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McCain says knows how to capture bin Laden 03 Sep 2008 23:44:01 GMT Source: Reuters ST. PAUL, Sept 3 (Reuters) - Republican candidate John McCain said on Wednesday that if elected president, he will capture al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. "President Clinton had opportunities to get Osama bin Laden. President Bush had opportunities to get Osama bin Laden. I know how to do it and I'll do it," he told ABC's "World News" in an interview. "I understand and I have the knowledge and the background and the experience to make the right judgments. Senator Obama does not," McCain...

A public-interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption announced recently it has obtained newly declassified information from the State Department regarding the threat Osama bin Laden posed in 1996. Judicial Watch says the State Department had previously redacted some information from documents released to the public-interest group in August 2005. But spokesman Chris Farrell says following an appeal to the Department of State Appeals Review Panel, the new information was released this month. Farrell says the new data revealed some important details about what President Bill Clinton was told about the terrorist mastermind during a State Department briefing in...

Could Osama Bin Laden's erstwhile comrades be responsible for bringing about the collapse of al-Qaeda? The BBC's security correspondent, Frank Gardner OBE, talks to former allies of Bin Laden, who are now working to turn Islamist sentiment against al-Qaeda, and examines how the war of ideas within the Jihadi movement is becoming as important as the military frontline. As a leader of a jihadist organisation committed to overthrowing the Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, Noman Benotman was regarded by Osama Bin Laden as an ally. However, shortly before 9/11, Benotman cautioned Bin Laden against targeting the United States. In the programme,...

KABUL (AFP) - The United States is erecting billboards in Afghanistan offering hefty rewards for Osama bin Laden, Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar and US Al-Qaeda member Adam Gadahn, the embassy said Saturday. Ten of the large Rewards for Justice boards were being erected countrywide, two of them in Kabul, embassy spokeswoman Corina Sanders told AFP. They show a portrait of the turbaned Gadahn flanked by those of Al-Qaeda chief bin Laden and Mullah Omar. The United States led an invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001 that toppled the extremist Taliban regime because it did not surrender Al-Qaeda leaders after...

TRANSLATION FROM BABELFISH The Swiss Foreign Minister lends “to sit down with the table of Bin Laden” LEMONDE.FR with AFP | 25.08.08 | 21:11 evant nearly 170 ambassadors at this meeting in Bern, the Swiss Foreign Minister, Micheline Calmy-Rey, declared themselves lends, Monday August 25, “to sit down with the table of the Al-Qaida Usama Bin Laden leader” to engage a dialogue. The Swiss minister breaks a taboo thus, while becoming the first responsible for the diplomacy of a democratic country to consider a direct dialogue with the chief of an terrorist organization. “The refusal of the dialogue is in...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- The U.S. cruise missile strike on an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan in 1998 was meant to kill Osama bin Laden. But he apparently left shortly before the missiles struck, and newly declassified U.S. documents suggest the attack cemented an alliance with his Taliban protectors. The State Department documents released Wednesday provide details of the evolving relationship between Taliban leader Mullah Omar and al-Qaida chief bin Laden over four month in 1998. The period begins Aug. 21, 1998, one day after the missile attack — retaliation for the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on...

A human tide of more than 300,000 civilians has fled the al-Qa'ida badlands, amid indications that the fighting there has reached unprecedented levels, with the Pakistani army using massive firepower to attack jihadi militant strongholds. Helicopter gunships, fixed-wing strike aircraft, tanks and heavy artillery have been used in the onslaught that followed the visit last month by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to Washington, where he was berated for Pakistan's failure to wipe out the militants. The offensive runs counter to perceptions that Pakistan's new civilian Government is "soft" on Islamic extremism. This will reassure Washington, whose ally in the...

Two decades after al-Qaeda was founded in the Pakistani border city of Peshawar by Osama bin Laden and a handful of veterans of the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the group is more famous and feared than ever. But its grand project -- to transform the Muslim world into a militant Islamist caliphate -- has been, by any measure, a resounding failure. In large part, that's because Osama bin Laden's strategy for arriving at this Promised Land is a fantasy. Al-Qaeda's leader prides himself on being a big-think strategist, but for all his brains, leadership skills and charisma, he...

