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A CRISIS meeting of Pakistan's new coalition Government has been warned that it could lose control of the North West Frontier Province, which is believed to hold most of its nuclear arsenal. The warning came yesterday from the coalition leader, who, although he is part of the new Government, is regarded as having the closest links to al-Qa'ida and Taliban militants sweeping through the region. Maulana Fazlur Rehman bluntly told his colleagues: "The North West Frontier province is breaking away from Pakistan. That is what is happening. That is the reality." This came just days before new Prime Minister Yousuf...

The survey found that extreme Islamist ideology has a profound influence on a significant minority of Muslims on campuses across the country. The findings will concern police chiefs, the security services and ministers, who are struggling with radicalisation among Muslim communities. The YouGov poll was conducted for the Right-wing think tank, the Centre for Social Cohesion, at 12 universities, including Imperial College and Kings College London. It also found: * 40 per cent support the introduction of sharia into British law for Muslims * a third back the notion of a worldwide Islamic caliphate (state) based on sharia law *...

KABUL (Reuters) - NATO countries have agreed to send more troops to the volatile south of Afghanistan, Canada's foreign minister said on Saturday, and another 200 Canadian troops could also be deployed. Canada has some 2,500 soldiers in Afghanistan, most of them stationed in the southern province of Kandahar where they have suffered one of the worst casualty rates fighting a resilient Taliban insurgency. "We've been talking with our NATO allies and in fact we do now have commitments to increase the number of troops particularly in the Kandahar region," Canadian Foreign Minister David Emerson told a news conference in...

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba — In his seventh of month of U.S. captivity, Osama bin Laden's driver told a pair of FBI agents that it was America's fault that the al Qaida leader was alive. The message was, ''You had these opportunities, America. You didn't do anything,'' FBI agent George Crouch Jr. testified Friday at Salim Hamdan's war crimes trial. The United States could have killed bin Laden in Khartoum, Sudan, before he moved to Afghanistan in 1996, Hamdan told his interrogators. They could have killed him after al Qaida's 1998 twin bombings at the U.S. Embassy bombings in...

The detention center at Guantánamo hangs on the US like a ball and chain. Both presidential candidates and President Bush want it closed. But that won't be easy without broad consensus on how to deal with current and future detainees. On the tip of Cuba at a US naval base, the facility was set up in 2002 for the interrogation and detention of terrorist suspects after the 9/11 attacks. It now holds about 265 prisoners, including 14 of "high value." It may have helped prevent any other 9/11-style attacks, but Guantánamo has cost America considerable moral standing in the war...

Bombs rock ‘India’s Silicon Valley’ By Amy Kazmin in New Delhi Published: July 25 2008 15:49 | Last updated: July 25 2008 15:49 India’s information technology capital, the southern city of Bangalore, was rocked on Friday afternoon by a series of eight small bomb blasts that killed at least one person and injured nearly a dozen others. The blasts happened in quick succession at about 1.30pm local time and caused temporary traffic chaos in the city, which is the hub of India’s global software outsourcing business. Known as India’s Silicon Valley, Bangalore is home to 1,500 companies such as India’s...

Barack Obama's vice presidential search team has floated the name of a member of President Bush's first-term Cabinet, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, as Obama's running mate. The search committee, now led by Caroline Kennedy and Eric Holder, raised Veneman's name — among others — in discussions with members of Congress, two Democrats familiar with the conversations said.

The success of the surge offensive resulted in an intelligence windfall. Documents and prisoner interrogations (as well as identifying the dead) provided a lot more information on hostile Sunni and Shia groups, as well as interesting observations about the factions currently controlling the government. All this clarified and confirmed the very factious nature of Iraqi society. Seems anybody with a quick mouth and a lot of guns can form their own little army. This factionalism is accompanied by a self-righteousness that seems to justify a wide range of bad behavior. This includes corruption, but also murder, torture, rape, theft and...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Here is Brian in Battle Creek, Michigan. Brian, thank you for waiting and welcome to the EIB Network. CALLER: Yeah, thank you. RUSH: Go right ahead, sir. CALLER: Megadittos. RUSH: Thank you very much. CALLER: I've got two here. First, I had to go to your website to find a phone number and now I finally understand when you say the Messi-uh, what you actually are getting at with the uhs that he says. RUSH: Right. The Messi-uh. CALLER: Very clever. The other thing is I was wondering if you had a chance to see the new...

