Stop Training Saudi Arabia

I’m glad the FBI was capable of crack the iPhones of the Pensacola naval air base shooter, which confirmed that radicalized Royal Saudi Air Pressure second lieutenant Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani had communicated with al-Qaida to hold out a “particular operation.” Three younger American patriots died in Alshamrani’s December 2019 assault. The extra info we have now to forestall the unnecessary slaughter of U.S. army members on U.S. soil the higher.

However Legal professional Normal William Barr’s announcement of the Pensacola jihadist’s unlocked telephones yesterday raises extra questions than it solutions. Why haven’t the American folks been knowledgeable but of primary particulars relating to how Alshamrani acquired into our nation? Why have we resumed overseas flight coaching whereas lockdowns have put practically 37 million residents out of labor — and whereas nationwide safety issues concerning the A-2 visa for overseas army trainees stay unresolved? Why weren’t all short-term overseas visa applications for each civilian and army pilots from all over the world instantly frozen as a part of President Donald Trump’s so-called immigration ban?

In January, Senate Homeland Safety and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and fellow committee members Sens. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., asked Homeland Safety Secretary Chad Wolf for a “timeline of Alshamrani’s nonimmigrant visa vetting course of, the particular vetting actions carried out, whether or not he was interviewed by U.S. officers and whether or not the Division of Homeland Safety (DHS) was made conscious of any paperwork offered by the Saudi authorities indicating terrorist sympathies.”

The letter additionally sought info on “what number of A visa holders have been refused entry by Customs and Border Safety and what number of of these refusals have been Saudi nationals, in addition to particulars on DHS monitoring of visiting overseas army personnel’s social media and any such monitoring carried out in Alshamrani’s case.”

Was biometric knowledge collected?

Have been any pink flags shared by Saudi Arabia, and did our consular officers comply with up on any warnings?

The three GOP senators additionally requested Wolf about what “diplomatic courtesies or different variations from common nonimmigrant visa arrivals are afforded on arrival to people on an A visa?”

It’s historic historical past, however these of us who care a couple of functioning immigration and entrance system bear in mind how lazy and pandering State Division bureaucrats didn’t even hassle to interview the 9/11 Saudi hijackers in individual after they utilized for fast-track visas. The Bush administration arrange the so-called “Visa Express” program to permit Saudis to skip the traces and wait instances.

ORDER IT NOW

We additionally keep in mind that when the FBI was warned earlier than 9/11 by Phoenix-based agent Kenneth Williams that Arab Muslim pilots must be monitored as a result of his investigation discovered “a coordinated effort by Usama Bin Laden to ship college students to the US to attend civil aviation universities and faculty,” the FBI ignored Williams. He had referred to as on his superiors to conduct nationwide sweeps of aviation colleges and surveillance of suspicious visa candidates. Had the feds executed so, after all, Muslim grievance-groups would have been up in arms and hindsight hypocrite columnists like former New York Instances’ finger-wagger Maureen Dowd would have screamed “Islamophobe” sooner than a dashing bullet.

Authorities officers insist that the vetting is rigorous. However a 2017 report by the Particular Inspector Normal for Afghanistan Reconstruction uncovered how untold numbers of A-2 overseas pilot trainees from the Center East have merely disappeared for greater than a dozen years. In 2014, I reported on the alarming phenomenon of Muslim deserters in 2014 who had been granted visas for serving as interpreters in Afghanistan and Iraq. “We typically don’t know who we are training. Now we have little dependable info,” one U.S. official instructed RAND Corp. researchers. Their examine “discovered vital issues with present U.S. vetting practices in relation to safety help.”

Why would we proceed to place our troopers, pilots, sailors and residents at such pointless threat? Comply with the cash. The Pensacola joint coaching program was a part of the $30 billion sale of F-15s to the Saudis — engineered by Hillary Clinton and her pay-for-play State Division.

Is it an excessive amount of to ask President Trump, who campaigned on “America first,” “construct the wall” and “drain the swamp,” to place some flesh on these bones and shut down the Saudi terror pilot pipeline?