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Defense Secretary Panetta admits that CIA used the information from waterboarding to capture Osama Bin Laden • Controversial film Zero Dark Thirty has graphic waterboarding scene • Director Kathryn Bigelow says all information in the film was based on 'first hand accounts' of what happened but now Senator disputes theory Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said that some of the information that was used to locate and kill Osama bin Laden was attained using torture. The admission comes after months of speculation about the role that waterboarding plays in CIA interrogations following its graphic depiction in the Oscar-nominated film Zero Dark...

A banner showing al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri and former emir Osama bin Laden is placed outside the French Embassy in Cairo, Egypt during a protest organized by Mohammed al Zawahiri. Image from Euronews. Within the past few days, Mohammed al Zawahiri, the younger brother of al Qaeda emir Ayman al Zawahiri, has threatened France and the West while condemning the intervention in Mali. The younger Zawahiri promised that if France and its allies continue to fight in Mali, then Westerners will be the "first to burn." During an interview broadcast by Euronews on Jan. 22, Mohammed al...

During George W. Bush's presidency, it was a matter of liberal faith that the use of enhanced interrogation techniques on al-Qaida members "undermine our moral authority and do not make us safer," as Barack Obama once put it. According to Obama, "enhanced interrogation techniques" are wrong, and -- no matter what common sense tells you -- they never work. Asking nicely works best with terrorists. "Zero Dark Thirty" -- Kathryn Bigelow's new thriller about the decadelong quest to bring Osama bin Laden to justice -- doesn't cleave to that liberal orthodoxy. At a preview Thursday, I saw a steely homage...

This doesn't quite qualify as breaking news for those who tracked the extraordinary labyrinth of intelligence that emerged in the days following the 2011 Abbottabad raid, but the subject of US interrogation policy is again generating controversy in advance of the release of 'Zero Dark Thirty,' a film that dramatizes the bin Laden mission.  Writing in today's Washington Post, a former top CIA counter-terrorism officer sets the record straight on what measures were, and were not, employed to help bring down the world's most infamous terrorist.  Jose Rodriguez -- who made headlines last year when his book exposed Nancy Pelosi's...

THE daughter-in-law of former al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden is a keen member of the Royal British Legion... Zaina — previously known as Jane Felix Browne — married the terror mastermind’s son Omar in 2007 a month after she met him on a trip to Egypt’s pyramids. ... Zaina converted to Islam before she wed Omar, her sixth husband. ... A military source said: “The Legion can’t deny her membership purely on the basis of her surname — that would be discrimination. But many members will be appalled.”

I just saw Zero Dark Thirty, and I thought I'd give a quick review of it for the benefit of those of you who might consider seeing it in the coming weeks. I'll try not to give away too many spoilers, but obviously it's a true story, so it shouldn't be too hard. First off, I don't think it's pro-Obama propaganda. The hero of the movie is the CIA agent who made it her personal decade-long mission to track down bin Laden, and then secondarily, Seal Team Six of course, but also the other CIA personnel who participated in the...

After the successful May 2011 raid that took down Osama bin Laden, President Obama said that “his [bin Laden’s] demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity.” Pakistan’s treatment of CIA informant Dr. Shakil Afridi tells a different story, however. The country’s spy agency (Inter-Services Intelligence) promptly arrested the doctor for helping Americans identify OBL’s compound. In addition to a fine and his entire bank account being looted, Afridi was sentenced to 33 years in prison for high treason and is now reportedly being tortured: ... According to Afridi, ISI “regards America as its “worst...

NOTE The following text is a quote: Alabama Men Arrested on Terrorism Charges U.S. Attorney’s Office December 11, 2012 Southern District of Alabama MOBILE, AL—U.S. Attorney Kenyen R. Brown of the Southern District of Alabama and Stephen E. Richardson, Special Agent in Charge of the Mobile Division of the FBI, announced that Mohammad Abdul Rahman Abukhdair, 25, and Randy Wilson, also known as Rasheed Wilson, 25, both U.S. citizens living in Mobile, were arrested today on terrorism charges filed in the Southern District of Alabama. A criminal complaint signed on December 10, 2012, charges Abukhdair and Wilson with conspiring to...

What on earth is Terry Waite doing campaigning for the release of the British prisoners at Guantanamo Bay? These are the same kind of people who kept the former church envoy chained to a radiator in Beirut for five years. I know Waite is one those who believes you should love your enemy. But you can take forgiveness too far. At long last the Americans have broken their silence and revealed details of exactly why four of the British detainees should not be freed. They all trained at al-Qa’ida camps in Afghanistan, learning bomb making, assassination and urban warfare. They...

On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda operatives slaughtered nearly 3,000 Americans in an operation that marked the second major attack by violent jihadists against the World Trade Center. There wasn’t much mystery about who had carried out these atrocities — unless you were Salam al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. Marayati warned Americans not to conclude that the suicide hijacking attacks were the work of Muslim terrorists. “If we are going to look at suspects,” he told a Los Angeles radio station, “we should look at groups that benefit the most from these kinds of incidents, and I...

