10 December 2007
Just a thought, referring back to the Beslan posts, in regards the shooting at the church in Colorado...
I stated that I was wholly in favor of teachers being trained and going armed in our schools. I am sure that a lot of people out there would like to crucify me for that statement because guns are bad, and they are really bad around kids (we can't even have our children play cops and robbers, soldier, or even DRAW a gun for fear of being expelled from school for violating the zero tolerance gun policy!).
There are a lot of people who believe that a church is a sanctuary from violence (like schools) and that no one should have a gun in church (also like schools). Well, if it weren't for the armed security officer at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, the body count would more than likely been much, much higher - possibly in 75 to 100 range. It appears the shooter in this situation had planned for a high body count in advance for his "Mission" by placing smoke bombs in the parking lot to slow down the cops, giving himself more time to complete his "mission".
An AK-47 is quite a deadly weapon. In the hands of a trained rifleman, he could have easily killed 15 to 30 people with one clip of ammunition, depending on the clip size. Just think of many shooters with AK-47's with multiple ammunition clips.
From the information I have, he was armed to the hilt and prepared to take out everyone in the church.
Hats off to the security officer...She undoubtedly saved many lives, possibly dozens. She is definitely a hero.
A most outstanding job Ma'am!
Labels: AK-47, Armed Security, Colorado Church Shooting
Back in 2004, American defense and intelligence officials were given a bombshell report from General Ihor Smeshko, head of the Ukrainian Secret Service.
Intelligence and Pentagon officials were in London discussing WMD's in Iraq with Britain's MI6 when they were advised by General Smeshko that Iran had been attempting to persuade the Ukraine to give them access to their nuclear technology.
John Shaw, who was at that time the Pentagon's deputy secretary for international technology security, stated that, according to Smeshko, the Iranians weren't interested in the technology for energy purposes.
Now, Intelligence officials are saying that Iran is no longer a threat. According to the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), Iran is continuing their enrichment program but they have ceased any weaponizing attempts. The funny thing is that according the NIE report, Iran halted the program in 2003, a year before the meeting in London.
Obviously, something isn't right here. American Intelligence has insisted for the last couple of years, all they way up to just a few months ago, that Iran is determined to enrich Uranium to develop nuclear weapons. All of a sudden, almost overnight, they have done a complete turnaround.
One major fact that anyone who is following this has to realize is that most of the 700 or so page report remains classified. My curiosity wants to know what else is in that report.
Gut instinct tells me that this report on Iran is purely political in nature. President Bush's war on terror started with noble intentions in Afghanistan. When President Bush pleaded his case to go into Iraq, most politicians were on board. The list of those who were for an Iraq invasion included many of the Democrats that have been calling it an unjust war since they took control of congress, including Harry Reid, John Murtha and Hillary Clinton. With the intelligence we had - and it was good solid intelligence - just about everyone from the top down in Washington thought it was a good idea.
We now have senators and representatives who say that we were lied to. They say President Bush manipulated the intelligence community to give him a reason to go to war. We now have an intelligence community who appear unanimous in their estimate that Iran is no longer a threat. This, by all accounts, seems to be perfectly okay with the current Democrat-led Congress.
As long as the information suits their agenda, they will back the Intelligence agencies 110%, and give them what they want. The authors of the latest NIE report need to be looked at with suspicion. Thomas Fingar, Kenneth Brill and Vann Van Diepen, all former State Department officials, have had an ax to grind with President Bush since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. They have also been very vocal about their opposition to Iranian sanctions.
There are currently a handful in congress now who are beholden to the far left ideology of "Take down Bush at all costs". It seems that I remember a lot of moderates who were not on that bandwagon before the last election who have changed their politics. These are the cowards who will side with only the team that is winning, who seek shelter at any change in the wind.
You just simply can't have it both ways. Intelligence in the United States is political in nature. There are agents and officials jockeying for positions in various cabinets and departments. Being shrouded in secrecy, it is easy to manipulate any data or information to suit ones agenda without much outside scrutiny. All too often, the security of the United States and its citizens are what suffers. Anyone can do just a little research on the internet and see the intelligence failures in just the last fifteen or so years, failures that could have prevented tragedy.
All in all, we don't know, and probably won't know, what is in the rest of the NIE on Iran until we are either old and gray or have passed on. We didn't know everything in 2003 and we sure as hell don't know now. Iran is a threat, and this latest blunder in intelligence has emboldened Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his regime. He is gaining friends at an alarming pace, friends that are powerful and can inflict damage on the United States on various fronts.
When all is said and done, who will take responsibility for sacrificing American security for the sake of politics?