Homeland Security: Forced to defend its growing terrorist watch list, the FBI let slip a chilling fact that should silence ACLU grumblers: America is teeming with 20,000 terrorists.After 9/11, federal authorities estimated that as many as 5,000 terrorists were living in the U.S. The new figure is jarring not only because it's four times as large but because it's based on real persons, not estimates. It's not something headquarters wanted to publicize. Officials had downplayed the threat so as not to spook the public. The spin had been that Britain has the homegrown problem, not us. But that was before...

America is at the Mall by Bridget Geegan Blanton Several months ago I came across a photo while online that appeared to have been taken inside a military installation quite possibly in a theater of war. The photo was simple yet poignant. In the background was the indistinct image of a Marine dressed in camouflage entering the room from the outside and in the foreground the photographer zeroed in on the side of a refrigerator. Three sentences written on the side of the refrigerator constituted the single most riveting feature of the photo. The statement was brief, to the point...

Some interesting testimony from an FBI interrogator in the trial of Osama bin Laden’s driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan. GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, July 23 — Osama bin Laden’s driver witnessed the al-Qaeda leader being briefed on the day of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and overheard him express satisfaction that the death toll had exceeded expectations, an FBI interrogator testified Wednesday. Salim Ahmed Hamdan, now held at the U.S. military prison here, had said under questioning six years ago that bin Laden was “happy about the results� of the terrorist strikes because he had expected “only� 1,000 to 1,500 people to...

With both ...Obama and John McCain calling for more troops to be sent to Afghanistan, there have been a slew of articles arguing this will at best not work and, at worst, fuel the insurgency...Zbigniew Brzezinski,...prominent supporter of Barack Obama, ...risks repeating the defeat suffered by the Soviet Union in Afghanistan."... Our strategy is getting in deeper and deeper.” ...Canada’s Globe and Mail, ... ”We knew by 1985 that we could not win,” it quotes veteran Ruslan Aushev as saying. It then took Moscow four more years to extricate hundreds of thousands of troops... Gulf News, Patrick Seale says that...

DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) - Four peace activists were arrested on Friday as they attempted to make a "citizens arrest" of Karl Rove, who was one of President George W. Bush's top aides before leaving the administration last year. "It should be Karl Rove in that van. War Criminal!"

He told CNN's Wolf Blitzer, "We have various options. The Nuremberg Trials are certainly an example of the kind of tribunal that we could move forward with. I don't think we'd have any difficulty in devising an international -- internationally supported mechanism that would mete out justice. There's no problem there." McCain said it would be a "good thing to reveal to the world the enormity of this guy's crimes, and his intentions, which are still there."

A GAPING hole which ripped through the belly of a jumbo jet mid-flight may have been caused by an explosive device or a damaged fuselage, aviation experts say. The packed Quantas Boeing 747 was forced to make an emergency landing in the Philippines today after the hole ripped through the plane’s belly. Some passengers were so terrified they vomited when oxygen masks has to be used as the Melbourne-bound flight touched down. Air expert David Learmount said: “It’s possible there was some kind of explosive device in the suitcases. There’s a hole where there shouldn’t be.” But Mr Learmount, who...

A mysterious explosion in a suburb of Teheran that killed 15 people last Saturday was likely an attack on a Iranian military convoy carrying arms to Hizbullah, the Telegraph reported Friday. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards imposed a news black-out immediately after the blast, but the UK newspaper reported that it looked like sabotage was responsible for destroying the convoy as it traveled through Khavarshahar. The newspaper noted that the company responsible for moving the military equipment, LTK, was owned by the Revolutionary Guards and was allegedly involved in shipping arms to Hizbullah. Last Saturday's incident was the latest in a...

