Free Republic

Hunt intensifies for al-Qa'ida suspect By Andrew Buncombe in Washington 16 May 2003 The international hunt is intensifying for an alleged senior al-Qa'ida operative charged with playing a central role in the bombing of two US embassies in East Africa and the attack on an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombassa after he was reportedly sighted in neighbouring Somalia. His sighting - and the fear that he may be planning further attacks - appears to have been central to the security alerts which led British Airways to suspend its flights to Kenya. Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, a Comoros islander also known as Harun,...

Iran's test salvo of ballistic missiles last week together with recent threatening rhetoric by commanders of the Islamic Republic's Revolutionary Guards emphasizes how close the Middle East is to a fundamental, in fact an irreversible, turning point. Tehran's efforts to intimidate the United States and Israel from using military force against its nuclear program, combined with yet another diplomatic charm offensive with the Europeans, are two sides of the same policy coin. The regime is buying the short additional period of time it needs to produce deliverable nuclear weapons, the strategic objective it has been pursuing clandestinely for 20 years...

A bomb has exploded in the western Iraqi city of Falluja, killing four policemen and a civilian, police say. Fifteen people were injured in the blast outside a bank in the city. Falluja was at the centre of the Sunni Muslim insurgency following the US-led invasion of Iraq, until local tribes turned against al-Qaeda militants. The casualties were people who were inspecting the scene of an earlier blast when the second explosion was detonated, police said. Police did not say who was behind the attack, but al-Qaeda remnants in Anbar province are often blamed for such bombings. The US military...

A car thief who broke into a van - parked in a residential Brooklyn, New York City neighborhood - discovered that the van was loaded with explosives. Reports say the thief realized that he was driving a potential bomb, so he drove the van out of the residential neighborhood it was in to a remote waterfront area, then called the police. According to the New York Daily News, he told police that he thought the explosives may have been planted by terrorists to coincide with the Fourth of July celebrations. However, police are investigating a possible connection between the van...

Car Thief Finds Bomb-Packed Van in New York City Saturday , July 05, 2008 A car thief on Thursday night found a bomb-laden van wired to detonate by remote control that likely had been sitting there for more than five months, sources said. Investigators believe the homemade explosives found on a Brooklyn street in the Ford Econoline belonged to Yung Tang, 39, a Chinese national. He has been behind bars since he was caught Jan. 29 in Wallingford, Conn., with nearly identical bombs in his Mazda MPV minivan.

The Israel Herald has a long but interesting article, U.S. and Israeli militaries discuss attack on Liberty in which it links a current discussion on the USS Liberty with a possible attack on Iran. It speculates, So where does the Liberty fit in? What discussions could have possible brought the Liberty attack to the fore? If indeed Israel is planning an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, could it be that the U.S. has warned the Jewish state it would not tolerate a repeat of what happened to the Liberty? What other explanation could there be for discussing an incident both...

Al-Qaeda Draws New Recruits Via Internet Al-Qaeda is using the Internet to recruit vulnerable young people to its terrorist network, according to a programme aired on Saudi Arabian TV late on Tuesday. Umm Osama, the founder of al-Qaeda's first women-only website, al-Khansa, joined several others on the programme to discuss how they renounced jihadist ideology. Among those who sought a response to this question was an imam from the Medina mosque, Saleh Ibn Awad al-Mudamsi, and the father of a young al-Qaeda suspect held in an Iraqi prison. Read More Qaeda Targets U.S. Oil Interests in North Africa U.S....

A bomb-laden van found on a Brooklyn street by a car thief was wired to detonate by remote control, and had likely been sitting there for more than five months... Investigators believe the homemade explosives found Thursday night in the Ford Econoline belonged to Yung Tang, 39, a Chinese national. He has been behind bars since he was caught Jan. 29 in Wallingford, Conn., with nearly identical bombs in his Mazda MPV minivan. Also found in the MPV were two silencers, four hollow-point bullets and two radio-controlled detonators. Days after that arrest, the NYPD searched his Brooklyn house and found...

LOS ANGELES (CBS) ― The FBI says a man has been detained after allegedly making a bomb threat to police at Los Angeles International Airport. Authorities shut down traffic near the airport's terminal 3 while the threat was investigated. Airport police told CBS station KCBS-TV in Los Angeles airport roads have since been reopened but they're gridlocked. FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller says the man was detained Wednesday morning and his backpack was seized for inspection. She says police bomb squads were investigating.

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Bill Kristol and John Bolton, in separate interviews, seem to be leaking a Bush plan to take out Iranian nuclear facilities before he leaves office. If it is done before the election, Obama is sunk.

