The Most Dangerous Woman in the World

However you may personally think that the most dangerous woman in the world is supposed to look, it probably is nothing like this 29-year old Northern Irish white mother of three.

Samantha Lewthwaite, also notoriously known as the "White Widow", is arguably the holder of that 'Most Dangerous Woman in the World' title. The current internationally wanted fugitive has certainly earned a nomination for the title.

She was born in Banbridge, County Down, on December 5th, 1983 to parents who met when her father, a British Army soldier, was stationed in her mother's native Northern Ireland during the 1970's.

The family moved to Aylesbury, a town about 45 miles northwest of London, when she was a small girl, and it was there that she attended school. But it was not to remain a happy family life. At age 10, her parents separated. Friends say that she was greatly affected and disillusioned by the split, and gradually sought comfort in relationships with her Muslim neighbors, whom she felt had a stronger family ethic.

During her teenage years she seriously began to turn to Islam herself, and at about age 17 she officially converted, taking on the name 'Sherafiyah' in her new faith. She enrolled at the School of Oriental and African Studies near the British Museum, and began work towards a degree in Religion and Politics.

Sometime in 2001, she 'met' a man named Germaine Lindsay online in an Islamic internet chatroom. They soon met in person, and by October of 2002 the couple married using Islamic names, 'Asmantara' for her, and 'Jamal' for him. Though using an official Islamic ceremony, the wedding did not take place in a mosque or other licensed location, and so was never officially registered. Her parents, who never approved of her conversion, did not attend.

The pair would have two children together (she is now believed to have 3-4 kids altogether), but much as her childhood, her own family was not destined for a life of happy togetherness.

Benghazi

It's amazing how little so many know about one of the most important terrorist attacks in recent years. So I'm taking it upon myself here to educate and inform those who have heard something, but don't know the details, in nutshell form.

Benghazi is the 2nd largest city in Libya, and is located along the Mediterranean Sea in northern Africa. Just last year it was the scene of one of the key uprisings in the rebellion against the longtime dictatorial government of Muammar Gaddafi.

Towards the end of his 2nd term, President George W. Bush and his security people made the determination that Africa was under such a large threat from various sources, particularly from al Qaeda and other Islamist terror organizations, that a separate 'Africa Command' for American forces military response on the continent was required.

In 2008, 'AfriCom' was officially activated. However, with the Bush administration leaving office, it would be left to the incoming Obama administration to fully establish the commands effectiveness. To say they dropped the ball would be generous.

A full four years after it's establishment, General Carter Ham was in charge, but AfriCom was still a command "in paper only" with "very few assigned forces", as The Washington Times reported in a comment from a former Bush administration official.

At 9:40pm on the night of September 11th (date sound familiar?), the CIA reports that senior security of the US State Department called the CIA and requested assistance. The CIA states that it was told to wait. Just before 10:00pm, Ham, who was in Washington at the Pentagon, directed a drone to Benghazi to assess the situation visually. By 10:04pm, a CIA team finally responded to the embassy.

It was not for another half hour that the US Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs were notified, despite the fact that it was now obvious that a US  ambassador's life was in jeopardy as the American embassy was under attack.

Good Old Mr. Wilson

The insiders of Washington, D.C. and most especially behind the hallowed walls of the White House are sitting on pins and needles today, as they await word from the offices of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald as to whether any indictments will come down in the "CIA Leak" case. 

Word is that indictments could possibly come for top Bush administration assistant Karl Rove, as well as to Scooter Libby, the top aid of VP Dick Cheney. There have even been some rumors as to Cheney himself being indicted. 

All the furor is over a former U.S. diplomat named Joseph Wilson, and his wife, former CIA operative Valerie Plame. Concern was that Plame's status as an undercover agent was compromised when she was outed, possibly by Rove and/or Libby, in retaliation for Wilson having provided public information that the root causes of the Iraqi war were questionable at best. 

This is the Dem spin. Many others feel that the entire investigation is little more than a witch hunt, retaliation for the impeachment of then President Bill Clinton for lying under oath in the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal. 

The trouble for the current administration may actually come not from findings that an agent was outed, but actually that one or more of the players involved may have lied in the investigation process in an attempt to cover-up something potentially embarrassing. 

A great article on the background that I would advise as a must-read for those wanting to understand this issue is available at http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/217wnmrb.asp

Michael Scheuer Calls a Spade a Spade

This morning on his local radio broadcast, Philadelphia talk radio icon Michael Smerconish had on as his main guest Michael Scheuer, former head of the “bin Laden” desk for the Central Intelligence Agency.

Scheuer has just released a book titled “Imperial Hubris”, which he wrote under the pseudonym of “anonymous”.

One thing that I found refreshing about Scheuer’s opinion is that he was and is able and willing to look beyond the usual labels that all political and ideological sides of the terrorist issue like to hang on bin Laden, and to simply call a spade a spade.

What I mean by this is that far too often those on the far end of the political Right want to label bin Laden as a terrorist, a madman, a demon, a devil, a deranged killer, a murderer. Those on the far end of the political Left have called him an Islamic freedom fighter, a rebel, an insurgent leader. And of course, many have found far more colorful labels to hang on the man.

Scheuer points out that bin Laden is neither a demon nor a freedom fighter. He is a mainstream Muslim, a devout believer in Islam, a sincerely spiritual man.

Osama bin Laden says what he means, and he means what he says, and in this way he is a man of integrity. You don’t have to wonder what bin Laden thinks about any issue, he tells you how he feels, over and over.

In fact, more than we Americans, Osama bin Laden is willing to call a spade a spade.

For this reason, bin Laden is more dangerous to the United States and the future of our nation than most any other single man has ever been.

Radical Islam as an entity is a bigger threat to freedom, democracy and capitalism than any other ideology that has ever come down the pike. This includes everything from Nazism to Communism.