[End Update]
Hat Tip to Benjamin for the email, I will link here to his weblog when I get the address.
We have seen a story or two, now and then, on this subject but the media firestorm that we would expect hasn't materialized and we have to wonder why.
Before I show you some very disturbing facts, let me ask you a couple of questions.
Do you have children of school age? Do you drive them to school or do they get picked up by a bus? Do you walk them out to the bus, hand them their lunch money or a bagged lunched, kiss them goodbye and wave as they are leaving? Do they run outside on their own to catch their bus? Do you look at the bus driver and recognize them as the same person day after day? Or is it a new driver today?
Homeland security:
Over the summer months, and while your attention has been upon everything but school, at least 17 school buses have been stolen from a variety of student transportation concerns, including private companies, charter schools and businesses. These thefts occurred within a specific geographical suburb of Houston. No known threat? Oh, yes, there is a very real promissory threat from Islamic terrorists to kill several million American children; this is just one avenue to accomplish that Islamic promise. Figuratively, this falling “tree” is a threat to our children and also involves a transportation system. Did you hear it?
(Emphasis mine)
Lets get denial out of the way shall we?
9/11 took years to plan on the part of Islamic extremists, it was a coordinated effort that took forethought, training and men prepared to die to make a "statement".
It is clear that schools are a possible target for terrorists. Aside from Beslan and the dozens of other school attacks over the past 37 years, it has been reported that the U.S. military has found information in Iraq pertaining to U.S. schools, and in September 2004 the FBI notified school districts in six states that photographs, diagrams, and emergency plans had been found in the possession of unidentified individuals.
In 2002, before those captured documents in Iraq, the New York State Education Department set up Terrorism Preparedness Guidelines.
Perhaps a good place to start is to establish a working definition of terrorism. We have defined terrorism as: premeditated threats or acts of violence committed by politically motivated persons whose intent is to intimidate or cause serious physical harm to a specific group of people.
Most Emergency Management Plans include school buses merely as a means of shelter and a method of transportation away from a disaster. We are urging you to seriously consider your big yellow buses as an actual target of terrorism and to take steps to avert any such incidents.
In 2003, Worldnet.daily as well as multiple other news organizations brought us news of videos obtained and shot in Afghanistan of rehearsals of shooting school children and taking hostages.
Videos depicting a mock al-Qaida siege of schools and golf course assassinations are now being reported by other news agencies, confirming an exclusive report by WorldNetDaily last year.
The New York Post says the al-Qaida tapes include the rehearsed shooting of schoolchildren and the taking of hostages.
The training exercise reportedly took place under the guidance of al-Qaida operations chief Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks who is now in U.S. custody.
The location was an abandoned school in Mir Bach Kot, Afghanistan, north of Kabul, a hotbed of al-Qaida activity before the U.S. and allied forces ousted the Taliban.
Former Green Beret Keith "Jack" Idema discovered the tapes in an abandoned house while serving as an adviser to the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance.
He says the video shows bullet-ridden blackboards and cut-out targets in classrooms, apparently representing students and teachers.
"Knowing al-Qaida trained to take out a presidential motorcade or an office building is scary, but nothing is more frightening than their training to take over a school," Idema told the Post. "In a classroom in a camp near Jalalabad, we found little desks with bullet holes in them and the backs of the chairs each had seven or eight bullet holes in them. They were definitely aiming to hit critical mass."
Portions of the tapes viewed by the newspaper showed a hostage-taking exercise and three scenarios where masked men, armed with AK-47s, pistols and hand grenades, storm a school-like brick building. In one assault, two gunmen rappel from the roof onto a ledge and wait for the go-ahead via two-way radio.
The Post recounts the school assault in detail:"Two of the kidnappers are sitting in the cafeteria," a narrator says in Arabic.
At the command "move!" a janitor sweeping a hallway inside drops his broom and pulls out a gun. Others burst into rooms, fire automatic weapons and bark English commands at a group of children and adults, apparently locals and other camp residents co-opted for the exercise.