So let me get this straight. If you're an Islamic radical and blow up innocent people, you go to paradise and are blessed with a harem of 72 virgins. Somehow, I think Muhammad is full of beans and so does "Geeks On Caffeine!" Check out this toon! NOTE: AT THE AUTHOR'S REQUEST, PLEASE VISIT THE SITE AND DO NOT PLACE A COPY OF THE CARTOON WITHIN THIS THREAD.

WASHINGTON, June 18, 2008 – Terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq employ improvised explosive devices as a weapon of choice to sap the willpower of the American people, a senior U.S. officer said here today. Terrorists use IEDs “as a strategic weapon to wear our will down, because our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines can whip this thing, tactically,” Army Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz, director of the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, told attendees at the 2008 Joint Warfighting Conference. Metz compared the enemy’s strategy today in Afghanistan and Iraq to what occurred more than 30 years ago in...

An attempted bank robbery in Canton played out like a scene from a movie Monday when a man who claimed to have a bomb was stopped by a customer armed with a pistol. According to police, the customer pulled out a .9 mm handgun (for which he had a CCW permit), racked a bullet in the chamber, pointed it at the man and announced, "You are not robbing this bank!"

During the April 16 Democratic debate in Philadelphia, moderator George Stephanopoulos asked Barack Obama about his relationship to William Ayers, the unrepentant member of the Weather Underground who had participated in several bombings of government facilities back in 1970s. Since that time, Ayers had become active in leftist circles in Chicago. In 2001, Ayers bragged, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." At the debate, Sen. Hillary Clinton condemned Obama's association with Ayers, adding that in those bombings "people died." "So it is--I think it is, again, an issue that people will be asking about," said...

Tehran, 26 May (AKI) - A carbomb exploded in a western suburb of the Iranian capital Tehran on Monday. No one was hurt in the blast but some buildings were damaged. The area where the car bomb exploded was immediately isolated by security forces. No one has claimed responsibility for the incident. According to a report on the Fars news agency, one person has been arrested in connection with the blast.

EXETER, England -- An Islamic convert with a history of mental illness was slightly injured yesterday by his own bomb in a lunchtime explosion in a busy restaurant in this southwestern English city. Nicky Reilly, 22, was the only person hurt and little damage was reported from the blast in the restaurant's toilets. Police later discovered and disarmed another device left nearby. "Our investigations so far indicate Reilly, who has a history of mental illness, had adopted the Islamic faith," said Tony Melville, deputy chief constable of Devon and Cornwall. "We believe, despite his weak and vulnerable state, he was...

The white Muslim convert arrested after a bomb was detonated in a restaurant in Exeter has been named as 22-year-old Nicky Reilly. Mr Reilly had a history of mental illness and had been "preyed upon" by "radical" Muslims in the area, police officers said. They have established that he travelled between Plymouth and Exeter by bus before the explosion at the Giraffe restaurant at the Princesshay shopping centre at 12.50pm. Two bombs were found and Reilly was the only person injured. He suffered "serious facial injuries" although they were not said to be life-threatening. He was later arrested before armed...

US President George W. Bush intends to attack Iran in the upcoming months, before the end of his term, Army Radio quoted a senior official in Jerusalem as saying Tuesday. The official claimed that a senior member of the president's entourage, which concluded a trip to Israel last week, said during a closed meeting that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were of the opinion that military action was called for. However, the official continued, "the hesitancy of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice" was preventing the administration from deciding to launch such an attack on...

About 16,000 people were temporarily evacuated and services on a railway line were partially suspended while an unexploded bomb was being disposed of in western Tokyo on the weekend, local government officials said. The Chofu Municipal Government on Sunday morning sealed off an area within a radius of 500 meters from where the bomb was found, and a Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) unit began to dispose of the dud at 11 a.m. The bomb was removed by noon. As the team disposed of the bomb, about 16,000 people, including 150 inpatients at a nearby hospital, were temporarily evacuated. Services on...

The U.S. military is reinforcing the sides of its topline mine-resistant vehicles to shore up what could be weak points as troops see a spike in armor-piercing roadside bombings across Iraq, The Associated Press has learned.

John Bolton makes the case for bombing insurgent camps in Iran. This guy needs to be in the next administration in a position of power.

