Free Republic

Rather than specifically triggering the toxic effects of organisms such as anthrax, the Sunshine project warned that weapons based on a new medical technique called RNA interference could shut down vital genes. If the sequence of the target gene varies between two different populations the technique could be used to interrupt key body functions in one population and not the other. "If as little as 10% or 20% of a target population would be affected, this would wreak havoc among enemy soldiers on a battlefield or in an enemy society as a whole," the group said. Others say the concerns...

Bush Aides Gave One-Sided View of Iraqi Data -- NYT October 2, 2004 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bush administration officials, in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, gave a one-sided view of the case for believing Saddam Hussein had a nuclear arms program that ignored the doubts of their own experts, the New York Times said on Saturday. The newspaper made the charge in an article about thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes ordered by Iraq that leading administration officials said were intended for use in uranium centrifuges. "As the only physical evidence the United States could brandish of (Saddam's) revived...

Ukraine's main opposition chief back in race Reuters Kiev : Ukraine's main opposition leader, still undergoing treatment for a mystery ailment, has rejoined a campaign to overturn the scandal-plagued legacy of outgoing President Leonid Kuchma in a presidential election this month. Viktor Yushchenko, looking haggard and flushed, flew back to Kiev on Sunday after a second stay at an Austrian clinic where doctors failed to confirm his team's suspicions that he was poisoned to knock him out of the October 31 election. His main rival, Prime Minister Viktor Yanuko-vich, is backed by Kuchma, whose decade in office has been marked...

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is coming to Connecticut to throw her support behind Fourth Congressional District candidate Diane Farrell. Clinton will attend an Oct. 3 reception in Westport for Farrell. Tickets are going for $125 apiece. The fund-raiser is a part of the campaign's Women for Farrell initiative. Former Texas Governor Ann Richards is scheduled to attend an Oct. 15 reception for Farrell at a private home in Stamford. Farrell is the first selectman of Westport. Her challenge is considered the toughest Republican Christopher Shays has faced in his 17 years in office. National...

The FBI yesterday seized a pair of UK servers used by Indymedia, the independent newsgathering collective, after serving a subpoena in the US on Indymedia's hosting firm, Rackspace. Why or how remains unclear. Rackspace UK complied with a legal order and handed over hard disks without first notifying Indymedia. It's unclear if the raid was executed under extra-territorial provisions of US legislation or the UK's Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA). Provisions of RIPA make it a criminal offence to discuss warrants, so Rackspace would not be able to discuss the action with its customer Indymedia, or with the media....

When the president cannot trust his own CIA, the nation faces dire consequences. Chicago Sun-Times columnist Robert Novak's revelations this week that CIA officer Paul R. Pillar is actively undermining President Bush fail to portray the depth of animosity between factions within the CIA and the White House. Mr. Pillar, who currently serves on the CIA's National Intelligence Council (NIC) as National Intelligence Officer (NIO) for the Near East and South Asia, is the lead author of the classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's future recently leaked to the New York Times.

DUBAI (Reuters) - A group led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden and said it was in contact with al Qaeda over operations in Iraq, according to an Internet statement posted Sunday. "We announce that the Tawhid and Jihad Group, its prince and soldiers, have pledged allegiance to the sheikh of the mujahideen Osama bin Laden," said the statement, dated Sunday and posted on several Web sites often used by militants. Washington says Zarqawi is al Qaeda's link to Iraq but the statement was the first by the group to announce its allegiance...

Walking U.N. Perhaps Sen. John Kerry does have an advantage after all over President Bush in understanding the complex political issues of the Middle East. New research by Burke's Peerage reveals that Mr. Kerry is the only presidential candidate in U.S. history who has genealogical descent from Muslims, Jews and Christians. "Senator Kerry ... is a virtual walking United Nations," says Harold Brooks-Baker, publishing director of Burke's. Mr. Kerry is kinsman of the Shi'ite shahs of Persia (the most famous was Shah Abbas I, who reigned from 1587 to 1629), as well as the Muslim kings of Tunisia, all of...

GENEVA (AP) - Switzerland approved on Friday the handover of bank documents to the United States on the source of a donation to a U.S.-based Islamic charity suspected of money laundering and recruiting terrorists over the Internet. The supreme court's decision allows Swiss authorities to override banking secrecy and provide documents, including those for a $300,000 transfer made May 14, 1998, from a Geneva bank to the Michigan-based Islamic Assembly of North America. The decision was in response to a February 2003 U.S. government request for judicial assistance in its investigation of the assembly and its Idaho-based Saudi computer expert...

Trinidadian authorities have detained an Israeli national found living in a remote mountainous area east of the capital, police said, declining to state if he was being questioned in connection with a recent spate of bombings in the Caribbean island nation. A string of bombings, the latest one occuring last Thursday, have rocked the capital of Port-of-Spain. The bombings have injured 28 people. Authorities identified the detained man as Dahtang Mik Agarunov, 26. They said he was found living in a wooden shack in Arouca, about 10 miles east of Port-of-Spain. Agarunov was detained on Friday and questioned by Interpol,...