Labels: Iranian Threat, NIE
08 December 2007
Recently, Glenn Beck aired a series on his television show called “The Perfect Day”. The content of this series, the 2004 Beslan school siege in
The following is what I’ve learned about what may be in
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Lessons Learned From
From everything I've read and heard the perfect day scenario has been sugar-coated. As a matter of fact, it seems that anything terror related is glossed over and sugar-coated because of political correctness. I believe this has a negative effect on the way the American public prepares for any type of terror related incident. This is bad. It is going to cause a lot of casualties when (not if) an attack does occur.
When the Beslan siege occurred, the world was not told the whole story. What we were told was that Chechen separatists had taken over 1200 children and women hostage at school number one in
The real truth is that the Chechen separatists were Muslim, and there is strong evidence that this particular group was being backed and/or supported by Al-Qaeda. Also, while it is true that Spetsnaz did storm the school, they only did so after one of the explosive devices accidentally detonated when one of the captors removed his foot from a pressure detonator (probably due to being exhausted). One part of the story that was really glossed over was what these "Freedom Fighters" did to the children.
One thing you have to remember in situations such as these is that the media and the government walk a fine line when it comes to dissemination of information. On one hand, the information that something has happened, or is happening, has to get out to the masses. On the other hand, you don't want panic and chaos to rule the day. To this end, both media and government have a tendency to give facts, but not all the facts. When you take that and throw in political correctness, you end up with everyone looking like they are basically decent people, just misunderstood. God forbid that anyone in the media blames Muslim radicals for something as sinister as this, or portray them as anything other than peace loving. You can thank CAIR for that bit of brainwashing.
Now that the stage has been set, it is time for some brutal honesty.
If, God forbid, this does come to fruition, children will die. This we cannot stop once the siege has started. What we can do is prepare and keep the casualties as low as possible. By preparing, I'm talking about everyone; Fire, police, schools, school boards, parents, and anyone who lives near a school.
There are lessons that we have learned from the Beslan siege, and these lessons are not pretty. They are, however, lessons that we need to learn from.
First of all they will kill any and all adult males, as well as any younger males who may be old enough or big enough to resist. If anyone, including women and small children, try to run they will be shot and killed. Once anyone who is perceived as a threat to their mission has been eliminated, along with attempted escapees, the remainder will be herded into a large area such as a gymnasium. The next step will be for the terrorists to fortify the perimeter by barricading entryways, wiring explosive devices, and placing guards in strategic places to prevent a quick action deployment by law enforcement. In Beslan, once the terrorists were settled in they began throwing the bodies of those shot and killed out of the windows.
One of the most important things to remember is that terrorists will not negotiate. Although they may appear to want negotiations of some kind, their intent is not to trade off. They will use this tactic to buy time, and for many reasons. One, it will give them a chance to "dig in". By digging in I mean organizing the hostages into manageable groups (Women, children, elderly) and separating them. Also, they can better place explosive devices so that when the time is right they will inflict maximum casualties on the hostages as well as any rescuers.
Once the terrorists have fortified the perimeter and have everyone under control, the real horror begins. They will deny their hostages food and water. The Beslan siege lasted for a little over three days in hot weather. Water became such an issue that children resorted to drinking their own urine. They were not allowed to go to the bathroom and had to relieve themselves where they were. More than likely they will have the hostages sit with their legs crossed and their hands on top of their heads. Anyone who has done this for any length of time will tell you that it is very uncomfortable and tiring. You will start cramping up in about an hour.
If any child, or adult for that matter, cried, they were told once to shut up and stay quiet. If they cried incessantly, they were shot and killed in front of the others. The terrorist would then take the corpse and drag it in front of anyone else who had been crying to discourage them from crying.
The female children were raped. Some were beaten. After some had been raped and beaten they were shot in the head thrown out of windows. The terrorist did this to show they had no mercy whatsoever for human life. This also showed that if any rescue attempt were mounted they would kill everyone without hesitation. The effect this had on the bystanders was chilling. Can you imagine being at your child’s school in a situation like this and hearing a gunshot then seeing a child’s lifeless body flying out of a window to the ground below? This accomplished the terrorist’s intent, and that was sheer terror. Russian Spetsnaz, who is considered one of the most elite Special Forces in the entire world, was stymied. Even though they are the experts at hostile deployment, they held off anything planned for three days because of the ruthlessness displayed by the terrorists.
The Beslan siege only ended when one of the terrorists accidentally detonated one of the explosive devices. When the explosion occurred it caused enough chaos and cover from smoke and debris that hostages made a run for it. When this happened Spetsnaz stormed the school, first gathering any of the hostages they could while identifying the bad guys and killing them. This was not the way it was supposed to end. The end result was to execute all hostages and then set off the devices as the school was stormed.