John Bolton: US should bomb Iranian camps By Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent Last Updated: 3:35PM BST 06/05/2008 John Bolton, America’s ex-ambassador to the United Nations, has called for US air strikes on Iranian camps where insurgents are trained for war in Iraq. John Bolton was an influential member of President Bush's inner circle Mr Bolton said that striking Iran would represent a major step towards victory in Iraq. While he acknowledged that the risk of a hostile Iranian response harming American’s overseas interests existed, he said the damage inflicted by Tehran would be “far higher” if Washington took no...

SAN DIEGO — An early morning explosion at the federal courthouse in downtown San Diego left a door damaged and blew out a window. Sgt. Bob Dare of the San Diego Police Department says the loud blast occurred at about 1:40 a.m. Sunday. Streets in the area have been closed. No injuries were reported. The explosion is under investigation. FBI Special Agent Darrell Foxworth told a local TV station it appears the explosion may have been caused by a pipe bomb.

Barack Obama’s church published an opinion piece [http://tucc.org/upload/tuccbulletin_june10.pdf, " Open Letter to Oprah from Ali Baghdadi on Her Visit to Palestine"] that accused Israel and South Africa of working together to develop an “ethnic bomb” to kill Blacks and Arabs. Here are the principal excerpts from the Pastor’s Page (the pastor being Jeremiah “God **** America” Wright), which pretty much speak for themselves. …I must tell you that Israel was the closest ally to the White Supremacists of South Africa. In fact, South Africa allowed Israel to test its nuclear weapons in the ocean off South Africa. The Israelis were...

SWAMPSCOTT — A middle-school student had the ends of two of his fingers blown off yesterday by a homemade bomb that went off inside his Melvin Avenue home, authorities said. The victim's brother said rescue workers could find only one of the fingertips. The 13-year-old victim, identified by family and neighbors as Joel Surette, was taken to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston by ambulance. "First, he was screaming for five minutes," said his brother, Michael, 17, "He said, 'I can't believe I blew off my fingers.'" Joanne Schumann, who lives two houses from the Surettes, was eating dinner with her...

Woman denies the allegations NEW YORK (WABC) -- A woman trying to board a JetBlue flight in New York City is accused of causing a a bomb scare at JFK Airport. The Daily News is reporting the woman, 44-year-old Rosalinda Baez, was trying to board a JetBlue plane but was stopped by an attendant because the jetway had closed. In a complaint filed with the Brooklyn Supreme Court, prosecutors allege that Baez told the attendant her suitcase was on the plane and asked, ""What if I had a bomb in my bag?" Baez, a Dell web consultant, says she asked:...

Assume for a moment: It's January, 2009, and Barack Obama has just been inaugurated as President of the United States. Ahmadi-Nejad explodes his first Bomb; he now has that itchy finger on the button as long as the mullahs stay in power. The Middle East goes wild --- with abject fear among the Saudis, and loud celebrations among terror supporters. The day of revenge against the Jews and the Crusaders has finally arrived. What would President Obama do? He has only two basic options. Option One Stick with his electoral promises, fly to Tehran, and "talk to the mullahs." What...

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A high school senior collected enough supplies to carry out a bomb attack on his school and detailed the plot in a hate-filled diary that included maps of the building and admiring notations about the Columbine killers, authorities said Sunday. Ryan Schallenberger, 18, was arrested Saturday after his parents called police when 10 pounds of ammonium nitrate was delivered to their home in Chesterfield and they discovered the journal, said the town's police chief, Randall Lear. The teen planned to make several bombs and had all the supplies needed to kill dozens at Chesterfield High School,...

Bill Ayers' brother, Rick Ayers, is lashing out at Hillary Clinton, accusing her of "McCarthyism" for making an issue of rival Barack Obama's links to Chicago professor Bill Ayers during this week's Democratic presidential debate. "The fact that she would drag up this pathetic red herring about Obama's alleged ties to so-called terrorist Bill Ayers (my brother!) brings her right down to the level of Fox News and the National Enquirer," blogged Rick Ayers, a California high school teacher and author. "This is the most base version of McCarthyism," he wrote. "Obama should have taken a page from Joseph Welch...

WARNING: Some Graphic Language I read occasionally of former Weatherman Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn, both now not only accepted, despite their bombing campaign against America in the 1960s and 70s, but successful , establishment educators whose opinions on social issues are taken seriously. Every time I see Ayers’ name I shudder with fear and rage and realize that I will never be able to erase the mark he left on my life one evening 40 years ago. It was at the Undergraduate Library at the University of Michigan on a Friday night in November 1965. I was...