Gitmo Merry-Go-Round by: Emily Miller, July 25, 2008 The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (U.S. Helsinki Commission) held a congressional hearing last week to revisit Guantanamo policies in the wake of Boumediene v. Bush, a recent Supreme Court decision that extends habeas corpus rights to detainees in Guantanamo Bay. Co-Chairman Senator Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD) says that in light of Boumediene the U.S. should “reopen entirely the question of how we handle terrorism suspects.” Calling Guantanamo a “lightning rod for international human rights criticism of the United States,” he encourages the U.S. to look abroad to see how...

The ayatollahs continue to enrich uranium, despite the high profile meeting on July 19, in Geneva between Tehran's top nuclear negotiator and senior western diplomats representing the Group of 5+1. No surprise there. They are banking their regime's survival on nuclear capability. Ali Larijani, Iran's former nuclear negotiator, once said that giving in to the West's demands that Iran suspend its enrichment would be suicide. But, however much their regional role is tied to developing a nuclear weapon, domestically their grip is being challenged on a daily basis. Indeed, the backbone of the ayatollah's regime, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps...

Islamabad, July 24: Pakistan's security and intelligence agencies have been put on high alert following reports that local Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud has prepared a hit list of 300 high-profile figures, including top political leaders. Among those that could be targeted are the leadership of the ruling Pakistan People's Party, Awami National Party, Muttahida Qaumi Movement and anti-Taliban Shia and Sunni clerics, said source close to an intelligence agency. Personnel from intelligence and law enforcement agencies, officials from the federal interior and provincial ministries and journalists could also be targeted by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan of Mehsud, who was blamed for...

Whistling Past the Graveyard   By John PerazzoFrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, July 25, 2008 Last week, columnist Paul Weyrich reported that there is credible evidence that Osama bin Laden has acquired twenty suitcase-sized nuclear bombs from Chechen rebels in the former Soviet Union and smuggled them into the United States by way of the Mexican border. If that is true, the al Qaeda kingpin has laid the groundwork for an “American Hiroshima” plan that he intends to carry out in the very near future. Once bin Laden gives the signal, his henchmen will proceed to detonate their explosives in a...

Whistling Past the Graveyard   By John PerazzoFrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, July 25, 2008 Last week, columnist Paul Weyrich reported that there is credible evidence that Osama bin Laden has acquired twenty suitcase-sized nuclear bombs from Chechen rebels in the former Soviet Union and smuggled them into the United States by way of the Mexican border. If that is true, the al Qaeda kingpin has laid the groundwork for an “American Hiroshima” plan that he intends to carry out in the very near future. Once bin Laden gives the signal, his henchmen will proceed to detonate their explosives in a...

A mysterious explosion in a suburb of Teheran that killed 15 people last Saturday was likely an attack on a Iranian military convoy carrying arms to Hizbullah, the Telegraph reported Friday. The Revolutionary Guards imposed a news black-out immediately after the blast, but the UK newspaper reported that it looked like sabotage was responsible for destroying the convoy as it traveled through Khavarshahar. The newspaper noted that the company responsible for moving the military equipment, LTK, was owned by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and was allegedly involved in shipping arms to Hizbullah. Last Saturday's incident was the latest in a...

UNITED NATIONS - A Swiss-led, five-nation panel proposed Thursday that the United Nations assert itself as leader of a global fight against terrorism and establish a new agency or program to coordinate that effort. U.N. ambassadors from Costa Rica, Japan, Slovakia, Switzerland and Turkey suggested that the U.N. General Assembly create an agency for counterterrorism along the lines of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency. It also recommended that the U.N. assist counterterrorism officials from individual nations in promoting "a human rights-based approach to counterterrorism" that disdains torture and preserves prisoners' rights. snip But the panel pointed...

