Free Republic

Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes will discuss the close relationship between Barack Obama and Rashid Khalidi - Palestinian supporter and the professor at Columbia University - on a special broadcast of "Hannity's America" which will air tomorrow night at 9:00 PM eastern time. Khalidi is a former professor at the University of Illinois and was a close friend of Barack Obama and his wife Michelle. At a farewell dinner for Khalidi before he took the Columbia job, Obama 's speech was filled with glowing praise for his friend, including references to the many meals they had shared. He thanked Khalidi...

SIR Paul McCartney has been threatened that he will be the target of suicide bombers unless he abandons plans to play his first concert in Israel. Self-styled preacher of hate Omar Bakri claimed the former Beatle’s decision to take part in the Jewish state’s 60th anniversary celebrations had made him an enemy of all Muslims. Sources said Sir Paul was shocked but refused to be intimidated. In an interview with Israeli media yesterday he said: “I was approached by different groups and political bodies who asked me not to come here. I refused. I do what I think and I...

Although the overall level of violence in Iraq has decreased to a four- year low, the country has recently witnessed a sharp rise in a violent trend that alarms many Iraqis: female suicide bombings. This year the number of suicide bombings carried out by women has more than tripled to 29 attacks, say US military officials. Al Qaeda and other insurgent groups have turned to women to exploit cultural practices that do not allow men to search women. As a result, females can pass through most checkpoints in Iraq without someone so much as looking in their handbags. To combat...

Tears streaming down her face, she is confronted by police - a teenage girl apparently planning to blow herself up in front of an Iraqi school. The officers handcuffed her to a metal balustrade before moving in with extreme caution to uncover a vest full of explosives hidden under her colourful robe. The dramatic scenes were captured on a video shot by the police.-SNIP- Police in Baqouba, where the girl was caught on Sunday, said she was fitted with the vest by female relatives of her husband, whom she married five months ago. They also claimed that the girl's father...

Click HERE to play video. TRANSCRIPT: August 19, 2008 Clip No. 1840 Women in Gaza Prepare to Become Suicide Bombers Following are excerpts from a TV report on female Palestinian suicide bombers, which aired on Al-Jadid/New TV on August 19, 2008. Reporter: This elderly Palestinian woman, called Fatima Al-Najjar, used to lead women’s demonstrations at the entrance to the town of Beit Hanoun in the winter of 2006, calling upon the occupation to leave her town and stop the killing and destruction. But despite her advanced age, she decided to take a different path. Fatima Al-Najjar: I sacrifice myself for...

Forward Operating Base Salerno, situated north of Khost City, is a main Coalition hub for operations in southeastern Afghanistan. Photo courtrsy of Lieutenant Colonel James Megellas. Nearly 30 Taliban fighters attempted to storm a major US base in eastern Afghanistan a day after a double car bombing attack was attempted on the same base. Forward Operation Base (FOB) Salerno, the biggest Coalition base in southeastern Afghanistan, withstood Monday’s failed car bombing attempt but one of the bomber’s managed to detonate his vehicle at the base’s perimeter, killing 10 Afghans and injuring 13 others, according to a US military press...

Pentagon Makes Fighting Extremism Top Priority Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon on Thursday officially named "the long war" against global extremism as its top priority and pledged to avert any conventional military threat from China or Russia through dialogue. The Defense Department, in a new national defense strategy, also emphasized the need to subordinate military operations to "soft power" initiatives to undermine Islamist militancy by promoting economic, political and social development in vulnerable corners of the world. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he hoped the change would help establish permanent institutional support for counterinsurgency skills...

"This is to raise awareness about the civilian toll in Iraq, and how a lot of them have been forced by the consequences of the invasion to become suicide bombers."

Bombers kill 50 in Iraq, wound nearly 250 BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Three female suicide bombers killed 28 people and wounded 92 in Baghdad on Monday as Shi'ite pilgrims flooded into the Iraqi capital for a major religious event, police said. In the northern oil city of Kirkuk a bomb killed at least 22 people and wounded 150 at a protest against a controversial provincial elections law, Iraqi health and security officials said. The U.S. military said initial reports showed the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber. The blasts marked one of the bloodiest days in months and underscored...

