Two terrorists behead a British soldier on a London street, first such Islamist outrage in the West.

( Islamophobia?   Or just more “Workplace Violence?”- JW )

The terrorists jumped on their victim from this car shouting Allahu Akbar

Two as yet unidentified Muslin terrorists chanting Allahu Akbar assaulted a British soldier on a street close to the Royal Barracks at Woolwich in southeast London, shot him, hacked him with knives and a machete and finally beheaded him. This happened in broad daylight Wednesday afternoon, May 22, in the presence of dozens of witnesses, the first such outrage seen in a West European capital.

Witnesses told the police that the two terrorists covered in blood had held up body parts of their victim and shouted: “We swear by Allah never to stop killing you.”
British TV stations are airing gruesome scenes of the episode.

The terrorists drove up to their victim in a car, jumped out and after the murder wandered about in the area, apparently lying in wait for more soldiers to come out of the Royal Artillery command barracks 400 meters from the scene of their attack.

London police reached the scene after 20 minutes. When the two killers ran towards them brandishing knives and a firearm, the police shot and injured them. They were taken to separate hospitals and placed under heavy guard in case of attempts to rescue them.
Police sources said later they were treating the incident as a politically-motivated Islamist terror attack, but have not identified the killers.

In the absence of Prime Minister David Cameron in Paris, Home Minister Theresa May summoned the Cobra emergency committee into urgent session. After examining intelligence input, the committee must decide whether the Woolwich outrage was a lone incident or to raise the terrorist alert level in London and the rest of the country.
Cameron cut short his trip to Paris and returns to London Wednesday night. He will deliver a speech to the nation after chairing a second emergency committee meeting Thursday morning.

Soldier beheaded in London in apparent terror attack | The Times of Israel.

Witness describes two men wielding butcher knives carrying out horrific assault while shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’

The scene where British officials said one person has died and at least two people have been wounded in an attack on Wednesday May 22, 2013. (photo credit: AP Photo/Nick Ansell/PA)

A British official says a violent attack near a London barracks is being investigated as a possible terrorist act. Police said two men attacked another man on Wednesday. One man is dead and two others were injured.

According to the Daily Telegraph, the attack took place in the street near a military barracks and the dead man was a British soldier, who was beheaded by the knife-wielding attackers.

The BBC reported that the attackers shouted ”Allahu akbar” during their assault, and had filmed the attack while it was in progress.

One witness said that the men were “crazed, like animals” and carried large knives “like you would use in a butcher’s, they were hacking at this poor guy, we thought they were trying to remove organs from him.”

It took more than 20 minutes for the authorities to arrive on the scene, he added.

Prime Minister David Cameron called the killing “truly shocking” and said he had asked Home Secretary Theresa May to call an urgent meeting of the government’s emergency committee.

A British government official who spoke only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the investigation said the details that had emerged were indicative of a “terrorist-motivated attack.”

May said she had been briefed by Britain’s domestic security service, MI5, and by police on what she called a “sickening and barbaric” attack.

Britain’s Ministry of Defense said it was urgently investigating reports that a serving soldier was involved in the incident.

Police said armed officers responded to reports of the assault Wednesday afternoon just a few blocks from a military training barracks in southeast London.

Commander Simon Letchford said reports indicated that one man was being assaulted by two other men, and that a number of weapons — including possibly a firearm — were used in the attack.

He confirmed that one man was found dead at the scene and that two men were shot by police and taken to separate London hospitals. One of them is in serious condition, according to London Ambulance Service.

Live television images of the scene showed a trail of blood staining a pavement, cordoned off streets and crime scene investigators marking the scene.

David Dixon, head teacher of a nearby primary school, said police told him there was a serious incident. He said he saw body lying in the road outside.

He told the BBC that he then made sure children were inside and put the school into lockdown mode. He said he then heard shots fired.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission, which is called in when officers are involved in shootings, confirmed that it is investigating the incident, which took place near the Royal Artillery Barracks.

The barracks — which house a number of the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery and independent companies of the Grenadier and Coldstream Guards — were the site of shooting events during the 2012 London Olympics.

VA Congressman Reacts to NBC 5 Report Showing Accused Fort Hood Shooter Still on Army Payroll | NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth.

