Free Republic

"What is the Islamic State? Where did it come from, and what are its intentions? The simplicity of these questions can be deceiving, and few Western leaders seem to know the answers. In December, The New York Times published confidential comments by Major General Michael K. Nagata, the Special Operations commander for the United States in the Middle East, admitting that he had hardly begun figuring out the Islamic State’s appeal. “We have not defeated the idea,” he said. “We do not even understand the idea.” In the past year, President Obama has referred to the Islamic State, variously, as...

SO it wasn't a political stunt. It isn't about Iraq. And the threat of Islamist terror right here is more real than many pretend. How real? If the police are right, they have saved scores of you from being blown up -- as people in Madrid and London were blown up. As NSW Police Commissioner Ken Moroney put it, the arrest yesterday of 17 Muslim men disrupted "the final stages of a large-scale terrorist attack". He said explosive material had already been collected. Yet only last week, Prime Minister John Howard was pilloried by many for having warned of an...

A VICTORIAN court has found three men guilty of planning a terrorist attack on an Australian army base in Sydney. Another two men who also stood trial over the alleged planned attack have been found not guilty. The Victorian Supreme Court trial, which has been running for three months, was told the five Victorian men planned a shootout at the Australian army barracks at Holsworthy in Sydney in the belief Islam was under attack from the west. The jury heard the men took steps to obtain a religious decree to endorse the attack at the barracks and shoot as many...

POLICE this morning arrested suspected Islamic extremists who they believe were plotting a suicide bomb attack on an army base in Sydney's west. Police swooped about 4.30am, executing 19 warrants on homes in the Melbourne suburbs of Glenroy, Carlton, Meadow Heights, Roxburgh Park, Broadmeadows, Westmeadows, Preston, Epping and Colac. The raids came after a suicide bomb plot by suspected Islamic extremists in Melbourne was uncovered.The group is thought to be linked to extremists in Somalia. Police believe the group was planning to launch an attack on Sydney's Holsworthy Barracks. The mass counter-terrorism operation, the second-largest ever in Australia, involved the...

ASIO was powerless to stop a Melbourne man who allegedly trained with al-Qaida from boarding an international flight out of Australia. The 23-year-old terror suspect, known as Abu Jihad, is now in custody in Cairo. The Federal Government, through ASIO, was forced to issue an international alert to find Jihad after he disappeared from Australia last October. Jihad was named as an al-Qaida terrorist by captured American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh in December 2001. But ASIO was not able to verify Lindh's claims until after Jihad had boarded the aircraft in Melbourne almost 10 months later. Jihad, a house...