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From the Los Angeles Times

Is it time to retire 'ground zero'?

As the nation prepares for the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11, New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg wants to bring new symbolism to that date, and suggested that perhaps it's time to retire the "ground zero" moniker.

Instead of remembering Sept. 11, 2001, as the day the terrorists attacked America, he said, it's time to recognize it as the day that American began to rebuild. He called the transformation of the site -- with its new skyscrapers, and its stark and stirring memorial to all the lives lost -- a symbol of triumph over the terrorists. So is the revitalization of Lower Manhattan, Bloomberg said at a breakfast this week hosted by the Assn. for a Better New York.

"As we look back on the past decade, and as the picture of what has happened here comes into sharper focus, I believe the rebirth and revitalization of Lower Manhattan will be remembered as one of the greatest comeback stories in American history," Bloomberg said.

He went on to highlight some of the hallmarks of the city's stubborn determination to rebuild and thrive. Today, Lower Manhattan is not known just for its business district but also for a creative community, as a destination for visitors and a place that many families now call home, thanks to incentives for the TV and film industry, the expansion of parkland and tourist attractions, and new schools and residential buildings. "Ten years ago, none of that was possible," he said.

Bloomberg, whose comments are available in full here, also suggested that this post-9/11 renaissance meant it was time to retire the term "ground zero" because it represents the past, and the attacks.

“We will never forget the devastation of the area that came to be known as ‘ground zero.' Never. But the time has come to call those 16 acres what they are: The World Trade Center and the National September 11th Memorial and Museum."

He added that this Sunday, the 10th anniversary of the attacks, shouldn't be mired in sadness.

“Let us remember not only the day that time stood still -– but the decade we have spent recovering, rebuilding, and renewing.... there is no challenge that this country can't meet. That is the ultimate lesson of our past decade..”

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/

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Al Qaeda is down, not out

U.S. talk of defeating terrorism is dangerously premature.

by Amy Zegart

September 7, 2011

Talk of strategically defeating Al Qaeda is all the rage in the White House these days. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta used the "D-word" in July. President Obama declared in his new counter-terrorism strategy, "We can say with growing confidence… that we have put Al Qaeda on the path to defeat." Compared to the woeful state of the economy, terrorism has become the administration's feel-good story of the year.

"Defeat" is a big word. It is also dangerously misleading. Yes, the United States has made great strides in the last decade to harden targets, improve intelligence and degrade the capabilities of violent Islamist extremists. Osama bin Laden's death was a major accomplishment. But the fight is nowhere close to being won, and America's most perilous times may lie ahead. Three reasons explain why.

The first is that strategically defeating Al Qaeda is not nearly as important as it sounds. After 9/11, Al Qaeda morphed into a more complicated, decentralized and elusive threat consisting of three elements: core Al Qaeda; affiliates or franchise groups operating in places like Yemen and Somalia with loose ties to the core group; and homegrown terrorists inspired by violent extremism, often through the Internet in the comfort of their own living rooms.

Core Al Qaeda's capabilities started degrading in 2001, when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, dismantled training camps, ousted the Taliban and sent Bin Laden running. The CIA has estimated the core group remaining in the Afghanistan/Pakistan region to number 50 to 100 fighters. The last time Bin Laden oversaw a successful operation was 2005, when Al Qaeda struck the London transit system.

But plots by homegrowns and franchise groups have risen dramatically in recent years. The 2009 Ft. Hood shooting, the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11, was the work of a homegrown terrorist. The "mastermind" of the 2010 Times Square car bomb plot was a naturalized American citizen trained by the Pakistani Taliban, not Al Qaeda. Another franchise group, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, was behind the foiled 2009 Christmas Day "underwear bomber" aviation plot and the 2010 plot to explode tampered printer cartridges aboard cargo planes. The Bipartisan Policy Center reported 11 violent Islamist extremist terrorist incidents against the U.S. homeland in 2009, the most since 9/11. Nearly all involved what former CIA Director Mike Hayden calls "a witches' brew" of radicalized Americans and franchise groups.

The second reason why talk of defeat is premature has to do with weapons. Terrorism against Americans is nothing new. The potential for terrorist groups to acquire weapons of mass destruction is. In 1995, a Japanese cult released sarin nerve gas in the Tokyo subway, killing 12 people and injuring thousands. It was the first WMD terrorist attack in modern history, and it sparked a wave of presidential terrorism commissions years before Bin Laden became a household name.