Al Qaeda and the Taliban are executing suspected U.S. informants in Pakistan in a campaign to terrorize potential spies and reinforce the authority of the militant organizations across the country’s vast and volatile tribal belt. Most of the murders take place after accused informants have confessed to spying for the Americans. Some suspects were caught with satellite telephones and global positioning devices identical to equipment provided by the Central Intelligence Agency. Dour men in traditional clothing sell the videos at markets in the tribal region for as little as $1 each. The images are astonishingly brutal. The camera never flinches...

Saudi Arabia is to build five modern prisons in the kingdom to replace US Guantanamo detention facility, a new report has revealed. Jordanian daily quoted unnamed sources as saying that US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Saudi officials are cooperating to construct the prisons which are to replace Guantanamo and US secret prisons in Europe. Riyadh is to spent about two billion Saudi Rials for the project which can accommodate up to 18000 inmates, they added. Bin laden firm and with the help of German engineers will build the prisons in the Saudi cities of Mecca, Haer, Demmam, and Qasim....

George Clooney, one of Hollywood's most prominent backers of Democratic Sen. Barack Obama for president, has bought the movie rights to tell the story of Osama bin Laden's driver. According to the report in the Guardian, the book sympathetically portrays Hamdan and his Navy lawyer, Charles Swift, as the little guys up against the powerful forces of the United States government. Clooney, who is reportedly offering policy and speaking advice plus also helping Obama raise money from within the wealthy, liberal Hollywood community, is said to covet the role of Swift for himself.

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - A potential mistrial was avoided in the first Guantanamo trial on Tuesday when the U.S. military judge ruled it was too late to challenge his war crimes instructions to the jury deliberating the case of Osama bin Laden's driver. But the judge acknowledged he may have erred and prosecutors sought clarification on the law that they said could affect plans to try up to 80 more Guantanamo prisoners.

Unverified Letter Obtained By CBS News Urgently Requests Doctor To Treat Ayman al-ZawahiriCBS) Ayman al-Zawahiri - the second most powerful leader in al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden's No. 2 - may be critically wounded and possibly dead, CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent Lara Logan reports exclusively. CBS News has obtained a copy of an intercepted letter from sources in Pakistan, which urgently requests a doctor to treat al-Zawahiri. He's believed to be somewhere in Pakistan's remote tribal areas of Pakistan. The letter refers to Sheikh Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri by name - and says that he is in "severe...

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden wanted to introduce himself to America with an ABC television interview months before al Qaeda bombed two U.S. embassies in Africa, the interviewer testified on Tuesday. Former ABC correspondent John Miller, testifying at the first Guantanamo war crimes trial, also recalled comparing bin Laden with U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt as he made small talk during filming of the May 28, 1998, interview at an Afghanistan mountain hideout. It was a rare opportunity for an American journalist, and Miller detailed a movie-thriller route to get to bin Laden, complete with...

How the next president can win over the world's most alienated Muslims. On a typically humid spring night in Jakarta in 2005, an Indonesian colleague and I were driven by some Islamist activists through the city’s dense back alleyways to the dilapidated offices of a leading radical student publication. We were led up a narrow flight of stairs and into a small room, crammed with young university students. Standing at the center of the room was a thin, bearded man in a skull cap and flowing white robes. He was an imam, a mentor to the students and a popular...

Osamo Marx? FBI release rendering of a disguised Bin Laden. Following news that Radovan Karadzic easily mixed in with an urban population using a simple fake beard, the Federal Bureau of Investigation believes that Osama Bin Laden is now using fake glasses, mustache and nose to shake international authorities. Bin Laden is blamed for the 9/11 attacks in New York City and Washington D.C, but claims to have been at Applebees with his number three wife during the incident. The feds received the information from an intercepted message between Al Qaeda and its costume and wardrobe department. The message requested...

Steve Shippert, of ThreatsWatch.org just sent this email out on a small email ring of bloggers. It is simply and truly incredibly important, and eloquent. I beseech every blogger to post it on their blog. If all do, it will redound widely, and be widely heard, as it must be, if we care for our nation, our children's future, everything we value in life and liberty. This must get out. It can really shape the debate in this country, and sway many. In every election, there is a moment when it happens, and Shippert's message is that moment. PLEASE, everybody...