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Here in
The targets will be, with very few exceptions, schools in rural or remote areas away from larger cities. Areas such as these have small police departments without many internal resources. They would have to rely on larger outside agencies for reinforcements and tactical teams. This would be an ideal scenario for the terrorists, as it would give them enough time to fortify their mission.
There have also been reports of "dry runs" in various parts of the country. One such incident happened in
Like any well trained soldier, the terrorists will perform surveillance runs on schools and school buses. This is called reconnaissance, or recon. This is where the public and parents come in. Trust your gut and report ANYTHING that seems suspicious or out of the ordinary. If these terrorists find that people are alert and willing to inform the authorities, they may just move on to an easier target.
In part two I will discuss in more detail of what can be done to deter an attack.
Changing The Mindset of Americans
Statistics have shown that in states where carry-concealed laws are in place, crime has declined. The reasoning behind this is simple: Bad guys like easy targets. If some low life idiot wants to try to rob someone, he doesn't want resistance. If he thinks that a potential mark may be armed, chances are he'll move on to another.
Terrorists probe. They scope. They do their homework, gather intelligence, and find easy targets. Their goal isn't confrontation, its striking terror in the victim's hearts. This is where our weakness is in school security. This is also where guns would balance things out.
Anywhere you go, in any state, you see signs around schools denoting that it is a gun-free (and yes, drug free) zone. This has always struck me as a big advertisement for people with ill intentions. There are very few schools in the United States that have armed security. They are mostly confined to large urban area schools with gang problems. Smaller schools in rural areas are more than likely not going to have any armed security, unless they happen to have a school resource officer or DARE officer.
In the absence of armed officers, I am wholly in favor of teachers being trained and going armed. The arguments against doing so are flawed and based in fear and we won't discuss or debate this issue here. Just think about this for a moment: If only one teacher at
Just think of the advantage of having all teachers armed in any school. You basically have a platoon of armed soldiers. Even in small schools you would have ten to twenty teachers plus support staff.
At Beslan School Number One, there were 59 teachers plus a number of other staff. The Muslim terrorists who took over the school numbered about 32 from the best estimate. The terrorists were outnumbered 2 to 1. I think that the situation would have been much different if the teachers and support staff were armed and trained.
I also believe that armed parents should be welcomed at schools. We have to change our mindset when it comes to schools and guns. We cannot think of guns as something that just jumps up and kills people. Sure, there is a chance that someone with ill-intentions will come onto school grounds armed, but that has always been a possibility. When the good guys outnumber the bad guys it actually reduces the chances of a school shooting. The concern, as I am trying to lay out, is multiple targets with ill intentions and the ability of someone to eliminate, or at least severely limit, the threat.
In my personal time, you will more than likely find me armed. This is the case even when I just run to the store to get some milk. I go to church armed. Unless it is practically impossible to go out armed, Mr. Glock and I usually have a date.
For those who cannot or will not go armed, there are things you can do also. There is an old saying in law enforcement: It is better to be a live witness than a dead statistic.
We no longer live in an age where just a single school shooter is possible. That world is forever gone after 9/11. We have to start thinking in terms of small arms combat, close-quartered, on American soil, in our own backyard. To do otherwise is not only foolish but naive.
In part 3 I will discuss what to do and what not to do in case of a hostile takeover of a school.
What To Do If An Attack Occurs
As the old saying goes, "Our children are our future". When it comes to our children, most parents will do anything to keep them safe. When our children are threatened, we tend to disregard anything resembling normal courses of action and drop everything to come to their aid. It is our natural instinct.
The chances that your local school will come under attack are remote. With the tens of thousands of elementary and middle schools across the country, being overly paranoid about such an attack would be akin to playing the lottery and expecting to win. There is a difference between being paranoid and being prepared though, and walking that fine line can save you and your child's life.
In the event of an attack at one of our nation's schools, terrorists will rely on these parental instincts and use them to their advantage. They would count on parents, as well as the media, to converge on the school en mass. Although it goes against everything you do and feel as a parent, you cannot just drop everything and run to protect your child. Intelligence reports suggest that in such a scenario the terrorists will at least attempt to booby trap vehicles in the parking lot with Improvised Explosive Devices (IED’s) or more conventional car bombs. They will set them up to be remotely detonated so that they can inflict the maximum civilian and law enforcement casualties. Going to the school after a siege has begun is a mute point. It will be too late to do anything. The point is to help prevent an attack from happening. This is the best way to ensure your child’s safety.
The following guidelines can be found at The National Terror Alert Response Center, My thanks goes out to them for being on the cutting edge of this scenario.