It is this specter of the lone fanatic or small group armed with the world's most devastating weapons that keeps experts up at night. In 2005, 60 leading nuclear scientists and terrorism experts were asked how many believed the odds of a nuclear attack on the U.S. were negligible. Only three or four hands went up; most were far more pessimistic. Today, there is enough nuclear material to build 120,000 weapons. As long as fissile material is poorly stored and rogue states like Iran and North Korea continue their illicit weapons programs, nuclear terrorism remains a haunting possibility.

The third reason is that the FBI has not yet become a first-rate domestic intelligence agency. Analysts, whose work is vital to success, are still second-class citizens, labeled "support staff" alongside secretaries and janitors, and passed over for key jobs, including running the bureau's intelligence units. The FBI's information technology is so antiquated, it belongs in a museum. And the old crime-fighting culture still lives. There is now a move afoot to shrink new classified facilities so that agents don't have to "waste time" away from their cases to read intelligence documents there.

"Strategically defeating Al Qaeda" sounds too good to be true. Because it is.

Amy Zegart is a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution and the author of "Eyes on Spies: Congress and the United States Intelligence Community."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-zegart-alqaeda-20110907,0,4278355,print.story

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3rd National Guard member dies after Carson City IHOP rampage

A third National Guard member has died following the shooting rampage inside an IHOP restaurant in Carson City, Nev., authorities said late Tuesday.

Carson City Sheriff Kenny Furlong said the third Guard member, a woman, died at an area hospital, the Associated Press reported.

Her death brought the toll to five in Tuesday morning's shootings: three members of the National Guard, a civilian woman in the restaurant, and the gunman, who took his own life. Seven others were wounded.

Authorities identified the gunman as Eduardo Sencion, 32, of Carson City. They say he entered the restaurant about 9 a.m., went to the back where five uniformed National Guard members were eating breakfast, and began firing, hitting all five.

The man's motive was unclear. Interviews with Sencion's family suggest he was mentally unstable. He had no criminal history, was not a member of the military and had no connection to the diners at the restaurant, Furlong said.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/

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From Google News

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Ten years later, what kind of ally is Canada?

Well before 9/11, I testified before a congressional subcommittee concerned about the Canadian Security Intelligence Service's 1998 warning that more terror groups were in Canada than in any other country, except perhaps the U.S. Imagine American officials' discomfort with today's Canadian security problems.

Canadian-based Sikh extremists caused the world's biggest pre-9/11 aviation-terror disaster, the 1985 Air India bombing. Today, India's security officials privately regard Canada - not India - as a font of international Sikh extremism.

CSIS director Richard Fadden warned of illicit foreign-influence operations in Canada. One or two provincial cabinets could be penetrated, he said, as might local governments. Yet MPs shy away from asking whether Canada's politicobureaucratic system is infiltrated.

American congressional leaders recently stopped Chinese telecom giant Huawei's plan to buy into the U.S. market. Huawei denies links with Beijing, but the company partnered with sensitive Canadian telecom systems and got a $6.5 million Ontario grant without debate. Now Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird dubs America's strategic Chinese foe an "ally" and declares unreconstructed Beijing the political equal of democratic post-war Germany and post-Soviet Russia.

Canada's growing Islamist threat is becoming an export, and American security sources say they know it.

Convicted in Chicago, Pakistani-born Canadian Tahawwur Hussain Rana plotted against Danish publishers of Muhammad cartoons.

Canadians reportedly kill for al-Shabab in Somalia.

Federal computer software consultant, Momin Khawaja, was a transnational jihadi.

Fateh Kamel's Canadian group ran international operations. Meanwhile, a 2007 Environics poll found 12 per cent of Canadian Muslims - up to 119,000 people - could sympathize with a Toronto 18-type mass-casualty plot.

Some Canadian Muslim moderates say radicals dominate many Canadian mosques. Radical influence seeps into Canadian educational institutions, shaping Canadian minds in ways hostile to North American security. Ethnocultural community members warn about infiltration threats in Canadian public administration and the private sector.

Many moderate Muslims want the RCMP's inept Community Outreach program shuttered for legitimizing radical elements through outreach "engagement."

In 2010, an Ottawa outreach committee RCMP officer encouraged attendance at an RCMP diversity committee member's "peace conference," sponsored by four Green party members.

The conference agenda featured senior Tehran University faculty, and an Iranian "peace" activist whose website had a cartoon of a hook-nosed Jew. Imam Zijad Delic, then the Canadian Islamic Congress's executive director, was originally scheduled; on his watch, the C.I.C. brought Yvonne Ridley - Taliban apologist and Iran Press TV reporter - to speak in Canada. All this while our soldiers were fighting and dying at the hands of the Taliban to help liberate Afghan women and citizens.

