It was obvious that Iran made a mistake when they announced that they defeated the United States on “debate” if their nuclear program was for peace or more demonic purposes. They then retracted that statement by accusing the United States of spying on them. Well, no duh! President Bush wants Iran to explain to the world why they had a nuclear weapons program.

From the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON (AP) – President Bush on Tuesday called on Iran to explain why it had a secretive nuclear weapons program, and warned that any such efforts must not be allowed to flourish “for the sake of world peace.”

“Iran is dangerous,” Bush said after an Oval Office meeting with Italian President Giorgio Napolitano. “We believe Iran had a secret military weapons program, and Iran must explain to the world why they had such a program.”

Bush’s comments came after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that it was “a step forward” that U.S. intelligence agencies had concluded that Tehran stopped developing its nuclear weapons program four years ago.

Ahmadinejad told reporters that an “entirely different” situation between the United States and Iran could be created if more steps like the intelligence report followed.

“We consider this measure by the U.S. government a positive step. It is a step forward,” Ahmadinejad said.

“If one or two other steps are taken, the issues we have in front of us will be entirely different and will lose their complexity, and the way will be open for the resolution of basic issues in the region and in dealings between the two sides,” he said.

Iran has said its nuclear program is peaceful, but until last week, the United States and Western allies had countered that Iran was hiding plans for a bomb.

“Iran has an obligation to explain to the IAEA why they hid this program from them,” Bush said, referring to the nuclear watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency.

“Iran is dangerous, and they’ll be even more dangerous if they learn how to enrich uranium,” Bush said. “So I look forward to working with the president,” Bush said, referring to Napolitano, the Italian leader, “to explain our strategy and to figure out ways we can work together to prevent this from happening for the sake of world peace.”

Terror at Omaha Mall.

OMAHA, Neb. — Omaha police said nine people were dead, including the alleged shooter, after shots were fired inside the Von Maur store at Westroads Mall on Wednesday afternoon.

Sgt. Teresa Negron said there are nine fatalities. She said officers found the suspected shooter dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Negron could not describe the shooter, but said he was a male. Negron said most of the victims were inside Von Maur.

The gunman has been identified:

OMAHA, Neb. — The shooter at Westroads Mall was identified as Robert A. Hawkins of Bellevue, according to the Sarpy County Sheriff’s Department, and a suicide note said he was going to be famous.

Hawkins, 19, had been arrested on a couple of misdemeanors in November and was due in court this month. One charge included minor in possession of alcohol. He was arrested on Nov. 24. He was due in court for an arraignment on Dec. 19.

Sarpy County deputies said they are getting a warrant to search Hawkins’ home in the Quail Creek neighborhood in Bellevue.

The woman who owns that house at 4302 McCartey Drive, who only gave her first name of Debra, said Hawkins had a lot of emotional instability. She said she thought he was turning things around. She said he had just learned that he was fired from McDonald’s.

Debra said Hawkins was coming out of his room Wednesday morning when she last saw him.

“He said he’d gotten fired and was pretty upset and said, ‘This is the only way,’ and we tried to talk to him,” Debra said. “He was just a very troubled — I had no idea that he was this troubled. I don’t know if it was because he got fired from McDonald’s.”

Debra said she saw Hawkins with a gun last night and thought he and her sons were going hunting, which they did quite often.

Shooter was said to be a black male in his 30′s. Possibly wore fatigues. Possible more than one shooter? Fox News is citing a local NBC report that one person has a self-inflicted wound. KETV has a photo of a male matching the description of the shooter in custody. FoxNews radio is reporting that the shooter is in custody dead.

Police radio reports 2 people dead, up to 10 victims. KETV reporting that are multiple fatalities. 9 Dead confirmed, and 5 victims in Omaha hospitals.

Shots said to be random. 35 to 40 shots said to have been fired. Event said to have occurred in a gift-wrap customer service line. Employees and customers were among the victims.

Officers are stilling trying to clear the mall store by store.

Witness: Shooter was a tall man. He was standing in the children’s section. Raising his gun in the hair shooting numerous rounds into the air.

KETV 7:24: Gunman left three notes. One to his family, One to his friends, and One that was titled, “My Will”. He lost his job at McDonalds recently. Landlord took him to give him safe shelter, stability. Her sons grew up with the Gunman. Warrant has been issued for the house.

Flashback:

Police Remove Grenade from Westroads Parking Lot

Posted: Dec 1, 2007 04:26 PM

Omaha, NE – Police removed a grenade from the parking lot outside Westroads Mall late Friday.

