HONOR AMONG THIEVES

AL-ZAWAHIRI, THE SECOND IN COMMAND of Al-Qaida, released a new video message to Pakistani people yesterday, which shows the desperation of Al-Qaida to keep on going in its supposedly strongest region. Al-Qaida is fighting to survive and has lost its fundamental strength in the last few years. The U.S. government has killed or captured over 60% of Al-Qaida's leadership.

Whether you agree or disagree with the previous administration's War on Terror, it has been successful on all fronts:

We have done major damage to Al-Qaida's operation and leadership destroying 60% of its command structure. Al-Qaida today is even hurting for funds. Al-Zawahiri appealed to the Pakistanis in his video to support the organization with much-needed funding to carry on operations.

We have brought democracy to Iraq where today there are almost 100 different political groups practicing democracy and participating in the government system. Iraq today is the envy of its surrounding neighbors such as Iran, Syria, Egypt and many others - thanks to the U.S. and its allies.

We have eliminated the dictator Saddam Hussein who posed a major threat to the region and our interest.

We have protected the homeland form a major terrorist attacks since 2001.

Our immediate military involvement in Pakistan working with the secular military and applying pressure on the government has helped choke Al-Qaida in its stronghold.

All the above successes were achieved through strong, authoritative confrontation with terror. Despite all the criticism for the way we fought the War on Terror, the results speak for themselves.

Brigitte Gabriel, the New York Times bestselling author of "They Must Be Stopped" and president of Act! for America provides in-depth analysis and commentary on Al-Zawahiri.

THE AL QAEDA READER

Orginally published by Jihad Watch

Given that war, as both Sun Tzu and Mohammed preached, is deception, it behooves us to understand accurately the enemy's motivations and not be fooled by his deceiving propaganda. Yet in the current war against Islamic jihad, the West has stubbornly refused to take seriously what the jihadists tell us, believing instead what Thucydides called the "pretexts" with which an enemy rationalizes his aggression. Osama bin Laden and his theorist Aymin al Zawahiri in particular have provided us with numerous texts outlining the Islamic foundations of their war against the West. A few of these pronouncements and manifestoes have long been available, but now thanks to Raymond Ibrahim's The Al Qaeda Reader, writings previously unavailable in English can be studied and analyzed. Such study will provide powerful evidence that contrary to the deceptions of apologists and the naïve delusions of some Westerners, the bases of the jihadists' actions lie squarely within Islamic tradition, not in the alleged Western crimes against Islam.

Fluent in Arabic and trained as a historian in the ancient Middle East, Ibrahim is currently a technician in the Library of Congress' Near East Section, where he discovered al Qaeda documents that had not been translated into English. He has organized these writings into two sections: theology, writings intended for fellow Muslims that ground al Qaeda's war against the West in the traditional Islamic doctrine of jihad; and propaganda, writings meant for Westerners that cast bin Laden's war as a just response to the depredations of Western powers.

The documents in the first section make a sustained, coherent argument for offensive jihad based on the Koran, the Hadith (the traditions of the words and deeds of Mohammed), and the Ulema (past and present scholars of Islam). Indeed, as Ibrahim notes, "Zawahiri's writings especially are grounded in Islam's roots of jurisprudence; in fact, of the many thousands of words translated here from his three treatises, well more than half are direct quotations from the Koran the Sunna [words, habits, and practices] of Mohammed, and the consensus and conclusions of the Ulema." This extensive grounding weakens the "highjacking" charge apologists use to explain Islamic jihad. On the contrary, al Qaeda's arguments are unexceptionally traditional—which is why, of course, millions of Muslims accept them.

In these writings addressed to fellow Muslims, bin Laden and Zawahiri argue against the notion of "moderate" Islam; the compatibility of Sharia (laws governing Islamic society) with democracy; the idea of accommodation with the enemy; and the prohibition against killing women and children. In other words, they meticulously attack as distortions of Islam all the popular assertions about Islam's nature promulgated by apologists, Westernized Muslims, and even many Christians. As bin Laden himself writes in "Moderate Islam Is a Prostration to the West"—a letter written to the Saudi theologians who in 2002 publicly advocated coexistence with the West—such moderation necessitates the adoption of Western values: "They [the Saudi theologians] first acknowledge their [Westerners'] values and ideologies in their entirety, while shying away from evoking the truth valued by the Religion [Islam] and its foundations."