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...

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...

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."

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...

Excerpt - GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba, July 24 (Reuters) - A driver for Osama bin Laden was not told of any rights against self-incrimination under years of interrogation, FBI agents told the Guantanamo war crimes court on Thursday. "Our policy at the time was not to read Miranda rights," FBI special agent Robert Fuller said in testimony at the U.S. military commission trial of Salim Hamdan on charges of conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism. Fuller was referring to the Miranda v. Arizona U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1966, which held that potential criminal suspects in custody...

Afghan Fundamentalism: The Role of the U.S., Russia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia David Storobin, Esq. - 12/12/2004 Victor Boot was a graduate of Military Institute for Foreign Languages in Moscow, a known school for Russian intelligence. He was the son of the son-in-law of foreign Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, who initiated the Russian policy of secretly assisting Islamic terrorists. In 1997, Boot arrived in the United Arab Emirates for the first time. From UAE, it was easier for Boot to funnel Russian weaponry to Afghanistan. In June 2001 - less than three months before September 11 - Pakistani intelligence described...

Bin Laden happy with September 11 toll, war court told Wed Jul 23, 2008 1:58pm EDT By Jim Loney GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden's driver overheard the al Qaeda leader saying he was happy about the death toll in the September 11 attacks and thought the hijacked plane that crashed in Pennsylvania was shot down, according to one of the driver's interrogators. The evidence by Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent, was meant to support the case by prosecutors at the Guantanamo Bay war crimes tribunal that the driver, Salim Hamdan, was close to...

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden's driver knew the target of the fourth hijacked jetliner in the September 11 attacks, a prosecutor said on Tuesday in an attempt to draw a link between Salim Hamdan and the al Qaeda leadership in the first Guantanamo war crimes trial.

THESE days in Peshawar, where al-Qaeda was founded 20 years ago, the only glimpse of Osama bin Laden comes on little green packets of safety matches strewn around town by American officials (see picture). They bear the portrait of the world’s most wanted man, along with the promise that America will pay up to $5 million for information leading to his capture. It is an appropriate image. Like one of these matches, Mr bin Laden caused a flash with the September 11th attacks on America in 2001, then vanished into smoke, leaving a burning trail of militancy stretching from Indonesia...

Speaking at a Town Hall Meeting in New Mexico today, July 15, 2008, Sen. John McCain vowed to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice for his crimes against America . . . (see video) This is the kind of grit and determination we need in a President. John McCain has the resolve and strength to do what he says he will do. This is the McCain who needs to keep showing up at every appearance on the campaign trail, and on television.

UNIDENTIFIED gunmen shot and killed a brother-in-law of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in a raid on his home in Madagascar, his brother said. Malek Khalifa told Dubai-based Al Arabiya television that the aim of the killers appeared to have been to rob his brother, Jamal Khalifa, who mined and traded precious stones in Madagascar.

Lebanese Sunni Cleric Sheikh Maher Hamoud: I Admire Bin Laden, But Would Not Have Sanctioned 9/11 Attacks – Except for Those on Pentagon, CIA HQ, and White House Following are excerpts from an interview with Lebanese Sunni cleric Sheikh Maher Hamoud, which aired on NBN, a TV channel affiliated with the head of the Amal movement, Nabih Berri, on July 7, 2008. Sheikh Hamoud, imam of Al-Quds mosque in Sidon, Lebanon, has given interviews to Western journalists, [1] and has received financial support from former Australian mufti Taj Din al-Hilali. [2] Sheikh Hamoud is the scion of a prominent Sidon...

Pakistan's foreign minister has ruled out allowing military personnel from the United States, or any other foreign country, in Pakistan to hunt for Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda. Mahmoud Qureshi said on Saturday that the country's new government had not permitted any such operation in the regions bordering Afghanistan and never would. Bin Laden is widely believed to be hiding somewhere in the Afghan-Pakistan border region. "Our government's policy is that our troops, paramilitary forces and our regular forces are deployed in sufficient numbers. They are capable of taking action there. And any foreign intrusion would be counter-productive,"...