Terrorists linked to Al-Qaeda may be planning to buy former NHS ambulances and police cars to mount suicide bomb attacks in Britain, MI5 has warned. They may import a tactic already used in Iraq and Israel, according to a report by MI5’s Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre to chief constables. In a statement to The Sunday Times, the Association of Chief Police Officers also warned of the risk of such an attack. It said ministers must legislate to stop the sale of such vehicles. Its move has been backed by Lord Carlile of Berriew, the government’s terrorism watchdog. He said he...

BAGHDAD -- Two suicide bombers have killed 27 people and wounded 68 at a recruitment center for the Iraqi Army north of Baghdad, an Iraqi security source said, just days after the government promised a crackdown in the area. The U.S. military said 20 recruits were killed and 55 wounded when the bombers blew themselves up in a line outside a security base in Ba'quba, 65 kilometers northeast of Baghdad. The attack follows a string of bombings in recent months in Diyala Governorate, of which Ba'quba is the capital. Sunni Islamist Al-Qaeda has sought to stoke tensions in religiously and...

Wenza Ali Mutlaq walked a bit uncertainly up the long street near the main government offices here on June 22, the hot wind stirring her heavy black abaya. She passed the concrete barricades put up to ward off suicide car bombers and made her way alone, almost haphazardly. Suddenly, a police car zoomed in. A policeman got out to talk with her. And then their lives were over — torn apart, along with 14 other people, by the huge blast of fire from her concealed explosive vest. Ms. Mutlaq, who was in her 30s and whose attack was captured on...

A former Guantanamo Bay detainee, Abdullah Salih al Ajmi has been identified as the Al Qaeda operative who conducted a suicide truck bombing in Mosul: Released Guantanamo detainee behind March suicide truck bombing at Combat Outpost Inman in Mosul. A former Kuwaiti Guantanamo Bay detainee conducts a suicide attack in Mosul. Two Kuwaiti al Qaeda operatives who conducted suicide attacks were featured at the end of the video. Abu Omar al Kuwaiti, also known as Badr Mishel Gama’an al Harbi, and Abu Juheiman al Kuwaiti, also known as Abdullah Salih al Ajmi, are both shown on the video, along with...

Yusufiya, Iraq (CNN) -- Female suicide bombers, who often slip through security checkpoints untouched because of cultural norms, are taking a more deadly toll than ever across Iraq. But the U.S. Army has created a solution with "Daughters of Iraq," a program that trains Iraqi women to find female suicide bombers. Women carried out eight bombings in all of 2007, according to the U.S. military. Halfway through 2008, the number of female suicide bombers is 20. A suicide attack carried out by a woman on Sunday in Baquba killed at least 16 people and wounded another 40. "Daughters of Iraq"...

BAGHDAD - The Iraqi military on Monday displayed a group of weeping teenagers who said they had been forced into training for suicide bombings by a Saudi militant in the last urban stronghold of al-Qaida in Iraq. Four of the six boys were lined up for the media at police headquarters in the northern city of Mosul, where they said they had been training for a month to start suicide operations in early June. The United Nations and the Iraqi and U.S. militaries say they fear that al-Qaida in Iraq is increasingly trying to use youths in attacks to avoid...

The United States is seeing a sharp drop in the number of foreigners entering Iraq to become al Qaeda suicide bombers, according to intelligence and Bush administration sources. An administration official and a military adviser to Iraqi commanders attribute the decline to a fairly new phenomenon: Al Qaeda's call for mass killings in the name of Islam is losing some of its appeal with young Arabs in North Africa and Saudi Arabia, where most of the bombers originate. The decline also parallels the battlefield losses al Qaeda has suffered in the past 12 months in Iraq's Anbar province and the...