( While the victims’ are being denied benefits because the gov designated this attack as “workplace violence” rather than terrorism, this murderous Jihadi has gotten rich on US tax payers.  This is beyond weird.  Beyond grotesque.  Don’t tell me Obama had nothing to do with it.  How many times can I hear that in one week!  I’m sorry, I’m goddamned furious.  ENOUGH!!!! – JW )

NBC 5 Investigates discovers accused Fort Hood shooter has been paid nearly $280,000 since his arrest

An NBC 5 Investigation has received national attention after revealing the accused Fort Hood shooter, Major Nidal Hasan, has received nearly $280,000 in military pay since the 2009 attack that left 13 dead and 32 injured.

Meanwhile, victims of the shooting are still fighting for the same military pay and benefits as soldiers wounded at military bases overseas, and in the 9-11 attack on the pentagon.

“To think that they’re paying him – they’re paying a terrorist. That’s crazy. And yet these poor families are having a very difficult time making it,” said U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), reacting to the NBC 5 Investigates report that first aired Monday night.

Tuesday, Wolf introduced an amendment (see it here) that would give the Fort Hood victims the combat-related pay and Purple Heart benefits they’ve been denied because the Pentagon has called the attack “workplace violence” and not an act of terrorism.

FBI reports show Hasan was communicating with a leader of Al-Qaida in Yemen prior to the attack. And, the government’s National Counterterrorism Center included the incident on a list of “high fatality terrorist attacks”.

In an interview with NBC 5 Investigates, Wolf indicated he wants to look at whether anything can be done to suspend the pay of soldiers arrested for attacking other soldiers. He’s asked for a copy of the letter the Department of Defense sent to NBC 5 Investigates, confirming the details of Hasan’s pay.

Under current military rules, the Army cannot suspend Hasan’s pay unless he is convicted. More than three years after the attack he is still awaiting a court martial, which is expected to begin this summer.

Hasan’s attorney has declined to comment on the matter.  Additionally, the U.S. Army said they will not comment further until after Hasan’s trial is complete.

Israel to hold massive chemical warfare drill | The Times of Israel.

Next week’s nationwide exercise to focus on grappling with missile strikes on civilians

By Michal Shmulovich May 22, 2013, 3:45 pm

IDF Home Front Command soldiers take part in a 2011 defense drill simulating a chemical attack (photo credit: Gili Yaari/Flash 90)

The Home Front Command on Wednesday was preparing for a massive military drill next week, to focus on coping with chemical weapons attacks. The nationwide exercise will drill the civilian population as well as military and emergency services.

The exercise was originally scheduled to take place three weeks ago but was postponed due to tension with Syria. The simulation, which is being run in conjunction with the emergency response services, starts Sunday morning as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announces a week of national emergency preparedness.

Head of the Home Front Command Maj. Gen. Eyal Eisenberg said Tuesday that the outbreak of a war in which Israel would be hit with a “large volume of rocket fire” was a certainty. “Our opponents hold long-range missiles with large warheads and a carrying capacity of hundreds of pounds,” he said.

The drill will include preparation for possible missile strikes against Israel, particularly in the greater Tel Aviv area. The first few days will center on protecting civilian populations at public institutions and private households. Two alarms will be sounded on Monday, at 12:30 p.m. and 7:05 p.m., and citizens will be requested to go to protected rooms or bomb shelters and to stay inside for 10 minutes.

The drill will mark the first time an entire network of early warning systems will be tested. In addition to sirens, civilians are to receive alerts from various sources, including from from cellphones, social networks, and the television.

Home Front Defense Minister Gilad Erdan warned Tuesday that rockets raining down on densely populated areas in Israel “are only a matter of time” and could happen at any moment. He referred to the threat posed to Israel by Syria and Iran’s unconventional weapons stockpiles.

“The question is no longer will rockets be fired at the large populated areas in Israel, the question is when it’ll happen,” Erdan told reporters during a briefing ahead of a large drill in southern Israel on Wednesday. He said the battles being fought no longer distinguish between the front line and the home front, as missiles and rockets allow strikes far from the battlefield.

Israeli jets reportedly struck sites near Damascus twice earlier this month, aiming to stop the transfer of advanced Fateh-110 missiles to the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah. Although Israel never took official responsibility for the strikes, it has said it will continue to act to stop weapons transfers and an unnamed official even reportedly threatened to topple the regime in Damascus should President Bashar Assad hit back at Israel for any further strikes. Syria, for its part, has threatened to retaliate if it is hit again.

Earlier this week, the Sunday Times reported that Damascus put a number of advanced weapons on standby to strike Israel, should Jerusalem hit targets inside Syria again, the UK’s Sunday Times reported. According to the report, satellite images show Syria has readied its stock of Tishreen missiles for use against Tel Aviv.

