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"In August 1998, the detainee traveled to Pakistan with a member of Iraqi Intelligence for the purpose of blowing up the Pakistan, United States and British embassies with chemical mortars."  U.S. government "Summary of Evidence" for an Iraqi member of al Qaeda detained at Guantanamo Bay, CubaFOR MANY, the debate over the former Iraqi regime's ties to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network ended a year ago with the release of the 9/11 Commission report. Media outlets seized on a carefully worded summary that the commission had found no evidence "indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or...

AN IRAQI scientist-turned-author says the most significant pieces of his country’s dormant nuclear programme were buried under a lotus tree in his backyard, untouched for more than a decade before the US-led invasion in 2003.But their existence, Dr Mahdi Obeidi writes in a new book, is evidence that the international community should remain vigilant as other countries try to replicate Iraq’s successes before the 1991 Gulf war to develop components necessary for a nuclear weapon. In The Bomb in my Garden, Dr Obeidi details Saddam’s quest for a nuclear bomb: "Although Saddam never had nuclear weapons at his disposal, the...

Saddam, the bomb and me Mahdi Obeidi NYT Tuesday, September 28, 2004 Iraq's nuclear program While the final report from Charles Duelfer, the top American inspector of Iraq's covert weapons programs, won't be released for a few weeks, the portions that have already been made public touch on many of the experiences I had while working as the head of Saddam Hussein's nuclear centrifuge program. Now that I am living in the United States, I hope to answer some of the most important questions that remain. What was really going on in Iraq before the American invasion last year? Iraq's...

I hadn’t planned on posting more of the Morning Jolt today, but the video from Obama’s Harvard days seems to be the big story of the morning. It becomes the big story when CNN’s morning program features an old sitcom-actor-turned-pundit Jay Thomas suggesting that Breitbart.com editor-in-chief Joel Pollak is a racist for making a point about Barack Obama’s support for a proponent of “critical race theory” during his days at Harvard Law School. Unbeknownst to Thomas, Pollak’s wife is black. Breitbart.com also has footage of Prof. Charles Ogletree showing the 1991 video of Obama to an audience and saying with...

Coiffed, groomed and impeccably suited, Mithal al-Alusi cuts an imposing figure at this trendy hotel. In the empty bar lounge, he makes himself at home to a breakfast of fresh fruit, strong coffee and a constant flow of cigarettes. The leader of the Democratic Party of the Iraqi Nation is in town to promote his vision for a new Iraq and accept an accolade from an unlikely sponsor – the American Jewish Committee – who honored him with a Moral Courage award at their annual dinner last week. His act of courage was an attempt to break Iraq's long-standing taboo...

Rats or Humans? Inside Saddam's Extermination Plant(August 29, 2002)This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/ He was introduced as director of research and development at Falluja, one of the remote factories where the United States claims Saddam Hussein could be making chemical and biological weapons. Asked if he had worked on any of Saddam's chemical weapons programs, Dr Mohammed Frah played a straight bat: "In the early 1980s I worked for five years on the chemical and biological programs at Al-Muthanna." This is the name of a critical centre in Saddam's weapons program - a huge pesticide complex that produced...

As Israel considers allowing Egypt to control the critical Philadelphi corridor along Israel’s border, startling revelations about Egyptian chemical weapons proliferation are coming to light. Egypt secretly helped former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in his chemical weapons program, according to a CIA report. The report, authored by the CIA’s Iraq Survey Group, says that Egypt sent specialists to Iraq in the 1980s to help him manufacture poison gas. Iraq later used the gas against Iranian citizens as well as Iraqi Kurds. The report says that the Iraqi government paid Egypt $12 million, "in return for assistance with production and storage...

The human cost of the War of 1812 was dramatic. Some 35,000 people were killed, wounded or missing at the end of the war. York (now Toronto), Niagara (now Niagara-on-the-Lake) and Washington, D.C. were torched. Elsewhere, homes and properties were looted and damaged and family lives were thrown into chaos. The borders between British North America and the United States might not have changed when the fighting stopped — the old lines were reconfirmed in the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the war on December 24, 1814. But once the treaty was signed, there wasn’t simply a return to the...

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Terry Waite, back in Lebanon for the first time since he was freed from years of captivity at the hands of Islamic militants, says he would gladly meet his erstwhile kidnappers. "I wouldn't mind meeting with them at all," the former Church of England envoy said on arrival at Beirut airport. "I'm sure that they have changed, that they have grown and developed, just as much as I have." Waite, who had helped free Western hostages held by extremists in Libya, Iran and Lebanon, came to Lebanon in 1987 to negotiate more releases. Accused of being a...

The Muslim Public Affairs Council’s choice of location for its 12th Annual Convention on December 15 is telling: The All Saints Episcopal Church of Pasadena, California. The group, founded by Muslim Brotherhood followers, says this is the “next step in its mission by crossing the interfaith line.” Yet again, the Islamists are taking advantage of naïve Christians with a desire to show off their tolerance. … Hassan Hathout says they sought to begin the “Islamic Movement” in the U.S., a term the Brotherhood uses to describe its ideology. In 1997, he predicted its success because “America needs Islam. If you...