Omaha Police say someone found the grenade in the mall parking lot near The Cheesecake Factory. It was still intact – meaning the pin had not been removed. Police say no one was around when they found the grenade. The bomb squad safely removed it from the area.

Police do not have any suspects at this hour.

Related News Articles

- Worst Mass Slaying In Nebraska History Claims 9
- More Known About Westroads Mall Shooter
- Two Surviving Victims Identified After Westroads Shooting
- Six Minutes of Mayhem
- Troubled Youth Ends in Bloodshed

I’ve been pondering the “Postwar Findings About Iraq” Phase II report from the United States Senate. The report states that there was no known link between Saddam Hussein and the terror organization Al Qaeda. I think we were played.

Now here me out on this. I’m not going to be placing blame on President Bush or anyone in our government. They were simply acting on the intelligence that we and other nations had gathered prior to 2003. Since then Bush has repeatedly confirmed that the intelligence was faulty. As White House press secretary Tony Snow said, there is “nothing new” here.

Were we all, including President Bush, played by our enemies? Were we unknowingly duped into ousting Saddam? I’m beginning to believe that this is the likely case. Al Qaeda’s leadership is a ragtag fleet of strategist and war gamers who have a very clear endgame. They want to put an end to the western culture, destroy non-believers, and create a world government based on Islam, known as a caliphate. Is it at all possible that Saddam Hussien was the lesser of two evils in the Middle East?

According to wikipedia Saddam believed in spreading Pan-Arabism, which is a secular movement for unification among the Arab peoples and nations of the Middle East. In other words he wanted to become the person who controlled the entire region. Al Qaeda and Iran have similar ambitions, but they want to spread Pan-islamism, the religious movement of reunification among all muslims in the world. Both movements were opposed to each other because they basically had the same goal.

Did Al Qaeda have the resources to plant false information about its own involvement in Iraq? Is it possible that Al Qaeda, not President Bush tugging at the American people’s emotions when we learned there might have been a possible link between Al Qaeda and Iraq? Isn’t that what a terror organization does?  What better way for someone to lie about Al Qaeda’s involvement if it were coming directly from the mouth of an Al Qaeda informant.

This entire post deals with conspiracy theories and I have no information to back up my claims. Though it surely seems plausible…

Glenn Beck seems to be the only guy on TV who has a highlighter and is taking notes. On tonight’s “Real Story” segment Glenn quoted President Bush’s speech from Tuesday. In the speech the President linked together the war on terror and the war in Iraq using Osama Bin Laden’s own words.

These terrorists hope to drive America and our coalition out of Afghanistan, so they can restore the safe haven they lost when coalition forces drove them out five years ago. But they’ve made clear that the most important front in their struggle against America is Iraq — the nation bin Laden has declared the “capital of the Caliphate.” Hear the words of bin Laden: “I now address… the whole… Islamic nation: Listen and understand… The most… serious issue today for the whole world is this Third World War… [that] is raging in [Iraq].” He calls it “a war of destiny between infidelity and Islam.” He says, “The whole world is watching this war,” and that it will end in “victory and glory or misery and humiliation.” For al Qaeda, Iraq is not a distraction from their war on America — it is the central battlefield where the outcome of this struggle will be decided.

The reason we need to stay in Iraq and defeat the enemy from Bin Laden’s mouth. They want to establish a world government based on Islam and Iraq is going to be the caliphate’s Washington.

This alert has been out all day, but I found something interesting… The first article details the alert.

(NEW DELHI )The U.S. Embassy here warned its nationals Friday that foreign terrorists, possibly linked to Al Qaeda, were planning a series of bomb attacks in India’s major cities in the days leading up to the nation’s Independence Day next week.

In a strongly worded e-mail warning, the embassy urged American citizens living and working in India to “maintain a low profile, and be especially alert and attentive to their surroundings” in the days ahead of the public holiday Tuesday, which celebrates the anniversary of independence from British colonial rule.

“Likely targets include major airports, key central Indian government offices and major gathering places such as hotels and markets,” the alert added.

However, the Indian Government is downplaying the alert and is even avoiding commenting if Al-Qaida is in their country:

(NEW DELHI) The government on Friday described as “very innocuous” the US Embassy advisory on possible Al-Qaida attacks in the national capital and Mumbai but refrained from commenting on the presence of foreign terrorists in the country.

“It is normal for a mission to issue advisories whenever they have information. We too do the same thing. They do their security based on that. It is a very innocuous advisory,” Union Home Secretary V K Duggal told a press conference.