What You Can Do As A Parent
Most importantly, plan now. Take the necessary steps today that will ensure you and your family’s safety.
Be Alert …Get an Alert
The sooner you are aware that a terror attack is underway, the sooner you can react and the greater your chance for staying safe. We strongly recommend that you subscribe to an Emergency Alert Notification service and keep your mobile phone, text pager or PDA with you at all times.
We use and recommend Alerts USA. Yes, we advertise on this site for them and there’s a reason. Their alert notification service is, in our opinion, beyond comparison. The system alerts you regardless of location, with near real-time notification of terrorist attacks, threats, warnings and advisories. The alert is sent directly to your cell phone, text pager or PDA and is available on any mobile device, on any network, anywhere in the
If an attack is underway, whether it’s in a school, a mall, a subway or any other location, one of the best safeguards you can have is an early notification.
When you receive an alert, ACT IMMEDIATELY!
Create a Plan
Preparing for a potential terrorist strike provides you your best chance of survival in the event an attack actually takes place. Preparedness should always be considered in the home, school and workplace for any unexpected event.
Keep Current Authorizations On File
Most schools will only allow an authorized family member or guardian to pick up a child from school. Be sure to have all authorization forms signed and registered with the school. Be sure that the school has updated information about how to reach parents and responsible caregivers to arrange for pickup. And, ask what type of authorization the school may require to release a child to someone you designate, if you are not able to pick up your child. During times of emergency the school telephones may be overwhelmed with calls.
Designate A “Point” person
Next, establish a plan for picking up your child in the event of an actual attack. Who is the closest “point of contact” authorized to pick up your child? It needs to be someone who is prepared to drop everything at a moments notice and proceed to the school immediately when notified.
If you work some distance from the school, find someone closer. The moment an alert goes out or you hear that a school somewhere has been seized or is under attack, activate your plan and above all, remain calm.
What To Do If An Attack Takes Place
If it’s your child’s school…
This will go against every instinct that you have as a parent but if it’s your child’s school that has been attacked, DO NOT GO TO THE SCHOOL. Terrorist’s plans that have been uncovered show they are counting on you showing up along with the news media. When you arrive it’s very likely that you’ll be greeted by car bombs strategically placed within the school parking lot, sniper fire, or worse.
This is not a normal crime scene and law enforcement will most likely need to take immediate tactical action. That action may include live fire and engagement with the terrorists. Your presence will only slow down deployment during a very critical time.
In a Beslan type attack, law enforcement knows the terrorists have no exit strategy. They have come with a single intent. Stay away and let law enforcement do what they are trained to do.
If it’s NOT your child’s school that has been attacked
Immediately after being alerted, contact your child using a pre-determined code on a cell phone or pager. Don’t tell your child that this is related to a terrorist attack. Your child should be taught in advance that whenever they receive a call from you using this code, they should politely excuse themselves from the classroom and go to a designated location to be picked up. Be calm, keep your child calm.
Next, contact the school and ask to speak to the person in charge of releasing students. (You should already have the number programmed into you phone) Inform the school that an unexpected situation has come up and you will need to pick up your child immediately. Let the administrator know that you have already paged your child to let them know you or the person you have authorized is on their way.
Have your child picked up and leave the area without delay. When picking your child up, observe what is going on in around the school. If you see suspicious behavior, do not confront the individuals involved.
Take note of the details:
S – Size (Jot down the number of people, gender, ages, and physical descriptions)
A – Activity (Describe exactly what they are doing)
L – Location (Provide exact location)
U – Uniform (Describe what they are wearing, including shoes)
T – Time (Provide date, time, and duration of activity)
E – Equipment (Describe vehicle, make, color etc., license plate, camera, guns, etc)
Suspicious activity is often recalled after an event. We must train ourselves to be on the lookout for things that are out of the ordinary and arouse suspicions.
Report details To Law Enforcement Immediately
You will also need to make some decisions based upon your own circumstances and the situation.
What will you do if school has already been informed of the event and is in lock-down, or in the process of being locked down? Find out your schools plans for such an event and make sure that other families are informed through PTA, etc.
Should you alert the school to the potential threat? Chances are your child’s school will not come under attack and pulling them out would only be out of an abundance of caution. This determination can only be made as the situation presents itself.
Dave Grossman wrote an excellent article about what school administrators can do to shore up school security. You can read that article here. Print it off and mail it to your school principal, district superintendent an school board. Make everyone you possibly can aware of this scenario and what to do if such a scenario does develop.
Remember, vigilance and planning is the key in deterring a terror attack on our schools. You are the front line in this part of the war on terror. It is a war we must win.
