The Learning Moment

The sentencing phase in the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui has offered some surreal moments and unearthed some fascinating and disturbing information.

First, the dream.

The Washington Post reports:

Zacarias Moussaoui stroked his beard. He scratched his chin. Finally, he asked the question that everyone in the federal courtroom yesterday had waited much of the day to hear.

"You said you met someone by the name of John, correct?" Moussaoui asked the witness.

"Yes," said Faiz Bafana.

"Can you identify this person?" Moussaoui asked.

"He looks exactly like you," Bafana replied.

For most of the second full day of testimony, the jury at U.S. District Court in Alexandria watched a November 2002 videotaped deposition of Moussaoui cross-examining Bafana, a member of a southeast Asian terrorist group with ties to al-Qaeda. Moussaoui watched from the courtroom, along with everyone else.

That's just creepy. Cue the Twilight Zone theme music.

...Bafana testified on the videotape that he had met a man, identified only as John, who visited him in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in mid-2000. Bafana said that John told him of his dream to fly a plane into the White House, and that this dream had been blessed by bin Laden.

While being questioned by prosecutors for a couple of hours on the videotape, Bafana was never asked about John's real identity. It took Moussaoui, asking questions on his own behalf, to link himself to John.

...Bafana said he was certain Moussaoui and John were the same person.

"Are you sure?" Moussaoui said.

"Very sure," Bafana answered.

"Was the person you mean very heavy in weight?" Moussaoui pressed.

"I am sure it is you," the witness replied.

...Bafana also said that Moussaoui talked about jihad, or holy war, during the 2000 conversation in Malaysia and said it was important to "bring down America."

What a bizarre exchange between Moussaoui and Bafana!

Reuters gives these details:

"He told me he had a dream. He dreamed to fly an airplane ... into the White House," Bafana said. "He told me he informed (Osama bin Laden) what he dreamed and (bin Laden) said go ahead. He asked me to assist him."

Bafana said the man spoke of his desire to carry out "jihad" and said he needed help with financing. He was also interested in getting ammonium nitrate and aluminum powder -- items used to make bombs.

Federal prosecutors had said previously that Moussaoui had told Bafana of his dream to fly into the White House.

...Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, has admitted to being a member of al Qaeda and pleaded guilty in April to six charges, including conspiracy to commit terrorism, in connection with the September 11 attacks.

The statement of facts signed by Moussaoui when he pleaded guilty included a paragraph that said bin Laden had personally approved of Moussaoui attacking the White House.

"Bin Laden told Moussaoui: 'Sahrawi, remember your dream,'" it said, using one of Moussaoui's aliases.

That entire scene is so weird -- Bafana identifying Moussaoui, as Moussasoui cross-examined him.

As if that's not strange enough, then add the dream sequence.

It's surreal.

It makes my skin crawl.

Moussaoui lived here, in Oklahoma and Minnesota, preparing to kill Americans.

The dream stuff is hardly the most troubling thing to come out of the testimony.

This next part makes me angry and it makes me want to cry.

WASHINGTON -- The Sept. 11 hijackers made dozens of telephone calls to Saudi Arabia and Syria in the months before the attacks, according to a classified report from the office of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

According to the report, 206 international telephone calls were known to have been made by the leaders of the hijacking plot after they arrived in the United States--including 29 to Germany, 32 to Saudi Arabia and 66 to Syria.

The calls to Germany are not especially surprising because the plot's organizers, Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah, who moved to Florida to learn to fly passenger jets, had been university students in the northern German city of Hamburg when they were recruited by Al Qaeda.

...The German report contains no information about the timing or recipients of the calls, except that the majority of them were made from a cell phone registered to al-Shehhi, a native of the United Arab Emirates. It said the telephone records were obtained by German intelligence agencies from the FBI.

Within hours of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, German agencies learned that, during their student days, Atta and his co-conspirators had been in close touch with Al Qaeda's principal representatives in Hamburg, Mamoun Darkazanli and Mohammed Zammar, both Syrian expatriates who became German citizens.

Two hundred and six international calls made by the 9/11 hijackers when they were living in the United States.

Oh, I don't know...do you think maybe a program to intercept such calls might have made a difference?

Would the morning of September 11, 2001, have played out differently?

Would American Airlines Flight 11, United Airlines Flight 175, American Airlines Flight 77, and United Airlines Flight 93 have landed safely?

Would New York's skyline still include the World Trade Center towers?



Think of the three thousand victims. Think of the loved ones they left behind.



Now think of the New York Times leaking details of the NSA's terrorist surveillance program.

Think of Russ Feingold and Howard Dean and Hillary Clinton and John Kerry and all of those shameless Dems. Think of Harry Reid boasting about killing the Patriot Act last December.

Think of the disgraceful lib media outlets and the Maureen Dowd types. Think of them moaning about "domestic spying."

Do they ever think twice about working to thwart the Bush Administration's efforts to protect the homeland?

Do they ever consider that their political opportunistic streak may be aiding terrorists? Do they realize that their actions could be serving to allow another massive terrorist attack to occur?

I hope that they aren't consciously intending to make Americans vulnerable. I'm sure they don't mean to do that.

In fact, it's impossible for me to believe that they want to see another 9/11. No American, no decent human being would be capable of such callousness.

Still, their cluelessness angers me. They are disconnected. All too often, the Dems are fighting what needs to be done to prevent terror. They say the most irresponsible things without reflecting on the consequences of their words. They put personal political gain ahead of everything else.

As a result, they assist our enemies. That's the reality.

That's a problem. It's a problem for us.

For al Qaeda, it's not a problem at all. It's a gift.