According to the report, the man, who was arrested on Friday, was carrying a press card identifying him as an employee of Al Jazeera. He reportedly confessed to his intention to stab Obama with a knife and said that he was aided by three accomplices.

The report stated that Turkish authorities were still unsure as to whether the press card was a fake or whether it had actually been issued the man by the Qatari news network.

Al-Jazeera’s Ankara bureau chief, Yussef al-Sharif, told the paper that news of the suspected assassination plot had come as an utter surprise to the network’s staff in Turkey, adding that all of Al-Jazeera’s employees in the country claimed that they were not acquainted with the suspect.

Let me be the first to congratulate the law enforcement involved in stopping this assassination attempt. And let me be the first to say that I hope this brush with the realities of the war on terror will help to convince our President that he needs to commit to the fight. I hope you now see, Mr. President, that the terrorists don’t want to be your friend. They want to kill you, literally.

Pandering to them wont make them like you. Talking with them wont make them civil. Surrendering to them wont make them stop.

UPDATE: Ace links the story. He thinks there isn’t much to the plot because they planned to use a knife but it’s the press passes that make me think otherwise. It seems to me that the press could, at least in theory, get within knife range of the President. Especially considering Obama’s desire to make middle eastern networks like him.

UPDATE: CBN News has a little more information on this story. Apparently the man was planning on carrying out his attack tomorrow but was arrested on Friday. However, President Obama may still be in danger because the man claims that if he was to fail in his attempt his three conspirators were supposed to carry out their own attack. I’m sure the President is safe but this is still unnerving.

I’d also like to thank Hot Air, Tommy Christopher at AOL News, Protein Wisdom, and Memeorandum for linking me on this story. The consensus seems to be that these guys were just a bunch of morons with a knife and a fake press pass. I’m not so sure but I’ll keep you updated.

UPDATE: Some more information over at Today’s Zaman (h/t Gateway Pundit). According to their report two people have been arrested, all the conspirators had press passes and they were planning on throwing a knife at President Obama(?):

Meanwhile, two Syrian nationals purported to be in preparations of an attack against President Obama were reportedly detained by the İstanbul police on Saturday. According to a story that was published in Sunday’s Habertürk daily, the Turkish police and the CIA unearthed a plan of four individuals using fake identity cards belonging to the Al Jazeera television station to follow the US president’s visit as journalists and kill Obama by throwing a knife at him during the president’s Alliance of Civilizations meeting at the Çırağan Palace scheduled for tonight. Three others were being sought by the police yesterday in İstanbul, where the police have been carrying out extensive security operations to make sure that the visit passes without a hitch.

If you read the report it outlines the very stringent security measures that should be reassuring. I still won’t be happy until they catch the other conspirators or the President leaves Turkey.

Sorry… I can’t liveblog 24 tonight because I’m working on a NewsBusters article.

I’ll be watching and I should be back next week.

Enjoy and hope the show takes a turn for the best.

ITS TIME

Make sure you check back for my first foray into liveblogging later tonight at 9/8c during the latest episode of 24!

Mark your calendars:

We’re screwed (but I guess you already figured that out)

Apparently, only a day after Obama suspended all military tribunal proceedings, there has been a draft to close guantanamo presented to him. The order requires the prison to be closed within one year but there aren’t any details as to what will happen to the detainees thus far.

Not surprisingly this decision has the defenders of the terrorists and the Europeans (I know, I know… same thing) cheering:

“It is a major positive step in the right direction,” said Jamil Dakwar, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union who was observing pretrial hearings at Guantanamo this week.

The decision was also welcomed by the European Union, which repeatedly criticized the Bush administration over alleged human rights abuses at Guantanamo as well as for the military commissions.

The European Commission “has been very pleased that one of the first actions of Mr. Obama has been to turn the page on this sad episode of Guantanamo,” said Michele Cercone, spokesman for the EU Justice and Home Affairs Commission.

