contributions and your opinions, but to cut to the chace, I strongly disagree with your Dec. 9th article entitled "Stop Prosecuting American Heroes."

In your article, you simply assume that the suspect is guilty. No judicial proof has been presented to support your assumption. In fact, you call the suspect a "terrorist" and a "murderous thug," while acknowledging that he, in reality, is merely a suspect. You do not offer a single piece of compelling evidence regarding this suspect's guilt, instead you merely assume he is guilty because someone in the military thinks so.

This flies in the face of our Nation's great fundimental policies of justice, namely that all persons are innocent until proven guilty: including those whom our government suspects of terrorists activities. I know that you value these policies of justice, so I am confused why you would abandon them. Are you suggesting that we should presume terrorist suspects guilty before proven to be so? Indeed, it appears to me that you have already reached a conclusion of guilt without having access to the relevant and probative evidence.

Also, I take issue with your assumption that the behavoir of these Navy Seals is beyond reproach. The Army Field Manual specifically curtails certain uses of physical force when apprehending suspects. Are you suggesting that the Army Field Manual is wrong? Aren't the authors of the Field Manual also American heroes, who dedicated years of service to this country so as to determine the most effective manners in which to carry out our military operations? If a soldier decides to violate the Army Field Manual, shouldn't our government be able to discipline such insubordination, so as to best serve the national security interests of our country?

Furthermore, you seem to have glossed over the fact that these Seals may have lied about their conduct. Breaking a rule while in hot pursuit is one thing. Lying about it to your superior officers is quite another. I am sure you recognize how important it is for subordinates to be honest with their superiors. Nevertheless, in my opinion, you have ignored this aspect of the charge against the Seals, and have inaccurately suggested they are being prosecuted merely for "giving a terrorist a bloody lip."

That is an inaccurate statement, and in my opinon, you know it is inaccurate.

Interestingly, all the Republicans you have quoted in your article make the same logical mistakes that you have, namely:

* they all refer to the suspect as if he had been proven to be guilty of terrorism

* they all pretend that the Seals had "done their duty" when in reality they are charged with violating their duties under the Army Field Manual and then lied about it!

With all due respect sir (and much is due), I think you owe your reading audience a clarification. Many fans of yours expect you to honor the Army Field Manual, the right of officers to demand honest from their subordinates, the right of officers to discipline insubordination, without inaccurate scrutiny from the media.

Your desire to declare this suspect guilty before being any judicial or legal process, and your use of the media to express this desire, undermines our military's abilty to hold subordinates to the high standards that are required to overcome the obstacles we face.

(name removed to prevent his dismemberment)

JD Candidate 2009

Harry Reid on the wrong side of history

By Chuck Hustmyre

Harry Reid, the Democratic Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate, said on Monday that those who oppose government-run healthcare are the same sort of people who opposed granting civil rights and voting rights protections to black Americans.

Monday on the Senate floor, Reid said:

"Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all the Republicans can come up with is, 'slow down, stop everything, let's start over.' If you think you've heard these same excuses before, you're right. When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said 'slow down, it's too early, things aren't bad enough' ... When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing equal civil rights to everyone regardless of the color of their skin, some senators resorted to the same filibuster threats that we hear today."

What Harry forgot to mention was that it was Democratic Senator Strom Thurmond who led the unsuccessful filibuster against Republican President Dwight Eisenhower's Civil Rights Act of 1957.

Harry also forgot to mention the many other prominent Democrats who fought tooth and nail to stop passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, including party luminaries Robert Byrd, Al Gore Sr., and J. William Fulbright.

Crying RACISM! is the No. 1 go-to play for Democrats in trouble, even when the charge is a flat-out lie.

In September, Democrats jumped all over Republican Congressman Joe Wilson, whose emotional shout of "You lie" to President Obama during his address to a joint session of Congress gave the legacy media's race-mongering lapdogs plenty to wag their tongues about.

Maureen Dowd, a partisan hack masquerading as a journalist, claimed that Joe Wilson's outburst was a racist attack on the president.

Dowd wrote: "What I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!" She added that Representative Wilson "clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president."

