 2008-11-21 - War, Not Law Enforcement
Who better than the lead federal prosecutor of the Blind Sheikh (mastermind of the 1993 WTC bombing) to explain to Americans that the criminal law will never defeat terrorism?
Mr. McCarthy's book delivers the goods on two levels: First, this is a gripping and highly entertaining story of sinister plots, dogged (though often ham-handed) police work, heroic informants and complex legal maneuvers, ending - the reader is happy to discover - in guilty verdicts and life sentences. Among other things, one gets to meet the quirky, the remarkable Emad Salem, a former Egyptian army officer and terrorist-hating Muslim (yes, there are such people) who puts his life on the line to infiltrate and destroy the Blind Sheikh's murderous operation. His story alone is worth the price of the book.
On a deeper level, McCarthy confronts the oft-expressed fallacy that America can deal with terrorists by prosecuting them in courts of law, giving them every presumption of innocence, every right of evidentiary discovery, every objection and every appeal. McCarthy is very clear about this: It won't work. As he says, "Terrorism prosecutions create the conditions for failure and thus for more terrorism....International terrorism is not the type of national challenge the criminal justice system is designed to address." The largest specific problem created by terror prosecutions is that they hand valuable intelligence to our enemies on a silver platter. As McCarthy puts it, "The criminal justice system arms international terrorist organizations with a trove of intelligence, including information that identifies intelligence methods and sources, thus further improving their capacity to harm Americans." This information includes the identities of deep-cover informants like the marvelous and irreplaceable Mr. Salem.
Mr. McCarthy's lucid explanations will enable the intelligent layman to see through the bogus arguments made by extreme civil libertarians. It is a must-read for people who want a more thorough understanding of the War On Terror.
2008-10-15 - It didn't have to end like this.
It didn't have to end the way that it did, with 3000 dead and a smoking hole in lower Manhattan. We were warned. We had gotten our wake-up call. It was our choice to go back to sleep.
What makes Andrew McCarthy's book a must read for everyone is that he is not a journalist telling someone else's story. He is the lead prosecutor in the case against the perpetrators of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, and this is his first-hand account of that high-profile prosecution and the events leading to it.
After reading Willful Blindness the inescapable conclusion is that all of the societal structures that are supposed to serve us have broken down. The Intelligence Agencies failed to warn us; Law Enforcement failed to protect us; the Press failed to understand the implications and meaning of the events they reported on; the Courts, obsessed with legal abstractions, mis-judged the very real danger we faced; our political leaders were too timid, self-absorbed, and focussed partisan advantage to fulfill their first and most fundamental obligation: to defend the nation above all else. Only the Military, our last line of defense, has succeeded in raising the shield. Yet, even now their efforts to protect us are underminied by those same elements of society that so singularly failed in their past duties.
It is tempting to shrug and say, "Hindsight is always 20/20." A better cliche to adopt as our slogan is Santayana's famous dictum, "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it." We closed our eyes and chose to forget what happened in 1993, only to see history repeat itself - with a vengeance - in 2001.
The cast of characters today is familiar to us all. Ramsay Yusef, who planned the first bombing and who was thwarted in his plan to simultaneously blow-up 11 airliners over the ocean - but only just. Kalid Sheik Mohammed - the Mastermind of the second bombing and ultimate destruction of the World Trade Center - who escaped civilian prosecution in 1993 but is presently held prisoner at the military base at Guantanamo Bay - to the consternation and frustration of the ACLU. Lynn Stewart, the radical lawyer convicted and disbarred for abusing the privilege accorded legal counsel to unmonitored access to an accused, who used her lawyer's priviledge to transmit operational orders from the "Blind Sheik" Omar Abdel-Rahman to his followers outside the US. Her presence on the streets of this nation today, as a free woman - the result of a Judge's decision not to imprison her for the crime for which she was convicted - is a reminder that the legal system fails us still.
Andrew McCarthy has rendered invaluable service to this country, first as a Justice Department Prosecutor, and now as the voice of warning. Will we listen to him, or will we remain wilfully blind?
 2008-09-11 - Opinion
It's great that America is to blame for everything but if you look at the ideology of Al Qaeda they do not care who they deem is wrong. In their eyes they deal with what they do not like with a sword not a kind word. Look at the bombings in Spain, last I heard Spain was not into world dominance like the US apparently is.
I also noticed that the Taliban and Al Qeda had no problem blowing up those Buddhist statues in Afghanistan. We all know that for centuries the Buddhist's have worked hard to rule the world with their interfering ways and policies. They have NO Tolerance for things they do not sanction plain and simple.
I think it is time to wake up if was not the US it would have been some other country they viewed as being unworthy of existence. The US is not entirely to blame for the mixed up ideology these people hold.
2008-09-04 - Book review for Willful Blindness: Memoir of the Jihad
A must read. Good overview of events, detail coverage of individual people involved yet very readable. Concludes with an excellent review of the dangers America faced and still faces.
2008-08-05 - Willfull Blindness
Mr.McCarthy skillfully shows why we had{and continue}to have the problems
we do concerning our handle on terrorism.A MUST READ!!!!!
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