Islamic terrorists may be targeting mentally disturbed or disabled people in Britain in a bid to form a new “brigade” of home-grown suicide bombers, security officials fear. MI5 and police say the case of Nicky Reilly, who is being held over a nailbomb attack last week in Exeter, may indicate a new strategy of targeting vulnerable people with mental health problems to carry out attacks. A counterterrorism official said MI5 was investigating the extent to which Reilly had been manipulated by a “charismatic” Al-Qaeda recruiter. “It is a grotesque concept but they are using people who are clearly mentally subnormal,”...

LONDON – Officers in Britain's MI6 intelligence service, working alongside Pakistani intelligence officers in that nation's remote North West province, have located a training camp where children, some as young as six years old, were being trained as suicide bombers, according to a report in Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin. The camp – one of several al-Qaida training camps in the region – is under the direct control of the terror group. The intelligence officers led Pakistani Special Forces to the children's camp outside the village of Spinkai in the mountainous region. An MI6 report on the school describes it as...

The Pakistani army claimed today to have overrun one such camp in territory where the notorious Pakistani Taliban commander, Baitullah Mehsud, operates. Militants had transformed a government-run school near the village of Spinkai in South Waziristan into what one officer described as a “nursery for preparing suicide bombers”. The school was part of a large compound above the village that included a small mosque. Maj Gen Tariq Khan, the commander of the division that captured the area, said: “It was like factory that had been recruiting nine to 12-year-old boys and turning them into suicide bombers.” He told the Dawn...

Peace efforts with Palestine are at odds with the raids and arrests credited with keeping bombings down. NETANYA, ISRAEL Suicide bombings in Israel have dropped off so significantly that the nation's security officials now dare to speak openly of success. But the very steps they are taking to thwart bombers appear to collide head-on with the government's agenda of achieving peace with the Palestinians. It is a classic military-political dilemma. The progress in stopping suicide bombers, the vast majority of whom cross into Israel from the West Bank, has brought enough quiet for Israel to resume peace talks with the...

The moral logic of suicide bombing. Are suicide bombings increasing around the world? If so, why? What can we do about it? The latest warning sign comes from data reported a week ago by Robin Wright of the Washington Post: Suicide bombers conducted 658 attacks around the world last year … more than double the number in any of the past 25 years … More than four-fifths of the suicide bombings over that period have occurred in the past seven years, the data show. The bombings have spread to dozens of countries on five continents, killed more than 21,350 people...

U.S. Wary Of Small Boat Terrorism As boating season approaches, the Bush administration wants to enlist America's 80 million recreational boaters to help reduce the chances that a small boat could deliver a nuclear or radiological bomb somewhere along the 95,000 miles of U.S. coastline and inland waterways. According to an April 23 intelligence assessment obtained by The Associated Press, "The use of a small boat as a weapon is likely to remain al Qaeda's weapon of choice in the maritime environment, given its ease in arming and deploying, low cost, and record of success." While the United States...

Israel may have 200 nuclear warheads, but Hamas has 200,000 people who want to blow themselves up inside Israel, Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar said Tuesday. Slideshow: Pictures of the week Zahar, who was speaking to supporters at the Islamic University in Gaza City, said Israel would pay a heavy price if it rejected the Egyptian initiative for truce with the Palestinians. "If Israel says no, it will pay a heavy price," he said. "We are a besieged people and we will have to use all our tools to defend ourselves against Israel." Zahar said he expected Egyptian Intelligence Chief Omar...

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,...

Petraeus: Al Qaida Trying to 'Come Back In' U.S. military officials said there will be no significant reduction in coalition troops in the Baghdad area as part of an effort to stop the Al Qaida offensive in northern Iraq. They said Al Qaida was trying to reenter Baghdad and reverse its losses in 2007. "Al Qaida is trying to come back in," U.S. military commander Gen. David Petraeus said. "We can feel it and see it, and what we're trying to do is rip out any roots before they can get deeply into the ground." Read More Militants Assert...

March 24, 2008, 5:00 a.m. Chilling ConfirmationYes, Saddam Hussein was an Islamofascist threat. By Deroy Murdock As Operation Iraqi Freedom is now five years old, a new study confirms that ousting Saddam Hussein was justified and vital to U.S. national security. Though war critics hate to admit it, the Baathist dictator was up to his mustache in aid for Islamofascist terrorism. As a report from the Institute for Defense Analyses explains, “captured Iraqi documents uncovered strong evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism.� IDA’s review of some 600,000 documents discovered in Iraq since...