Democratic Congressman Hank Johnson of Georgia took his rhetoric a step further, saying Wilson's comment had to be formerly rebuked or the Klan would ride again. "I guess we’ll probably have folks putting on white hoods and white uniforms again and riding through the countryside, intimidating people,” Johnson said.

The only current member of the United States Congress I know of who ever wore the white sheet and pointy hat of the KKK is West Virginia's senior senator, and former Democratic leader, Robert Byrd, who held the Klan titles of kleagle (recruiter) and grand cyclops.

In 1942, at the start of the U.S. involvement in World War II, when millions of young men his age were signing up to join the military, Robert Byrd joined the Ku Klux Klan.

In 1944, the bloodiest year of the war, Byrd wrote, "I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side."

Perhaps Congressman Johnson was worried that Joe Wilson's outburst might drive Robert Byrd to dust off his white sheet and hood.

History is clear. The Democratic Party was the party of the Ku Klux Klan. Almost without exception, Klansmen were Democrats, and the Klan itself served as the armed wing of the Democratic Party.

In 1875, in East Feliciana Parish, an armed mob of white Democrats, led by Dr. J.W. Saunders, stormed the town square in Clinton and drove all of the black elected officials out of town. The mob threatened the officials with death if they ever returned. One black official who initially refused to leave was Sheriff Henry Smith. He was shot and forced to resign.

A nearby newspaper, The Amite City Democrat, declared its support for the coup against the black elected officials, proclaiming, "The insolent, ignorant, negro Sheriff Smith of East Feliciana has at last resigned." The newspaper made no mention of the details surrounding the sheriff's "resignation."

In the Florida Parishes, the Whitecaps were another armed band of miscreants that terrorized black people on behalf of the Democratic Party. In his book Pistols and Politics, historian Samuel C. Hyde Jr. wrote: "Whitecaps ... typically functioned as racial regulators, keeping the blacks down and assaulting the interests of economic competition."

The left is losing the argument on healthcare and voter confidence in President Obama is tanking. Every serious poll shows that the vast majority of Americans are satisfied with their medical insurance. So the Democrats are doing what they always do, attempting to portray as racist anyone who opposes massive healthcare reform and huge spending increases on a host of other needless government programs.

Harry Reid is a liar and a fraud. If he wants to get on the "right side of history," he should try telling the truth.

###

Chuck Hustmyre is an award-winning journalist and a retired federal agent. He is the author of three books and hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles. For more information visit www.chuckhustmyre.com.

Stop prosecuting our American heroes

By Chuck Hustmyre

In what must be one of the most outrageous criminal prosecutions in American military history, the U.S. Navy is dragging three Navy SEALs, members of one of our country's most elite commando and counterterrorist units, before a court martial for punching a terrorist in the mouth and giving him a bloody lip.

The alleged "victim" of this so-called assault is not just any old anti-American, murderous barbarian terrorist. No, the scumbag who these SEALs gave a schoolyard fat lip to was Ahmed Hashim Abed, the man the U.S. government suspects planned the ambush, murder, and mutilation of four U.S. civilian contractors in Fallujah, Iraq in 2004. After the ambush, terrorists hung the charred bodies of two of the American contractors from a bridge.

The three SEALs--Special Warfare Operators 2nd Class Matthew McCabe and Jonathan Keefe, and Special Warfare Operator 1st Class Julio Huertas--will be arraigned Dec. 7, according to the Navy.

The irony of that date should not go unnoticed, for it was on Dec. 7, 1941 that a surprise attack almost crushed the war fighting capability of the U.S. Navy. Now, 68 years later, the war fighting spirit of the Navy stands on the brink of being crushed.

According to a military official, Petty Officer McCabe is charged with one count each of assault of the detainee, dereliction of duty and making a false official statement, including "willfully failing to safeguard a detainee."

Petty Officer Keefe is charge with one count each of dereliction of duty and making a false official statement, and Petty Officer Huertas is accused of dereliction of duty, making a false official statement, and impeding an investigation.