US Secretary of State John Kerry stated recently that “strong evidence” exists that the Syrian regime used chemical weapons against its people. Kerry’s comments came the same day that Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu cited tests on Syrian war casualties being treated in Turkey that indicated chemical weapons had been used against them.

Damascus’s large stockpile of chemical weapons, and President Bashar Assad’s refusal to sign international accords banning them, has become a major international concern as the civil war in Syria rages on.

Joshua Davidovich contributed to this report.

Kerry says thousands of Hezbollah fighters involved in Syria – Israel News, Ynetnews.

US state secretary condemns group’s ‘contribution to violence,’ says US considering increased support for rebels; British FM: Hezbollah ‘propping up’ Assad

News Agencies

US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday that if Syrian President Bashar Assad was not prepared to discuss a political solution to end Syria’s civil war, the United States and others would consider increasing support for his opponents.

Kerry also told a news conference in the Jordanian capital Amman that there were several thousand fighters from the Lebanese group Hezbollah taking part in Syria’s conflict, with Iranian support.

“Just last week, obviously, Hezbollah intervened very, very significantly. There are several thousands of Hezbollah militia forces on the ground in Syria who are contributing to this violence and we condemn that,” he said.

Funeral of a Hezbollah fighter who died in Syria

Kerry said recent military gains by Assad’s forces were only temporary and that if he believed the counter-offensives against the rebels would be decisive, “then he is miscalculating”.

He said US President Barack Obama had made clear he did not intend to dispatch US forces to Syria but that Washington would discuss continued and growing support to help rebel fighters if Assad was unwilling to negotiate a political solution to the two-year-old crisis.

Hezbollah supporters in Lebanon (Photo: AP)

Wednesday’s meeting in Amman, which gathers ministers from 11 Western and Middle Eastern countries who have led international opposition to Assad, aimed to promote efforts to end the bloodshed in Syria, he added.

Speaking at the conference, British Foreign Secretary William Hague seconded Kerry and said that Iran and its militant Shiite Lebanese ally Hezbollah are “propping up” President Bashar Assad and giving him increasing support.

Hague said Britain would urge international powers to set a date in the next few days for an international conference to try to end the two-year-old conflict engulfing Syria and threatening regional stability.

Earlier on Wednesday, Germany said it supports adding the military wing of the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah to the European Union’s list of terrorist groups.

Smoke over Tripoli, Lebanon, during latest violent bout (Photo: AFP)

Germany’s foreign ministry said the decision follows “discussions we have had with our partners following the terrorist attack in Burgas” on the Bulgarian coast last year that killed five Israelis and a Bulgarian bus driver.

Meanwhile, Lebanese supporters of rival factions in Syria’s civil war battled overnight in the city of Tripoli in the worst such bout of spillover violence since the conflict started two years ago.

One person was killed and many were wounded as Sunni and Shi’ite Muslim gunmen fired mortar bombs and rocket-propelled grenades at each other in a fifth day of clashes in the coastal city, security sources said on Wednesday.

Syrian activists said the fighting in Tripoli was triggered by an assault on the Syrian border town of Qusair, where Hezbollah fighters are helping Syrian government forces.

AP, Reuters contributed to this report

U.S. willing to keep Assad in the picture to avoid threat of all-out Mideast war – Middle East – Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper.

Due to the lack of U.S. policy on Syria, encouraging a negotiated solution between Assad and the rebels now appears to be the West’s least dangerous course of action.

A vandalized picture of Syria’s President Bashar Assad in eastern Syria on May 1, 2013. Photo by Reuters

The rationale for avoiding foreign military intervention in Syria, which is based on the fear of an outbreak of regional war, continues to lose its relevancy. The chances for a negotiated solution to the conflict between the rebels and the regime of Syrian leader Bashar Assad are poor and the tragic humanitarian crisis hasn’t yet moved even one of the world powers to action.

Barring a decisive military outcome in the near future, the Syrian civil war is likely to continue for years and lead to violent spillovers in neighboring countries like the recent terror attacks in Turkey, the power struggles in Lebanon, the threat of Al-Qaida in Jordan and fire directed at Israel. In fact, just on Tuesday, Syria took responsibility for the first time for fire directed toward Israeli army vehicles.

More seriously, Israel is already involved in the conflict and is threatening to topple the Assad regime. The Turkish army is maintaining a level of high preparedness along its border with Syria. The strengthening forces of the Jordanian army are prepared to respond, and Iran and Hezbollah are already participating in battles. Under such conditions, the initiative to determine when and if to set off the regional powder keg has fallen into Assad’s hands. The recognition of this threat is what stands at the center of the United States’ agreement to leave Assad in power as long as negotiations will be conducted with the rebels.