What would it take to persuade a terrorist to give up the life? A growing number of specialists are trying to find out. SAUDI ARABIA IS one of the last places on earth one would expect to find an art therapy course for convicted terrorists. The kingdom, after all, is known for an unforgiving approach to criminal justice: thieves risk having their hands amputated, "sexual deviance" is punishable by flogging, and drug dealers are beheaded. And yet, over the past few years, jailed Saudi jihadis, led by therapists and motivated by the possibility of a shortened sentence, have been putting...

Afghanistan to Ask NATO for Bigger Army Afghan officials will go to the NATO summit in Romania Thursday with a request: pay to increase our national Army by 40 percent. A bigger Army, Afghan officials argue, will allow the US and other coalition members to scale back in the coming years. This appeal comes amid pleas from the US and Canada for other NATO members to commit more to the Afghanistan mission, which many analysts say has floundered over the past year for lack of resources and a coherent strategy. France is expected to contribute another 1,000 forces and...

The classic blood libel accuses a religious group of using human blood for its rituals. The most infamous is the accusation that Jews used the blood of Christian babies to make matzoh (unleavened bread), although early Christians also were falsely accused of drinking human blood. It is quite likely that Roman emperors like Nero and Diocletian picked up on the Mass, in which wine stands in for the blood of Jesus, as a premise for this blood libel. In general, however, a blood libel is a vicious false accusation whose purpose is to incite ferocious hatred of a religion, ethnic...

Attacks on nuclear power stations, oil and gas terminals, Canary Wharf and Heathrow’s control tower were being considered by leaders of the plot to blow up seven transatlantic airliners in mid-flight, a court was told yesterday. Documents found on computer memory sticks at the home of an alleged terrorist ringleader contained a list of targets across Britain – including the gas pipeline between Britain and Belgium. The man, Assad Sarwar, was said to be in contact with terrorist leaders overseas and visited Pakistan a month before his arrest as preparations for the airline attacks were being finalised. Peter Wright, QC,...

A man suspected of trying to take bomb components onto a plane at Orlando International Airport told investigators he was going use the bomb materials to show friends how to build explosives "like he saw in Iraq." He also told them he only planned to blow up a tree stump. Those details and a few others emerged as a federal judge today ordered Kevin Brown, 32, temporarily held without bail... He is charged with attempting to carry an explosive or incendiary device onto an aircraft. A federal complaint filed against Brown charged that he was carrying components for pipe bombs,...

YUMA — A Marine who disarmed a huge truck bomb outside a bombmaking factory in Iraq last year has been awarded the Bronze Star medal.

A mysterious bomb-making experiment that ended with the accidental death of a government scientist has remained an official secret for more than five years, leaving his family in the dark about what went wrong. Terry Jupp, a scientist with the Ministry of Defence, was engulfed in flames during a joint Anglo-American counter-terrorism project intended to discover more about al-Qaida's bomb-making capacities. There has been no inquest into his death, as the coroner has been waiting for the MoD to disclose information about the incident. An attempt to prosecute the scientist's manager for manslaughter ended when prosecutors said they were withdrawing...

More Dirt on a Dirty Church-- Obama's Church published anti-Semitic articles claiming Jews were working on "ethnic bombs." Sweetness and Light and American Thinker discovered this "Open Letter to Oprah" today from Obama's church newsletter the Trinity United Church of Christ. The letter describes how Israel was working on an ethnic bomb that would kill Arabs and Blacks: "An Open Letter to Oprah" (click pages below to enlarge...) Carl from Jerusalem reported this ethnic bomb:Israel was the closest ally to the White Supremacists of South Africa. In fact, South Africa allowed Israel to test its nuclear weapons in the ocean...

THE top US commander in Iraq blamed neighbouring Iran for rocket attacks over the weekend on the heavily-fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, in an interview with the BBC. General David Petraeus said that the rockets "were Iranian-provided, Iranian-made rockets" and added that Iran's actions were "in complete violation of promises made by President (Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad and the other most senior Iranian leaders to their Iraqi counterparts". Each of the four attacks on the Green Zone on Sunday, which in total injured at least four people and damaged buildings, sent staff of the US embassy scurrying for the shelter of nearby...

BAGHDAD, March 23 (KUNA) -- Up to 15 Al-Qaeda operatives were killed Sunday in an air raid by US fighter jets over Diyala district, northeast of the capital, Baghdad. Iraqi security sources told KUNA that the American planes shelled Al-Qaeda hideouts in the village of Baladros, southeast of Baqouba, Diyala's largest city, killing 15 members of Al-Qaeda. Meanwhile, official spokesman for the law implementation plan Major General Qassem Atta said no military attire would be on sale at markets to prevent suicide bombers from impersonating security personnel.