Canadian author Tarek Fatah suggested the defence department was infiltrated, its own National Capital Region Defence Visible Minority Advisory Group facilitating an invitation - later cancelled - to have Delic appear at a departmental Islamic celebration. Fatah spoke of the group's Canadian "military officers who are Muslim, of Pakistani and Egyptian descent, who used their position in the visible minority caucus at DND to stage this invitation."

This reinforces suspicions that Islamists in government launder controversial Muslims by facilitating speaking invitations for them.

Canada's intellectuals have disappointed, too. Despite Tehran's crimes, the Canadian International Council joined the University of Ottawa in an Iran conference, inviting National Iranian American Council's Titra Parsi, commonly considered a Tehran fellow-traveller.

(He eventually withdrew.) The Council's Hamid Jorjani refused an event media pass to a journalist who had been critical of Iran. Conference sponsors included DND and the federally funded Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies.

Canada's immigration and refugee malaise accounts for much of the deteriorating security situation. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has turned Canada into the biggest per capita immigration receiver on the planet: 281,000 annually for a population of less than 34 million - closer to 600,000, counting visa-holders. Essentially vote-importing, this costs Canada about $23 billion a year net and many come from antagonistic countries.

"Public safety and social cohesion," says leading Pakistani-Canadian Muslim commentator, Raheel Raza, "demand an immediate moratorium on immigration to Canada from Pakistan, Somalia and other radical-Islamist and terrorist-producing countries." Pakistan is among Canada's top 10 immigrant source countries. This idea should at least be discussed.

My pre-9/11 Congressional testimony warned of Canada's increasing vulnerability to terrorism, radical infiltration and illicit influence.

Today, many American authorities ponder Canada's reliability as an ally and guarantor of their northern front.

They - and Canadians - must ask whether Canada is doing enough to behave like a reliable ally with a secure future.

David Harris, director of the International Intelligence Program of INSIGNIS Strategic Research Inc., is a lawyer with 30 years in intelligence affairs. This is based on a longer article appearing in the Summer 2011 edition of Diplomat and International Canada magazine.

http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/years+later+what+kind+ally+Canada/5362915/story.html

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Canada dropped $92 billion on security post-9/11: Report

The report, obtained by the Ottawa Citizen, tracks the increased funding over and above the amount that would have been spent had budgets remained with pre-9/11 spending.

The organizations involved include the Defence Department, the RCMP, Foreign Affairs, Public Safety, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Justice Department and Canada Border Services Agency, according to the report written for the Rideau Institute.

The Ottawa-based institute has in the past questioned what it calls high levels of military spending.

According to the report by economist David Macdonald, such spending is not showing any signs of easing.

This fiscal year, Canada is planning to spend $34 billion on its national security, $17 billion more than the amount it would have spent had budgets remained in line with pre-9/11 spending levels, the report says.

In the period after the al-Qaida attacks on the U.S., Canadian military expenditures have nearly doubled, with the current Defence Department budget at around $21 billion, the report adds.

Much of the $11 billion the government says it spent on the Afghanistan war is included in that overall figure.

"While DND may garner significant attention because of its relative size, Security and Public Safety programs have grown at a much more rapid pace than the military," Macdonald concludes. "Security and Public Safety Programs have nearly tripled, from $3 billion to almost $9 billion annually."

The report argues that it is time to re-evaluate the post-9/11 spending on national security.

"The question now is, do we want to continue spending at this level?" Macdonald said in an interview. "The situation is much different than it was a decade ago. Bin Laden is dead and the mission in Afghanistan is winding up.

"It's a question of whether this money — about $10 billion a year in extra funding — can be better spent in Canada."

In July, U.S. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta declared that the U.S. was "within reach" of defeating al-Qaida as a terrorist threat. Panetta said that only 10 to 20 of the terror group's leaders are still left.

In the report, Macdonald provides comparisons on what $92 billion could purchase. It could have been used to rebuild the transit systems in each of Canada's 10 largest cities or it could have provided a national childcare program. Or that amount of money could have provided all Canadians with free prescriptions on an annual basis.

The 9/11 attacks altered the makeup of the federal government. The Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness was created in 2004 as well as the Canada Border Services Agency. Public servants from various agencies were brought together to form the new organizations.

The report notes there was a shift in Foreign Affairs, which before 9/11 was a department dominated by its trade promotion branch, to put more of a focus on security. Expenditures at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service "exploded, tripling in size," it added.

"The result of these increases in resources for the defence, international, security and justice areas of the federal government has been a 'national security establishment'," Macdonald writes.

But since 9/11, the political landscape has also changed, he pointed out. The ailing global economy seems to be a greater threat to Canada than global terrorism, Macdonald argues. At the same time, pressures are mounting at home in Canada with unemployment and large deficits at the federal level, he added.

