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(Reuters) - U.S. officials have met members of the Muslim Brotherhood's political party, a U.S. diplomat said, after Washington announced it would have direct contacts with Egypt's biggest Islamist group whose role has grown since U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak was ousted.

The sign on the wall reads “Schoolbook Printing and Storage Warehouse,” but the fact that the double gates in the wall have been crudely ripped off suggests that something more interesting might be inside. It turns out that the only books to be found in any of the three large buildings in the walled compound are manuals — how to fire rocket launchers and wire-guided missiles, among others. The buildings are actually disguised warehouses full of munitions — mortar shells, artillery rounds, anti-tank missiles and more — thousands of pieces of military ordnance that are completely unguarded more than two...

Emails reveal attempts to hide that Gunwalker guns were present at Brian Terry's murder — within hours of Terry's death. Just days after Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Acting Director Ken Melson was forced into a make-work job at the Justice Department and long-time Janet Napolitano confidant U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke abruptly resigned, the investigation into Operation Fast and Furious rapidly gained momentum with evidence of a coverup instigated within hours of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s death.Also, the Justice Department begrudgingly revealed that Fast and Furious guns were recovered at the scene of more than twice...

As National Gun Rights Examiner David Codrea, Seattle Gun Rights Examiner Dave Workman, and Sipsey Street Irregular Mike Vanderboegh have been covering, compelling new evidence strongly points to a deliberate cover-up of the "Gunwalker" scandal, involving at least the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) and the U.S. Attorney's office in Arizona. The (very) short version is that emails between the BATFE Phoenix office and the U.S. Attorney's Arizona office openly discuss said cover-up. Stonewalling and cover-ups have been the hallmarks of the Obama administration's response to every attempt to get to the bottom of the Gunwalker scandal....

It's no secret that war is expensive, but a report out Wednesday says the U.S. has wasted billions in Iraq and Afghanistan. More tax dollars will go down the drain unless the government makes big changes... Today, a blue ribbon commission put a number on how much has been lost not to violence but to mismanagement and corruption. Commission on Wartime Contracting Chairman Christopher Shays says: "We are wasting between $30 and $60 billion during the course of our engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan." Shays says $30 billion in waste can be documented; Everything from leasing four-wheel vehicles at "grossly...

Libyan rebel commander admits his fighters have al-Qaeda links Mr al-Hasidi...added that the "members of al-Qaeda are also good Muslims and are fighting against the invader". His revelations came even as Idriss Deby Itno, Chad's president, said al-Qaeda had managed to pillage military arsenals in the Libyan rebel zone and acquired arms, "including surface-to-air missiles, which were then smuggled into their sanctuaries". Mr al-Hasidi admitted he had earlier fought against "the foreign invasion" in Afghanistan, before being "captured in 2002 in Peshwar, in Pakistan". He was later handed over to the US, 5 years later released from GITMO and then...

Fighters from the western mountain city of Zintan control the airport. The fighters from Misurata guard the central bank, the port and the prime minister’s office, where their graffiti has relabeled the historic plaza “Misurata Square.” Berbers from the mountain town Yafran took charge of the city’s central square, where they spray-painted “Yafran Revolutionaries.” A week after rebels broke into Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s former stronghold, much of its territory remains divided into fiefs, each controlled by quasi-independent brigades representing different geographic areas of the country. And the spray paint they use to mark their territory tells the story of a...

Tripoli, Libya (CNN) -- Hundreds of Islamist militants were among the prisoners freed from a notorious Tripoli prison this week, according to a former Libyan jihadist. The freed militants had been imprisoned in Tripoli's Abu Salim prison by Moammar Gadhafi's regime during the height of the insurgency in Iraq, according to Noman Benotman, once a senior figure in the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. Benotman said he believes as many as 600 militants may have been among the prison population at Abu Salim. It's not known how many prisoners were held in the vast facility. Human Rights Watch said Gadhafi's prisons...

Speaking to RT today live from Brazil, Asia Times correspondent Pepe Escobar said that an al-Qaeda asset is now leading the military of rebel-controlled Libya. According to Escobar, Abdelhakim Belhadj, who commanded a military offensive in Libya over the weekend, has become the de facto commander of the Tripoli armed forces. Belhadj has also, says Escobar, was trained in Afghanistan by a “very hardcore Islamist Libyan group.” Escobar says that Taliban-linked sources overseas have confirmed Belhadj as the new commander. In the aftermath of 9/11, the CIA began tracking Belhadj, who was eventually captured in Malaysia in 2003. Escobar says...

Sen. John McCain said that as Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi faces an "inevitable" end, the U.S. should concern itself with helping contain weapons from Qaddafi's arsenal. "We've got to secure these weapons depots," the Arizona Republican said on CBS' "The Early Show" Tuesday. "that have huge, huge numbers of weapons, and apparently mustard gas and other weapons of mass destruction."

