Free Republic

In wake of 4 recent bomb attacks, al Qaeda in Iraq appears to be gaining newfound resurgence, as well as a shift in strategy. Any goal of undermining January elections may be moot, as they may have already been derailed, regardless of what al Qaeda does. Foreign powers appear to still be exercising influence and interference with the democratization process of Iraq: What was once a foreign-led terrorist organization is now a mostly Iraqi network of small, roving cells that continue to rely on the flow of fighters and weapons smuggled through the Syrian border, albeit at a slower rate,...

Pres. Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, experienced litigators, fully realize that in civilian court, the Qaeda quintet can and will demand discovery of mountains of government intelligence. They will demand disclosures about investigative tactics; the methods and sources by which intelligence has been obtained; the witnesses from the intelligence community, the military, and law enforcement who interrogated witnesses, conducted searches, secretly intercepted enemy communications, and employed other investigative techniques. They will attempt to compel testimony from officials who formulated U.S. counterterrorism strategy, in addition to U.S. and foreign intelligence officers. As civilian “defendants,” these war criminals will put...

When Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in December of 2007, we were appalled but not exactly shocked. In fact, a sort of unspoken consensus about the likelihood of her being taken down had been in the air since she announced her campaign for opposition leadership months earlier. Pakistan tends to deliver in this way. The buzz now, and it’s palpable, is that the civilian government of Bhutto’s husband Asif Ali Zardari will fall to Taliban/al Qaeda forces. Counterinsurgency guru David Kilcullen predicts the collapse in “one to six months.” In 2007, there were reassurances from Pakistan that threats to Bhutto were...

I don't have a timeline/list of which Al Queda detainees have been captured and when, and the Obama Admin is refusing to release any information that shows if any of these attacks were thwarted by the use of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques ("torture"). However, I do know of several instances in which an Al Queda leader was captured and/or EIT used, and then days later an attack was thwarted. Sheer coincidence? Perhaps, but I don't believe in a pattern of coincidences. For a full view of this timeline, please email me at smalensek@neo.rr.com , and I'll be happy to send you...

(IsraelNN.com) The emigration of Yemen’s remaining Jews comes in wake of increased anti-Semitism, a rise in Al-Qaeda activities in the country, and the terrorist organization’s targeting of Jews. Ten new immigrants arrived in Israel on Thursday afternoon from the Yemenite community of Raida, where Jews have recently been harrassed by Muslims. The group included Said Ben-Yisrael, one of the heads of the Raida Jewish community. Several weeks ago, Muslim extremists threw a grenade into the Ben-Yisrael family's courtyard. After receiving threats against his life, Said went to live in the capital city of Sana'a, taking his family with him. From...

Hackers prevented Al Qaeda from releasing a videotape to mark the seventh anniversary of 9/11. Al Qaeda has traditionally issued a video or audiotape by either Osama bin Laden or Ayman al Zawahiri, the terror network’s two leaders, to mark their massive terrorist attack on the US. As-Sahab, Al Qaeda’s media unit, had indicated earlier this week that it would post such a videotape on September 11. As-Sahab had banner images on the internet showing a silhouetted head with a question mark and the words, “Wait 11 September”. The US-based intelligence group IntelCenter had speculated the video would be a...

Wednesday the Senate Judiciary Committee announced it would call FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III to appear at an oversight hearing Sept. 17, when he is likely to be asked about the strength of the government's case against Ivins. A spokeswoman for Sen. Charles Grassley, R- Iowa, a vocal FBI critic, said he would demand more information about how authorities narrowed their search. The House Judiciary panel, meanwhile, is negotiating to host a separate oversight hearing in September with bureau officials, in a session that could mark the first public occasion where Mueller faces questions about the FBI's handling of...

I never give time frames, because you never know where you'll have sufficient evidence to go public with a prosecution, " Mueller said.

Dr Bruce Budowle has been in the FBI for over 20 years, heading one of its forensic laboratories. He looks back to the mysterious and still unsolved case of the anthrax envelopes which followed 9/11 and which moved bioterrorism combat to a new level. *** Robyn Williams: The shape of sleuthing to come, Angela van Daal at Bond University in Southern Queensland. She has been looking after Bruce Budowle, an FBI veteran of 20 years who's head of their lab in Virginia and is sometimes called the FBI's top scientist. He's not only involved in forensics but also in the...

"We have still failed to solve the anthrax attacks that killed Americans on our soil in 2001. We know that Al Qaida was attempting to develop biological weapons in Afghanistan. And we know that the successful deployment of a biological weapon -- whether it is sprayed into our cities or spread through our food supply -- could kill tens of thousands of Americans and deal a crushing blow to our economy. As President, I will launch an effort across our government to stay ahead of this threat. To prevent bioterrorism, we need to invest in our analysis, enhance our information-sharing,...