London-based Daily Telegraph reports of mysterious blast in military convoy leaving Revolutionary Guards Base last weekend. At least 15 people killed in explosion, but Iranian authorities seeking to silence incident Was sabotage responsible for disrupting a shipment of arms from Iran to Hizbullah? The London-based Daily Telegraph newspaper reported Friday of a mysterious explosion which devastated an Iranian supply convoy intended to reach Hizbullah. According to the report, the strong blast took place in one of Tehran's suburbs as a military convoy left a Revolutionary Guards' ammunition storehouse. At least 15 people were killed in the explosion. Western sources reported...

After more than three decades in United States prisons — a term punctuated by a brief escape and recapture — a 62-year-old Croatian independence fighter was returned to his native country on Thursday, having served his time for a 1976 hijacking and a bombing that killed a police officer. The fighter, Zvonko Busic, led a group that planted a bomb at Grand Central Terminal that later exploded, killing a city police officer, Brian J. Murray. Mr. Busic left the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Ind., boarded a plane in Chicago and touched down in Zagreb about 2:20 p.m. on...

The Democratic candidate is putting together a team to prepare him for taking office in January should he win the Nov 4 election. It is headed by John Podesta, Bill Clinton's chief-of-staff when he was in the White House. A senior adviser travelling with Mr Obama on his global tour told Atlantic.com: "Barack is well aware of the complexity and the organisational challenge involved in the transition process and he has tasked a small group to begin thinking through the process. "Barack has made his expectations clear about what he wants from such a process, and the establishment and execution...

US presidential hopeful Barack Obama was due in Paris on Friday to meet President Nicolas Sarkozy during a fleeting and low-key visit in stark contrast to his crowd-pulling trip to Berlin the day before. Obama's aides did not detail his agenda, but the Illinois senator was expected to land at Le Bourget airport and head into Paris solely for the Sarkozy meeting before leaving for London soon afterwards. "Senator Obama looks forward to meeting with President Sarkozy and discussing areas of mutual interest, including the common challenges of security, transnational threats, and the global economy," his national security spokeswoman Wendy...

Barack Obama concedes that America's troops have contributed to improvements on the ground in Iraq, but he still stands by his vote against the surge. Why not just admit that he was wrong? Come on, senator, this is a lot easier than changing churches. Say: "As a proud American, I'm delighted that the surge has worked so we can move forward with my timetable for withdrawal. Look, if I'd known how successful it was going to be, I would have voted for it. At the time it didn't seem like a good bet, but prognosticators go broke in wartime." See,...

    Major gongs for heroic Our Boys   Award ... Captain Paul Britton is congratulated by Major General Gary Robison    By TOM NEWTON DUNN Defence Editor Published: Today     AN Army officer who led a battle despite a lump of burning shrapnel in his shoulder was one of 19 forces heroes awarded the Military Cross yesterday.   Praise ... Lieutenant General Graeme Lamb  Captain Paul Britton, 28, refused morphine so he could control artillery and air strikes to beat off Taliban attackers in Helmand province, Afghanistan. The Royal Artillery officer was wounded by a rocket-propelled grenade...

The McCain campaign is slamming Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., over a decision to cancel a visit with U.S. troops in Germany. The German magazine Der Spiegel is reporting online that Obama has “cancelled a planned short visit to the Rammstein and Landstuhl U.S. military bases in the southwest German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The visits were planned for Friday.” “Barack Obama will not be coming to us,” a spokesperson for the U.S. military hospital in Landstuhl told Der Spiegel. “I don't know why.” Obama senior adviser Robert Gibbs told ABC News in a statement, “During his trip as part of the...

BALAD, Iraq – Iraqi Special Operations Forces detained eight suspected members of the Islamic State of Iraq, a front organization for al-Qaeda in Iraq, in Mosul July 22.The ISOF conducted the operation to disrupt an active improvised explosive device cell in Mosul that operates in an area reportedly known to support criminals. Two other suspected terrorists were detained during the operation.-30-

<p>All charges against Sgt Johnny Winnick have been dismissed without prejudice by LtGen Samuel Helland.</p>

Islamofascism: A new study confirms our "ally" Saudi Arabia is still poisoning young Muslim minds with anti-Western textbooks. So? Its hate-filled graduates are enrolling at our colleges.The Hudson Institute reviewed the 2007-08 textbooks distributed by the Saudi Ministry of Education and found that, despite promised reforms, the kingdom still teaches students to "hate the infidels." The texts assert that it's "permissible" for a Muslim to kill an "apostate," an "adulterer," a "homosexual," as well as non-Muslims practicing "polytheism," or Christianity. The violent ideology is introduced in a religion textbook in the first grade and reinforced and developed in following years...