Even the notion of "co-existence" is a Western idea contrary to Islam: "As if one of the foundations of our religion is how to coexist with infidels!" Quite the contrary: the traditions and foundations of Islam urge believers to "wage war against the infidels and the hypocrites, and be ruthless against them" (Koran 66:9), a verse Zawahiri quotes along with the commentary of al Qurtubi, 13th-century author of a 20-volume exegesis of the Koran: "There is but one theme—and that is zeal for the religion of Allah. He commands the waging of Jihad against the infidel by use of sword, sound sermons, and the summons to Allah."

So too with other Western notions such as tolerance and "dialogue," which bin Laden correctly asserts are "built on Western conceptions, which themselves rest upon the most loathsome, secular principles." Indeed, bin Laden has a strong case, for he appeals for evidence to the life and practices of Mohammed and his companions—along with the Koran the Muslim's guide to every aspect of life—and asks sarcastically, "What evidence is there for Muslims for this [dialogue and shared understanding]? What did the Prophet, the companions after him, and the righteous forebears do? Did they wage jihad against the infidels, attacking them all over the earth, in order to place them under the suzerainty of Islam in great humility and submission? Or did they send messages to discover 'shared understandings' between themselves and the infidels in order that they may reach an understanding whereby universal peace, security, and natural relations would spread—in such a satanic manner as this?"

History shows that bin Laden has the better understanding of Islam than do Western apologists; as Ibrahim summarizes the argument, "'radical' Islam is Islam—without exception." In this same vein, Zawahiri argues in his "Loyalty and Enmity" that the only relationship one can have with the infidel is enmity. Zawahiri buttresses this argument with numerous quotations from Islamic theology, the most important coming from the Koran 60:4: "'We disown you and the idols which you worship besides Allah. We renounce you: enmity and hate shall reign between us until you believe in Allah alone.'" On this authority comes the necessity to wage jihad against the infidel.

Perhaps the most important document in Ibrahim's collection is Zawahiri's "Jihad, Martyrdom, and the Killing of Innocents." For years, we have been told that terrorism is un-Islamic because Islam forbids suicide and the killing of non-combatants. Zawahiri, however, teases out from Islamic tradition a perfectly rational and coherent argument in support of terrorism and suicide bombings.

Zawahiri starts by repeating Islam's acceptance of deception in war as justified, thus legitimizing suicide bombings, which are deceptive by nature. Next, he builds his argument on selected hadiths, which as Ibrahim notes requires some interpretive stretching. Zawahiri gets around this difficulty by resorting to analogy, "a legitimate tool of Islamic jurisprudence," as Ibrahim reminds us. Zawahiri focuses on intention, why the Muslim kills himself, not who kills him: "Thus the deciding factor in all these situations is one and the same: the intention—is it to service Islam [martyrdom] or is it out of depression and [despair]?"

As for killing women and children, Mohammed himself provides a precedent during the siege of Ta'if, where he used catapults. The Prophet's response to the question of killing women and children, which of course catapult missiles would do perforce, was "They [women and children] are from among them [infidels]." Again, the ultimate intention is the key: referring to al Shafi' and the Hanbalis, two schools of Islamic jurisprudence, Zawahiri argues that it is permissible "to bombard the idolators even if Muslims and those who are cautioned against killing are intermingled with them as long as there is a need or an obligation for Muslims to do so, or if not striking leads to a delay of the jihad."

Zawahiri's reasoning in defense of suicide bombing may be ultimately unconvincing to many Muslims, or unsustainable by more careful exegesis. But the mere fact that such a case can be made—something impossible to do in the Christian, or Hebraic, or Hindu, or Buddhist traditions—and that millions of faithful Muslims accept the case, speaks volumes about the "religion of peace."

These leftist bromides appear over and over in subsequent speeches and manifestoes, and testify to bin Laden's shrewd recognition of the West's Achilles heel: the appeasing proclivities of its elite intellectuals who, riddled with self-loathing guilt, are incapable of defending their way of life and its highest goods.

The Al Qaeda Reader, simply by letting our enemies speak in their own voices, explodes the popular delusion that Western crimes and policies are responsible for the "distortion" of Islam that al Qaeda represents. As Ibrahim writes, "This volume of translations, taken as whole, prove once and for all that, despite the propaganda of Al Qaeda and its [global] sympathizers, Radical Islam's war with the West is not finite and limited to political grievances—real or imagined—but is existential, transcending time and space and deeply rooted in faith."

