Media outlets from Fox News to the Associated Press agree that the new operations director for al Qaeda, Adnan Shukrijumah, is far more dangerous because he resided in the United States for 15 years and has corresponding knowledge of American society.

However, nobody in the MSM has noted the obvious, namely that welcoming possible enemies is a dumb idea and ought to stop. Muslim immigration is a threat to national security, but the people who are supposed to protect us have gone squishy because of political correctness – even the military, as shown by its callow response to the Fort Hood mass murder.

Here’s the Associated Press:

Report: New Al Qaeda Leader Knows U.S. Well , AP, August 6, 2010

MIAMI – A suspected Al Qaeda operative who lived for more than 15 years in the U.S. has become chief of the terror network’s global operations, the FBI says, marking the first time a leader so intimately familiar with American society has been placed in charge of planning attacks.

Adnan Shukrijumah, 35, has taken over a position once held by 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was captured in 2003, Miami-based FBI counterterrorism agent Brian LeBlanc told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview. That puts him in regular contact with Al Qaeda’s senior leadership, including Osama bin Laden, LeBlanc said. […]

”What’s dangerous about an individual that understands the U.S. is he may have a better sense of our security vulnerabilities and insights into how to terrify the American people using smaller attacks for large, political impact,” said Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism research fellow at the New America Foundation. ”This increases the risk of attacks outside traditional places we normally worry about like New York and Washington.”

Shukrijumah was born in Saudi Arabia. He is a citizen of Guyana, a small South American country where his father was born. His father died in 2004.

While still in Afghanistan, he met another young recruit – Jose Padilla, an American citizen once suspected of plotting to set off a radioactive ”dirty bomb” and now imprisoned on a 2007 terrorism material support conviction in Miami. At one point, according to interrogations of Padilla and other Al Qaeda detainees, Shukrijumah and Padilla were paired in a plot to fill apartments in several high-rise apartment buildings with natural gas and blow them up, but they had a falling out.

Nice people that Washington lets live here.

The problem is there are still many liberal kumbaya types who think that all our enemies need is a pleasant visit to America to understand that we are really good people and any difficulties can be solved by additional outreach and candlelight vigils and bridges of understanding. The support of New York libs, led by the Mayor, for the Ground Zero mosque (which claims to want similar good deeds) indicates this misguided narrative remains as strong as ever.

Here’s a Fox report on Shukrijumah, emphasizing the increased danger he poses because of his familiarity with America:

Interestingly, the jihadist’s mother still resides in Miramar, Florida, because America is so welcoming.