Bomb attack hardens Chinese resolve in Tibet Jane Macartney, Beijing A homemade bomb thrown at a paramilitary police patrol in Lhasa has hardened Beijing’s resolve to punish anti-Chinese rioters, with officials issuing wanted lists for 17 Tibetans, including two monks and a woman. The hardline Communist Party secretary of the deeply Buddhist Himalayan region warned officials they faced a “life or death” struggle that involved nothing less than the stability of the entire country as it prepares to play host to the Olympic Games in August. Anti-Chinese protests flared this week across Tibet and in neighbouring provinces where many Tibetans...

Allegedly he was causing a disturbance on the train and the conductor attempted to move him to another part of the train, that’s when he said he had a bomb and the bomb was in his bag” says Emporia Police Chief Bernard Richardson. Around 2am the bomb squad determined the threat was a hoax. The Yemeni man was taken into custody by the FBI and is facing a felony charge of making a threat on a public conveyance. The hundreds of passengers were finally able to continue on their way.

(IsraelNN.com) Thousands of people were told to evacuate the international Paris book fair after a bomb threat was received. This year's book fair gave special honor to Israel, because of the 60th anniversary of its independence. Israeli writers Amos Oz, A. B. Yehoshua, Aharon Appelfeld and others participated at the fair, and President Shimon Peres also paid a visit. Arab countries including Lebanon, Yemen,, Tunisia and Morocco boycotted the fair because of the special honor given Israel.

China fabricated terror plots: Uighur leader by Jitendra Joshi WASHINGTON (AFP) - Exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer Monday accused China of fabricating alleged plots against the Olympics, and even of scheming to carry out its own terror attacks, to blacken her community's name. ADVERTISEMENT "It's completely untrue. All these allegations are falsified," the separatist figurehead, who joined her US-based husband in 2005 after six years in a Chinese jail, told AFP through an interpreter. "The real goal of the Chinese government is to organize a terrorist attack so that it can increase its crackdown on the Uighur people," the 61-year-old...

An explosion has been reported in central Stockholm. Police confirmed on Sunday morning that a bomb squad was at the scene and that no casualties had been reported. Neighbours reported to police early on Sunday morning that a large explosion had rocked the area around Surbrunnsgatan 4 in central Stockholm. Twenty windows were blown out as result of the blast. According to Eva Nilsson at Stockholm police something exploded under a parked car. "To the naked eye the car is in principle intact." A large area was cordoned off by police after the explosion, and Surbrunnsgatan was closed off between...

NEW YORK, New York (CNN) -- The New York Police Department has released photos of a bicycle and a suspect in Thursday's Times Square recruitment center bombing. Police released this surveillance image of a bicyclist believed linked to the Times Square bombing. The photo of the suspect, extracted from surveillance footage and released on Friday, shows someone riding a bicycle away from the scene shortly after the explosion. The second photo shows a metallic blue bicycle that was found abandoned in trash nearby.> Authorities are offering a $12,000 reward for information in that leads to an arrest in the case....

The bombing of a military recruitment center keeps getting stranger and stranger. The eight Congressional Representatives from New York City all received a copy of a picture of the targeted office, showing deliberate premeditated intent to hit the recruiting center. They also received a letter, but it contained no threat: Eight House Democrats were mailed a letter and photo of a Times Square recruiting station in Manhattan before it was bombed this morning, according to House insiders.The letter did not contain any specific threats against the lawmakers or the site, but the U.S. Capitol Police and the FBI are now...

Authorities investigating the bombing of a military recruiting center in Times Square have turned their attention to a strange incident at the Canadian border last month.  Four men fled a checkpoint when crossing, and the Canadians arrested two of them.  During questioning, pictures of the center and other apparent targets were found in their backpacks, suggesting a plot in the works: Nearly a full day after the explosion in Times Square, law enforcement officials said they had no suspects. WNBC.com has learned NYPD, Homeland Security and FBI officials are now revisiting an incident that occurred along the Canadian border last...

There's apparently no link between the bombing of an military recruiting station in New York's Times Square and letters sent to Congress saying "We did it," law enforcement officials said Friday. The lengthy anti-war letters — which arrived with photos of a man standing in front of the recruiting office before it was damaged — contained no threats and were sent to as many as 100 members of Congress, officials said. Laura Eimiller, an FBI spokeswoman in Los Angeles, said an individual was questioned there about the letters to Congress and "there is no evidence linking the letters, which contained...