Government officials have often highlighted the increases on security and defence, noting they are spending to protect Canadians. The Conservative government has focused much of its funding increases on the Canadian Forces for new equipment such as tanks, helicopters and armoured vehicles.

While much of that equipment has found its way to battlefields in Afghanistan, military officers have said other purchases are needed to replace aging gear.

Governments worldwide significantly boosted spending on their militaries and security agencies after the 9/11 attacks.

The most significant increases were in the U.S., which ended up fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those conflicts are estimated to have cost U.S. taxpayers $4 trillion so far.

A recent report to Congress found that as much as $60 billion has been lost to waste and fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At the same time, U.S. federal and state governments are spending about $75 billion a year on domestic security. Part of that money came from the $32 billion in grants that the Department of Homeland Security provided to various agencies in the years after 9/11.

A large security bureaucracy has also sprung up in the U.S. in the last decade. There are now an estimated 1,200 government organizations and 1,900 private firms doing security work. Around 850,000 people were issued with government security clearances as part of the buildup.

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/9-11-anniversary/Canada+dropped+billion+security+post+Report/5362869/story.html

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From the White House

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Austin's Warrior Playroom: A New Space for Families at Walter Reed

Tomorrow is the grand opening of Austin's Warrior Playroom, a great new addition to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Austin's Playroom is a space for young family members of wounded warriors to play and relax while their parents attend to medical needs.

The Austin's Warrior Playroom located in the newly-established Warrior Transition Unit on the campus of the new Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, MD.

Mario Lemieux, the current owner and former NHL player who led the Pittsburgh Penguins to two consecutive Stanley Cups, and his wife Nathalie Lemieux helped make Austin's Warrior Playroom possible as an initiative of the Mario Lemieux Foundation. Before the grand opening they received a preview of the playroom and Nathalie Lemieux had this to share:

Recently, my husband, Mario, and I were given a “sneak-peek” at the Austin's Warrior Playroom located in the newly-established Warrior Transition Unit on the campus of the new Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, MD. While not scheduled to officially open until September, our dreams for this special playroom are nearly complete.

The 2,000 sq. ft. playroom will accommodate children from six weeks up to 12 years. The room is equipped with the newest toys and games including video gaming systems, creative and imaginative play areas and an interactive kiosk. From our personal experience, this room will give children a space to call their own while parents attend to medical needs, but will also allow them to remain together as a family. We believe providing an environment that is cheerful, safe and comfortable for children and patients is an essential complement to medical treatment when addressing the quality of a child and families' hospital experience.

When we began Austin's Playroom Project in 2000 as an initiative of the Mario Lemieux Foundation, I never dreamed it would grow so large. Our son, Austin, was born profoundly pre-mature at Magee-Womens Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and with two young daughters, it was difficult to manage our time together. It was then that we dreamed of someday helping future families who find themselves in similar situations. Since that time, we have established 22 playrooms throughout western Pennsylvania, with six more scheduled to open by the end of 2012.

Austin's Warrior Playroom marks a new initiative in the Austin's Playroom Project. The Mario Lemieux Foundation is proud to join forces with the US military to establish an Austin's Playroom in the new Medical Center to bring joy and happiness in what otherwise will be a very difficult and stressful situation. We hope this playroom provides comfort, warmth and love for these very special families.

Learn how you can support military families at JoiningForces.gov and check out more preview photos of Austin's Playroom at Walter Reed Medical Center.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/09/06/austin-s-warrior-playroom-new-space-families-walter-reed

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Ten Years Later: Air Traffic Controllers Remember 9/11

Ed. Note: Cross-posted on Fast Lane, the blog of the U.S. Secretary of Transportation. See more 9/11 reflections and remembrances.

This Sunday, our nation will mark a somber occasion, the tenth anniversary of September 11th. There is much to remember about that day--the thousands of lives lost and families upended, the life-saving first responders at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the heroes of United Airlines flight 93.

Today, the Federal Aviation Administration is sharing a video about the quick-thinking air traffic professionals who recognized that the errant blips on their radar screens posed a potential threat to every passenger on every plane in our skies that morning. In response, they were able to completely shut down U.S. airspace.

“The men and women who control air traffic in this country realized we were under attack on that terrible day and had the skill to quickly land thousands of planes,” said FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt. “Ten years later we are still incredibly proud of their work.”

Those controllers took an unprecedented situation and used their training and experience to bring those thousands of planes safely down and out of harm's way. They do an outstanding job every day, and we commend the decisive action they took on September 11th. .

Ray LaHood is Secretary of the Department of Transportation.

See more about Tenth Anniversary of Sept 11, Homeland Security

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/09/06/ten-years-later-air-traffic-controllers-remember-911

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