But the families of the terrorist’s victims are clearly and justifiably upset at the halt of the trials and the possibility that these terrorists could be brought to the united states:

“The safest place to have these trials is Guantanamo Bay. If they were to move to the homeland it would endanger all of us,” said Lorraine Arias Believeau of Barnegat, New Jersey, whose brother, Adam, was killed in the attacks.

Did I say we’re screwed yet?

Interestingly enough it seems that, for once, we aren’t the only ones fighting this battle:

The United States is among at least 20 countries that are trying to combat piracy in the region, including Russia, India, Germany and Iran. In December, German sailors foiled an attempt by pirates to hijack an Egyptian cargo ship off the coast of Yemen, according to the German Defense Ministry, and the European Union launched its first naval operation to protect vessels. That came just days after China revealed its own plans to patrol the Horn of Africa’s volatile coastline.

But who knows how long that will last once other nations realize they can rely on the US to do the heavy lifting militarily. But, for now, this seems like good news to me. The chaos we have experienced in international waters lately can’t be tolerated.

Seems the Navy agrees:

“The problem of piracy is and continues to be a problem that begins ashore and is an international problem that requires an international solution,” Vice Adm. Bill Gortney, commander of the Combined Maritime Forces, said in a news release from the Fifth Fleet in Manama, Bahrain. “We believe the establishment of CTF-151 is a significant step in the right direction.”

The right direction indeed…

Our story begins with a small family-run Lego customizing business known as BrickArms. This company makes little Lego weapons and customizes Lego figurines to look like military icons and their enemies. Included in the enemies column is an Islamic-terrorist character.

And there’s where the fun begins…

You see, somehow some people, who must have be barred from playing with action figures as children, looked at this terrorist Lego figurine and said to themselves “this toy glorifies terrorism”. I’m not kidding… people literally looked at this generic bad guy character and surmised that it was telling kids that terrorists are good.

What planet are these people on? Where they ever children? Isn’t it obvious that this toy doesn’t glorify terrorism but rather demonizes it? Do they really think that when children play cops and robbers it somehow glorifies thieves? Should kids only be allowed to play with the good guys and how would that even work?

In fact, kids need to create scenarios where good guys are pitted against bad guys in order to develop a healthy sense of morality. It disturbs me that some would view a child acting out the struggle between good and evil as “disgusting”.

Whats even more interesting is that the same company making the terrorist figurines also produces several Nazi figurines. Yet, I don’t hear anyone complaining about the glorification of Nazis? Why the double standard?

Actually, forget that question, I think a better question is… where do they find people like this?

That is what the pentagon is telling everyone at least…

Bin Laden’s driver, Salim Hamdan, was made famous in the pile of crap known as Hamdan V. Rumsfeld. You know, the case where “Justice” Stevens and the crap pack, as I shall now call them, decided they knew how to run a war better than the executive (which is definitely absolutely constitutional and consistent for them to do, by the way). And, accordingly, that terrorists should be coddled and extended the same legal rights as citizens. Cool, huh?

And now Hamdan is, on the eve of his release, Hamdan is being sent to Yemen to serve out his pathetically short 66 month sentence. And, of course, thats 66 months minus time served which gives him almost exactly one month left to serve. But, hey, he only helped facilitate the most horrific terrorist attack in history.

Oddly enough, though, I think he may just miss Guantanamo. After all, the terrorist held there now have gameboys, art classes, and “movie nights”. There is even an “Arab-American cultural advisor” (why the hell is there an “Arab-American cultural advisor”?!!?!?). Honestly, the place sounds about a thousand times more enjoyable than the vast majority of middle-eastern countries. I’d be sad to leave if I was him.

Oh, I almost forgot, make sure you don’t miss the passive agressiveness of the BBC on this one:

“The US has always argued it can detain such people indefinitely, as long as its so-called war on terror continues.”

“so-called”, I guess those terrorists are only in our imagination?

UPDATE: Hot Air eventually weighed in on this…