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said in interview excerpts released Friday that Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden should be executed, if he is ever captured alive. The Illinois Senator told CNN that the accused mastermind of the September 11 attacks in 2001 should face the full weight of US and global justice. "I am not a cheerleader for the death penalty," Obama said. "I think it has to be reserved for only the most heinous crimes, but I certainly think plotting and engineering the death of 3,000 Americans justifies such an approach." "I think this is a big hypothetical, though...

Defense officials are criticizing what they say is the failure to capture or kill top al Qaeda leaders because of timidity on the part of policy officials in the Pentagon, diplomats at the State Department and risk-averse bureaucrats within the intelligence community. Military special operations forces (SOF) commandos are frustrated by the lack of aggressiveness on the part of several policy and intelligence leaders in pursuing al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his top henchmen, who are thought to have hidden inside the tribal areas of Pakistan for the past 6½ years. The focus of the commandos' ire, the...

Al-Qaeda Draws New Recruits Via Internet Al-Qaeda is using the Internet to recruit vulnerable young people to its terrorist network, according to a programme aired on Saudi Arabian TV late on Tuesday. Umm Osama, the founder of al-Qaeda's first women-only website, al-Khansa, joined several others on the programme to discuss how they renounced jihadist ideology. Among those who sought a response to this question was an imam from the Medina mosque, Saleh Ibn Awad al-Mudamsi, and the father of a young al-Qaeda suspect held in an Iraqi prison. Read More Qaeda Targets U.S. Oil Interests in North Africa U.S....

THIS is Osama Bin Laden’s school-age son, who yesterday continued his father’s mission of hate — with a POEM begging for Britain to be destroyed. Baby-faced Hamza Bin Laden — just 16 but already dubbed the Crown Prince of Terror — also ranted in his evil ode that the US and our other allies must be wiped out. The teen declared in his demented ditty to fanatics: “Accelerate the destruction of America, Britain, France and Denmark.”

The United States has a standing agreement with Pakistan that CIA-operated Predator drones may strike Osama bin Laden's hide-out without prior permission from Islamabad, according to people familiar with the arrangement. One source said the free hand - an exception in a country politically sensitive to U.S. counterterrorism operations - was granted by President Pervez Musharraf early in the war if the U.S. locates bin Laden in Pakistan's rugged tribal areas, where he is thought to be hiding.... DRONE

SOURCES: BUSH ANGER AT COMING NEW YORK TIMES STORY DETAILING HUNT FOR BIN LADEN... The newspaper planning to expose internal debate surrounding 'highly classified Pentagon order'; Special Operations forces hunt al-Qaida leader in mountains of Pakistan... DEVELOPING.... Thats the Story from drudge, OMG if the Times is gonna report this... Good GOD.... This is Huge. ( yea and Series) This is NOT a good thing for national Security and I am just a housewife. Even I can see and call a Traitor, a Traitor, but the Editor and the signing off authority that Prints this, to bee seen by the...

WASHINGTON: Late last year, top Bush administration officials decided to take a step they had long resisted. They drafted a secret plan to authorize the Pentagon's Special Operations forces to launch missions into the snow-capped mountains of Pakistan to capture or kill top leaders of Al Qaeda. Intelligence reports for more than a year had been streaming in about Osama bin Laden's terror network rebuilding in the Pakistani tribal areas, a problem that had been exacerbated by years of missteps in Washington and the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, sharp policy disagreements, and turf battles between American counterterrorism agencies. The new plan,...

SOURCES: BUSH ANGER AT COMING NEW YORK TIMES STORY DETAILING HUNT FOR BIN LADEN... The newspaper is planning to expose a 'highly classified Pentagon order' authorizing Special Operations forces to hunt al-Qaida leader in mountains of Pakistan... DEVELOPING....

McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann today on a conference call noted that Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, said he didn't want to make Osama bin Laden a martyr. "The last I checked, a martyr is someone who dies for a cause or someone who is killed for a cause," Scheunemann said. "It seems that Senator Obama is ruling out capital punishment."