N.Korea ‘to Stay on Terror List Until Verification Is Agreed’ The U.S. has told North Korea that it will not strike it from the list of state sponsors of terrorism until it agrees on a verification protocol for its nuclear programs and stockpiles, it emerged on Thursday. A reliable source in Washington said Wednesday the U.S. reaffirmed its position that it will not remove North Korea from the terrorism list until it agrees on a detailed verification procedure. The U.S. was expected to strike the North off the list on Aug. 11 but will hold off however long it takes...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration has proposed shifting $226.5 million in U.S. counterterrorism aid to Pakistan to upgrade Pakistani F-16 fighters, U.S. officials said on Thursday. The plan has provoked some opposition in the U.S. Congress, where an influential lawmaker questioned how upgraded F-16s, which are widely seen as aimed at countering any threat from India, would be used against al Qaeda and Taliban forces. U.S. officials have long been frustrated at what they view as Pakistan's failure to do enough to combat militants along its border with Afghanistan, where the United States has some 35,000 troops, many of...

For an organisation that prides itself on being a well-run administrative machine, the leadership of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards is having a rather testing time. It’s not just last Saturday’s mysterious explosion in a suburb of Tehran that killed 15 people that is causing the leadership sleepless nights, although the nationwide news black-out imposed immediately afterwards does suggest the Revolutionary Guards, the storm troops of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, are rattled. Details are only now starting to reach the outside world, and it looks increasingly like sabotage was responsible for devastating a military convoy as it travelled through Khavarshahar. The company responsible...

Editor’s Note: Newsmax Editor Christopher Ruddy is visiting Israel this week and met with Natan Sharansky. The former Soviet dissident spent more than a decade in the communist Gulag. He emigrated to Israel after his release in 1986, became a Knesset member and served in four successive Israeli governments, including time as deputy prime minister. In 2006, he resigned from Israel’s Knesset, but he remains active in the country’s political discourse. He has just authored his latest book “Defending Identity: Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy.” Jerusalem — An Israeli businessman I met described Natan Sharansky as having an “inner...

               Now We Know Jennifer Rubin - 07.23.2008 - 10:50 AM Barack Obama has repeatedly expressed puzzlement at how American Jews could be wary of him. At various shuls and before AIPAC he has brought up the email/whispering campaign, his middle name and even the comments of other African-Americans to explain why Jews haven’t all been smitten by the Great Man. The tone, not just from him, but from his blogoshpere friends has often been one of “But how can it be that they doubt him?” Well, now there are plenty of stories...

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The Bush administration told the CIA in 2002 that its interrogators working abroad would not violate U.S. prohibitions against torture unless they “have the specific intent to inflict severe pain or suffering,” according to a previously secret Justice Department memo released Thursday.

Lawmakers Who Vote Against Our Security Deserve Our Scorn by Jeffrey Imm Last week, there was an interesting development in the U.S. House of Representatives that will give Americans a clear view as to exactly where their individual representatives stand on the war of ideas in fighting Jihad.Per my previous article on this subject, on May 8, 2008, Congressman Peter Hoekstra attempted to add an amendment on the "terror lexicon" to a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence bill on 2009 intelligence funding (House Resolution 5959).   Hoekstra's amendment condemned efforts by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), National Counter...

When a memorial to the victims of an Islamic terrorist attack is being built to specifications that will make it the world's largest mosque, we have a serious problem. The person who has stayed on top of all of this is Alec Rawls, author of Crescent of Betrayal - Dishonoring the Heroes of Flight 93. He has given up permission to reprint it here. For more information, visit his website.Here is that email:  Here are some details on the trip that Mr. Burnett and I (and hopefully a lot of others) will be making to Somerset on Saturday 2nd: At...