The U.S. military spent five years tracking this barbarian murderer, a "high-value target" whose code name was OBJECTIVE AMBER, and these three guys were part of the team that actually captured him. Now they face a year in prison and the wrecking of their military careers for maybe--and I stress maybe--giving this terrorist the same injury as any fifth grader who has ever been in a playground tussle.

And that's only if one of these SEALs slugged the guy. For a while after his capture, Abed was in Iraqi custody, where it's apparently still legal to smack around a guy who has been murdering people and trying to destroy your country.

There is also the possibility that no one even hit this terrorist. In an al Qaeda training manual recovered in Manchester, England and later translated by the FBI, captured terrorists are instructed to claim they were "mistreated or tortured during detention."

As a 20-year law enforcement veteran, I understand that in theory trials are the vehicle for determining the truth of a criminal charge, and that defendants are presumed innocent.

However, in the real world of criminal justice, I know that prosecutors don't file charges unless two conditions exist:

1. They believe the defendants committed the crimes charged.

2. They are confident they have enough evidence to convict the defendants.

It would be unethical for a prosecutor to charge someone with a crime that the prosecutor did not believe the person had committed. (Remember the Duke University rape case?)

By the very act of filing these criminal charges, military prosecutors have demonstrated that they are convinced that at least one of these three Navy SEALs committed a crime by smacking this murderous thug in the face, and that the other two SEALs committed a crime by either allowing it to happen or failing to report it.

These charges are a disgrace.

We would not have won World War II had we hamstrung our fighting men with these absurd rules.

Fortunately, not everyone in the U.S. government has drunk from the same P.C.-flavored Kool-Aide. A few--far too few--Republican lawmakers are rising to the defense of these heroes.

U.S. Congressman Ted Poe, a Republican from Texas, said: "We should be celebrating this achievement, and these Navy SEALs should be getting medals for their work doing what we've asked them to do. But that's not what is happening. ... They are going to be court-martialed because some terrorist supposedly got a bruised mouth."

Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter from California said: "It's just so absurd. I mean, they split his lip. In a boxing situation, that's legal. They punched a terrorist in the face and, boom, we're going to launch these guys out of the Navy."

Dan Burton, a Republican congressman from Indiana, called the charges crazy. "I think that is insane," Burton said. "What kind of a message are we sending to our troops in the field when they do their duty, risk their lives, capture a terrorist that's wanted, one of the top 10 terrorists, and we're going to court-martial them? I don't care if they broke the guy's nose or broke both his arms and his legs. This is insane."

It's disgusting that these charges were ever filed, and I wouldn't be surprised if these men leave the Navy even if they are acquitted.

But as bad as this prosecution is for these three SEALs, imagine the morale killing message it is sending to every member of our military, and particularly to our special operators, who hunt these murderous terrorist bastards in the dark, far from friendly forces, out in the lands the bad guys call home.

Let's send a message to the government: Stop prosecuting our American heroes.

###

Chuck Hustmyre is an award-winning journalist and a retired federal agent. He is the author of three books and hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles. For more information visit www.chuckhustmyre.com.

Letter to Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. Holly Silkman regarding the prosecution of three Navy SEALs

Lt. Col. Silkman:

I realize you are not responsible for charging these three brave special operators with crimes in the capture of a high-value terrorist target; however, you are the spokesperson of record. Thus, I want to register my complaint with you.

I want to say what an outrage this persecution is. Our fighting men and woman (and I'm not counting chair warmers at the Pentagon or JAG) have enough to deal with trying to capture or kill terrorists without having to worry about being hauled into court for something they should get a medal for.

I am an Army veteran and a retired federal agent and I am disgusted with what is happening to our military.

These brave men are heroes, yet you treat them like criminals.

Can you imagine if our soldiers had operated under these ridiculous rules during World War II? Can you imagine hauling soldiers into court for giving a captured German or Japanese soldier a fat lip?

A kid on a schoolyard playground wouldn't get hauled into court for giving another kid a fat lip. Boxers get paid for it.

This prosecution has likely crushed the morale of our war fighters.

It is an outrage.

