BORDERS: President Bush last week unveiled a new plan to address the disaster and the crisis that is US immigration policy. Conservatives immediately attacked the proposal. Why? Because it rewards lawbreakers. Liberals immediately attacked the proposal. Why? Because Bush proposed it. One thing should be clear: We need a debate in this country over immigration. This is a national security issue at least as much as an economic issue. No nation fighting terrorists can afford to have porous borders. Today there are millions of illegal immigrants in the US, including hundreds of thousands who have been ordered out of the country - but who can't be deported because they have melted into the population. At a time of war, the government needs to know who is coming into the country and what foreign visitors are doing while they are here.....
....KEY QUESION: Every presidential candidate, Democrat and Republican alike, should be asked these questions: Did 9/11 change your views about national security? If so, how exactly? What did you not understand before 9/11 that you have come to comprehend since 9/11?
FROM THE SHORES OF TRIPOLI: As part of Muammar Gaddafi's new charm offensive, Libyan officials - including Gaddafi's son -- have been meeting with Israeli officials. "Libya clearly feels that the road to the White House passes through Israel," said Ra'anan Gissin, a senior advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. This is obviously a subsidiary benefit of America's use of force in Iraq and Afghanistan. But Americans - and Israelis as well - should not lose sight of how oppressive Gaddafi remains at home, and the extent to which he supports dictators in Africa. And Gaddafi's promises to disarm and end his support for terrorism deserve more verification than trust.
AHEAD OF THE CURVE I
"We witnessed three global wars in the past century. Only a decade ago we ended WWIII, also known as the Cold War. But a new enemy has been on the march and we have entered a dangerous but subtler conflict: World War IV. This is not only a war against terrorism but also a war for democracy and for freedom."
- Ambassador R. James Woolsey, FDD White Paper, May 2003
"What you are witnessing is why Sept. 11 amounts to World War III - the third great totalitarian challenge to open societies in the last 100 years."
- Thomas Friedman column, The New York Times, January 8, 2004
AHEAD OF THE CURVE II
"A key failing has been to assume that the tactics of the terrorists are and will remain constant. For example, the debate over whether airline passengers should or should not be 'profiled' was largely based on the false assumption that future atrocities would be carried out by operatives with easily recognizable characteristics: 'young Arab males.' For a few years now, al-Qaida has recognized that this is a potential vulnerability of its activities and has looked to recruit so-called 'White Moors.'"
- Andrew Apostolou, FDD White Paper, November 24, 2003
"Although Whitehall sources strongly denied suggestions that UK passport holders were suspected in the threat to British Airways, telephone intercepts seen by this newspaper make clear that Islamist terror cells are deliberately targeting 'well-educated' foreigners, Britons among them. In one call, an unidentified jihadist tells a colleague: 'We need foreigners. We have Albanians, Swiss and English... all that is important is that they are of a high cultural level ... businessmen, professors, engineers, doctors and teachers.' The focus on well-educated, capable and highly committed 'foreigners' was a hallmark of the al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, which ran a strict selection policy for its students."
- The Observer (UK), January 4, 2004
- Clifford D. May
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