Scoundrels of 2007 Are Imams Who Abet Bombings

There is only one thing more contemptible than a suicide bomber, and that is the person or person who encourages the bomber.

According to the best available information, from many sources, fundamentalist Islamic imams are the greatest instigators of these crimes, and I believe the War on Terror should be directed primarily at the instigators. Quite simply, these imams must be rubbed out, along with those who inspire them, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri of the Al-Qaeda death cult. Just as we finally destroyed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, so the answer here is to find the others and treat them without mercy.

In 2007, the instigators were the scoundrels of the year. That distinction went in 2006 to Iranian President Mahmoud Achmadinejad. This year saw Achmadinejad come under pressure politically, both at home in Iran and abroad. He ended up, perhaps, not quite as large a danger.

The radical imams have grown into a greater danger. Not confined to the Arab world, they are found in Britain, Germany, Spain and other European countries, and there are even radical imams in the United States. All of them constitute a clear and present danger. We cannot afford to let them foment their crimes and hide behind their bombers.

One reporter who has followed the radicals with steadfast determination is Andrea Elliott of the New York Times. Elliott won a Pulitzer Prize this year for her coverage of a Brooklyn imam, and then went to the city of Tetuane in Morocco and wrote a long story about a place that is the point of origin for many suicide bombers in the Madrid train attacks, and which also has sent many fighters to Iraq to try to defeat U.S. forces.

It was not so much the pathetic numb skulls who undertake suicide bombings, as the imams that told them they would go to paradise and be able to sleep with virgins if they only committed murder and died doing so. according to Elliott's findings.

How should we deal with these people? In World War II, the Nazis and the Japanese were defeated in large part by mass bombings that destroyed their cities and, finally, discouraged the local populace from pursuing its nefarious goals. Both the Germans and Japanese became quite peaceful after their tyrannies were smashed. In the end, they weren't allowed to be extremists.

I suspect the same could be true now. When we act with devastating ferocity toward these religious neantherals, then, and only then, will the suicide attacks stop.

So, I say without hesitation, let's go after them where ever they are. No mollycoddling. No mistaken appeasement. We have to make sure the scoundrels of 2007 are not attacking us with atomic and biological weapons in 2017.

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Los Angeles International Airport is a dangerous mess. This was evident again early this morning when I arrived on United Airlines Flight 925 from Washington-Dulles, at 12:20 a.m.

We ended up sitting on the tarmac for 40 minutes, before getting to our gate. The pilot finally explained that there was a microphone out of commission in the control tower, and he could not communicate with the tower. Besides, he said, there was only one controller on duty to handle all the flight traffic that was coming in and out at that hour.

I don't know how many such flights there were, but we did see other planes taxiing about.

If memory serves, the presence of only one controller was held to be partially to blame for a fatal accident last year at the Lexington, Ky. airport early one morning. Of course, LAX is bigger. One controller cannot possibly suffice.

There needs to be an official and journalistic investigation of conditions at LAX. It is not doing its job, and, in not doing it, is endangering passengers and pilots alike.