Sincerely,

Chuck Hustmyre
(225) 955-0290
www.chuckhustmyre.com
www.chuckhustmyre.blogspot.com

The Left's love affair with Islam

By Chuck Hustmyre

The union between the American Left and fundamentalist Islam seems like a marriage made in hell.

The Left hates religion, particularly Christianity, and has succeeded in ripping nearly all vestiges of it from American public life. Through the legal machinations of its lapdog, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Left has banned Christmas from public schools, nativity scenes from City Hall, and the Ten Commandments from courthouses.

In liberal newspeak, "Happy holidays" has replaced "Merry Christmas." Holiday trees have replaced Christmas trees, and Christmas break has become "fall break."

Yet a few years ago, seventh-grade students in California were required to participate in a religious studies program during which they were told to wear Muslim clothing, memorize passages from the Quran, and choose an Islamic name for themselves.

Interestingly enough, the ACLU did not file a lawsuit.

The American Left champions causes such as gay rights (including gay marriage), equality for women (suffrage, the right to work, etc.), and religious freedom (usually in the form of freedom from religion). Yet, fundamentalist Islam opposes nearly everything the American Left stands for.

In many Islamic countries, homosexuality is punishable by death. In Iran, a top government official recently said that torture followed by death is the appropriate punishment for being gay.

In Saudi Arabia, women can't vote, run for public office, or drive cars. Women are routinely jailed and beaten for merely being in the presence of a man not related to them. The Saudi version of Dr. Phil provides televised lessons to men on how to properly beat their wives.

In many Islamic countries, women are forced into arranged marriages and held as property by their husbands, something not exactly in line with progressive Western thinking. In some Muslim countries, women aren't even allowed to decide what clothes to wear. To reveal even the smallest patch of skin is a crime.

Religious freedom is often nonexistent under Islamic rule. In countries like Afghanistan and Iran, people who convert from Islam to another religion face public execution.

So why does the American Left hate Christianity yet love Islam?

In this country, a shadow army of apologists works tirelessly to provide alternative explanations for faith-based Islamic violence--shootings, bombings, stabbings, and beheadings. These shadow soldiers work in government, media, and on college campuses. Most are members of the American Left. The rest are bureaucrats who have been cowed by the omnipresent specter of political correctness. You hear these apologists every time a Muslim goes berserk and murders people in the name of Islam.

That's an important distinction I'd like to be clear about. Every week someone goes nuts in this country and commits a sensational crime that captures the attention of the media for a few days. Last weekend, a convicted felon from Arkansas murdered four Seattle-area cops at a coffee shop. Before that, some nut shot up an Orlando office building.

Truly impulsive and insane acts of violence are unpredictable. But when horrific violence is based on a theology that preaches hatred, intolerance, and global conquest, there are usually plenty of warning signs. According to the FBI, imams preach jihad in at least 10 percent of the United States' 2,000 mosques.

Certainly Army Major Nidal Hasan signaled his intent when he told fellow Army doctors that infidels (those who don't accept Allah as the one true God) should have their heads cut off and have burning oil poured down their throats. After telling everyone around him that non-Muslims should be killed and that the U.S. Army was engaged in a war against Islam, Hasan murdered 13 people at Ft. Hood, Texas.

Practically before the sounds of the last gunshots had faded, professional apologists in government and the media were saying Hasan was not a terrorist and that the shootings had nothing to do with his belief in Islam. Of course, the exact opposite is true. Nidal Hasan is a jihadist and he committed mass murder because of his belief in Islam.

Nearly a month after the shootings, the American Left is blaming the Ft. Hood murders on everything but Islam. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley took the opportunity of announcing the expansion of the city's Arabic language program in public schools to blame the killings on America's love affair with guns.

Other apologists blame the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, claiming Hasan, a psychiatrist, suffered from "secondary trauma" after hearing of the horrors of war from the soldiers he was counseling. Still others invented a new psychological malady, pre-traumatic stress disorder, meaning the mere thought of going into a combat zone so traumatized Hasan that he snapped.

The proof that all of these excuses are just so much hot air is that Hasan himself told us why he shot more than 40 people before he did it.