Executive Summary:In the absence of police and government security forces, al-Qaeda-sympathetic movements, including al-Shabaab al-Islam (The Youth of Islam), have formed in the Sinai Peninsula. The demands of these Salafi-Jihadist groups reflect both local and regional concerns. Among their demands are calls for a full implementation of Shari’a, the revocation of Egypt’s treaties with Israel, the establishment of an Islamic Emirate in the Sinai and Egyptian military intervention against Israel on behalf of the Palestinians in Gaza. Despite a statement proclaiming the establishment of al-Qaeda in the Sinai Peninsula, core al-Qaeda has not yet acknowledged this new chapter of the...

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Libya has become a new source of smuggled weaponry for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, a senior Israeli official said on Thursday. With eastern Libya largely held by rebels who rose up against Muammar Gaddafi in February, arms were being brought across the border, through neighboring Egypt, to the Islamist Hamas-ruled territory, Vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon said. "Weapons are available in Libya as a result of the unstable situation there, and Hamas has exploited it to buy weapons from Libyan smugglers," he told foreign journalists in a briefing, without elaborating on the kind of munitions involved.

Rebels in the mountains in Libya's west have looted and damaged four towns seized since last month from the forces of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, part of a series of abuses and apparent reprisals against suspected loyalists that have chased residents of these towns away, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday. The looting included many businesses and at least two medical centers that, like the towns, are now deserted and bare. Rebel fighters also beat people suspected of being loyalists and burned their homes, the organization said. The towns that have suffered the abuses are Qawalish, which rebels seized last week, Awaniya,...

Lieutenant General John Allen told the Senate Armed Services Committee today that the Afghanistan decision President Obama announced last week was not among the range of options the military provided to the commander in chief. Allen’s testimony directly contradicts claims from senior Obama administration officials from a background briefing before the president’s announcement. In response to questioning from Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Allen testified that Obama’s decision on the pace and size of Afghanistan withdrawals was “a more aggressive option than that which was presented.” Graham pressed him. “My question is: Was that a option?” Allen: “It was not.” Allen's...

NAPLES — As NATO bombs began to rain on Libya in March, President Obama and other Western leaders assured their war-weary publics that the campaign to protect civilians from Moammar Gaddafi’s crackdown would be over within weeks. Now the coalition’s springtime incursion has stretched to summer and Gaddafi’s resilience has startled the leaders who committed to the operation. Calls are growing to end it even as NATO pleads for more time. As the campaign enters its fourth month, NATO officials insist that it is succeeding and that Gaddafi will become the Arab Spring’s third casualty. But that will happen, they...

While Holder didn’t pull any triggers, the Department of Justice was involved in Gunwalker from the beginning. A detective assembles a crime’s “history” by collecting and examining evidence, which eventually leads him to the perpetrator. When sufficient evidence points to a reasoned conclusion, perpetrators are arrested and prosecuted in court. Crimes consist of means, motive, and opportunity. So it is with ATF’s Operation Fast and Furious, also known as “Gunwalker.” Violent crimes committed with Gunwalker firearms Besides Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s murder, “Mexican officials estimate 150 of their people have been shot by Fast and Furious guns.” This indicates...

During the Bush administra­tion, when the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel got into the habit of rationalizing whatever the president wanted to do, Indiana University law professor Dawn Johnsen dreamed of an OLC that was willing to “say no to the president.” It turns out we have such an OLC now. Unfortunately, as Barack Obama’s defense of his unauthorized war in Libya shows, we do not have a president who is willing to take no for an answer. While running for president, Obama criticized George W. Bush’s lawless unilateralism in areas such as torture, warrantless surveillance and detention of...

NATO air strikes killed nine civilians in the Arada neighbourhood of Tripoli, which is a known anti-Gaddafi stronghold, the regime said Sunday. The incident occurred a day after the government accused NATO of specifically targeting civilians. AFP - NATO said Sunday it was investigating Libyan claims that nine civilians, two of them of toddlers, were killed in an alliance air raid... Libyan government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim told AFP that a NATO air strike on a residential district of Tripoli early on Sunday killed nine people... Earlier in the day, journalists had been shown the bodies of five people, one of...

Since the United States handed control of the air war in Libya to NATO in early April, American warplanes have struck at Libyan air defenses about 60 times, and remotely operated drones have fired missiles at Libyan forces about 30 times, according to military officials. The most recent strike from a piloted United States aircraft was on Saturday, and the most recent strike from an American drone was on Wednesday, the officials said. While the Obama administration has regularly acknowledged that American forces have continued to take part in some of the strike sorties, few details about their scope and...

Charlie Savage has the amazing story that President Obama “rejected the views of top lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department when he decided that he had the legal authority to continue American military participation in the air war in Libya without Congressional authorization.” The Acting head of the Office of Legal Counsel, Caroline Krass, and the General Counsel of the Department of Defense, Jeh Johnson, advised the President that military activities in Libya constituted “hostilities” under the War Powers Resolution and thus Section 5(b) of the WPR required him to terminate or scale back the mission after May...