Free Republic

The September11 terror attacks in the US were staged to overcome disunity in al-Qa'ida, confidential computer records reveal. Alan Cullison reports on what happened after his laptop was wrecked while he was covering the combat in Afghanistan IN the autumn of 2001, I was one of scores of journalists who ventured into northern Afghanistan to write about the US-assisted war against the Taliban. After losing use of my computer in an accident, I scrawled stories by candlelight with a ballpoint pen and read dispatches to my editors at The Wall Street Journal over a satellite phone. When the Taliban's defences...

While Britons celebrated the royal wedding last Friday, one of Iran’s greatest intellectuals willingly fell to his death from the sixth-floor balcony of his Tehran apartment. Siamak Pourzand, aged 80, had held out long enough against the Islamic Republic..... Pourzand was an already prominent cultural commentator and foreign correspondent long before Ayatollah Khomeini boarded a plane from Paris, full of big ideas, in 1979.... Secular and cosmopolitan to the core, Pourzand had no time for the guardianship of the sadists and made a point of saying so, especially in the late 1990s when he began writing for various opposition newspapers...

Special Dispatch 296 – Jihad and Terrorism Studies November 2, 2001 Terror in America (22): Egypt's Al-Azhar Clerics: We declare war on America The unofficial website of Egypt's Al-Azhar University, www.lailatalqadr.com, continues to post anti-American statements made by the university's clerics and professors pertaining to the U.S. war against terrorism. Moussa Hal, a reporter for the website, compiled these statements and published them in a number of articles entitled "Islamic clerics in Egypt declare war on America."[1] The following are excerpts from the site: Hal reported that Sheikh Ali Abu Al-Hassan, head of Al-Azhar's Religious Ruling Committee, said, "It ...

Originally posted Sept. 29, 2003; reposted June 18, 2004 Senior investigators and analysts in the U.S. government have concluded that Iraq acted as a state sponsor of terrorism against Americans and logistically supported the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States - confirming news reports that until now have emerged only in bits and pieces. A senior government official responsible for investigating terrorism tells Insight that while Saddam Hussein may not have had details of the Sept. 11 attacks in advance, he "gave assistance for whatever al-Qaeda came up with." That assistance, confirmed independently, came in a variety of...

UPDATE 3 - U.S. applies new rules to 22 more 'terrorist' groups   (Adds comments by Rep. Tom Lantos, paragraphs 8-9) By Jonathan Wright WASHINGTON, Nov 2 (Reuters) - The United States on Friday added 22 groups including Hamas and Hizbollah to the list of "terrorist" groups under tight financial controls introduced after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington. The main pro-Israeli lobbying organization in the United States applauded the decision, saying it showed the Bush administration intended to combat all forms of terrorism. Six groups -- al Qaeda and five allegedly associated groups -- came under the new rules in September. Al Qaeda, led by Saudi-born ...

The Washington Timeswww.washingtontimes.com Pentagon lets terrorism suspect see lawyerPublished December 3, 2003     ASSOCIATED PRESS     Reversing course, Pentagon officials have decided to allow a U.S.-born terrorism suspect access to a lawyer, the Defense Department announced yesterday.     The Defense Department will make arrangements over the next few days for a lawyer to visit Yaser Esam Hamdi "subject to appropriate security restrictions," a Pentagon statement said.     Mr. Hamdi is being held as an "enemy combatant," a designation the Bush administration says denies him rights to a lawyer or a trial.     The Supreme Court is considering whether to hear an appeal from a public...

Republican Senate candidate in California Tom Campbell is the frontrunner in the nomination fight and his ties to radical Muslims, specifically Sami al-Arian, have become an issue, but the story is bigger. Campbell has surrounded himself with people tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, who recruited him for their political agenda in a campaign that ultimately reached the Bush White House. In November 2001, a Brotherhood document called “The Project” from 1982 was found by Swiss police raiding the home of Youssef Nada, a Brotherhood leader thought to be financing terrorism. It detailed a sophisticated plan to incrementally bring Sharia Law...

Here's an excerpt.. But if spoiled ballots do indicate disenfranchisement, then the new data show that, by a dramatic margin, the group most victimized in the Florida voting was African American Republicans.

The US is turning on old friends in Europe, writes John Laughland. Before he denounced the "prevailing influence" of the US in the "anti-constitutional coup" that overthrew him, President Askar Akayev of Kyrgyzstan used an interesting phrase to attack those who were stirring up trouble in the drug-ridden Ferghana Valley. A criminal "third force", linked to the drug mafia, was struggling to gain power. Originally a label for covert operatives shoring up apartheid in South Africa before it was adopted by the US-backed "pro-democracy" movement in Iran in November 2001, the third force is also the title of a book...

Baghdad, Nov 05, 2001 (EFE via COMTEX) -- Iraqi officials said Monday they were ready to hand the United States a "painful defeat" if Washington decides to attack Baghdad as part of its current international campaign to root out terrorism. "We are prepared to defend our people and defeat our aggressors," Iraqi Foreign Minister Nayi Sabri Al Hadizi told Iraqi reporters. Some conservative U.S. legislators have argued that the Bush administration should target Iraq in the American-led war on terrorism triggered by the events of Sept. 11. But, al Hadizi warned, the United States "will pay a high price if ...

<p>HOUGHTON -- Federal and state law enforcement officials remained on the Michigan Tech University campus late Monday after bombs found at two university buildings were disarmed. Radical environmentalists are considered possible suspects, a county official said.</p> <p>The bombs, described by university spokesmen as the "real thing," were discovered early Monday morning by campus public safety officers at the U.J. Noblet Forestry Building and the U.S. Forest Service Engineering Laboratory.</p>

Homegrown terrorist Jeffrey Leon Battle considered America the “land of the kaffirs,” or unbelievers, and the American people “pigs.” He once lamented to an acquaintance—who happened to be a government informant—that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks did not sufficiently damage the U.S. economy. “This is the land of the enemy,” he said of his own country in a May 8, 2002, conversation secretly recorded by the government. He explained to a friend how his “burning desire” to become an Islamic martyr had inspired his aborted quest to join forces with al Qaeda in Afghanistan, where he could kill American...

Abdullah Khadr at large: Brothers were caught in Afghanistan, father is wanted for aiding Osama bin Laden The federal government released secret intelligence documents yesterday revealing that an al-Qaeda training camp in eastern Afghanistan was under the command of a Scarborough man whose two brothers are captives in the war on terrorism. Abdullah Khadr, 22, is described in a Privy Council Office intelligence report as a suspected al-Qaeda member who is thought to have "commanded an extremist training camp in Lowgar Province in Afghanistan." He is the fourth member of the Khadr family to come to the attention of Canadian...