The Washington Post reports that “the CIA and other intelligence analysts have settled on what amounts to a hybrid view” of September 11, 2012, “suggesting that the Cairo protest sparked militants in Libya, who quickly mobilized an assault on U.S. facilities in Benghazi.”  What the Post doesn’t say is that the Cairo protest was itself an al Qaeda-infused, if not outright orchestrated, event.The “hybrid” explanation is a compromise, of sorts, between two competing narratives. The first suggested that a protest against an anti-Islam film in Benghazi led to a “spontaneous” assault on the US consulate there. We know that version...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The California man behind an anti-Muslim film that led to violence in many parts of the Middle East was sentenced Wednesday to a year in federal prison for probation violations in an unrelated matter, then issued a provocative statement through his attorney. The sentence was the result of a plea bargain between lawyers for Mark Bassely Youssef and federal prosecutors. Youssef admitted in open court that he had used several false names in violation of his probation order and obtained a driver's license under a false name. He was on probation for a bank fraud case....

DARNA, Libya—Two former Afghan Mujahedeen and a six-year detainee at Guantanamo Bay have stepped to the fore of this city's military campaign, training new recruits for the front and to protect the city from infiltrators loyal to Col. Moammar Gadhafi... Abdel Hakim al-Hasady, an influential Islamic preacher and high-school teacher who spent five years at a training camp in eastern Afghanistan, oversees the recruitment, training and deployment of about 300 rebel fighters from Darna... Sufyan Ben Qumu, a Libyan army veteran who worked for Osama bin Laden's holding company in Sudan and later for an al Qaeda-linked charity in Afghanistan,...

Dear Friends: The election is coming up on all of us and we all have strong feelings about it. IÂ’ve been getting asked a lot about where I stand, so for those who are interested, here goes. This presidential election is different than the last one because President Obama has a four year record to run on. Last time around, he carried with him a tremendous amount of hope and expectations. Unfortunately, due to the economic chaos the previous administration left him with, and the extraordinary intensity of the opposition, it turned into a really rough ride. But through grit,...

Talk about chickens coming home to roost. Talk about the Mother of All Fiascos. It's the revenge of Osama bin Laden from the bottom of the ocean, and the message is plain: al-Qaeda is very much alive, and America is a paper tiger. The Middle East is beginning to fall apart -- Iran just sent a spy drone over Israel's sensitive defense installations, and the IDF waited hours to react; Turkey forced down a Syrian arms plane, and al-Qaeda's Al Zawahiri openly assaulted the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi in a six-hour attack, working through al-Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM), while...

The decision to raid Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan and kill him was made without President Obama – and actually was kept from him until after the helicopters already were in Pakistani airspace – according to a new report from a retired major general who cites a senior intelligence source.

The decision to raid Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan and kill him was made without President Obama – and actually was kept from him until after the helicopters already were in Pakistani airspace – according to a new report from a retired major general who cites a senior intelligence source. The raid was handled by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Director of Central Intelligence Leon Panetta and others in this way because Obama had vetoed multiple earlier opportunities to attack the man behind the 9/11 terror attacks, the report said. Ads by Google Silver to Soar in 2013? Free...

The more Romney talks these days the better he sounds. While it may seem counter intuitive with less than a month to go until election day, Romney has finally found his voice in this presidential campaign and a backbone to support it. After notching a “heavy weight” win against President Obama in last week’s Denver debate, Romney laid down another game changer in his foreign policy speech Monday at the Virginia Military Institute. Osama bin Laden might be dead but we are not safer was the theme of Romney’s speech. America isn’t shaping history but “leaving our destiny at the...

Mmm hmm -- strangled him to death with his own bare hands, dontcha know?  How predictable and pitiful:   Obama Spokeswomen: The President Killed Osama Bin Laden Yeah, we've heard, Ms. Psaki -- unlike many of your own supporters, it seems.  Bin Laden dead, General Motors alive (but at what cost, and for how long?)  That's pretty much the only argument they've got to apply some lipstick to the filthy pig that is Obama's term in office.  I mean, there's a reason why his spokespeople are urging voters to ignore those totes irrelevant last four years or so.  As I've...

President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have approved one of Osama bin Laden’s personal bodyguards for release or transfer from the Guantanamo Bay detention center to another country, according to prison records released by WikiLeaks and a recently published list of approved-transfer detainees from the Justice Department. Idris Ahmad Abdu Qadir Idris is the second name on Holder’s Justice Department list of 55 Gitmo detainees approved for release or transfer. This detainee, according to a Jan. 26, 2008, Defense Department document published by WikiLeaks, provided security for bin Laden both before and after the deadly Sept. 11 terrorist...