The growing use by terrorist groups of women — some disguised as expectant moms — to deliver deadly homicide bombs has prompted the Department of Homeland Security and FBI to issue a rare warning that such attacks could take place on American soil. The joint security assessment cited recent female homicide bomber attacks in Baghdad — in which two women who appeared to have Down syndrome delivered a deadly explosion that killed 99 — as well as in Sri Lanka, Chechnya, India, Pakistan and the Palestinian territories as reason for the warning. "Female suicide bombers may have an advantage over...

Baghdad, 21 March (AKI) - Al-Qaeda has decided to enlist widows to carry out suicide bombings in Iraq, according to a study by the Voices of Iraq news agency. During the last three months, six suicide attacks were carried out by women. A total 10 women have carried out suicide attacks in Iraq since April 2003 , according to statistics from the United States army. As recently as Wednesday, a woman blew herself up in volatile Diyala province, killing five people. On Monday, a female suicide bomber blew herself up among a group of civilians in the holy Shia city...

There's a famously funny scene in the 1976 movie The Pink Panther Strikes Again in which Peter Sellers' bumbling Inspector Clouseau eyes a dog sitting near a hotel clerk. Clouseau: Does your dog bite? Hotel Clerk: No. Clouseau: (bowing to pet the dog) Nice doggie. (Dog barks and bites Clouseau in the hand) Clouseau: I thought you said your dog did not bite! Hotel Clerk: That is not my dog. A RECENT article by Ohio blogger Patrick Poole reminded us of how Muslim American Society (MAS) Freedom Foundation director Mahdi Bray similarly told a lie while telling the truth. In...

So, according to the AP’s guidelines, it would fall under the heading of fair use when I point out the following Reuters photograph, and mention that it’s yet another example of the mainstream wire services’ utter corruption and moral blindness, labeling Hamas terrorists in suicide bomber outfits as “activists.” They’ve slowly debased the language to the point where this kind of sick, evil description is routine business as usual. Palestinian Hamas activists take part in an anti-Israel rally organized by the Hamas movement in Gaza March 7, 2008. (Reuters)

BAGHDAD — Iraq has captured an Al Qaida-aligned cell that recruited and deployed women for suicide operations. On March 1, Iraqi and U.S. troops raided a suspected Al Qaida safe house in Al Makhesa, in northeastern Diyala. Officials said scores of suspected women operatives recruited as suicide bombers were arrested. The women suicide cell was said to have consisted of 100 operatives. Officials said Al Qaida has increased its use of women for suicide operations. The women cell was said to have operated in the Diyala province. Officials said some of the women were recruited by their husbands for suicide...

Not long ago, my son and I had a dinner argument over the war against radical Islamist terrorism. He’s a brilliant academic, about to enter graduate school for either math, physics, or both, but he sometimes gets trapped in his rationalism — which, to be honest, isn’t exactly the worst thing a father could wish for his son. He insisted that violence only made the problem worse, and that we had to find a negotiated settlement with Islamist terrorists.Alan Dershowitz had an answer for that in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. In an essay entitled “Worshippers of Death,” Dershowitz argued that...

LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) — A series of explosions went off Tuesday in the parking lot of the Naval War College in the eastern city of Lahore, police said. A television news channel said two people were killed. Lahore police chief Malik Iqbal told The Associated Press that police are investigating the blasts and do not know yet if they were caused by bombs. Geo television network reported four explosions within minutes of each other on the war college's premises, and said two people were killed and several injured. It said the casualties were taken to hospitals in "several ambulances." The...

Zahra Maladan is an educated woman who edits a women's magazine in Lebanon. She is also a mother, who undoubtedly loves her son. She has ambitions for him, but they are different from those of most mothers in the West. She wants her son to become a suicide bomber. At the recent funeral for the assassinated Hezbollah terrorist Imad Moughnaya -- the mass murderer responsible for killing 241 marines in 1983 and more than 100 women, children and men in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994 -- Ms. Maladan was quoted in the New York Times giving the following warning...