No sooner did the literary agency brochure in which Barack Obama was said to be Kenyan-born surface than the media went to work to deep-six it. "This was nothing more than a fact checking error by me - an agency assistant at the time," Miriam Goderich, now a named partner in the literary agency, Dystel & Goderich, wrote in an emailed statement to Yahoo News, which was then picked up ABC News. "There was never any information given to us by Obama in any of his correspondence or other communications suggesting in any way that he was born in Kenya...

It used to be a lot simpler. As E.C. Bentley deftly summarized it in 1905: "Geography is about maps, But Biography is about chaps." But that was then, and now Biography is also about maps. For example, have you ever thought it would be way cooler to have been born in colonial Kenya? Whoa, that sounds like crazy Birther talk; don't go there! But Breitbart News did, and it turns out that the earliest recorded example of Birtherism is from the president's own literary agent, way back in 1991, in the official bio of her exciting new author: "Barack Obama,...

Face of evil: MOHSEN RABBANI The Islamic Shiite cleric active in Latin America since the early 1990s. Responsible for the 1992 and 1994 anti-Jewish massacres in Argentina. Wanted in that country and by the Interpol for the crimes. Called for Israel to be "wiped off," in 1994. 'Chief' Islamic operator of Hezbollah - Quds activities of: Islamizaton --including 'recruting converts for Islam'-- and terror networks in Latin America, resides in Brazil. Lightning Out of Lebanon: Hezbollah Terrorists on American Soil - Pages 122-3Tom Diaz, Barbara Newman - Random House Digital, Inc., 2006 - History - 272 pagesThe man directly responsible for this cell-building...

The web is abuzz today about video of a speech Barack Obama gave in 1990 (some reports have incorrectly identified the speech as occurring in 1991) at Harvard Law School defending the actions of Professor Derrick Bell. Bell, the law school’s first tenured black professor, had protested Harvard’s failure to offer tenure to women of color as law school professors. Online publisher Andrew Brietbart, who died last week, had said he possessed the speech and hinted that he would release it, arguing that it provided evidence that Obama has long held radical political beliefs. Today, the website BuzzFeed published a...

In the spring of 1991, Barack Obama, then the president of the Harvard Law Review, spoke at a rally in favor of Professor Derrick Bell and his push for greater diversity on the law school faculty, video footage that has been licensed by the website BuzzFeed from Boston television station WGBH: The context of the video: Bell was the first black professor to sit on the law school faculty. As David Remnick wrote in his Obama biography “The Bridge,” “Derrick Bell was, in Barack Obama’s time, the most vivid symbol of racial politics at Harvard Law School…In 1962, Bell helped...

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced Wednesday that Khalid Al-Jawary, a dangerous Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) terrorist convicted of a 1973 New York City bomb plot and implicated in multiple terrorist attacks spanning two decades, was deported to Sudan. He had served only half of his thirty year sentence. Recently declassified information additionally reveals that Al-Jawary got help from New York's Iraqi diplomatic mission in communicating with his PLO masters. In March of 1973, Al-Jawary and possible accomplices planted three powerful car bombs: two along 5th Avenue near Israeli-owned banks, and one at Kennedy Airport. Timed to explode upon...

The Obama administration finally highlights Iran’s key role in supporting al Qaeda On July 28, the Treasury Department designated six al Qaeda operatives involved in shipping money and men from the Persian Gulf to senior al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The move targets a node of the global terror network that is critical to its overall strength, freezing any of its financial assets under U.S. jurisdiction and prohibiting any transactions with the operatives. Of the many conduits for al Qaeda funds and personnel across the world, the U.S. government believes this one is the most important. “This network...

Just a quick update on our Iraqi Jihadist here in Nashville. From WSMV 4 in Nashville The F.B.I. says it has foiled a terrorist plot in Nashville by arresting a man who bought automatic weapons at a local Krispy Kreme donut shop on Thompson Lane. 33-year-old Ahmed Hassan Al-Uqaily was caught Thursday after buying machine guns, handguns, ammunition and hand grenades from an undercover agent. Channel 4 News’ Susan Harding reported that Al-Uqaily has lived in Nashville since 1991 and lived at at least four different addresses. His name has often appeared in the media over the last few months...

OSLO (AFP) - The founder of radical Islamist group Ansar al-Islam was questioned in Oslo by German police ahead of the arrests in Germany of three men suspected of plotting to attack visiting Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allaiwi. German police interrogated Mullah Krekar in Oslo early last week and he is thought to be linked to at least one of the men arrested on Friday on suspicion of planning attacks during Allawi's visit, the Norwegian daily VG reported Sunday. All three have been ordered held over their alleged membership of Ansar al-Islam, described by German authorities as a foreign terrorist...

TOPEKA - The estranged son of a controversial Kansas pastor encouraged people to feel sympathy for members of his father's church, "at least for the young children stuck in that situation." Nate Phelps, 51, spoke in Topeka over the weekend, marking his first trip in 20 years to the city where his father, Fred Phelps, runs Westboro Baptist Church. He alleged that he endured fear, intimidation and abuse before leaving the family and church on his 18th birthday. He said that while society is quick to take steps to protect children, it seems "curiously blind" when religious beliefs jeopardize a...