Major Hasan's business card identified him as a "Soldier of Allah." He was in email contact with a militant Muslim imam who fled the United States and now operates in Yemen. He tried several times to contact al Qaeda.

To anyone but an American Left apologist, Hasan's motive for murdering 13 fellow soldiers and wounding another 30 is quite clear: He did it because he was fighting for Islam. As Hasan repeatedly told fellow Army doctors, he is a Muslim first, an American second.

In unambiguous terms, fundamentalist Islam has announced again and again that it despises the values, culture, and traditions of America. The American Left does too.

Consistent with the Arabic proverb that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, the American Left has formed an alliance with fundamentalist Islam to transform this country into something far removed from its Judeo-Christian origins and ideals.

The mistake the Left is making is that its so-called progressive goals have nothing in common with the medieval tenants of fundamentalist Islam. Militant Muslims have no respect for American progressives, any more than they respect the very existence of Israel.

Fundamentalist Islam is using the American Left to advance its own agenda. Militant Muslims want Islam and sharia law to dominate the West. Their goal is to subvert the U.S. Constitution and our way of life to the will of Allah. The word Islam means submission.

What members of the American Left seem blind to is the fact that in countries where Islam dominates, their progressive ideas would be crushed and many of them would be thrown in jail simply because of their lifestyle choices.

Yet, the American Left continues to serve as apologist-in-chief for fundamentalist Islam.

Why?

Because deep down American Leftists are terrified of Islamic fundamentalists.

Last year, publishing giant Random House canceled the publication of Sherry Jones's novel The Jewel of Medina because it might be offensive to some Muslims. According to its own press release, the publisher feared Muslim violence against its offices and employees. Apparently, Random House's fears were well founded.

In September 2008, three Muslim terrorists firebombed the home and office of the British publisher who bought the rights to the novel.

In 2006, the Apple computer company drew howls of rage from Muslims who claimed the glass cube the company built outside its midtown Manhattan store was modeled on the Kaaba, the Muslim shrine in the Saudi city of Mecca, and was meant as an insult to Islam.

The American Left's affair with fundamentalist Islam is essentially a love-fear relationship. The Left loves Islam's hatred of America and its desire to radically change this country, but the Left also fears what militant Muslims are capable of, especially if they turn their murderous rage on their so-called friends.

So the Left, like Neville Chamberlain with the Nazis, walks a tightrope, appeasing Muslims at every turn, offering excuses for Islamic violence, and hoping Muslim fundamentalists won't bite the hand that feeds them their excuses.

The Question is: WHY?

By Chuck Hustmyre

Pinned to a cork board above my desk I have an index card on which is written a single word in black marker. The word is: WHY?

The card is there to remind me that as a journalist that single word represents the most important aspect of any story. Why people do the things they do is crucial to understanding them. If action reveals character, then motivation explains action.

A couple weeks ago, President Obama's attorney general, Eric Holder, announced that he was transferring the cases of five captured terrorists, including self-confessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, to federal court in Lower Manhattan, just blocks from Ground Zero.

Interestingly enough, Eric Holder's Washington, D.C. law firm donated 3,000 hours of legal work to terrorists detained in Gitmo. My guess is, when the Gitmo terrorists are shopping around for lawyers to plead their cases in Manhattan, they will likely use some of Holder's ex-law partners.

Can you spell CONFLICT OF INTEREST?

My question is, why did Obama do this? Why take these terrorists out of the Congressionally-approved military tribunal system and dump them in U.S. District Court in New York?

Is it because the military system is fundamentally unfair? Not likely, since Obama has left some terror suspects to face justice in the military system.

Is it, as Holder said, so that the rest of the world will see that our justice system treats everyone equally? That sounds nice, but that can't be true either because if it were then surely the Obama administration would end the military tribunal system and transfer all of the terrorists to federal court.

Also, the world already knows that in our criminal justice system we bend over backwards to protect the rights of criminal defendants, to the point that we frequently release them to rob, maim, and murder more innocent Americans.

Could the reason be that Obama wants other terrorists to like us? Possibly, but even Obama, as narcissistic as he is, probably realizes that Muslim fanatics aren't ever going to accept our rich and powerful Judeo-Christian culture.

