Why Terror Financing is So Tough to Track Down

An anonymous reader writes "After a recent Slashdot story detailing the errant investigation into a credit card holder's dept payment, comes this article from the Christian Science Monitor discussing the commoditization of terrorism, its relationship to crime, and the difficulties encountered when trying to track "bad" money."

Comments

The source

[afaik_ianal]

For people who shuddered when they saw that the paper reporting this had "Christian Science" in the name like I did, it appears that the paper is not linked in any way with the Creation Science movement.

According to their site, the paper is largely secular (except for a single religious article each day). The paper just happens to be published by a church.

Re:Why is it difficult to LEARN FROM MISTAKES ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember in the 70's and early 80's when West Germany was fighting the Red Army Fraction and collaborating palestinian terrorists? Maybe not, since nobody called it global war on terrorism. Anyway, the federal government tried the same techniques (Rasterfahndung, dragnet investigation). They checked every bank account, every lease, harassed innocent people at every second intersection. The bottom line is these measures were unsuccessful and people did mistrust their government more than they did before. The worst case scenario! Free people should be able to trust their government. What did make the difference was a totally different tactic. Teams of few well trained police officers and agents tried to understand how the terrorists operated. One team would pursue one target. These teams were damn successful, and I am very glad. They big question is, why repeat mistakes?

Re:perhaps not

[grimwell]

The 9/11 Commission was a bipartisan effort initiated not from Congress but from the families of 9/11 victims. Where is the evidence that they covered up or lied about this particular story?

The Families of 9/11 victims are still looking for answers.
Press Release from 10/26/2004 demanding a better investigation Note: the 9/11 Commission was published July of 2004
The top 15 reasons to doubt the official story of Sept. 11, 2001 Number 1: Conflict of interest of those on the commission.

Conspiracy theories are very tempting, but sometimes more logical explanations exist.

And the logical explanation for WTC7 collopse is?
And how is it the ASTM E119 certified steel in the World Trade Towers weaken/melt after exposure to an uncontrolled & undirected jet fuel fire?

See Letter from Underwriters Laboratories(UL) to NIST

snip
We know that the steel components were certified to ASTM E119. The time temperature curves for this standard require the samples to be exposed to temperatures around 2000F for several hours. And as we all agree, the steel applied met those specifications. Additionally, I think we can all agree that even un-fireproofed steel will not melt until reaching red-hot temperatures of nearly 3000F (2). Why Dr. Brown would imply that 2000F would melt the high-grade steel used in those buildings makes no sense at all. /snip

If the buildings collapsed because fire weaken the steel support, then there are some serious safety issues that need to be addressed. But no one has really bothered with this. At the very least you would think building codes would have been updated to mandate better steel and UL would have to update it testing&certification process. Because clearly their certification that the steel used in the World Trade Towers was not up to snuff. Gee, that kinda smells like a lawsuit... but I haven't heard of one.

Don't forget that the Commission was opposed by the Bush Administration every step of the way!

And when W did final give testimony to the commission it wasn't under oath, it was behind closed doors and his vice-president was there to help him.

What kind of "War President" needs his vice president to help him testify?
Why wasn't his testimony under oath and public? (we can't handle the truth?)

But hey the gov't put out a report, so that must be the end of it. Nothing to see here, move along. Oooo look over there the Vice President was out hunting, had a few beers and shot someone. What were we talking about?

This current administration is the most blantly & openly corrupt administration ever. Nixon was almost impeached(his resigned before they could impeach him) for bugging the DNC. Bush admits to illegal wiretaps on untold thousands of Americans on national TV and Congress has to have a meeting to decide if they even want to question Bush about it. WTF?!?!