Our Ever-Shrinking Security Blanket

From an article in the Washington Post today about the CIA under the reign of Porter Goss:

"Goss, who served as a CIA operative in Latin America in the 1960s, is also eager to reopen stations there so the agency is prepared when conflicts arise in otherwise quiet areas. That desire has been welcomed even by his critics, but some argue it is still too early in the struggle with al Qaeda to begin moving resources elsewhere." [Editor's italics]

For the allegedly knowledgeable "some," to be unaware at this late date that Al Qaeda doesn't maintain a strong presence in Latin America is inexcuseable. In his new book, The Al Qaeda Connection: International Terrorism, Organized Crime, and the Coming Apocalypse (Prometheus Books), Paul L. Williams provides intensive documentation to the contrary.

First Hezbollah--remember the 1992 and 1994 Buenos Aires attacks against the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish center respectively, killing 115 people between them?--then HAMAS, and now Al Qaeda have gained a foothold in South and Central America. Some may find Williams's alarms about nuclear terrorism sensational, but he supports his work with meticulous footnoting.

His sources range from federal documents like those of the Center for Strategic and International Studies to Military Review to National Review to the investigative Insight Magazine to the Christian Science Monitor. The region is flooded with Islamists, who then pour through our open southern border and disappear into the countryside.

Some might argue that sealing the border tight discriminates against Mexicans. After all, by abusing NAFTA and opening plants in Mexico and then shutting them after locating cheaper labor elsewhere, American corporations bear some responsibility for Mexican poverty.

But it's, as they say, a moot point. if Al Qaeda sets off nuclear bombs in major American cities with supplies it's imported over the border, our thus-gutted economy will no longer be a haven for impoverished immigrants.

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