Beslan in America? You Connect the Dots

By Duane Lester • Sep 14th, 2007

On the first day of school in September 2004, Beslan, Russia began a three day nightmare. Around 100 militant Muslim terrorists took control of the school and held it for three days. At the end of the seige, three hundred thirty four citizens were dead. One hundred eighty-six were children. It was the most horrific attack on schoolchildren the world had ever seen.

In the months following September 11th, clues that were either missed or not understood began being understood with a new clarity. Across the nation, pundits and experts could not understand how America’s intelligence agencies failed to “connect the dots.” There were men learning to fly, but not learning to take off or land. Reports said Osama was going to use planes in an attack. We have seen them all.

Now, a new series of dots are being connected, and it leads to a Beslan in America style atrocity. Here is a look at the clues that lead me to believe the next great terrorist attack will be against America’s schoolchildren.

Connecting the Dots

In 2002, WorldNetDaily reported on a videotape captured from a terrorist training camp showing trainees launching an attack against a school. The NY Post later reported on the same tape. It described the video in its article:

“Two of the kidnappers are sitting in the cafeteria,” a narrator says in Arabic.

At the command “move!” a janitor sweeping a hallway inside drops his broom and pulls out a gun. Others burst into rooms, fire automatic weapons and bark English commands at a group of children and adults, apparently locals and other camp residents co-opted for the exercise.

“Sit,” a hooded terrorist yells to the children, who shriek in horror.

“Don’t move, don’t move,” he says. The children are made to kneel and place their hands on the walls while adults stand with hands raised and are frisked.

The armed thugs then herd their captives down the hallways as they shout in English, “Go in here!” and “Don’t move!” Some hostages are then ordered to the roof.

“I don’t want to go,” one sham victim pleads in Arabic.

“Go before I kill you,” a rifle-toting thug barks back.

The camera then zooms in on a terrorist, who stomps on a child.

On the rooftop, a lookout announces the arrival of police. A terrorist then drags a “hostage” to the ledge for display.

Also in 2002, an al-Qaeda spokesman said that two million American children were targets:

In June 2002, its spokesman, Suleiman Abu Gheith, published an article on the alneda website that claimed: “We have the right to kill four million Americans — 2 million of them children — and to exile twice as many and wound and cripple hundreds of thousands.”

In October 2004, our military discovered information about public schools in America. The bad thing is, they found them in Iraq:

The U.S. military in Iraq discovered two computer disks containing photographs, evacuation plans and academic information from eight school districts in six states, U.S. government officials told CNN.

The FBI weighs in on the discovery. We are told “Nothing to see here. Move along. Move along.”

On March 16th of this year, the FBI issued an “Information Notice” to state and local law enforcement officials that members of extremist groups were trying to get jobs as bus drivers. They claim that the information was shared out of an abundance of caution, and again, “There is no plot. There is no threat. And parents and children can feel perfectly safe.”

Even now in New York, bus drivers can be on the job 90 days without a criminal background check. Yes, you read that right. Schools can hire people to drive your children for three months without knowing their criminal background.

Police and Homeland Security officials are wondering what has happened to 17 Houston area school buses:

The Houston Police Department’s Criminal Intelligence Division, the FBI and the Harris County Sheriff’s Office are all concerned about a large number of school buses that have been stolen in the Houston area over the last several months.

Seventeen large, yellow school buses were stolen recently from various charter schools, business schools and private bus companies. Not one has disappeared from HISD.

In California, over 2,000 school bus radios have been stolen this year. More radios have been stolen around the country. Those would be excellent ways to spread confusion, disinformation or direct school buses into an ambush. They would also come in handy to learn how dispatchers and drivers communicate.

Two Saudis boarded a school bus in Tampa, FL and took it for a ride, with it full of kids. The school bus driver didn’t do anything but notify the dispatcher and drive back to the school. The two were promptly arrested but the judge let them go. He felt it was a cultural miscommunication even though the two had several reasons for boarding the bus:

The two men “initially told deputies they were from Morocco, but later admitted to being from Saudi Arabia,” the sheriff’s office said. “They told authorities they are enrolled at the English Language Institute at the University of South Florida. The defendants gave several versions of the reason they took a school bus to a high school, among those being they wanted to enroll in easier English language classes.”

Maybe it was a miscommunication, but then maybe it was a test, a dry run. Maybe it is another dot that needs connected.

It is possible also that terrorists are also buying surplus emergency vehicles:

While Abdalla Deiab didn’t buy the college’s surplus ambulance or three other vehicles, public records suggest he may have acquired a similar vehicle elsewhere.

A 1997 Navistar 4700 - commonly used as an ambulance or utility truck - was registered in April to Deiab’s former address on Shelley Street in Clearwater, according to state records. It is the same address he wrote on the bids he submitted to SPC for a used ambulance, two former police training cruisers and a large truck.

The Navistar was registered under Mintulla Inc., a defunct corporation. Deiab was not an officer in the company, but he did apply for a fictitious business name similar to Mintulla Inc. It was Mintulla International.

Deiab bid on SPC’s ambulance and other vehicles in a surplus equipment auction on Aug. 6. It was earlier that week that Weaver recalls the pair of Middle Eastern men coming to his office.

That same week, four men described by college officials as Middle Eastern went to the college’s warehouse in Tarpon Springs and took photos of surplus vehicles for sale, Weaver said. It was unclear whether Deiab was one of the four men.

In Beslan, many of the terrorists were standing around in the school, working there, behaving as they would any other day. They were present in the school and they were mixed in with the crowd. Some of the volunteers to carry stretchers were in on the assault. It was well organized. It isn’t a stretch to think that emergency vehicles could show up to carry the injured terrorists away, only to be driven by terrorists in on the plot.

It isn’t paranoia to think that these all add up to something. Osama has already said what happened in Beslan will happen in America many times over. It would be negligent to take that promise lightly.

—

Click here to join the Newsvine discussion.