The announcement by Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations special envoy for the Syrian crisis, that the Syrian regime and the rebels have agreed to participate in talks in Geneva, still awaits official confirmation by the Syrian regime and the rebels. But even if the two sides do officially and publicly announce their willingness to conduct talks, some explosive issues must be addressed ahead of the meeting.

Based on reports from the Arabic press, Assad has already appointed five senior officials to manage regime affairs, although their names have not been made public, and their positions and the powers given to them by Assad remain unclear. On the rebels’ side, it isn’t clear who among the opposition forces will participate in the talks or if all of the members of the national coalition’s leadership will agree to participate after the strident disputes among them following the agreement of former leader Moaz al-Khatib to conduct negotiations with Assad without preconditions. It also isn’t clear if the commanders of the Free Syrian Army will be party to the dialogue, and if the very existence of the conference won’t split the fighters’ forces.

The agreement of the parties to participate in a conference is an important development because it means the opposition has suspended its basic condition that Assad abdicate before dialogue begins. If indeed opposition representatives participate in talks, this will be an important victory for Assad and, of course, to the Russian, Chinese and Iranian position, who have sought to keep Assad in power. It will also constitute a failure for the American position, who also called for Assad’s removal before dialogue would take place between the Syrian government and rebels.

Calling for the conference, which is planned for June 10, attests to the understanding between both sides that the crisis has reached a stalemate and that only a negotiated solution or foreign military intervention will bring it to a conclusion. These two possibilities are still far from being realized, however it appears that both sides can start making mistakes.

A year ago, then Central Intelligence Agency director Gen. David Petraeus suggested to U.S. President Barack Obama that he arm the Syrian opposition. Obama listened to him, but refused. It’s hard to evaluate how the Syrian conflict would have looked had Obama acceded or if NATO forces had intervened then, as they did in Libya, by bombing the presidential palace and its inhabitants. Assad would probably have been consigned to the dustbin of history, the lives of tens of thousands of people would have been saved, but it is highly doubtful if Syria would have been stabilized.

It is enough to look at the venomous and violent feuds and disputes among different opposition factions and hundreds of militias that are fighting in Syria to understand that the removal of the Syrian president would not have prevented a civil war.

But timely military intervention, say a year ago, could have made clear to Assad that the threat to him isn’t just from civilians and armed deserters but that he was also facing the international police, the same one that removed Muammar Gadhafi from power in Libya and Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and that frightened Hosni Mubarak into standing down in Egypt and is threatening Iran.

True, there is a two-fold fear that prevented this: First, the response from Russia, which put its foot down to prevent a recurrence of Libya in Syria, and second, that such an attack would likely instigate an anti-Western response in general and an anti-American response in particular in the Middle East. But the policy that was implemented then and the policy that is being adopted now are no less dangerous.

The United States chose an ambiguous policy that lacked a straightforward “yes or no” stance. The United States is funding opposition group activities and even sending rebel forces “non-lethal” military gear, but no military intervention. But it is also supporting negotiations between the regime and the opposition but not including Assad in them, all while levying sanctions on Syria but permitting oil purchases from the rebels.

This policy led to a dead-end and gave rise to the assumption that the stalemate between the regime and rebel forces will force both sides to talk, sketch an outline for a political settlement and accept a compromise to be formulated in the White House and the Kremlin. At first glance, this is a reasonable working assumption; however, it contains a minor flaw: It still lacks a firm basis.

“To resign means to flee,” Assad said last week in an interview with the Argentinian newspaper Clarin. Assad has no intention of resigning, fleeing or abstaining from standing as a candidate for the presidency in next year’s Syrian elections.

For a while now, this war has not been about a regime change in Syria but about Arab and Western control and influence there, or at least an attempt to preserve the historical distribution of Western and Russian spheres of influence in the Middle East.

This kind of war cannot wait to see which militia will come out on top, what territory will remain in the hands of the rebels or Assad, or who will possess Syria’s chemical weapons and long range missiles.  It should probably be acknowledged that the long delay in dispatching forces and the absence of a resolute policy of providing military aid to the rebels have thwarted the rebellion’s chances of success just as these very reasons thwarted the success of the Shi’ite rebellion against Saddam Hussein’s rule in Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the First Gulf War.

This is the bitter pill that Western and Arab countries will have to swallow, because the alternative, the continuation of hollow chit-chat, is far more dangerous. Perhaps within this is buried the most significant chance for the success of the Geneva talks.

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