This means that the fight will be long and hard, that leaving Iraq or creating a Palestinian state will not buy peace, and that the side that accurately understands its enemy and has confidence in its own beliefs will ultimately triumph. Thanks to Raymond Ibrahim's The Al Qaeda Reader, we have the means for achieving that understanding.

STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION NOW

Thanks to Glen Reinsford for the following:

Pardon the crude analogy, but what if someone handed you a revolver with one bullet and five empty chambers and asked you to put it to your temple and squeeze the trigger? Would you indulge them?

If you are a sane person, then you would naturally decline the offer, regardless of the number of empty chambers. Even a one in a hundred chance of doing harm is hardly a reason, in and of itself, for taking an unnecessary risk.

Consider the similarities to Muslim immigration:

1) In most cases, nothing bad will happen.
2) In some cases, it will.
3) The risk increases as the process continues.
4) There is an utter pointlessness to the whole affair.

First, let's concede that the majority of Muslim immigrants mean Americans no harm. They have their reasons for not wanting to live in Muslim countries and these aren't hard to guess. Of the fifty-three Islamic nations on the planet, there is hardly a single one that isn't characterized by some combination of debilitating corruption, economic blight, third-world standard of living, political repression, or an appalling human rights condition.

Unfortunately, however, more Muslims in America will inevitably result in a more Muslim America, which ultimately means having to deal with the problems that plague Muslim society. If there are tangible benefits that offset the added strain of trying to accommodate a religion that is very much at odds with Western liberal values (including freedom of conscience, social tolerance, democracy, and the equality of women), then they are not immediately apparent.

Even the Council on American-Islamic Relations, one of the most vocal advocates of unfettered Islamic immigration into America rarely bothers to try and make the case that non-Muslim citizens will benefit from an influx of those believing that Islam is meant to be the dominant political, religious and social system that Muhammad required it to be. Instead, CAIR merely implies that Muslims are entitled to America by virtue of the fact that the U.S. accepts other immigrants.

Beyond flirting with cultural catastrophe, there is also the loss of American lives resulting from the domestic terror attacks that will certainly escalate as the U.S. inexplicably imports a fifth column in a time of war.

A Pew Research poll released in May shows that one out of every four Muslims in America either supports al-Qaeda outright or is ambivalent about the terrorists that slaughtered 3,000 fellow citizens in the name of Allah just six short years ago. About the same percentage of younger Muslims also believe that suicide bombings can be justified in "defense of Islam."

Support for terrorism isn't just theoretical. The release of the study was sandwiched between news of a shooting rampage plot by Muslims against Fort Dix residents and a separate Fedayeen plot literally to blow up JFK airport in New York. It also follows the murder of five Americans at a Utah shopping mall by a Muslim teenager in February.

In each case, the terrorists are immigrants to America.

This is also true of Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, who murdered two people waiting in line at an LAX airline counter in 2002, Mohammed Taheri-azar, who intentionally ran down nine students with an SUV in North Carolina in 2006, and OsamaAhmedIbrahim, a Muslim doctor in Chicago who allegedly allowed a Jewish patient to die under his care in 2003. NaveedHaq, who shot six women at a Seattle Jewish center last year, was the son of immigrants.

The Qur'an, Islam's holiest text, contains dozens of verses that directly encourage religious violence, and there are literally hundreds more that speak of Hell or hatred toward nonbelievers. Muslim apologists usually insist that the bloodiest directives are reserved for times of war (even if this stipulation is not always evident from the context of the passage).

Many Americans naively assume that they are safe from Islamic terror because they mean Muslims no harm. Indeed, the Pew Research study showed that the majority of American Muslims are "well-assimilated" and have a "positive view" of American society, something that simply would not be the case if there truly was a "war on Islam." Even CAIR (an organization that normally tries to convince the world of just how miserable life is for Muslims in the U.S.) hastily touted this part of the study, as it tried to assuage the concerns of Americans over the news that their Muslim neighbors may not be who they appear.

But whether or not there actually is a war on Islam matters far less than what Muslims choose to believe. Unfortunately, an overwhelming majority of Muslims overseas and an alarming number of Muslims in the U.S. are convinced that there is a war against their religion. In fact, high-profile organizations like CAIR and MPAC routinely feed this misconception with negative propaganda, while very few Muslim leaders are active in countering it.

Suddenly the issue of whether or not those Qur'anic mandates to "slay the infidels wherever ye find them" are limited to times of war becomes somewhat academic. A Muslim who actually believes the rhetoric of war (as most Muslims now do) has, at his fingertips, a manual of instruction telling him to strike off heads and fingertips in the cause of Allah. What sense does it make for the U.S. to draw its future citizens from a pool of potential terrorists?

