While no longer breaking news, the Iranian plot to assassinate a Saudi ambassador touches on another, larger story. It starts with how countries who export terror seek to infiltrate the US. Our various intelligence agencies and web of foreign contacts through the CIA and State Department make the US a very hard egg to crack. Any direct military attack is practically unthinkable. However, our nation does have an underbelly, and a soft one, at that.
Iran used a dual US-Iranian citizen to carry out the hit. With the assistance of its ruthless Quds force, Iran set out to kill the ambassador, presumably at a restaurant. The Iranian assassins also sought to enlist the help of a Mexican drug cartel that routinely exploits our porous southern border. The Iranians were certainly on the right track. Fortunately, we were able to prevent a disastrous event.
Terror suspect Manssor Arbabsiar
The man involved in the plot is named Manssor Arbabsiar. We can now add his name to a trend that so far has included Anwar al-Awlaki (recently deceased) and Yaser Esam Hamdi. The special circumstances around this group are that they are all American-born citizens. That was the subject of a post I wrote back in March. “‘Terror Babies’: A Growing National Security Threat“:
The nation’s immigration policy debate has entered into a new stage. What’s being questioned is rather children of legal but visiting “non-immigrant” parents allowed birthright citizenship. Apparently, this happens more than realized. Temporary visitors such as students, workers, and extended stay visitors give birth to 200,000 babies each year in the US. Hence, the term birth tourism. Most notably among these children are Anwar al-Awlaki and Yaser Esam Hamdi. This special category has been rightfully dubbed “Terror Babies.”
Media Matters picked up on this, and their false reporting led to a baseless smear of Andrew Breitbart. As is their usual manner, they didn’t read it. They just know Breitbart and many of his writers are right-leaning thinkers. So they took my post and tried to convince Breitbart that I said all children of immigrants are “terror babies.” In other words, I was just spouting more mean ol’ xenophobic conservative ideology. In a Univision interview, anchor Jorge Ramos used Media Matters’ “research” on the article to paint Breitbart as anti-Hispanic:
RAMOS: In one of your websites, in “Big Peace,” there was an article written by Jason Bradley titled “Terror Babies: A Growing National Security Threat.” Do you share Mr. Bradley’s point of view?
BREITBART: I didn’t even read that article but I can tell you this, I created the Huffington Post in the United States of America which is a left of center blog. I created my blogs which are mostly right of center and I believe in open debate in our society. That’s why I believe so strongly in the first amendment, so I don’t know the specifics of that article, had I known going into this interview, I would’ve read it and we could have talked about the specifics.
RAMOS: Well the specifics is that Mr. Bradley’s view is that children born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrants are terror babies.
BREITBART: I’ve never read that, I’ve never heard that and I’d have to see the context of that to give you an opinion. I would never call people that are born in this country who are from Mexico terror babies.
Those were hardly the “specifics,” and I said no such thing. I only dealt with the facts. The recent and brazen attempt by Iran, using a dual citizen to carry out a political assassination, only substantiates the point I made.
Larry O’Connor at our sister site, Big Journalism, cut straight to the matter in his response:
For Ramos to ask Breitbart about one post from March of this year, that didn’t exactly make headlines from coast-to-coast is unfair on its face. But then for Ramos to characterize the post as saying “children born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrants are terror babies” is the kind of mis-representation that could only have been made if his staff only read the Media Matters lies about the post instead of the post itself. Ramos not only slandered the post and its author with that statement, he also misinformed his audience about an article that most of them probably did not read.
Breitbart’s answer to Ramos’ fabricated mis-characterization of the post was “I would never call people that are born in this country who are from Mexico terror babies” and of course, neither did Mr. Bradley or anybody else in the Big Peace post in question.
I wonder if Media Matters and their associates will finally one day realize the nature of our enemies and the real threats America faces instead of trying to create straw men here at home.
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