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Sunday, July 10, 2005 The Belmont Club The Belmont Club, or Wretchard rather, was cited in the Times of London in connection with "Downed US Seals may have got too close to Bin Laden". It's pretty strange since I've neither met Bin Laden nor ever been in Afghanistan, and makes me feel something of a fraud at being cited in connection with something I have no direct knowledge of. (Though the analysis is probably correct). It also reopens the question of whether Wretchard should continue to blog anonymously. Anonymous blogging has proved a good buffer against the petty vanities of...

Downed US Seals may have got too close to Bin Laden Tony Allen-Mills, Washington and Andrew North, Kabul ::nobreak::THE first sign of trouble was a radio message requesting immediate extraction. A four-man team of US Navy Seal commandos had run into heavy enemy fire on a remote, thickly forested trail in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan. Trouble turned to disaster when a US special forces helicopter carrying 16 men was shot down as it landed at the scene, killing all on board. Almost two weeks later, a mission that led to the worst US combat losses in Afghanistan since the...

KABUL, Afghanistan - American warplanes bombed a suspected Taliban compound in an area where an elite U.S. military team has been missing for five days in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, a U.S. military spokesman said Saturday. It was not clear if there were any casualties from the airstrike. "We conducted an airstrike on a target we deemed we had to hit immediately. The target was an enemy compound in Kunar province," U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara said. "The bombing was done using precision guided munitions. The target objective was intelligence driven." He said a "battle damage assessment...

According to sources familiar with the intelligence community discussion on this issue, there is mounting evidence that the Pakistani military - and its intelligence wing Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) - is nurturing its deep ties to Islamist extremists including those sheltering the Al Qaeda leadership and leaders of the Afghan Taliban.

WASHINGTON - The US military is close to locating al-Qaeda's frontman in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, General John Abizaid, the commander of US forces in the region, said. "I think we have a good idea of where to find him," Abizaid told CNN. "We know what we're doing in our efforts how to get him," he said. "But I want to also stress that it's not about one man. It's about his network. His network exists inside Iraq. It's connected to al-Qaeda. It's got facilitation nodes in Syria," Abizaid told the US cable news channel. "It brings foreign fighters in...

...According to sources familiar with the intelligence community discussion on this issue, there is mounting evidence that the Pakistani military -- and its intelligence wing, the ISI -- is nurturing its deep ties to Islamist extremists, including those who are sheltering the Al-Qaida leadership and leaders of the Afghan Taliban. ... The administration shoveled in economic and military aid while soft-pedaling Musharraf's miserable record on democracy and human rights. But it is increasingly difficult to cover up evidence that Musharraf is no longer delivering his side of the bargain.Consider just these few recent events:• On June 5, the FBI arrested a...

/begin my translation N. Korean Refugees' 'Underground Hideout' in China Shown (photos)  [ 2005-05-30 14:25 ] This month (note: May, 2005), during a 15-day trip to Yanji (note: N.E. Chinese city across N. Korea), Park Sang-hyuk(alias) took the pictures of an underground hideout where a N. Korean refugee, Mr. Paik, and his family live. It was located at a mountain in Helong Perfecture, Jilin Province. The pictures were posted on the home page of Free North Korea Broadcast(www.freenk.net) on May 28th(, 2005.) In this place, Mr. Paik, his wife, and their three daughters in late 20's had lived for 7 years(, according to his...

BAGHDAD, IRAQ – Marines in Iraq discovered a series of underground bunkers used by insurgents in western Iraq that show a sophisticated organization with a vast supply of weapons and enough confidence to operate near a major Marine base. The well-equipped, air-conditioned bunkers, found Thursday, were just 16 miles from the city of Fallujah where hundreds of Marines are stationed. Measuring 558 feet by 902 feet, the underground system of rooms featured four fully furnished living spaces, showers and a kitchen with fresh food - suggesting insurgents had been present recently, according to the U.S. military. The weapons and high-tech...

LATIFIYAH, Iraq (AP) -- Hundreds of Iraqi and U.S. troops searched fields and farms Saturday for insurgents and their hideouts in an area south of Baghdad known for attacks, and the Marines said they discovered 50 weapons and ammunition caches and a huge underground bunker west of the capital fitted out with air conditioning, a kitchen and showers. The joint U.S.-Iraqi force operating in Latifiyah to the south was backed by American air power and said it had rounded up at least 108 Iraqis, mainly Sunnis, suspected of involvement in the brutal insurgent campaign to topple the Shiite-led government. To...

