Pamela Geller: Why Did Orlando Happen? A Massive Intel Failure

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One year after the first U.S. ISIS attack — on our free speech event in Garland, Texas — an Islamic jihadist, Omar Mateen, succeeded in carrying out the largest terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11.

About this massive intel failure, Obama’s FBI Director James Comey declared:  “I don’t think there’s anything we could’ve done differently.”

Nothing they could have done differently?

This was a massive intel failure.

There were innumerable red flags. But if you see something and say something, you will be smeared as an islamophobic-anti-Muslim-bigot.

Here are some of the warning signs about which the FBI could have and should have acted much differently:

— Omar Mateen was the subject of two prior FBI investigations (one was dropped after Mateen after he claimed his co-workers were “Islamophobic”).
— A Florida sheriff said Omar Mateen’s support for the Fort jihad mass murderer “worried cops.”
— ISIS warned us they would attack in Florida.
— Omar Mateen cheered 9/11.
— Omar Mateen pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.
— Omar Mateen was “quite religious.” 
— Omar Mateen beat his wife, in accord with the laws of the sharia (Islamic law).
— Omar Mateen traveled to Saudi Arabia… twice.
— Omar Mateen threatened to shoot his classmate at a cookout over over pork meat (haram).
— Omar Mateen “studied” jihad at an “Islamic center” run by a convicted imam who recruited for jihad slaughter.
— Disney reported Mateen and his wife to the authorities for “casing” Disney World and suspicious behavior, but the FBI did nothing, not wanting to appear Islamophobic.
–The owner of a Florida gun shop alerted the FBI that a suspicious Omar Mateen had come in to buy weaponry.

Omar Mateen posted to Facebook on June 12, 2016: “I pledge my alliance to abu bakr al Baghdadi..may Allah accept me.” “The real muslims will never accept the filthy ways of the west”; “taste the Islamic state vengeance.” In a final post, Mateen apparently wrote, “In the next few days you will see attacks from the Islamic state in the usa.”

But in spite of all this and more, counterterror analysts and media talking heads are still scratching their heads and wondering why this attack happened. In a New York Times article titled “Why Do Terrorists Commit Terrorism?,” “terrorism expert” Peter Bergen wrote about Omar Mateen that “it’s unlikely that anything will ever really explain why he did what he did.”

Really? Nothing? How about this: Muhammad commanded Muslims to put gays to death. Mateen thought that to kill a large number of gays during Ramadan would get him a great reward from Allah.

But Obama’s FBI wasn’t looking into that as having any kind of connection to a possible terror attack. Instead, FBI Director Comey is “confused” as to jihadi Mateen’s motivations. Why is he confused? Because the Obama administration has purged its counter terror materials and program of any mention of Islam and jihad.

Under Obama, the Department of Homeland Security was prohibited from using words like jihad and sharia. Instead, according to the Daily Caller: 

One of the sitting members on the Homeland Security Advisory Council’s (HSAC) Subcommittee on Countering Violent Extremism is a 25-year-old immigrant of Syrian heritage who said that the 9/11 attacks “changed the world for good” and has consistently disparaged America, free speech and white people on social media. Laila Alawa was one of just 15 people tapped to serve on the newly-formed HSAC Subcommittee on Countering Violent Extremism in 2015 — the same year she became an American citizen.

The result?

The subcommittee Alawa serves on instructed the DHS to begin “using American English instead of religious, legal and cultural terms like ‘jihad,’ ‘sharia,’ ‘takfir’ or ‘umma’” when discussing terrorism in order to avoid offending Muslims.

Not only did this Syrian immigrant cheer 9/11; in April 2013 she told me to “go f–k yourself” after I called the Boston bombing jihad. This is who Obama assigns to keep us safe. Who is going to keep us safe from this woman? And she is not alone: another Homeland Security Advisor, Salam al-Marayati, has said that the U.S. is doing Israel’s “dirty work” and blamed Israel for the 9/11 attacks. Salam al-Marayati defends terrorist acts and the groups who carry them out.

It is no surprise, in light of all this, that the ACLU and leftists elites blame the GOP for the jihad slaughter. Because the left in media, academia, entertainment, and the U.S. government treat Muslims like a protected class and deny the Islamic doctrine that inspires and fuels this holy war.

The ghastly death toll is a stunning indictment of Obama’s sharia-compliant “countering violent extremism” policies. Obama now seeks to disarm us and import hundreds of thousands more “believers” after his policies has led to an unprecedented escalation in the war in the homeland. Guns are not the problem. Bombs, knives, suicide vests, machetes, cars… it’s the jihad.

Obama is now completely unmasked (pronounced unmosqued). He is going full-on Muslim, sounding and acting more and more like terror-tied jihad groups (i.e. CAIR, ISNA et al).

As dangerous and frightening as it is, it will be good for us. It is these acts of outrageous sedition, and treason that will get Trump elected.

Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of PamelaGeller.com and author of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter here. Like her on Facebook here.

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