There's a famously funny scene in the 1976 movie The Pink Panther Strikes Again in which Peter Sellers' bumbling Inspector Clouseau eyes a dog sitting near a hotel clerk. Clouseau: Does your dog bite? Hotel Clerk: No. Clouseau: (bowing to pet the dog) Nice doggie. (Dog barks and bites Clouseau in the hand) Clouseau: I thought you said your dog did not bite! Hotel Clerk: That is not my dog. A RECENT article by Ohio blogger Patrick Poole reminded us of how Muslim American Society (MAS) Freedom Foundation director Mahdi Bray similarly told a lie while telling the truth. In...

Yet another study of suicide bombers was published recently, this time by researchers at the University of Toronto. Like almost all its predecessors, the study refuted the theory that such bombers are motivated by poverty and despair; most, it found, were not economically deprived. It also echoed previous studies in concluding that suicide bombers are not psychologically unstable. More than 200 Iranian men and women volunteer to carry out suicide bomb attacks against Americans in Iraq and Israelis in 2005. Photo: Associated Press , AP But, again like many of its predecessors, it stopped short of the obvious conclusion: that...

TORONTO - In an extensive study of Palestinian suicide bombings, 3 University of Toronto researchers have concluded that the bombers were not psychologically unstable and were often motivated by personal vengeance, not religious zeal. The study was carried out by political sociologist Robert Brym, with the assistance of two Ph.d students, Palestinian Bader Araj and Israeli Yael Maoz-Shai. Writing in the academic journal Social Forces, Brym noted, "The organizers of suicide attacks don't want to jeopardize their missions by recruiting unreliable people. It may be that some psychologically unstable people want to become suicide bombers, but insurgent organizations strongly prefer...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Terrorists increasingly favor using women as suicide bombers to thwart security and draw attention to their causes, a new FBI-Department of Homeland Security assessment concludes. The assessment said the agencies "have no specific, credible intelligence indicating that terrorist organizations intend to utilize female suicide bombers against targets in the homeland." But it points out that women have been reported as attackers in the Russian breakaway republic of Chechnya and in India, Iraq, Pakistan, the Palestinian territories, Sri Lanka and Turkey. The notice was distributed Monday to law enforcement officials throughout the United States, and CNN obtained a...

BAGHDAD - The U.S. military said Wednesday that two women used as suicide bombers in attacks earlier this month had undergone psychiatric treatment but there is no indication they had Down syndrome as Iraqi and U.S. officials initially had claimed.

BAGHDAD – Multi-National Division – Baghdad Soldiers arrested a suspected suicide bomb facilitator during a raid in the Rashid District of the Iraqi capital Feb. 9.Numerous tips led Soldiers from Company C, 2nd Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment, 10th Mountain Division, Multi-National Division to detain the alleged extremist. He was found with five Iraqi women in a home in Doura. One of the women is suspected of being a possible suicide bomber-in-training.The man was taken to a Coalition Detention Facility for questioning. Two of the women were also detained for further questioning. At this time, there is no indication this event...

Is the U.S. Failing in Afghanistan? It was malice in wonderland at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday as Bush Administration envoys insisted things are getting better in Afghanistan, while angry lawmakers from both parties cited facts and figures showing just the opposite. Even the senior Republican on the panel, Senator Richard Lugar, found the Administration's claims wanting. "I'm not sure that we have a plan for Afghanistan," he said. Long seen as the "forgotten war" eclipsed by Iraq in U.S. priorities, Afghanistan is in the Washington spotlight this week with the release of three independent reports concluding...