As if this weren't bad enough, the Pew Research study also finds that the younger generation of Muslims is more accommodating of terrorism than their parents - a trend that is supported by surveys of Muslims elsewhere in the West, with alarming implications. While moderates are capable of breeding radicals, radicals rarely breed moderates. Islamic extremism will expand with each new generation, even if the overall number of Muslims stays the same.

Progressive radicalization is a persistent theme in Islam, not just in the West, but in other parts of the world as well, where fundamentalism usually has a way of winning out over pragmatism.

In Gaza, for example, Palestinians recently used their new-found "independence" to elect the bloody Islamist terror group, Hamas, to power, even though it meant an immediate and drastic reduction in foreign aid.

It is also highly unlikely that the Pakistan of today (where Islamists are forcing the implementation of Sharia and the persecution of surviving religious minorities) is what the father of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, had in mind when he engineered an independent Muslim nation just 60 years ago. Jinnah was a secularist who believed in the separation of church and state.

Lebanon, a vibrant and predominantly Christian nation before 1975, is perhaps the most vivid example of Muslim immigration pushing a nation past the tipping point in the modern age. Native Lebanese expert, Brigitte Gabriel, traces the downfall of her country to the absorption of Palestinian refugees, which gave radical Islam the foothold that it needed to trigger the civil war.

The subsequent occupation by Syria forced out huge numbers of Christians and devastated the social fabric of what had been the Arab world's best example of economic success, civil liberty and tolerance. The free reign of Hezbollah and other radical groups has virtually ensured Muslim hegemony and Lebanon's grinding descent into the abyss of dysfunction that defines those nations under Islamic rule.

Every country that is Muslim today was once non-Muslim. Every culture that found itself under the heel of Islam died a pitiful death as the concentration of Muslims within the population gradually exceeded critical mass. This is because Islam is an end unto itself. Like a virus, once it is introduced, it uses the host's machinery to make copies and eventually strangle native religions into tiny, persecuted minorities.

In the past, Islam achieved its imperial goals by the sword. Today - notwithstanding the occasional terror attack - Jihad against the West is waged via the tactics of unilateral immigration and one-sided proselytizing.

This is not to say that all Muslims are a threat to America's future, of course. Indeed, there is a handful in the United States that does stand against extremism, trying their best to convince the rest of the Islamic world that America is not a legitimate target for terror. Unlike, say, the first-generation immigrants who mostly make up the executive leadership of the Hamas-linked CAIR, these Muslims aren't takers. They are makers—giving back to America, rather than existing merely to foment grievance and group identity for personal indulgence.

Presumably, there are potential Muslim immigrants who would also become patriotic and productive citizens. Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing who they are or predicting who their children might become. Like putting a partially-loaded gun to one's head, there is absolutely no compelling reason to gamble with American life and civil liberty. What reward have Americans gained so far that can possibly offset the loss of those already killed by Muslims on American soil?

For potential immigrants who believe that Islam is the true religion, America's message should be one of challenge rather than appeasement. Over the course of fourteen centuries now, Islam has demonstrated a proven ability to take prosperous countries and turn them into disaster zones. Now it is time for Muslims to show that their "one, true religion" is capable of building societies in which Muslims themselves actually want to live rather than escape.

After all, what service to the Muslim world does the United States do by absorbing the most reform-minded individuals from where they are needed most?

It should go without saying that citizens of America who happen to be Muslim should not be viewed with suspicion or treated any differently than anyone else merely on the basis of their religion. But neither should Americans be afraid of confronting organizations like CAIR, which cynically exploit Western tolerance for the purpose of ultimately destroying that tolerance and advancing a theocratic system that is fundamentally opposed to the very principles that made America successful and attractive.

Again, the message should be clear: If you want to live in a Muslim country, then go live in one. On the other hand, if you don't want to live in a Muslim country, then stop trying to turn America into one.

The problems are not uniquely American, of course. But Americans are best positioned to avoid them if they can muster the courage. Others in the West are not as fortunate. Some have developed a pathetic resignation to their fate.

On a recent visit to the United States, Queen Elizabeth talked positively of the "challenges" posed by "diversity." This was a thinly-veiled reference to the consequences of British immigration policy over the last fifty years, which now include a disaffected Muslim underclass that is just beginning to flex its muscle. In the Queen's mind, it would appear that diversity is the tautological justification for very social "challenges" that diversity creates.