Duggal repeatedly ducked questions whether there was any presence of Al-Qaida in the country. “I have only seen the advisory and there is no intelligence input shared with us.

Elsewhere in India and in the same article…

Delhi Police last night arrested at New Delhi station two terrorists of the Lashker-e-Taiba outfit, which is believed to be working with Al-Qaida. One of the terrorists was a Pakistani national.

Is this guy saying he doesn’t know if Al-Qaida has a presense inside India just because the United States deciding against sharing important information? Do the Delhi Police operate on a different level than the Indian Government? Do they share information between the two Indian organzations? The second article makes it very clear that there is a presense of Al-Qaida. Now why would you avoid that question?

Just seems odd to me.. that’s all.

CNN reporting: 2 men captured in the plot also had prepared “Martyrdom Tapes”, two traveled to Pakistan and had money wired to them from Pakistan.

A small piece of the puzzle….

(WTAP) Twenty-year old’s Ali Howssaiky and Osama Abulhassan are facing charges of money laundering to aid terrorism. This comes after a traffic stop Tuesday led police to thousands of dollars in cash, several disposable cell phones and instructions of how to obtain private flight information. Police also found a list of flight passengers in the car.

“It also had information about airport checkpoints, and what would be accomplished there, so this is a little bit unusual,” Washington County Sheriff Larry Mincks says.

And the “missing” Egyptian students?

(AP) Six of the 11 Egyptian exchange students who failed to show up for their college program are now in custody after three additional students were arrested Thursday, the FBI said.

Airline stock shares are down…

(AP) Shares of airlines and travel companies dropped sharply Thursday after British authorities reported they thwarted a terrorist plot to blow up several aircraft in flight between the United States and the Britain.

Oil down $2.35 “Biggest single day drop in over a year”

( Reuters) Oil fell $2 to below $75 a barrel on Thursday after Britain said it had thwarted a plot to blow up aircraft in transatlantic flight and investors recalled the slump in fuel demand that followed 9/11.

I’m going to piece together a couple of news articles and you tell me if I should be stocking some fresh tuna…

The first excerpt comes from Barbara Lerner from NRO:

Today, Iran’s emboldened mullahs are on a triumphant roll, waging a bloody, three-front proxy war against us, using the Mahdi army to assassinate dreams of peace and democracy in Iraq, using Hezbollah to blow up those same dreams in Lebanon, again, and using Hamas to make a grotesque mockery of them in the Holy Land. Now they threaten to activate Hezbollah terror cells, here in America and throughout the world, to kill and maim us at home and inflict more carnage on our allies. This week, they mocked our efforts to prevent them from becoming a nuclear power, announcing that nothing we do – in the U.N. or elsewhere – will stop them from going nuclear, and sharing their WMDs with other rogue states and Islamofascist terror groups at will. More ominous yet, they threaten to unleash an apocalyptic surprise on us on August 22, the night they believe Mohammed lit up the skies by ascending to heaven from the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.

Despite all this and more, we have yet to admit that Iran is at war with us, or to seriously consider striking back at her, and, in speaking of our own war aims, we never dare use the v-word – victory – anymore. Instead, we make head-in-the-sand happy-talk about “peace,” “democracy,” and “ceasefires,” rejecting any military action against Iran for fear of “widening the war” – as if Iran were not already at war with us – and rely on the U.N. and “the international community” to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions and to prevent her proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, from continuing to bring death and destruction to our smallest, truest, and most vulnerable ally, Israel. In doing this, we ignore two obvious realities: rather than restraining Iran, U.N. heavyweights Russia and China are busy arming her, and the perfidious EU will not even recognize the plain fact that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. Instead, these old-Europe “allies” join with our Islamofascist enemies in demonizing our brave soldiers in Iraq, and damning Israel for daring to fight back against unprovoked aggression, pursued with openly genocidal intent.

Our second excerpt comes from Bernard Lewis’ op-ed article in the Wall Street Journal (Via Drudge):

“In Islam as in Judaism and Christianity, there are certain beliefs concerning the cosmic struggle at the end of time — Gog and Magog, anti-Christ, Armageddon, and for Shiite Muslims, the long awaited return of the Hidden Imam, ending in the final victory of the forces of good over evil, however these may be defined.”

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “and his followers clearly believe that this time is now, and that the terminal struggle has already begun and is indeed well advanced. It may even have a date, indicated by several references by the Iranian president to giving his final answer to the US about nuclear development by Aug. 22,” which this year corresponds “to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427. This, by tradition, is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to ‘the farthest mosque,’ usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back (c.f., Koran XVII.1).