So what is Obama's motivation for sending the 9/11 mastermind and his terrorist buddies to New York, this time on a government plane?

Because it's payback time. Payback to George Bush and his administration. Payback for all the things the left wing loons hated about President Bush: his aggressive use of U.S. military might, his tax cuts, his environmental policies, gay rights, gay marriage, global warming, and on and on and on.

President Obama has built a stage, much like he did in Denver, onto which he intends to put some of the most America-hating murderous scum alive on the planet, and he intends to give them a forum to bash our country, our culture, and most of all our foreign policy.

Unwittingly, New York has signed up to host the I HATE AMERICA GAMES.

Because President Obama hates America as it is and wants to reshape it to fit his own vision of how America should be.

ISLAM: The Elephant in the Room

By Chuck Hustmyre

Imagine for just a moment that the mass murderer who killed 13 people and wounded 30 last week at Ft. Hood had been a Caucasian neo-Nazi and a member of the Christian Identity Church. For those of you not familiar with it, the Christian Identity Church preaches a theology based on white supremacy.

Imagine that just before unleashing his murderous rampage, the killer had shouted, "God is a white man!"

Would the media and the pundits be working overtime trying to concoct a reason for the murders that did not involve the killer's religious and political beliefs? Would the president have cautioned us not to jump to any conclusions about the killer's motive?

Of course not.

The media would be producing damning profiles of neo-Nazi and skinhead leaders. They would have analysts, professors, and authors explaining the ideology of racial and ethnic hatred and the warped theology of a religion that teaches such things. They would demand that government officials explain why a man who declared such feelings was allowed to remain in the U.S. Army. In essence, the media would skewer those who believed in the inherent superiority of one race over another.

They would be doing their job.

But if we move from the hypothetical to the actual, from the abstract to the concrete, the situation looks quite different. Army Major Nidal Hasan is not a neo-Nazi, nor is he a member of the Christian Identity movement.

Hasan is a Muslim who believes that the United States is an imperialistic power engaged in a war against Islam. According to those who know him, Hasan described himself as "Muslim first and American second."

Six years ago, Hasan reportedly told fellow doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center that non-Muslims should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats, according to Britain's Daily Telegraph. Non-Muslims, Hasan said, are infidels, condemned to hell, and should be set on fire.

A white soldier who advocated beheading black people and pouring boiling oil down their throats would have, at the very least, found himself dishonorably discharged from the Army, and rightly so.

So why did a Muslim soldier who spouted equally insane rhetoric not merit similar treatment?

The reason is that as Americans we are terrified of offending anyone, and we are particularly terrified of offending Muslims. In fact, many of us would rather let our fellow countrymen die rather than risk offending a Muslim.

We have learned that offending the sensibilities of Muslims often results in a torrent of violence--bombings, burnings, and beheadings--so we do everything we can to maintain "peace" with the so-called religion of peace. U.S. publishers have cancelled the release of books because they might be offensive to Muslims, gyms have restricted the hours available to men so Muslim women would not have to exercise with them, at least one public university has installed footbaths so Muslims can wash their feet before prayers, and the government and media have agreed to hide the truth about Islamic-inspired violence in this country, all in the name of political correctness.

Last week, we sacrificed 13 American soldiers on the altar of political correctness.

To be fair to Major Hasan, he provided the Army with ample warning of his intentions. Although he was born in Virginia, Hasan listed his nationality as Palestinian. He told fellow soldiers of his dislike for America. He worshipped at the same mosque as two of the 9/11 hijackers, and at the feet of a radical U.S.-born imam who has since fled to Yemen, where he preaches hatred for America.

Monday, that same imam declared Nidal Hasan a hero, writing "Nidal opened fire on soldiers who were on their way to be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. How can there be any dispute about the virtue of what he has done?"

Given that Hasan frequently harangued fellow soldiers with what one Army doctor described as "anti-American rants," why didn't the Army seek to shut him up? Why didn't senior officers kick Hasan out of the Army? Why wasn't Hasan nailed to the cross of intolerance, like our hypothetical neo-Nazi, Christian Identity soldier would have been?

