Terrorists

The Obama administration's mea culpa over the failure to prevent the attempted bombing of a U.S. airliner bound for Detroit on Christmas Day is understandable but misses the point. Yes, the United States can do better at catching would-be attackers; that will always be the case. But the truth is that there is no absolute security -- short of conceding victory to the terrorists by making it impossible for foreigners to visit the U.S., hellish for Americans to fly and difficult for all to live normal lives.

In the year since President Obama approved a successful raid against Osama bin Laden, public opinion has been shifting. While many Westerners still celebrate the targeted killing - along with the killing several months later of Anwar Awlaki - some are expressing doubts. European politicians, human rights lawyers and members of some East Coast think tanks have posited that these terrorists were actually more dangerous dead than alive. Death, the reasoning goes, martyred the leaders, thus immortalizing their ideas and appeal.

A San Fernando Valley man has become the first person convicted under a federal law making it a crime to provide material support to State Department-designated terrorist groups. Bahram Tabatabai, 43, who operated out of offices in Encino, was accused of providing phony immigration documents to members of the Mujahedeen Khalq, or MEK, a group engaged in a long-running campaign against Iran's rulers.

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba — Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the boastful self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, sat in a small blue chair for hours at the opening of his capital murder trial — holding his tongue. As Saturday wore on, it became clear that Mohammed and the four other defendants were staging a silent protest, aimed at both confounding the U.S. military court system here and demonstrating to the outside world that they do not acknowledge America's control over them.

German authorities on Monday pardoned and released a former terrorist convicted of killing three people in a 1975 attack on an OPEC oil ministers' meeting. A Frankfurt court in 2001 convicted Hans-Joachim Klein of three counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder and hostage-taking after a trial in which German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer -- a friend of Klein's from their student radical days 30 years ago -- appeared as a witness. Klein was sentenced to nine years in prison.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano wisely has backed off her statement that "the system worked" because a Nigerian terrorist failed to blow up an airliner on Christmas Day. The system decidedly didn't work if an explosive could be brought aboard a plane by a man whose radicalization had been brought to the attention of the United States by his father, a prominent banker. But as Congress and the Obama administration undertake inquests into this near disaster, their primary focus should be on lapses in human intelligence, not technology.

"Four Lions," the feature debut of notorious British provocateur Chris Morris, will indeed provoke righteous indignation, serious thought -- laughter. It's a challenging and often hilarious study of a group of bickering, homegrown terrorists as they plan suicide bombings in London. It's not your usual comedic fodder, but the director and co-writer's extensive research and profound intellect elevate the film above mere farce. Even the casual slapstick comes from Morris' conversations with journalists and actual jihadists, and these religious extremists' petty arguments seem not unlike those of any group working closely together.

Vice President Joe Biden has been the White House's point person for reaching a debt-ceiling deal since day one, so it was only natural that he was dispatched to Capitol Hill on Monday to move the ball over the finish line. "I didn't go to convince, I went to explain," Biden told reporters after back-to-back meetings with Senate and House Democrats today. Forget the debt deal. Biden is now being asked by Republicans to explain comments attributed to him likening talks with conservative "tea party" lawmakers to negotiations with terrorists.

Both the U.S. State Department and the government of Turkey have registered their dismay with Rick Perry, who claimed at Monday night's GOP presidential debate in South Carolina that the Middle Eastern nation and longtime NATO ally was run by "Islamic terrorists. " In responding to a question from Fox News' Bret Baier, the Texas governor, who has struggled with foreign policy while on the campaign trail, suggested that all U.S. foreign aid to Turkey should be cut off, that the nation should be kicked out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and, for good measure, seemed to lump it with Iran and Syria as an existential threat to the United States.

Rep. Michele Bachmann is trying to cash in on remarks attributed to Vice President Joe Biden linking "tea party" conservatives with terrorists, the latest example of how the heated rhetoric of the debt-ceiling debate quickly becomes fodder for fundraising appeals. According to Politico, Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Doyle of Pennsylvania was the one who introduced the attack, saying at a meeting of House Democrats that a "small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money.