INGRAHAM: I just -- every time I hear someone in a position of power say that the war on terror has been abandoned when we have three quarters of the al Qaeda leadership in our custody, when our men and women in battle have done such an enormously great job all around the world, not just in Afghanistan, not just in Iraq, but our special forces operating in every country from The Philippines to Indonesia, all over this are globe. I think it's an insult to the troops, and I don't think Senator Graham really means it. B. GRAHAM: It's...

TALLAHASSEE, FL – Today, Miami Beach Mayor David Dermer (D) issued the following statement regarding John Kerry’s remarks in Boca Raton yesterday: “I was surprised that John Kerry offered a book he wrote about terrorism eight years ago as evidence that he knows how to fight a War on Terror. Both his statements yesterday along with what he writes in his book make me even more certain that when it comes to the War on Terror, John Kerry simply does not understand the severity of the threat America faces nor does he understand that America must act offensively. “In Kerry’s...

Al-Zarqawi's Group in Iraq Changes Name Associated Press CAIRO, Egypt - Tawhid and Jihad, the Iraqi militant group of terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, apparently has changed its name two days after announcing its merger with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida organization. An Internet statement released Tuesday under the purported new name, al-Qaida of Jihad in the Land of Two Rivers, claimed responsibility for an attack on a U.S. military convoy west of the Iraqi city of Fallujah the same day. The two rivers in the new name refers to the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in Iraq.

PALOS HILLS, Ill. (AP) A local bank has closed a mosque's account after it donated money to an Islamic charity under federal investigation for allegedly helping terrorists. Family Bank and Trust Co. closed the account of the Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview after the mosque wrote two checks to the Islamic American Relief Agency, according to the mosque's imam, Sheikh Jamal Said. Mosque Foundation president Oussama Jamal said the mosque made its donations in August and September, before the federal government froze the charity's assets and raided its Missouri offices in October. The Treasury Department alleged Islamic American Relief was part...

SNIPPET: "On Friday, Mubarak Hamed, the former director of the now defunct Islamic American Relief Agency-USA (IARA) based in Columbia, Missouri, pled guilty to three counts of a federal indictment charging that he illegally sent more than a million dollars to Iraq in violation of U.S. sanctions, conspiracy, and tax violations. Federal agents raided IARA's offices in 2004, seized its assets, and said it was part of a global network of similar Islamic charities that supported terrorist organizations. As part of his plea agreement, Hamed admitted the U.S.-based charity was part of this international network, with the IARA branch based...

For twenty years – long before 9/11 – the danger of terrorists armed with surface to air missiles shooting at passenger planes has been the secret fear of many top political leaders. In the late 90s, a terrorist network was nabbed trying to bring them into Newark Airport, but the airline industry and the government have done nothing to equip passenger airplanes with any defense against these always deadly missiles. Now Barack Obama has committed the ultimate sin: He has let 20,000 surface-to-air missiles escape from military depots in Libya. According to ABC News “U.S. officials had once thought there...

Interesting.... This muslim Cleric visited london EXACTLY one year ago from the date of the attacks, July 7, 2004 CNSNews.com) - London Mayor Ken Livingstone's previous support of a Muslim cleric who advocates suicide bombings may cause him some embarrassment as he now must speak for the city in the wake of Thursday's terrorist bombings. Livingstone condemned the Thursday attacks as "mass murder," and added that "this was not a terrorist attack against the mighty or the powerful, it is not aimed at presidents or prime ministers, it was aimed at ordinary working-class Londoners." Yet Livingstone has in the past...

Just a quick update on our Iraqi Jihadist here in Nashville. From WSMV 4 in Nashville The F.B.I. says it has foiled a terrorist plot in Nashville by arresting a man who bought automatic weapons at a local Krispy Kreme donut shop on Thompson Lane. 33-year-old Ahmed Hassan Al-Uqaily was caught Thursday after buying machine guns, handguns, ammunition and hand grenades from an undercover agent. Channel 4 News’ Susan Harding reported that Al-Uqaily has lived in Nashville since 1991 and lived at at least four different addresses. His name has often appeared in the media over the last few months...

Note: The following text is a quote: Swedish National Charged with Hacking and Theft of Trade Secrets Related to Alleged Computer Intrusions at NASA and Cisco Philip Gabriel Pettersson, aka "Stakkato," 21, a Swedish national, was indicted today on intrusion and trade secret theft charges. The five-count indictment includes one intrusion count and two trade secret misappropriation counts involving Cisco Systems Inc. (Cisco), of San Jose, Calif., which is a provider of computer network equipment and producer of Internet routers. According to the allegations in the indictment Pettersson intentionally committed an intrusion between May 12, 2004, and May 13, 2004,...

FLORENCE, Colo. -- Three men convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing sent letters from the Supermax federal prison in Colorado that are suspected of being used by a Spanish terror cell to recruit suicide bombers, NewsChannel 4's Jonathan Dienst reported Monday. Letters from one of those men, Mohammed Salameh were found on Mohamed Achraf, one of 17 people charged in October in Spain for an alleged plot to blow up that country's National Court, the network reported, citing confidential documents from a Spanish court. One of the letters to Achraf, the alleged leader of the plot, reads: "Oh...