CNN: Right-wing extremists to blame for explosions?
WND
Network's national-security analyst makes disturbing claim
Within hours of the bombings in Boston that left at least three dead and more than 100 injured, left-leaning analysts in the media started the speculation that the bomber was “right-wing.”
It follows years of warnings already from the Obama administration that those who oppose abortion are potential terrorists and the military needs to beware of evangelical Christians.
Two explosions were heard near the finish line of the Boston Marathon and a federal law-enforcement source confirmed to the New York Post there are at least two dead. The fatality count was later upgraded to three, including an 8-year-old boy.
Fox News said dozens were injured – the Boston Globe reported 144 – including 10 whose limbs were amputated, following a large explosion. Then a smaller one happened a short while later.
Further, authorities then discovered at least two more devices that had not exploded and they were being dismantled by experts.
There was yet another device – a third explosion – at JFK Library in Boston, and fire officials said during a press conference it already had been linked to the ones at the marathon.
The Post said investigators have identified – and taken into custody – a suspect. Described as a Saudi Arabian national, officials said the 20-year-old suspect was under guard at an undisclosed Boston hospital. The city’s police commissioner later said no suspect was in custody.
Fox News said the suspect suffered severe burns, but there were no details whether he was injured in the attack and during the apprehension. The suspect was taken into custody less than two hours after the bombs went off around 2:50 p.m.
“We will get to the bottom of this. We’ll find out who did this. We’ll find out why they did this,” President Obama said today.
CNN national-security analyst Peter Bergen was questioned by reporter Jake Tapper about the explosions, and he said some of the information will become clear when police reveal what kind of explosive was used. He said al-Qaida often uses hydrogen peroxide explosives – while another explosion might signal that a “right-wing extremist” was involved.
The explosions, Bergan said, reminded him of the Oklahoma City bombing, for which Timothy McVeigh was arrested, convicted and executed.
WND contributor Reza Kahlili has been reporting since early December that terrorists were being dispatched to the United States to attack. Read the reports: IRAN ORDERS TERRORISTS: PREPARE FOR WAR; U.S. WARNED: AL-QAIDA HIT-SQUADS COMING; AL-QAIDA ALIVE AND WELL, READY TO ATTACK WEST; and NEXT 9/11: IRAN’S DEATH SQUAD IS HERE.
And Bergen said it also brought to mind other “right-wing” activities.
“Right-wing groups trying to attacking, for instance – trying to attack the Martin Luther King parade in Oregon in 2010,” he said. “So, if it is a device of some kind, you know, we shouldn’t leap to conclusion about where it’s coming from.”
When a dozen people were shot and killed, and another couple dozen wounded, at a theater in Aurora, Colo., last year, ABC’s Brian Ross immediately suggested the attacker was from the political right – because there was a “James Holmes” in Colorado’s tea party movement.
Both Ross and ABC later apologized for their overreach.
Read Joseph Farah’s related column: CNN’s expert analysis: Sheer demagoguery
Obama’s Department of Homeland Security famously warned at the beginning of his first term about Christians, pro-lifers, those who supported third-part presidential candidates and returning vets as being suspect. Then just recently, the “inflammatory rhetoric” of Army officials was cited by the head of the Family Research Council in his warning to supporters that Obama could put evangelical Christians and Catholics on a “watch list” to prevent them from purchasing guns.
FRC President Tony Perkins said on his “Washington Watch” radio broadcast Wednesday that the Senate’s bipartisan proposal requiring background checks for Internet gun sales is “very concerning given the fact that the United States military has been increasingly showing hostility toward evangelicals and Catholics as being somehow threats to national security and people that need to be watched.”
In an email to FRC supporters, Perkins explained that a recent Army briefing on “religious extremism” declared evangelical Christians and Catholics are among the biggest threats to America, along with Islamic supremacist groups such as al-Qaida and Hamas.
Perkins said it was also discovered that, in an email, Army Lt. Col. Jack Rich highlighted FRC and the American Family Association as groups that do not share “our army values.”
In his broadcast Wednesday, Perkins tied together the Army rhetoric with the proposed Senate legislation.
“Well, what does that have to do with gun control?” he continued. “Well, what happens if all the sudden you are identified as an evangelical, Bible-believing fundamentalist and the government decides you’ve got to be put on a watch list?”
Perkins explained that under the legislation, if “a caution comes up when they put your name in, you don’t get a chance to buy a gun.”
The controversial Army briefing, titled “Extremism and Extremist Organizations,” was given to an reserve unit in Pennsylvania.
A slide titled “Religious Extremism” listed organizations and movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaida, Hamas, the Nation of Islam, the Ku Klux Klan and Christian Identity as examples.
Other military missteps that have been identified include:
- A Fort Leavenworth War Games scenario identified Christian and evangelical groups as potential threats;
- A 2009 Department of Homeland Security memo identified evangelicals and pro-life groups as potential threats to national security;
- The U.S. Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center released a study linking pro-lifers to terrorism;
- Evangelical leader Franklin Graham was uninvited from the Pentagon’s National Day of Prayer service;
- At the National Cemetery in Houston, Christian prayers were prohibited at the funeral services for military veterans;
- Distribution of Bibles was banned for a time at Walter Reed Army Medical Center
- Christian crosses and a steeple were removed from a chapel in Afghanistan because the military said the icons disrespected other religions;
- Catholic chaplains were prohibited from reading a letter to parishioners from their archbishop regarding the Obama HHS mandate.