A UC Berkeley law professor who helped the Bush administration create policies to justify harsh interrogation techniques and prolonged detention may not be sued by an American citizen detained under those conditions, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said Jose Padilla, an American citizen arrested in 2002 and declared an "enemy combatant," may not hold professor John Yoo liable for "gross physical and psychological abuse" that Padilla said he suffered during more than three years of military detention.

BEIRUT - Two weeks after a supposed cease-fire was meant to bring an end to violence in Syria, an explosion Friday ripped through the capital, Damascus, killing at least nine people and injuring almost 30. A suicide bomber in the pro-opposition Midan neighborhood detonated an explosives belt near a school and the Zein Abidin mosque as worshipers were leaving Friday prayers, the Interior Ministry said. Those killed included civilians and law enforcement officers, state media said.

BEIRUT - United Nations monitors on Thursday visited the scene of an explosion in the Syrian city of Hama that antigovernment activists said had killed 70 people, many of them women and children. Homes in the Mashaa al-Tayyar neighborhood were targeted Wednesday, they said, by rockets or shells fired by forces loyal to President Bashar Assad. State media blamed the explosion on a "terrorist group" that accidentally set off an explosive in a house used to make bombs. Sixteen people died and 12 were injured, the report said.

Singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash will wail an anthem called "Land of Dreams" while images of smiling Americans playing on the beach, running through fields of flowers and dancing in streets flash across the screen. These are among the images and sounds behind the nation's first coordinated $150-million media campaign to promote the U.S. to travelers worldwide. Details of the campaign are set to be released today at International Pow Wow 2012, a travel trade show at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, wearing white prison clothes, seemed by turns amused and bewildered as he sat in a bright room last week during a pretrial hearing at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Nashiri is charged with being a key organizer of Al Qaeda's attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole on Oct. 12, 2000, off the coast of Yemen, which killed 17 U.S. servicemen, as well as of two other attacks. He faces the death penalty if convicted in a trial before a military commission that is scheduled to begin in November.

Women are becoming more lethal. In jihadist organizations - including even Al Qaeda, which had long banned females from violent roles - women are increasingly taking part in terrorist actions. Since 1985, terrorism's so-called invisible women have accounted for a quarter of fatal attacks in Iraq, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Chechnya, Sri Lanka, Morocco and Palestine. My research found that by mid-2008, women had acted as suicide bombers 21 times in Iraq's markets and other civilian venues patronized by Shiites.

I have seen the terrorists, and they are us. The Jan. 21 California section lists eight murders and a kidnapping on our local streets. Why are we going halfway across the world to fight suspected terrorists in Iraq when we can sit in our living rooms and see them? Robert Martin Rancho Palos Verdes

Will's column makes me wonder what he's trying to say. Does he mean that Americans, by traveling to areas where terrorists are operating, will combat this craziness by their numbers? Or that our overseas friends who miss our smiling faces and our pocketbooks will be made friendlier, knowing that Americans are available for terrorists to intimidate? Does that mean, if there are no Americans do the terrorists stop operations? I hope Will understands that the terrorists operate as they do, and where they do, because of convenience, i.e. Europe is easily reached from their various headquarters.

President Obama signed a sweeping aviation bill in February that will open American airspace to "unmanned aircraft systems," more commonly known as drones. Much of the recent discussion about the coming era of domestic drones, which will include those operated by companies and individuals, has been focused on privacy questions. However, drone proliferation also raises another issue that has received far less attention: the threat that they could be used to carry out terrorist attacks.

El Cajon police are asking for the public's help in its investigation into the fatal beating of an Iraqi immigrant and have not ruled out the possibility that Shaima Alawadi was the victim of a hate crime. "We're investigating all aspects of this crime," Lt. Mark Coit said Sunday. "The minute you rule out a possible motive, you start to get tunnel vision. As of now, we have not ruled out any of the motives for why people kill people. " Near the body of the 32-year-old Alawadi, police found what has been described as a threatening note.