Frank Gaffney on Hugh Hewitt

HUGH HEWITT:

Twenty-one minutes after the hour, America. If there were justice in the world and television time was allocated according to the accuracy of predictions about the rise of Islamic extremism, Frank Gaffney would not only be on every cable show, he would have his own cable network. Because he predicted IS (Islamic State) before IS was IS. Frank Gaffney joins me. President of the Center for Security Policy. He’ll be on this great station in Washington, DC on AM 1260 right after my show has concluded a little bit later. Frank, good news. The Mosul Dam retaken tonight. Or at least we think it’s been retaken. On the other hand, the band news is IS has got a lot more firepower and ambitions than anyone in the West seems to give them credit for and we’re focused on – obviously, it’s interesting what’s happening in Ferguson. It’s tragic the young boy is dead. And it’s a terrible lesson in race relations to me, but it’s not even close to being to the significance of IS and what their agenda is.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Certainly right, Hugh, and I’m sorry to say I’m afraid unless these things get an awful lot worse, and they may well, we’re probably not going to be giving even a modicum of the attention to not just the Islamic State in this particular configuration, but to the movement, as you said, I’ve been warning about for some time, of which they’re just the latest manifestation. Namely, the Shariah adherent Islamists who, whichever banner they fly under, whichever strain of Islam they happen to be organised under, they are determined, with whatever means possible, ruthless, terrifying violence or stealthy subversion, to impose this doctrine of Shariah on the rest of us, Muslim and non-Muslim alike.

HUGH HEWITT:

Now, it’s interesting, Frank, that no one has to believe you. All they have to do is watch Imam Abu Bakr al Baghdadi from the balcony in Mosul, which I had posted at townhall.com and it’s handily translated, in which he calls for just that. That the polytheists must be killed and Shariah must be imposed.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Yeah, well, and they could hear the same thing from, you know, the Ayatollah Khomeini, they could say they heard the same things from Khalid Mashal, they could hear the same things from Mullah Omar. The trouble is, Hugh, it’s not that they’re not telling us what they have in mind. It’s that we’re not listening or we’re not crediting it and, you know, I spend a lot of time mulling, what was it like in the 1930s and what were people thinking when Adolf Hitler was making absolutely clear what his purposes were? Mein Kampf and the whole globe. And it’s exactly what we’re doing now. We’re pretending it’s not so. We’re denying reality. We’re hoping against hope that it will simply go away if we ignore it. And unfortunately, it won’t. And I’m afraid that the world is in for a world of hurt.

HUGH HEWITT:

Now, Frank, you’ve done a – you’ve done a lot of work at the Center for Security Policy on the vulnerability of the electrical grid. When last I saw you, you gave me a book on that. Not surprisingly, I thought of you then and when the story came up today that there’s a nuclear reactor in Belgium that has been sabotaged – and they suspect by Islamists – it’s over at Powerline blog, if anyone wants to go read it, Steve Hay, we’re breaking nuclear sabotage in Europe, and they’re dealing with it very, very carefully. They don’t want to alarm anyone, but, quote, Belgium anti-terrorism investigators are working on the case. In other words, the bad guys have got a clue about what you’ve been warning about, that the grid is the weak link.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Yeah, this is just the latest, although a particularly scary example, of what is going on at the moment, Hugh. As you know, back in April of last year, somebody very nearly took out a critical substation in northern California. The folks in al-Qaeda have taken out the national grid of Yemen. It’s not much, but they did do it. Somebody took out Micheltod one of the Mexican state’s grids. The Knights Templar drug cartel took a whack, you know, people who were standing in their way. The enemies of this country, in other words, understand grid vulnerability. And they’re poised to take advantage of it whether, as in this case, perhaps, through cyber techniques, as in the case of that Metcalf substation up in northern California through physical attack. Or more efficiently and worrying perhaps through electromagnetic pulse attacks which, unfortunately, the Iranians are seemingly hell bent to acquire the capability to inflict upon it. Anyway you cut it, it’s a world without America. And that’s a scary proposition.

HUGH HEWITT:

The Belgians are warning today that there are possible blackouts this winter as a result of this which will come as a surprise to the average Belgian chocolate maker, I’ll bet you, and of no good for gaining leverage on Putin, but I want people to know how they can get a hold of your work on the grid. Cause they don’t run into Frank Gaffney at the Western Conservative Summit and get their copy hand delivered to them. How do they get their copy?

FRANK GAFFNEY:

You can get it two ways. At the website for the Centre for Security Policy, which is securefreedom.org. It’s available for free as a download there. Go to books and you’ll find it right there. It’s called Guilty Knowledge, what the US government knows about the vulnerability of our electric grid, but refuses to fix. Another way, a great resource, is the Secure The Grid Coalition’s website and that’s securethegrid.com.

HUGH HEWITT:

Well, both of those are very important. And I want to finish by talking about the strategic choice in front of the United States. Iran wants a nuke. They’re fighting IS. IS wants to behead everyone who’s in their way, including all the Shias that they find. What do we do, Frank Gaffney, other than arm the Kurds to the teeth and hopefully make Kurdistan jaboody.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Well, we’ve gotten into a hard task in Iraq. Principally, Hugh, because president Obama decided he was just going to pack it in and say, we’ve ended the war there. Hard choices result. One, I think, preventing the Mosul Dam from being blown by ISIS is a top priority at the moment. There are a lot of Shiites downstream of that dam who will be wiped out – and I think ISIS has every intention of pulling that off if they can. Sounds like a Hollywood movie at the moment with the booby trapping of that dam. I’m afraid that they will be able to defeat that attack. The, I think, call here is that we’ve got to stop ISIS and I think we should not, in any way, shape, or form, embolden, empower, or collaborate with Iran. They are both enemies of this country and I think they both have in mind, ultimately, as I’ve said earlier, our destruction through the imposition of shariah.

HUGH HEWITT:

Am I right, Frank, that Kurdistan, which is not Islamic, is – it borders both those regions and it borders both the IS front and the Shias in Baghdad and radical Iran. Shouldn’t we be building up our infrastructure there?

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Yeah, well, it is Islamic. It’s just not thus far been imbued with this taste for Shariah and the craziness that goes with it. I think, yes, Absolutely. You’ve sort of stipulated that that’s one of the things we should do, so I didn’t mention it. But I think certainly helping the Kurds protect themselves, protect the Christians in Iraq, protect probably a lot of our interests throughout the region by both having some infrastructure there and certainly arming them as much as we can.

HUGH HEWITT:

Frank Gaffney and the Center for Security Policy, he’s been right longer than anybody else. Go and support the Center. Securefreedom.org. Go get the report on Securethegrid.com or just go to Center for Security Policy. www.securefreedom.org.  And of course, listen to Frank. If you’re on AM 1260, you can do so directly in DC. And if you’re somewhere else, go find him on the web and listen to Secure Freedom Radio. I’ll be right back, America, on the Hugh Hewitt Show.