Alleged al-Qaeda Jihadis Caught Trying to Enter U.S. with Fake Colombian Passports

American authorities identified and apprehended three Syrian nationals accused of belonging to al-Qaeda in Dallas, Texas, from Colombia, the Colombian news agency RCN reported on Thursday, publishing images of the three individuals’ fake passports. According to RCN, American law enforcement identified the three individuals as Al Raefee, Tuameh Tuameh, and Al Harari Al Harari. The three are believed to be in U.S. custody, soon to be charged with membership in a terrorist organization. The men appear to have entered Colombia through Venezuela, where they acquired Colombian residency paperwork, a government identification card, and a Colombian passport through an illegal documentation network.

Journalist Luis Carlos Vélez published images of the counterfeit passports on Twitter, noting that the men appeared to have crossed into Colombia through the La Guajira border crossing with Venezuela. Reports have not yet specified how the Syrians entered Venezuela or how long they had spent in the country after leaving Syria. Vélez reportedly stated that the U.S. embassy identified them as al-Qaeda terrorists when they attempted to procure U.S. visas, which does not align with the RCN report that police arrested them in Dallas. The RCN report does not note if Dallas authorities arrested them at the airport, which would suggest the men did receive U.S. visas and got onboard a flight to the country, or if they arrived by other means.

American authorities reportedly suspected criminal activity after inspecting the passports and finding several irregularities. The identification numbers on all three passports, RCN noted, did not match their birthdates. Colombian passports assign numbers to citizens based on when they were born. Although the youngest of the three men is 45 years old according to his passport, the identification number on his passport corresponded to a much more recently born person, at most 25 years old. All three passports were also produced on the same exact date and stamped “La Guajira,” the Colombian state bordering Venezuela where it is believed they traveled to from Venezuela. The passports also stated that all three men were born in Cartagena, Colombia.

https://www.breitbart.com/latin-america/2020/01/23/alleged-al-qaeda-jihadis-caught-trying-enter-u-s-fake-colombian-passports/

Luis Carlos Vélez

https://twitter.com/lcvelez/status/1220366565348139009?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

How The Military-Industrial Complex Gets Away With Murder In Contract After Contract

Call it a colossal victory for a Pentagon that hasn’t won a war in this century, but not for the rest of us. Congress only recently passed and the president approved one of the largest Pentagon budgets ever. It will surpass spending at the peaks of both the Korean and Vietnam wars. As last year ended, as if to highlight the strangeness of all this, the Washington Post broke a story about a “confidential trove of government documents” — interviews with key figures involved in the Afghan War by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction — revealing the degree to which senior Pentagon leaders and military commanders understood that the war was failing. Yet, year after year, they provided “rosy pronouncements they knew to be false,” while “hiding unmistakable evidence that the war had become unwinnable.” However, as the latest Pentagon budget shows, no matter the revelations, there will be no reckoning when it comes to this country’s endless wars or its military establishment — not at a moment when President Donald Trump is sending yet more U.S. military personnel into the Middle East and has picked a new fight with Iran. No less troubling: how few in either party in Congress are willing to hold the president and the Pentagon accountable for runaway defense spending or the poor performance that has gone with it. Given the way the Pentagon has sunk taxpayer dollars into those endless wars, in a more reasonable world that institution would be overdue for a comprehensive audit of all its programs and a reevaluation of its expenditures. (It has, by the way, never actually passed an audit.) According to Brown University’s Costs of War Project, Washington has already spent at least $2 trillion on its war in Afghanistan alone and, as the Post made clear, the corruption, waste, and failure associated with those expenditures was (or at least should have been) mindboggling.

Of course, little of this was news to people who had read the damning reports released by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction in previous years. They included evidence, for instance, that somewhere between $10 million and $43 million had been spent constructing a single gas station in the middle of nowhere, that $150 million had gone into luxury private villas for Americans who were supposed to be helping strengthen Afghanistan’s economy, and that tens of millions more were wasted on failed programs to improve Afghan industries focused on extracting more of the country’s minerals, oil, and natural gas reserves.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/how-military-industrial-complex-gets-away-murder-contract-after-contract

The Attorney General Lays the Groundwork to Carry Out His Threat

Last October, Trump signed an executive order directing the attorney general to establish a Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice. As Tom Jackman reported, this is something that both police and civil rights groups have sought for years. Nevertheless, concerns emerged almost immediately. A number of groups that might be expected to be part of the discussion said they had not yet been invited, including the National District Attorneys Association, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and the Major Cities Chiefs Association.

Those who had advocated for such a commission were concerned about “overburdened courts, unsustainable incarceration costs, national security, prisoner reentry, victims’ rights, and civil rights and liberties.” But the tasks assigned to this commission are completely police-centric.

The challenges to law enforcement associated with mental illness, homelessness, substance abuse, and other social factors that influence crime and strain criminal justice resources;

The recruitment, hiring, training, and retention of law enforcement officers, including in rural and tribal communities;

Refusals by State and local prosecutors to enforce laws or prosecute categories of crimes;

The need to promote public confidence and respect for the law and law enforcement officers; and

The effects of technological innovations on law enforcement and the criminal justice system, including the challenges and opportunities presented by such innovations. On Tuesday, Attorney General William Barr announced the formation of this commission.

The first thing to notice is that there is no one on the commission representing civil rights, public defenders, or community groups. Seven of the members are employees of the Justice Department, including the chair, and all of them were appointed during the Trump administration. For example, David Bowdich became deputy director of the FBI when Andrew McCabe was fired. He then went on to fire Peter Strzok. The rest of the group’s members are either law enforcement officers or prosecutors. For those who have publicly identified their party affiliation, all are Republican. For example, former Florida Governor Rick Scott first appointed Robert Gualtieri as interim sheriff of Pinellas County and Ashley Moody replaced Pam Bondi as Florida’s Attorney General.

I suspect that this commission will probably be better-managed than the one Trump appointed to study voter fraud. But what the two have in common is that they have been established with an end product in mind. The goal will be to find a rationale to justify conclusions they already have in common. The same attorney general who appointed these commissioners is the one who recently said that communities that don’t show enough respect for law enforcement could find themselves without police protection. I don’t mean to be too alarmist, but I don’t think that William Barr is the kind of man who makes idle threats. It is very possible that this commission could lay the groundwork for him to carry that one out.

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/01/23/the-attorney-general-lays-the-groundwork-to-carry-out-his-threat/

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/attorney-general-william-p-barr-announces-establishment-presidential-commission-law

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How The Military-Industrial Complex Gets Away With Murder In Contract After Contract