"Sit," a hooded terrorist yells to the children, who shriek in horror. "Don't move, don't move," he says. The children are made to kneel and place their hands on the walls while adults stand with hands raised and are frisked.
The armed thugs then herd their captives down the hallways as they shout in English, "Go in here!" and "Don't move!" Some hostages are then ordered to the roof.
"I don't want to go," one sham victim pleads in Arabic.
"Go before I kill you," a rifle-toting thug barks back.
The camera then zooms in on a terrorist, who stomps on a child.
On the rooftop, a lookout announces the arrival of police. A terrorist then drags a "hostage" to the ledge for display.
The Post says other training exercises include an attack at a mock golf outing, as men dressed as caddies drop their bags, pull out guns and open fire.
In 2006, CNN reported that our school bus drivers were receiving extensive training to watch for potential terrorist threats to our children, financed by the Homeland Security Department.
Designers of the program, called School Bus Watch, want to turn 600,000 drivers into an army of observers.
"We are going to teach you how to identify, evaluate, and record unusual activity," instructor Joe Van Aken tells his class of 20 school bus drivers in Brooklyn, New York.
Aken, a bus driver himself, does not want these drivers to confront anyone suspicious but to call the authorities. The more eyes on the road the safer we will all be, he tells his pupils.
It's not just bus drivers on the front lines in the fight against terrorism. Bank tellers, ham radio operators and truckers also are being asked by Homeland Security to be on the lookout.
The department wants the bus drivers to report any suspicious activity, regardless of how small. If an attack is imminent or has just occurred it is important for bus drivers to get the children out of harm's way and to contact their dispatcher or 911 immediately. They, in turn, will direct that information to a national analysis center.
The new effort is part of Highway Watch, a safety program run by the American Trucking Association and financed since 2003 with $50 million from Homeland Security. So far, tens of thousands of bus operators have been trained around the country.
Officials say schools and buses are considered "soft" targets for terrorists, and an attack on them could have huge symbolic impact and lead to many casualties and spectacular images.
We all know that nothing encourages and helps terrorist organizations more than spectacular images all over the television screen in every country.
Anyone prepared to deny that al-Qaeda still wants to hit us? Denying that we have evidence that they have planned, for years to attack us using our children?
If so, you aren't using the brain that God gave you.
Just because you are able to stick your head into the sand and deny the truth doesn't make it any less true.
So while we keep our attention focused on our airports, and while the battle here in America rages on regarding Iraq and while we are busy arguing about politics, buses are being stolen, plans for school attacks are being confiscated, videos of those attacks are being published and then promptly ignored and the question remains.
Do you know where your children are and who is driving them to school?
For a government that is constantly being accused of fear mongering by the left, isn't it kind of amazing that they have downplayed this to avoid panic.
Just another accusation or "talking dull" that the far left liberals like to throw around without acknowledging there is a threat because to acknowledge it would mean they might actually have to show the American public they take these threats seriously, which they cannot because the stigma of being weak on national security is true, they are and as long as they continue to live in their bubble of denial, they will continue to be weak and they will continue to be seen that way.
I would much rather be accused of being a fear mongerer than a defeatist that ignores all threats.
I would much rather be accused of being a war mongerer than a surrender monkey.
I would much rather listen to what are troops say to us and back them, as they ask us to, than to ignore them and claim to be ignoring them because we support them.
I would much rather we win this fight against terrorism than to hand it to the terrorists because it fits the Democratic "political" agenda.
I would much rather be called a neocon, than a liberal leftist that is weak on national security.
As labels go, I will admit to being what they call a neocon, will they admit to what they are, which is a liberal that has no plan to fight terrorism?
I doubt it, they never can admit to what they are.
To follow this up, please read Safe Havens International's piece by Chris Dorn, "School Bus Terrorism".
Take Our Country Back with "Untitled Terrorism".
Last but definitely not least, American Thinker "Terrorists Targeting Students"
Tracked back by:
Untitled Terrorism from Miss Beth's Victory Dance...
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