Canada: Wet-nurse to terrorism

Time to pick on the Canadians again, and again, and again, and again......

Canada continues to break my heart; a country I have been to three times, and I have worked with Canadian Forces officers for a good third of my career. They are governed by a political elite that is more concerned with clinging to a discredited political philosophy of feelgoodism that literally, is "fun until someone gets hurt."

Deroy Murdock has a great writeup on the "Danger up North."

"I'm not afraid of dying, and killing doesn't frighten me," Algerian-born Canadian Fateh Kamel said on an Italian counterterrorism intercept. "If I have to press the remote control, vive the jihad!"

Kamel, who jet-setted among Afghanistan, Bosnia, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, was arrested in Jordan on December 15, 1999, and extradited to France. He was convicted of distributing bogus passports and conspiring to blow up Paris Metro stations. He was sentenced April 6, 2001, to eight years in prison.

But after fewer than four years, France sprang Kamel for "good behavior." (What is it about iron bars and German shepherds that mellows people so?) Kamel flew home to Canada January 29.

"When Kamel arrived in Montreal, the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] was not even at the airport to greet him," Canada's National Post reported last month. "As far as they're concerned, he is an ex-convict who has done his time and has committed no crimes in Canada."

Canadians must be so proud to have him. So bad even the French don't want him.

Paul Martin, Canada's Liberal premier, attended a May 2000 dinner while finance minister. Its hosts: The Federation of Association of Canadian Tamils, a front for the Tamil Tigers, a Sri Lankan terrorist group. It has killed at least 60 people, including two Americans, and injured more than 1,400 others, the State Department reports. Martin, and international cooperation minister Maria Minna, ignored security officials who urged them to stay away. Wooing Canada's sizable Tamil minority apparently was irresistible

Some Canadians are trying to tighten things up, but they are not in power and cannot make it happen. We are lucky that this hasn't literally blown up in our face.

The warm U.S.-Canadian relationship, illustrated by our 3,145-mile unprotected boundary, cooled somewhat when Ottawa recently refused to help Washington develop defenses against incoming nuclear-tipped missiles. But that modest dispute will pale beside the northward-flowing rancor that will erupt if a terrorist attack kills innocent Americans, and U.S. officials discover that the butchers slipped past complacent Canadians.

That is an understatement. The results would be horrible for both political and economic reasons. You think the beef ban is bad? To top it off, have a Canadian terror cell kill a few thousand Americans and then disrupt the HUGE energy exports from Canada to the U.S. Just not pretty.

Faster please.