An Israeli academic has withdrawn from a panel discussion at a respected London science-based institution after learning about the radical views of one of the invited members of the panel. Prof. David Newman, professor of political geography at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, was scheduled to take part in an event entitled "Israel-Palestine" on Tuesday at Imperial College London's Student Union as part of its Political Philosophy Society's Conflict Case-Study Week. On the panel is Robin Kealy, a former UK consul-general in Jerusalem. But it also features Azzam Tamimi, director of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought in London. Tamimi...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Female suicide bombers blew themselves up Friday at two markets in Baghdad, killing at least 64 people and wounding more than 100, authorities said. One bomber struck at a popular pet market around 10:30 a.m. in central Baghdad, killing at least 46 people and wounding 82, the Iraqi Interior Ministry said. The second blast happened about a half-hour later in a southeastern Baghdad market, killing 18 and wounding 25, according to the Interior Ministry. In both bombings, the attackers were wearing suicide vests, according to Qasim Atta, a spokesman for the Baghdad security plan. Atta told...

Baghdad got hit by two bombers today, but neither of them committed suicide. The al-Qaeda attack involved strapping remote-controlled bombs to two girls with Down's Syndrome, and detonating the devices when they walked through the market. The explosions killed 73 people in one of the deadliest days since the surge pacified most of Iraq: Remote-controlled explosives strapped to two mentally retarded women detonated in a coordinated attack on Baghdad pet bazaars Friday, Iraqi officials said, killing at least 73 people in the deadliest day since the U.S. sent 30,000 extra troops to the capital last spring. The chief Iraqi military...

Excerpt - Baghdad’s fragile peace was shattered yesterday when explosives strapped to two women with Down’s syndrome were detonated by remote control in crowded pet markets, killing at least 91 people in the worst attacks that the capital had experienced for almost a year. Iraqi and American officials blamed al-Qaeda, and accused the terrorist organisation of plumbing new depths of depravity. Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, said that al-Qaeda’s use of mentally-handicapped women as bombers showed that it had “no political programme here that is acceptable to a civilised society and that this is the most brutal and...

As if things weren't crazy enough already in the Middle East, here's the officially sanctioned message in sixth-grade Palestinian textbooks for 11- and 12-year-old kids: "The noble soul has two goals: death and the desire for it."...It's Jonestown, writ large, a cult of suicide for the collective, for Palestine. Israel isn't on the maps in the Palestinian textbooks. ...A recent article in Rolling Stone, "The Unending Torture of Omar Khadr," tells the story of a 15-year-old captured by U.S. troops in Afghanistan .... "Born into a fundamentalist Muslim family in Toronto," Omar Khadr "had been prepared for jihad since he...

ABC News has learned that the manhunt that began in Spain for suspected terror cell members has now extended to France and other European Union countries. Investigative sources tell ABC News the cell members are Spanish residents, including both nationals and foreigners. They are believed to have recently traveled to Spain from Waziristan, Pakistan, an area known as a hotbed for al Qaeda training and Taliban resurgence. The 14 suspected terrorists arrested last weekend in Spain were in the final stages of preparing a suicide attack using multiple bombs, according to sources close to the investigation being conducted by Spanish...

WASHINGTON -- The White House has added a new term to its Middle East descriptions: homicide bombings. That's how White House spokesman Ari Fleischer has begun referring to bombing attacks in Israel, including Friday's in which a woman detonated explosives she was wearing, killing herself and five other people at an outdoor market. "The president condemns this morning's homicide bombing," Fleischer said. He also called on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to "speak out and denounce today's homicide attack." When asked why he used the term, Fleischer replied that it better captures the nature of the violence. "These are not suicide...

Written by CJTF-82 Operations    Wednesday, 26 December 2007 The United States Air Force unveiled their F117 Nighthawk over the skies of Iraq in 1991; it has since been joined by the B2 Spirit. Both aircraft use stealth technology intended to aid its penetration role in order to survive extremely dense anti-aircraft defenses otherwise considered impenetrable by combat aircraft. The Taliban unveiled their own “Stealth Bomber� yesterday in Jalalabad, Nangarhar as a 50 year old woman was apprehended at a security checkpoint wearing a suicide vest. Evading radar isn’t an issue for the technology eschewing Taliban, Police and security...

Video is about a female suicide bomer's child, and includes the line "I will follow my mother's steps".