Anglican Cleric Was Warned of British Terror Acts

The nature of the enemy clearly comes to light today with the tale of a British Anglican cleric, Canon Andrew White, who lives in Iraq and reports being warned when he was in Jordan in April about the terror attacks vainly launched last week in London and Glasgow.

It's too much to be a coincidence. This is one story that ought to be burned into our minds, because it tells just what we're up against in Islamic fanaticism.

White says an "Iraqi religious leader" told him at the gathering in Jordan that "Those who cure you will kill you."

All eight of the suspects arrested in the attacks in Britain are medical professionals. None of them are British citizens. These wanton violators of the Hippocratic oath all came from Middle Eastern or South Asian countries, and they felt it was more important to try to kill women attending a nightclub in London and passengers flying through Scotland than it was to perform their duty to heal the sick. They callously used the country to which they migrated to carry out their evil scheme.

Now, the investigation has spread to Australia, and even to the U.S. There's a report that the two doctors who rammed a Jeep Cherokee into the Glasgow Airport terminal last Saturday had applied for positions in the U.S. So this may have been a very farflung plot.

White declined to name the Iraqi, from Anbar province, who had delivered the warning. But he said, appropriately, as quoted in the New York Times this morning, "He was a very bad man, and I was told afterwards that he was closely connected to Al-Qaeda, but I don't know definitely that he was connected to Al Qaeda."

The important thing is that it was out there that doctors would be used to kill innocents in Western countries where they had gone to practice (and incidentally earn good salaries).

It's another instance of the barbarism we saw on Sept. 11, 2001, when 19 Arab hijackers commandeered aircraft and used them to dive into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, killing nearly 3,000 people.

It shows once again the bitter hatred these savage people hold for the West and what a danger they pose when and if they acquire weapons of mass destruction, such as nuclear weapons. They are crazy enough to use them, and we must be careful enough and determined enough to take every step we can, including the military actions we have undertaken, to stop them.

This is a lesson, in short, we cannot afford to ignore.

It also points up, again, the danger of allowing more Muslim immigration to the U.S., at least without the most careful and intensive checks into who is coming. Even then, I do not favor it.

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On the way back from the Bay Area this afternoon, on the San Joaquin train from Richmond to Bakersfield, I was told by a conductor that California Amtrak may soon include a second San Francisco-to-Los Angeles train on the coastal line. Initially, he said this would be a daily between San Francisco and San Luis Obispo, connecting to the Surfliner service that presently exists between San Luis Obispo and Los Angeles. But, eventually, he said it would be a through train.

This, I think, is great news. Anything that expands the rail service that already exists in California will be of benefit, and when one sees how loaded all the San Joaquins, the Surfliners, the Capitol trains, the Coast Starlight and the subsidiary services like Metro Link, Caltrain and the Coasters, are these days, it is clear such new service will not only benefit California passngers, but make money.

Now, all Gov. Schwarzenegger can do is to reverse his silly decision to take a high-speed line off the California ballot. When and if that is built, it will mean two-hour service between L.A. and San Francisco at many different times of the day within a few years. We need it, and it is worth the projected $40 billion cost.