Technorati : Iran, World War 3

George W. Bush is winning people over with this whole port business deal. Can we just stop with the politics and focus on what is right for the security of our nation. The American people, myself included, want to win the War on Terror. We also want to keep our homeland safe, which includes better patrolling of our borders. These are two strong reasons why we re-elected Bush. Can anyone tell me with 100% certainty that this deal will not come back to bite us in the behind 2 years from now? How about 5 years? 10? It takes just one extremist in the board room to turn this into an advantage for the terrorist. While the United Arab Emerites is currently on friendly terms with the United States there have been plenty of red flags in recent post September 11th times. The UAE’s banks blocked investigators from researching money trails after the attacks. That’s strike number 1, 2 and 3 for me. Our relationship with the UAE is one-dimensional. We allow one of their companies to take control of some of our ports in exchange we can trust to hand over information, even though there is nothing set into stone saying they will keep their part of the deal.

Blurbs published on Rush’s website. In them he demonstrates how to turn this situation into a right versus left issue instead of right versus wrong.

It’s an election year. The left is so vulnerable on national defense that they are having to track as far to the right of the Republicans as they can on this port issue. They’ve been praying for an opportunity that they could see an enemy somewhere and they finally had it shown up in the United Arab Emirates.

The left is pulling a John Kerry. Note, they’re not demanding to "Stop the sale!" and there’s some Republicans in on this, too, I know. They’re not demanding to stop it. They’re demanding to stall it. "They want to be able to investigate it, sailor! Need a moratorium to look into what really happened." Then we find out that Bush didn’t even know as we pointed out yesterday until after it was a done deal, yet he is standing by it. They want to be able to stall the deal, the Democrats do, so they can look the voters in the eye and say, "I opposed this sale before I supported it," or "I support this sale before I opposed it," whichever it turns out to be.

How can the White House have a secret agreement with Dubai Ports World and our President not even know about it? There is just something fishy about this whole thing and I still haven’t been won over. Everyone’s gut feeling was that this was wrong. Trust your first impressions.

Tags: President Bush, Port, United Arab Emerites, Dubai Ports World

Can we be honest to each other? This is just between me, blog writer, and you blog reader. Does anyone else think that our President should stop making his political base upset with dumb decisions. There was that whole the Anti-Christ supreme court justice nominee in Harriett Miers that I certainly didn’t agree with. Perhaps you saw some qualities in her that made you feel comfortable, like the color of her hair? I saw nothing of interest in her. When someone is nominated to the bench they should have at least a record for every breakfast and dinner eaten in the last 15 years.

 And now we have this whole selling our ports to some "friendly" middle eastern country. Drudge has this posted right now,

He said he would veto any legislation to hold up deal and warned the United States was sending 'mixed signals' by going after a company from the Middle East when nothing was said when a British company was in charge... Lawmakers, he said, must 'step up and explain why a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard.' Bush was very forceful when he delivered the statement... 'I don't view it as a political fight,' Bush said

Whew, Mr. President you have made your point. Forgive me for I have sinned. I discriminated against a country, who by they way helped fund the attacks of September 11th. I mean there were only 3,000 lives lost in that event. When we were enemies against England we lost far more Americans. Well, they weren’t Americans yet, but you understand what I’m saying.  Thank you, Mr. President for setting me straight. Now can you please stop portraying the oil-guzzling, big spending, war mongering idiot that the liberals have up to this point wrongly painted? What are we doing allowing The United Arab Emirates to control our ports?

Weasels, I’m a few days late to comment on the whole situation, but I thought I should at least chime in.

Tags: President Bush, UAE, Ports, Common Sense

Has anyone seen “Sleeper Cell” on Showtime? I briefly heard the talking heads on the AM stations discuss the show last fall. In turn, I  dismissed it as being another one of those Cindy Sheehan type masterpieces where they completely ignore fact and build up the idea that everyone is Anti-USA. I downloaded the first couple of episodes on iTunes just to see for myself. I’m not sure what Rush and Glenn have against this series because it’s done very well. It’s actually believable. Without spoiling on here the basic premise is that the main character is recruited to an islamic sleeper cell based out of L.A. The first episode reveals that Darwin is actually an undercover agent for the FBI who just so happens to be muslim. “Sleeper Cell” is like a hybrid of 24 and Alias, two other shows that I really enjoy.

Check it out on iTunes. You will be pleasently surprised.