But "diversity" is merely a description, not a self-evident moral axiom that confers any sort of legitimacy in its own right. The same social engineers who champion the cause of diversity are often known to sing a different tune when it comes to poverty, the uneven distribution of wealth and the many other elements of economic diversity.

Challenge and risk often have their place at the personal level. There is usually nothing wrong with the challenge to exercise, eat right or become more productive, for example. Likewise, there are rewards in life, such as a lucrative career or meaningful friendships that are often accomplished only through taking a measure of personal risk.

The challenges posed by Muslim immigration are not personal, however, and neither do the esoteric rewards (whatever they may be) offset the all-too-tangible consequences for the broader society, particularly since it will affect those members who never wanted to incur these risks in the first place.

Muslim immigration adds nothing that is truly necessary to the lives of Americans, but its degenerative effects are already starting to threaten the American way of life through demoralization, litigation and the other subtle tactics of cultural Jihad.

In this sense, Americans are following in Europe's footsteps when they would do better to avoid the example being set. Although the Brits may brag about the problems that they have created for themselves, a more sensible France is quietly trying to pay some of its five million Muslims to leave the country. Other Western nations are also trying to accommodate the social strain that is rising from a petulant and increasingly unruly Islamic minority.

The Muslim world does not accept non-Muslim immigrants. In fact, it is becoming more homogenous as Islamic regimes drive out religious minorities or whittle them down through other means of attrition. Even Muslims who feel entitled to life in the West often decry the presence of foreigners in Muslim lands.

But if Muslim lands are for Muslims, then it is all the more reason for insisting that this is where they stay, particularly since the legacy of Islamic immigration into the West is becoming a series of unilateral concessions to appease Muslims that not only go unreciprocated, but are then the new foothold for even bolder demands.

Muslim immigration is a losing proposition for America. At best, it is an unnecessary risk that offers no comparable benefit. At worst, it is suicidal.

SCANDAL AT FBI

Some matters of state are simply undigestible. Are we to believe that certain unscrupulous American interests are deliberately weakening the defenses of the United States in this war against radicalized Islam in order to further some undivulged agenda, or worse, selling us out to the enemy? Have you heard about the the FBI translator scandal? We always seem to be in bed with those who would harm us the moment we cut off those billions of American dollars that are sent into their coffers as just a simplified collective form of jizya.

It's no joke. Several members from the American Congress For Truth members have discovered a curious disconnect from what our news media tells us, and what they have experienced in their own lives.

Jerry Gordon posted the following:

Last Thursday, Brigitte Gabriel and I put out an Action Alert to the American Congress for Truth membership, asking you for examples of how our government rebuffed your valued assistance as Arabic and Farsi linguists for critical intelligence translation work assignments in military, foreign and homeland security agencies. In less than 72 hours were got dozens of responses and they are still coming in.

While only a sampling, they are nevertheless indicative of your concerns about why our government persists in denial of loyal American citizens offering to reduce the mountainous backlog of untranslated intercepts and transcripts of interrogations in Arabic and Farsi, in particular.

How mountainous is the backlog of untranslated intercepts? Read this comment from a National Security Agency (NSA) official quoted from Congressional hearings in a Washington Times article on the subject written by Rowan Scarborough and Bill Gertz entitled:"Intelligence backlog."

NSA director, Army Lt. Gen. Keith in commenting in written response to Senators on the large backlog of time consuming labor intensive foreign language intercepts on terrorism noted: "Today's backlog is no longer confined to Arabic and its multiple dialect but also less commonly taught languages where linguists are in short supply."

One knowledgeable insider in our national security apparatus wrote in response to the ACT action alert:

'The fact that the FBI and the military don't have enough linguists/translators especially after 9/11 is a disgrace and the fact that those they have are possibly not reliable or trustworthy makes it imperative that new competent resources are found..."

Imagine that you are a Marine Corps battalion commander in Anbar province in western Iraq-hotbed of the Sunni and al Qaeda insurgency. You find out from your G-2 via counter intelligence operatives that the local interpreters procured through a contract let via a major defense contractor have been feeding intel to these insurgent groups. You're darn angry because this has cost you casualties and in some instances lives of brave Marines in your field units. What do you do besides complain to the theater ground commander and higher intelligence echelons at CENTCOMM.

As we have found out in our inquiries to our ACT members we have an overwhelming response that includes first rate Arab and Farsi linguists who are Middle Eastern Christians, Jews and apostate Muslims disappointed that their talents have gone wanting because of political correctness and frankly outright intimidation by Muslim linguists in our security agencies.