Because Hasan is Muslim.

According to the Telegraph, "One Army doctor who knew (Hasan) said a fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim soldier had stopped fellow officers from filing formal complaints."

Make no mistake, Major Nidal Hasan is a terrorist. The difference between a crazed lone gunman and a terrorist is that a crazed gunman is fighting against something, whether that something is his family, his employer, or society. A terrorist fights for something--animal rights, political ideology, or a medieval religion that preaches hatred and seeks to dominate the world.

America needs to acknowledge that there is an elephant in the room. And that elephant is Islam.

A study by the Pew Research Institute found that 26 percent of young American Muslims say that suicide bombings are justified in at least some circumstances. The same study found that half of all U.S. Muslims think of themselves as Muslims first and Americans second, and that only 68 percent of American Muslims had an "unfavorable" view of al Qaeda.

(For those of you who have forgotten, al Qaeda is the Islamic terror group headed by Osama bin Laden that attacked the United States on 9/11 and murdered nearly 3,000 innocent Americans.)

Major Nidal Hasan attacked soldiers at Ft. Hood because in his twisted view, the U.S. Army is the enemy of Islam and therefore his enemy. Hasan shouted "Allahu Akbar" (Allah is Great) as he gunned down dozens of his fellow soldiers, proclaiming his motive in crystal clear terms.

Despite that, the media, the Army, and the White House have been engaged in a campaign since last week to obscure Hasan's motivation for the killings. They've blamed everything but his religious convictions.

They've even come up with a new syndrome--Pre-traumatic Stress Disorder. Following that line of reasoning, Hasan was so upset about being deployed to Afghanistan that he didn't even have to see any of the horrors of war to be traumatized by them. Just thinking about them was enough to damage his psyche.

Soon the blame will fall on the pharmaceutical companies and a lack of adequate mental health counseling, despite the fact that Hasan is a psychiatrist who specialized in counseling soldiers and who worked with other mental health professionals specializing in the same field.

What the media will not blame is Hasan's devotion to a religion that seeks to destroy everything that does not adhere to its theology of hatred and global conquest.

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Chuck Hustmyre is an award winning crime reporter and the author of the Penguin true crime books Killer with a Badge and An Act of Kindness, and the novel House of the Rising Sun. For more information, visit his Web site www.chuckhustmyre.com.

MOVIE REVIEW: Lies and Illusions

By Chuck Hustmyre

Lies and Illusions, 2009.

This movie was terrible.

I had high hopes for this movie, because it starred Christian Slater and Cuba Gooding Jr., both of whom have done great work in the past. I'm also an aficionado of the crime genre.

But this movie was really bad. It got stuck between genres, on one hand trying hard to be a crime thriller, but also shooting for dark comedy. In the end, it was nothing but a very cheap knockoff of a Quentin Tarantino flick--less the good story, dialogue, and acting.

The movie was so cliched it was close to being a farce. Cuba Gooding Jr. plays a merciless criminal mastermind who has his own private jet. Interestingly, his pilot also drives his car and his jet has no co-pilot, something Mr. Gooding will regret at the end of the film.

But it's the logic, or lack thereof, behind the characters' actions that made this move so bad.

For example. There's a long foot-chase through a crowded shopping mall, with two of Gooding's goons chasing our hapless but wisecracking hero, Christian Slater. My question was, what are the goons going to do when they catch him? Drag him hundreds of yards to the car outside while he's kicking and screaming? Might not that attract attention from the cops?

There's a shootout in the hallway of a hotel, yet immediately afterward, two of the characters take time to talk and kiss in a room with a deadman before fleeing. Once again, the cops pay no attention.

Then there's the ridiculous use of coincidence. In the world of this movie, no matter where you flee, you will run smack into the carload of bad guys chasing you.

The plot was bad, the acting was bad, and the dialogue was bad.

Stay away from this movie. It is horrible.

On a 10-point scale, I'd rate it a 2. I only scored it that high because I have to leave room for something even worse, if that exists.