Free Republic

Messages posted recently by prominent contributors to Islamist Web sites are seeking specific information on U.S. military targets in hopes of carrying out an attack on Navy ships in the Persian Gulf, according to a U.S.-based group that tracks such sites. One post on the jihadi forum Al-Falluja calls for information such as the “name of the particular naval unit to be targeted, its exact location, the number of troops on board the warship and their ranks, familial status, where their families live, the type of weapons the warship carries … and the number of nuclear bombs onboard,” reads a...

A group that monitors Islamist Web sites has noted a disturbing trend - Internet posts from prominent contributors discussing attacks on U.S. warships. Online threats against U.S. interests are not uncommon, and Internet propaganda is nothing new, said Steven Stalinsky, executive director of the Washington-based Middle East Media Research Institute, which translated the posts. But he said the recent posts are more significant because they come in response to an official communique from al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the terror group linked to the attempted bombing of a commercial American jetliner on Christmas. It urged followers to kill "Crusaders" on...

ABOARD THE USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT, EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN SEA Fighter aircraft from this carrier destroyed a Republican Guard complex, including barracks, in Al-Falluja, just west of Baghdad, early Sunday. Later in the day, three ships accompanying it and the USS Harry Truman fired the first Tomahawk cruise missiles into Iraq from the eastern Mediterranean. The cruisers Anzio and Cape St. George and the destroyer Winston Churchill fired roughly 30 missiles into undisclosed targets. Sunday's strike mission on Al-Falluja was the carrier's second combat operation. "The anticipation is we are going to be flying a little bit more than we had in...