Following Up My "Disturbing Thoughts"

Okay…just one more post on this and then we’ll get back to our regular Homeschrewling programming.

I just wanted to list the specific things I’ve read or heard that has captured my interest on the topic of terrorists hitting our schools, since I know many of you don't have the time to read all my hyperlinks from the previous post.

Headlines from actual news reports:

FBI: Extremists sign up to drive school buses (USA Today;179 days ago)

Two Saudi men arrested for boarding school bus to Wharton High School (WTSP Tampa Bay’s 10 News; 5/19/06)

School bus thefts raise security concerns (KHOU.com, Houston; 8/28/07; 17 school buses missing in the Houston area)

Other reports and analysis from Glenn Beck and Brad Thor, taken from radio show transcript, 9/11/07:

We see thousands of school bus radios missing in the Northwest, the Pacific Northwest. (Thor)

In Iraq we found a diskette that had a -- that had downloaded all of the Department of Education security measures, and they're all available online. (Beck)

…that disk was on an Iraqi who was arrested in a terrorism raid, an Iraqi with known ties to active Islamic terrorism. (Thor)

…it would blow your mind how many law enforcement departments I talked to that have interrupted active surveillance on schools across the country. (Thor)

What was found in an insurgent, an Al-Qaeda affiliated safehouse over in Iraq, they were school blueprints, basically, floor plans for schools across the country. San Diego, California, West Salem, Oregon, Boyertown, Pennsylvania, schools in Texas, Virginia, New Jersey, (Thor)

Bin Laden has said what we did in Russia, we will visit 100 times worse in America [referencing the attack in Beslan]. He's even gotten a religious edict allowing him to kill up to two million American children and what they are looking for is a school where the girls are old enough to rape and the boys are too small to fight back. (Thor)

There's eight hours of tape that we found in Pakistan in another Al-Qaeda training camp, eight hours of tape where they made a mock American school. The guy, the terrorists came in and they took mock American students, they took one little boy and they shot him in the head immediately and then in English said, "Now follow our directions exactly." (Beck)

…what we've discovered is all of their plans on how to surveil the schools, how to get in the schools, how to hold the schools, the one thing that's missing from all these plans, there is no exit strategy. These people are not planning to leave alive. (Thor)

…this Al-Qaeda model of being like a shark, how they swim big concentric circles. They don't come right in and bite you. They collect Intel, getting closer and closer, tighter and tighter in the circles. But before they attack, before they take the bite, they come up and they bump you. They want to see are you a threat, are you going to put up a fight, or can we get you. And that's what we're seeing across the country…[referring to suspected dry runs and “bumps”] (Thor)

What to do according to Glenn if this goes down:

…if you happen to see that in Kansas, a school has been taken, you leave, you go to [your] school and you tell the principal, I need to get my kid because she's got a doctor's appointment. [don't create a panic]

Now, if it happens at [your] kids' school, you do not go to the school. That's the last thing you do. [possibility of secondary attacks]

In a wonderful in-depth post on Ordnance-Corner, Senior PoliceOne contributor Chuck Remsburg writes a piece about a three-day conference for terrorist issues, sponsored by the International Assn. of Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors (IALEFI) in Atlantic City. Here are a few bits from that:

Muslim religious literature…states clearly that the killing of children not only is “permitted” in Islam but is “approved” by Mohammed…

Probably not so many terrorists involved at a single location [as in Beslan]. Moving that big a contingent into place would likely attract too much attention and thwart the attack. Grossman describes a more likely possibility, in his opinion: Terrorist cells of four operatives each will strike simultaneously at four different schools. They’ll probably pick middle schools with no police officers on site, where the girls are “old enough to rape” but students are not big enough to fight back effectively.

The targets will probably be in states “with no concealed-carry laws and no hunting culture” and in communities where “police do not have rifles.” Rural areas may be favored, where 30 minutes or more could be required for responders to arrive in force.

In all, 100 to 300 children could be slaughtered in a first strike. Terrorists capable of this are already embedded in communities “all over America,” Grossman and Rassa agreed. [All emphasis mine]

I feel better now knowing I’ve shared this with some of you who were not aware of the threat. Of course, it’s not imminent, improbable that it will happen to anyone we know personally, but the possibility of such an attack is greater now than ever and there are many people who know way more about this than any of us do that are seriously worried about it. I pray they know enough so we never have to live it.

Please be active in your schools and communities, make a plan with your family members, and don't be afraid to ask your teachers and administrators questions related to security procedures and other "what if" scenarios. And thanks for bearing with me...I'm glad I have this forum to inform those I love without putting us all through the discomfort of an actual conversation!


Other sources: Gateway Pundit; Blogger News Network; National Terror Alert