Free Republic

A banner showing al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri and former emir Osama bin Laden is placed outside the French Embassy in Cairo, Egypt during a protest organized by Mohammed al Zawahiri. Image from Euronews. Within the past few days, Mohammed al Zawahiri, the younger brother of al Qaeda emir Ayman al Zawahiri, has threatened France and the West while condemning the intervention in Mali. The younger Zawahiri promised that if France and its allies continue to fight in Mali, then Westerners will be the "first to burn." During an interview broadcast by Euronews on Jan. 22, Mohammed al...

A jihadist website posted a new threat by al Qaeda this week that promises to conduct “shocking” attacks on the United States and the West. The posting appeared on the Ansar al Mujahidin network Sunday and carried the headline, “Map of al Qaeda and its future strikes.” The message, in Arabic, asks: “Where will the next strike by al Qaeda be?” A translation was obtained by Inside the Ring. “The answer for it, in short: The coming strikes by al Qaeda, with God’s Might, will be in the heart of the land of nonbelief, America, and in France, Denmark, other...

... The Star’s report Tuesday came from anonymous sources in the Defence Department. The CBC had to find out from French television that Canadian special forces are also operating in Niger, which borders on Mali. But then everything about Canada’s role in Mali is treated by Ottawa as a state secret. Canadians learned of the initial C-17 deployment only after Mali’s president tweeted the information on the internet. When that initial, one-week deployment was extended, we were first told not by our own government but by Mali’s ambassador to Canada. ... Meanwhile, who exactly are we fighting in Mali? The...

Hundreds of British troops will be deployed to Mali and West Africa, Number 10 has now confirmed. According to reports, approximately 350 personnel will be deployed. 200 British soldiers are expected to train soldiers in African countries outside of Mali, whilst 40 advisers are to be sent into the country to train troops. The UK would be "contributing to both Malian training and training forces that are involved in providing a regionally-led approach", a Number 10 spokesman was quoted as saying by the BBC. 70 Royal Air Force personnel are also to be used for the operation of Sentinel surveillance...

The image was taken innocently enough: A landing helicopter kicked up a dust storm as French soldiers moved toward Niono, in northern Mali, an area held by al-Qaida-linked militant groups. The soldiers pulled on their goggles to protect their eyes from the dust. One soldier pulled up a black bandana -- with a white skeleton face printed on it -- over his nose. Behind him, light beamed through tree branches, creating an otherworldly image -- the soldier looked like a skeleton in French military fatigues. Photographer Issouf Sanogo of the Agence France-Presse news agency and Yann Foreix of Le Parisien...

DIABALY, Mali — When France entered the world’s newest war against terrorism, French officials boldly declared that the ragtag radical Islamists they planned to oust from northern Mali would scatter in the face of a modern fighting force. But two weeks later, reality has sunk in. Even as they bombard Islamist targets, the French troops are facing a military landscape that is far more complicated than it appeared at the outset, raising questions about France’s long-term goals. With no clear exit strategy, the French are encountering a host of problems: Mali’s interim government is weak, its military is disorganized, and...

After four years of pretending there is no jihad against the free world, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton blurted out the truth during her testimony on the Benghazi jihad massacre Wednesday: “We now face a spreading jihadist threat,” she said, adding: “We have to recognize this is a global movement.” We do? Yet the Obama administration has for years steadfastly and repeatedly denied both that there was a jihadist threat at all and that it was a global movement. So far has the Obama administration been from acknowledging that there was a jihad threat that less than two months into...

The Prince, 28, has made it clear in interviews that he would love to get the chance of a third tour of duty, but his Apache squadron is not due to return before the scheduled pull-out of combat troops at the end of 2014. It is almost inconceivable that the Prince would be allowed to return as a foot soldier, his preferred option, meaning that unless the Nato withdrawal deadline overruns, he will not be going back to Helmand. The Prince is currently enjoying a month-long break from his Army duties following the end of his 20-week posting to Camp...

Prince Harry's remarks that his job as a co-pilot in an Apache attack helicopter required him to "take a life to save a life" may have disconcerted some squeamish westerners. But it was Captain Wales's somewhat blasé attitude to fighting the hardline rebels that has most riled the Taliban. An indignant Taliban spokesman said the young prince was a coward who ran away from fighting the mujahideen, or "holy warriors", as the militants like to call themselves. "I don't believe that he participated in the fighting," said Zabiullah Mujahid. "Maybe he has seen the mujahideen in a movie, but that's...

Hagel, Brennan, Kerry ... and now Denis McDonough. President Barack Obama plans to name Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough as his next chief of staff, a Democratic source briefed on the plans tells POLITICO. McDonough would replace Jack Lew, the communist Obama nominated to be his new Treasury secretary. Denis McDonough, Deputy National Security Advisor and a former senior fellow at the uber far left Center for American Progress, is the man most responsible for orchestrating the Benghazi jihad cover-up. McDonough rewrote the CIA talking points on Benghazi, misrepresenting the video, when the true motive behind the terrorist attack...