Senator Obama is obviously confused about what the United States Supreme Court decided and what he is calling for. After enthusiastically embracing the Supreme Court decision granting habeas in U.S. civilian courts to dangerous terrorist detainees, he is now running away from the consequences of that decision and what it would mean if Osama bin Laden were captured. Senator Obama refuses to clarify whether he believes habeas should be granted to Osama bin Laden, and instead cites the precedent of the Nuremburg war trials. Unfortunately, it is clear Senator Obama does not understand what happened at the Nuremburg trials and...

...here I was in the back of a beat-up car, blind-folded with a black fabric hood over my head, dust filling my lungs as we speed down the bumpy, mountainous back roads of the Afghanistan – Pakistan border. I was about to meet the most wanted man on Earth. I had been summoned by Usama bin Laden.....

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Barack Obama's foreign policy advisers said Tuesday that Osama bin Laden, if captured, should be allowed to appeal his case to U.S. civilian courts, a privilege opposed by John McCain. Responding to questions from The Examiner, Sen. John Kerry and former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke said bin Laden would benefit from last week's Supreme Court decision giving terrorism suspects habeas corpus, the right to appeal their military detention to civilian courts. “If he were to be brought back,” Clarke said of bin Laden, “the Supreme Court ruling holds on the right of habeas corpus.”...

In an ABC News interview Monday Night Barack Obama when questioned stated “What we know is that in previous terrorist attacks, for example, the first attack against the World Trade Center, we were able to arrest those responsible, put them on trial. They are currently in U.S. prisons, incapacitated,” Obama said adding, "And the fact that the administration has not tried to do that has created a situation where not only have we never actually put many of these folks on trial, but we have destroyed our credibility when it comes to rule of law all around the world, and...

An Islamic charity with ties to Al Qaeda and the Taliban is now collaborating with an unlikely new partner: UNICEF, the United Nations’ Children’s Fund.UNICEF has signed a “memorandum of understanding” with the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), a Saudi charity of massive scope that keeps branches in more than 20 countries and has over 100 offices worldwide. According to UNICEF, it will be teaming with the charity’s domestic Saudi branch to “promote children’s rights, health, equality and education,” in the oil-rich kingdom — but the organization has been doing more than just charity work. The U.S. Treasury Department...

President George W Bush has enlisted British special forces in a final attempt to capture Osama Bin Laden before he leaves the White House. Defence and intelligence sources in Washington and London confirmed that a renewed hunt was on for the leader of the September 11 attacks. “If he [Bush] can say he has killed Saddam Hussein and captured Bin Laden, he can claim to have left the world a safer place,” said a US intelligence source. Bush arrives in Britain today on the final leg of his eight-day farewell tour of Europe. He will have tea with the Queen...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Osama bin Laden's former driver may not go on trial this summer at Guantanamo after all. The military lawyer for Salim Hamdan says the Supreme Court ruling on the rights of Guantanamo prisoners is likely to at least delay the Yemeni's war crimes trial. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer told The Associated Press he will file a motion to dismiss the war crimes charges against Hamdan based on the court's finding that Guantanamo prisoners have constitutional rights. The defense lawyer said Wednesday he will argue that Hamdan was denied his constitutional right to a speedy...

The report of a Predator-launched missile strike in the Mohmand region of Pakistan follows a strike three weeks ago in the Bajaur area just to the north. Check out satellite imagery of the areas in question. This is some of the baddest of the badlands in Pakistan, and a great place to hide if you are Osama bin Laden. Or maybe it used to be. Local Taliban leader Umar Khalid recently signed a peace deal with Pakistan and has stated that there are no foreign fighters in the area. After the missile strike, maybe he's right.

June 9, 2008 WASHINGTON — The leader of the tribal confederation that has fought to expel Al Qaeda from most of Iraq's Anbar province is offering his men to help gin up a rebellion against Osama bin Laden's organization along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Osama Bin LadenNew Yorkers last week were reminded yet again of the horrors of the 9/11 attacks, when their unrepentant mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was arraigned in Guantanamo Bay. But few are aware a tectonic shift has taken place beneath the headlines in the wider war on terrorism - one that could within a few years significantly lower the likelihood of terror returning to New York's streets. This is because Al Qaeda has gotten itself into hot water with the one constituency that it cannot afford to alienate: its fellow jihadists.Over the past year, a growing number of very consequential...