Marines uncover bunker complex By Antonio Castaneda ASSOCIATED PRESS Published June 5, 2005 LATIFIYAH, Iraq -- U.S. Marines said yesterday they had discovered a massive underground bunker complex with 50 caches of weapons and ammunition and living quarters fitted out with air conditioning, a kitchen and showers.     In the northern city of Mosul, Iraqi forces said they had arrested a key terrorist leader linked to Syrian intelligence, who was responsible for numerous beheadings and car bomb attacks.     The Marines said the bunker complex, discovered over the past four days in Anbar province west of Baghdad, included a recently used "insurgent...

LATIFIYAH, Iraq (AP) - Hundreds of Iraqi and U.S. troops searched fields and farms Saturday for insurgents and their hideouts in an area south of Baghdad known for attacks, and the Marines said they discovered 50 weapons and ammunition caches and a huge underground bunker west of the capital fitted out with air conditioning, a kitchen and showers. The joint U.S.-Iraqi force operating in Latifiyah to the south was backed by American air power and said it had rounded up at least 108 Iraqis, mainly Sunnis, suspected of involvement in the brutal insurgent campaign to topple the Shiite-led government. To...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 4 - American marines have discovered an elaborate series of underground bunkers used recently by insurgents in central Iraq, with heavy weapons, a kitchen and fresh food, furnished living quarters, showers and even a working air-conditioner, the military said Saturday. The bunkers were built into an old rock quarry north of the town of Karma, an insurgent stronghold in Anbar Province that lies near the city of Falluja. The bunker system measures 546 feet by 883 feet, making it the largest underground insurgent hide-out to be discovered in at least the past year, if not during the...

LATIFIYAH, Iraq — Hundreds of Iraqi and U.S. troops searched fields and farms Saturday for insurgents and their hideouts in an area south of Baghdad known for attacks, and the Marines said they discovered 50 weapons and ammunition caches and a huge underground bunker west of the capital fitted out with air conditioning, a kitchen and showers.

BAGHDAD, May 30 (KUNA) -- The US forces Monday killed 12 "foreign" militants in an attack on terrorist hideouts Western Iraq, a Multi-National Forces statement said. The statement said US marines attacked, on tip-off, hideouts of supporters of the fallen Saddam regime in the towns of Rawa and Al-Karabla in Al-Anbar province.

Karachi, 24 May (AKI) - Bands of Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters are launching fresh attacks from their latest hideout - the remote mountain gorges and thick forests of Afghanistan's eastern Paktika region, stretching from Birmal to Argon just north of the Pakistani border, an area that offers shelter from US air force strikes. The Taliban, apparently galvanised by their spiritual leader, Mullah Omar, who was sighted in the nearby region of Zabul, have launched a series of attacks on US military targets including an army base in Argon . Over the last few weeks, Taliban fighters, backed by al-Qaeda cadres...

BAGHDAD, Iraq — American fighter jets flattened a suspected insurgent safe house near the Syrian border, the U.S. military said Friday, and hundreds of U.S. troops conducted house-to-house searches in remote desert villages for followers of Iraq's most-wanted militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. "... U.S. and Iraqi forces have stepped up raids in recent weeks. Iraq's government announced Thursday the capture of two more wanted insurgents — one a bomb maker with links to al-Zarqawi identified as Seif-Eddine Mustafa al-Naimi, the other a financier for an insurgent group linked to Al Qaeda in Iraq identified as Amar Farid Abdul-Qader Ashur...

MIRAN SHAH, Pakistan - Pakistani troops raided a hideout of suspected al-Qaida militants Saturday in a remote tribal area near Afghanistan (news - web sites), triggering a shootout that left two foreigners dead, an army spokesman said. Eleven people were arrested. AP Photo   The troops also seized a large number of weapons in the raid near Miran Shah, the main town in northwest Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal region, said Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan. Pakistani security officials have said hundreds of foreign militants — Arabs, Afghans and Central Asians — with suspected al-Qaida links are believed to be hiding in...

Iraq's most wanted terrorist, the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, is hiding out in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk after fleeing from Mosul, according to police sources. The claim comes barely days after the Iraq's interim government said that it was close to catching the jihadist, whose group has been behind the beheadings of foreign hostages, including Briton Kenneth Bigley, and suicide bombings. 'He came to Kirkuk from Mosul,' a source in the Kirkuk police department told Reuters yesterday, speaking anonymously. 'There's a possibility that he might be captured at any moment.'

"If I had to guess, I would guess that Osama bin Laden is in a remote region on the Afghan-Pakistan border," Bush told a White House news conference when asked if the hunt for bin Laden had gone cold.

ISLAMABAD: Interpol is searching for Mustafa Ahmed Muhammad Uthman Abu Al-Yazid, Al Qaeda’s chief financial officer and senior adviser to Osama Bin Laden and has alleged that he is hiding in areas adjoining the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, sources told Daily Times on Friday.