A Moroccan man pleaded guilty on Friday to attempting to bomb the U.S. Capitol building in Washington in February, 2012, and could face up to 30 years in prison. Amine El Khalifi, 29, an illegal immigrant living in Alexandria, Va., struck an agreement with prosecutors under which he pleaded guilty in U.S. federal court in Virginia. He was charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction against property owned and used by the United States, intending to detonate a bomb and to shoot people. "I plead guilty," he said, standing before Judge James Cacher for the U.S. District...

An animal rights group and six members were convicted Thursday of inciting violence against a company that tests drugs and household products on animals. The group, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, maintained its actions were protected under the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech. The government charged that SHAC waged a five-year campaign of threats, harassment and vandalism against Huntingdon Life Sciences and posted information on the SHAC Web site about the lab's employees and those who do business with Huntingdon. Many of those targeted saw their homes vandalized, and they and their families received threatening e-mails, faxes and phone...

SPECIAL REPORT: Slam-Dunking Animal RightsPosted On July 28, 2003It's no secret that Leslie and Nanci Alexander, co-owners of the NBA's Houston Rockets franchise, are among the global animal-rights movement's biggest financial backers. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals even acknowledged the couple in 1998 for making "one of the most generous gifts we have ever received." Nanci Alexander personally donated over $225,000 toward the passage of a constitutional amendment that gave legal protection to pigs in Florida. But recently released tax records indicate that the Alexanders have also funded the operations of "Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty" (SHAC), one of...

<p>The battle to retake Mali's north from the al-Qaida-linked groups controlling it began in earnest Saturday, after hundreds of French forces deployed to the country and began aerial bombardments to drive back the Islamic extremists from a town seized earlier this week.</p>

A French commando raid in Somalia to free a captive intelligence agent ended in the deaths of 17 Islamists and a French soldier. France said the hostage also died in the failed rescue, but the man's captors denied he had been killed and claimed Saturday to have seized a second soldier. Confusion surrounded early reports of the botched rescue of the French agent, known by his code-name Denis Allex. He was captured in the east African country on July 14, 2009, and last seen in a video released in October pleading for the French president to help him. But it...

“When it was my turn, they took me blindfolded,” the thief said. “Suddenly I felt a pain in my right hand that was out of this world. My hand had just been chopped off.” This is Gao, once the seat of an empire, and then a glorified village, and now a city the size of Scranton under the boot of its Islamist conquerors. Gao has become a place where thieves have their hands cut off, where women are forced to wear the stifling Hijab in 113 degree heat or be lashed and where unmarried couples are stoned to death. Borders...

Three top officials in the State Department resigned Wednesday in the wake of a scathing report which slammed "systemic failures" and "management deficiencies" in the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, which resulted in the murder of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. Assistant Secretary Eric Boswell, head of the bureau of diplomatic security, and Charlene Lamb, deputy assistant secretary for international programs, have stepped down, CNN and CBS television said, citing unnamed department officials. Lamb, who was Boswell’s deputy in charge of international programs, denied requests from the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli for an extension of temporary security...

Republic of Korea: For the record. Pak Ku'n-hye (Park Geun-hye) of the New Frontier Party won South Korea's presidential election on 19 December, media reported. She is the daughter of Park Chung-hee and the first woman elected to be president of the Republic of Korea. That should confound the North! North Korea-Iran: According to a Japanese news service, an Iranian lawmaker told the service that North Korea informed Iran in October of its plan to launch a satellite. The head of an Iranian parliamentary delegation to North Korea, Hamid Reza Taraghi, revealed talks took place mid-October with the North's delegates...

SNIPPET: "Social media is no longer simply a fun way to share updates on the harmless idiosyncrasies of our lives. It can undermine national security, and there ought to be a more robust discussion between the Bay Area technology world and Washington on what to do about it. Cyber-terrorism, especially the potential for electronic tampering with U.S. industrial or military installations, is a paramount national security threat that Washington is working to forestall. We're all working to protect our accounts from hackers. But the cyber-threat getting far less public attention involves the social media networks we use every day and the...

N THE AFTERMATH of September 11, more than several former national security and intelligence officials fashioned new careers as critics of the Bush administration's war on terror. Among the more prominent of these former officials is Daniel Benjamin, who worked for the National Security Council from 1994 to 1999. Benjamin's criticism flows from his belief that prior to the war in Iraq, as he wrote in Time magazine earlier this year, "there was no pre-existing relationship between Baghdad and al-Qaeda." Still worse, the invasion of Iraq has made us "less safe" and "above all, the invasion and occupation of Iraq--have...