Excerpt from book: “The anthrax spores in the letter to Daschle were so professionally refined, the Central Intelligence Agency believed the powder must have been sent by an experienced terrorist organization, most probably Al Qaeda, as a sequel to the group’s September 11 attacks. During a [October 17] meeting of the White House’s National Security Council that day, Cheney, who was sitting in for the President because Bush was traveling abroad, urged everyone to keep this inflammatory speculation secret. ... They thought Cheney had already been lethally infected. ... *** Cheney in particular was so stricken by the potential for...

Steven Hatfill finally has his life back. Thanks to FBI incompetence, he also has $5.8 million. ... It's worse because it is a virtual confession that the anthrax case is cold. Throughout one of the largest investigations in law-enforcement history, agents were fixated on a "lone wolf" theory that Director Robert Mueller's FBI, for all intents and purposes, now admits was wrong. Helped along by a sympathetic press corps, the obsession with a domestic perpetrator has ended up in a dead end. *** So the FBI needed to cast a wider net all along – which still remains urgent. In...

Suspected Al Qaeda leader Abu Qatada is celebrating his release from prison with the release of a book in which he urges Muslims to commit terrorist attacks in the West. In the 71-page tract, published in English translation on the internet, he repeatedly claims that fighting jihad, holy war, is obligatory for all Muslims and urges them to 'terrorise' non-believers. Security sources say his clear incitement to violence makes a mockery of the decision to set him free. The preacher of hate, who has been described as Osama Bin Laden's right-hand man in Europe, was released on bail from Long...

Charles Krauthammer at his best, brilliantly making the point that not only is Al Qaeda on the run in Iraq, they're being humiliated:

Egyptian al Qaeda leader Mohammed Atef was an effective CEO. When he caught one of his men being wasteful and insubordinate, he fired off a memo that would make Jack Welch blush with envy. This excerpt is from that newly released memo, written sometime before 2001: "I was very upset by what you did. I obtained 75,000 rupees for you and your family’s trip to Egypt. I learned that you did not submit the voucher to the accountant, and that you made reservations for 40,000 rupees and kept the remainder claiming you have a right to do so. . ....

WITH Gen. David Petraeus returning to Capitol Hill tomorrow, I asked a senior Coalition officer in Baghdad late last week what key trends he sees in Iraq. I suspect my friend's views resemble those of the general, so I'll let him speak for himself: "Overall, civilian deaths remain substantially below those at the height of the sectarian violence. Security incidents were [down to] levels not seen since early 2005. Thanks to help from local civilians [in] former al-Qaeda-in-Iraq safe havens, we've found more arms caches so far this year than were found in all of 2006." My old comrade went...

One of the familiar tropes of the anti-war caucus is that Iraq had no links to terrorism prior to the American invasion but now it has become a breeding ground of terrorists who will destabilize other countries. The first part of the argument—the claim that Saddam-era Iraq was not linked to terrorism—should have been demolished by the recent Iraq Perspectives Project report. (Unfortunately, its findings were generally misreported by the MSM.) The second part of the argument—the claim that Iraq is exporting terrorism—has now come under serious assault from, of all people, the French.

TRIPOLI (AFP) - Libya has freed 90 members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an Islamist group that Al-Qaeda hailed as a new affiliate last November, the Kadhafi Foundation headed by the son of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi said on Tuesday. "The dialogue opened with leaders of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group .. has resulted in the release of 90 members, which represents one third of the membership of this group," said the foundation headed by Seif al-Islam Kadhafi. The prisoners were paraded for photographers as they were released amid tight security from the Abu Salim prison in the Libyan...

Newly declassified documents show a number of links between the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein and violent terrorist or Islamist groups, many of them dating from the early 1990s. A Pentagon-funded study of the documents failed to find a direct link between Saddam and al Qaeda, the group that carried out the September 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. But it did establish Iraqi support for Egyptian Islamic Jihad, whose leader Ayman al-Zawahri merged the group with al Qaeda years later. The papers also show that Saddam's Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) maintained a working relationship with Palestinian terrorist groups, secretly...

Late Tuesday night in Damascus, Imad Mugniyah, senior terrorist of Hezbollah, was killed in a car bomb explosion. It was a fitting death for a founding father of Islamic terrorism, a man who himself had built many bombs. If you had not heard of Mugniyah before, there is a good reason. Terror chieftains like Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri seek the limelight with their frequent and widely disseminated diatribes. Not Mugniyah. Until recently, only a handful of photos of him were publicly available, and he never gave interviews. Instead, he was something of a ghost, confined to the...