Libya's dictatoship of Kadhafi has decided to suspend its oil selling toward Switzerland after Swiss authorities arrested and briefly detained Kadhafi's son in Geneva, last week, under the charges of having beaten two employees. Khadafi's son, Hannibal, seeks revenge. The Libya National Oil Company announced Libya will cancel its oil sells to Switzerland. Libyan oil represents 48% of Switzerland's needs.

WASHINGTON — Al Qaeda allies running terror camps for tots on the Afghan-Pakistan border are using video of a boy “martyred” in combat to recruit jihadis. The apparently lifeless body of the child, an Uzbek boy younger than 11, is the focus of the grisly half-hour video by the Islamic Jihad Union — a radical Uzbek group practically indistinguishable from Osama Bin Laden’s network, according to U.S. officials. "In a fierce battle in Waziristan between the soldiers of Allah and the friends of Satan, Abd al-Rahim was wounded by an arrow," says an Uzbek narrator, referring to a bullet or...

American pop culture has skewed the public’s view of what makes a hero in today’s world and what types of behavior make a person worthy of our attention and accolades. Those who contribute to the greatness of our country are largely ignored by the media who worship the cult of celebrity. Most Americans are familiar with the latest celebrity scandal; they can recite the particulars of the latest Hollywood divorce and Rattle off a list of “American Idol” winners. They know who set the new home run record or led his team to a Super Bowl victory. But if asked...

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) said yesterday that it paid Niger Delta militants $6 million in order to allow it repair the Chanomi Crude oil pipeline in Delta State. The Corporation also said that a total of $77.031 billion or N3.930 trillion was generated between January 2003 and March 2008. Out of the amount, it said, the Corporation remitted the sum of $56,222 billion or N3.930 trillion to the federation account .

ROCHESTER, N.H. -- Far from Amman, Jordan, where the world's news media were fixated on Sen. Barack Obama, Sen. John McCain told a town hall meeting here that U.S. troops "have succeeded, and we will win the war in Iraq." In midday remarks to a lively crowd in the old Rochester Opera House, McCain criticized Obama for sticking to his proposal for a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. "Now he wants to reverse the success we have had and set a date for withdrawal," McCain said. He did not address recent statements supporting withdrawal by 2010 from the...

BALAD, Iraq – Since the beginning of July, three highly sought after suspected terrorists have surrendered to Iraqi Security and Coalition forces. An emir of the Sinjar area Islamic State of Iraq, a front organization for al-Qaeda in Iraq, surrendered to the Iraqi Army for reconciliation in Kisik July 5, about 43 km west of Mosul. The suspect is reportedly involved in terrorist and foreign fighter facilitation and a leader of rocket and improvised explosive device cells. In Rutbah, a suspected AQI emir of the Rutbah region turned himself in to Coalition forces. The suspect is known to facilitate foreign...

Glenn has pretty well covered the imbroglio-inducing statement, but here’s a less-examined claim that really shows how separated from reality Klein has become: Obama, the poker player, has drawn to an inside straight: the Iraqis favor his plan over McCain’s long-term bases. Only the most intellectually dishonest reading of the situation could justify that statement; the WaPo has devoted an entire op-ed to debunking the ridiculous notion that Iraqis would rather see al-Ameriki withdraw on a fixed timetable from Washington without regard to conditions on the ground: But an Iraqi government statement made clear that Mr. Maliki’s timetable would extend...

Senator Barack Obama, the visiting Democratic presidential candidate who is leading the race for the White House, told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday evening that, if elected president, he would do "everything in my power" to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Asked about concerns that the Iranians would abuse his stated readiness for "tough diplomacy" to play for time and keep moving ahead toward the bomb, Obama said that his "willingness to negotiate" had "very clear and direct goals" and "a sense of urgency." So "if the Iranians fail to respond, we've stripped away whatever excuses they may have,...