Here are some examples of the responses received from ACT members and others to date. I will begin with Brigitte Gabriel's experience. She is one of many Christian Lebanese who tried to help but got no where.


Brigitte Gabriel, ACT founder, Lebanese Christian.
Brigitte applied three times to the FBI in 2001 and 2002 VOLUNTEERING her services to help translate, in whatever capacity she could be used, to help our country in the fight against terrorism. She never got an answer. Finally the Government sent her a government application that stated that translators must be between the age of 25 and 35, (she had just turned 36), must have graduated with a degree in the language they wish to apply to translate and must have three years on job experience as translators. (utterly ridiculous bureaucracy) Meanwhile complaining on TV that they do not have enough translators. Brigitte Gabriel speaks not only the classical Arabic which is the official language of all the Middle East, but also the local dialects, Lebanese, Syrian, Egyptian, Palestinian, and Jordanian.

From an Iraqi Christian.
"I applied twice for the FBI. I never got an answer from them. I heard that the recruiters are Egyptians and want translators with an Egyptian dialect. I don't know if religion is a factor, but I've given up. I think it will be very intimidating under these circumstances. By the way I'm an Iraqi Christian living in the U.S. I worked as a linguist for the U.S. Army in Iraq."

From a Lebanese American Christian.
"I was deployed from Ft. Benning, Georgia in May, 2003 in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Supporting our armed forces and intelligence units. In October 2004, I was injured by a suicide bomb blast inside the Green Zone [in Baghdad]. I had to come back for treatment. A year ago I was released by all doctors and they recommended that I could go back to work, but not in Iraq. I called my employer and to my amazement they offered me a job back in Iraq but not a stateside one because I lacked a security clearance. I refused and they sent me a letter in January, 2006 laying me off. I have tried in vain to find a job with the government or defense contractors. The recruiters are usually Muslim and some have told me that they have relatives working for al Jazeera TV. Can you believe that!

From a Persian American Jew
I volunteered to help with Farsi translations. I heard back from them that they were interested in my Hebrew skills!! I didn't see how Hebrew came into the equation with dealing with our country's dangers. The response was very bureaucratic in nature. I have since done Farsi translation for a private think tank.

From a Coptic Christian American
"I am a Christian Egyptian who applied for a linguist position with the FBI after 9/11, went through the testing process and was sent a rejection letter. I would love to contribute to your cause, if I can be of assistance."

Rejection of American Israeli citizens
"I know personally of such a case where a loyal American applied for such service and got nowhere. This American Israel Jew got the same treatment. He is young, intelligent eastern looking guy who could make a real contribution to the efforts. Something funny is going on."

What these ACT responses do is to resonate with previous reports of bias against Middle Eastern Christians, Jews and apostate Muslims chronicled in reports from WorldNetDaily about discrimination against American Israeli linguists and by investigative authors Rita Katz—an Iraqi born American Jew—in her book "Terrorist Hunter" and Paul Sperry in his
engrossing book "Infiltration."

So what is ACT going to do now that we have lifted the veil on this burgeoning scandal? Plenty. Working with key House and Senate National and Homeland Security Committees we are going to push for following:

A GAO audit of major defense contractors supplying in-country interpreters at egregious billing rates running as high at $100,000 annually versus $30,000 for a military trained linguist interpreter;

We are going to file under the Federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) a request for information from military, foreign and domestic intelligence agencies that includes the annexed information.

We are going to hold a Washington Summit for ACT members to discuss this issue and more as part of a major agenda for action;

We are going to request hearings on the translator 'scandal' from Senate and House National and Homeland Security Committees.

We will assist these subject matter Committees on Capitol Hill in the review and preparation of remedial legislation and executive actions to bring the translator scandal to heel, so that our troops in the field and our citizens at home aren't in jeopardy of a major series of 9/11 Islamist terrorist attacks.

Act will need your help in reaching out to those of you who are U.S. citizens to get to your Congressional representatives and Bush Administration officials demanding their attention to this problem.

Keep those emails coming! They are grist for the mill and build an effective case for immediate attention to this problem. A problem that needs resolution now if this nation is to be secure. A problem that is compounded by political correctness and intimidation by American Muslim advocacy groups.

We will continue to monitor your emails and report back on developments on this issue as they emerge. Rest assured that ACT is going to make this a 'cause' that will resound in the halls of Congress and the mainstream media.

Thank you for telling it like it is. With your support ACT will win this battle!