Free Republic

1. Ahmad Abu Adass In 2005, the last year of his life, Ahmad Abu Adass was 22 and still living with his parents in Beirut, Lebanon. He was kind and liked people, his friends later told investigators, but none of them thought he was very sophisticated. The best way to describe him was simple, one said. He was generous and a little naïve. He was very weak, physically. A Sunni Muslim of Palestinian descent, Adass had become interested in religion and now spent many hours at the Arab University Mosque near his home. It was there, after a prayer session,...

Senator: At Least One Foreign Country Assisted the 9/11 Terrorists Senator Graham knows where the bodies are buried>>> On 11 December 2002, the Senate and House Intelligence Committees released portions of their joint report on intelligence failures regarding the September 11 terrorist attacks. The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, on PBS, reported on the release that day. After asking her guests a bunch of predictable questions, and receiving predictable answers, guest host Gwen Ifill asked Senator Bob Graham, Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, a good question and got an amazing answer. GWEN IFILL: Senator Graham, are there elements...

SNIPPET: "But if the US can transport Abu Ghaith onto US soil and prosecute him for terrorist activities, why couldn't the Obama administration do the same with Musa Ali Daqduq, the senior Hezbollah commander who was captured in Iraq in 2007? The US Department of Justice had planned to prosecute Daqduq and the FBI was building a case against him. Daqduq was directly implicated in the kidnapping and murder of seven US soldiers in Karbala in January 2007. He was in US custody up until December 2011, just before the US withdrew from Iraq. Although the administration argued that it...

Early on the morning of March 16th, 1984, William Buckley left for work at the American embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. Officially, Mr. Buckley, a decorated veteran of the Special Forces, served as the political officer at the embassy. In reality, however, Mr. Buckley was the embassy’s CIA station chief. On his way to the compound, Buckley’s car was stopped by a group of masked men, who forced him from his car at gunpoint. His assailants would later be identified as terrorists from the group Islamic Jihad, which served as an alias for the real perpetrators, Hezbollah. The circumstances surrounding the...

REBUILDING PLAN AGREED Free Iraqis have drawn up a 13-point plan to rebuild their country following the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime. The plan was agreed at US-hosted talks at Ur, the birthplace of the biblical prophet Abraham. The delegates also voted to meet again in 10 days' time. In a statement they said a future Iraqi government must be democratic, no leader must be imposed from outside, and the Baath party must be dissolved. As the meeting began, hundreds marched through the streets of nearby Nasiriyah protesting about US involvement in their country's future. They were concerned that the...

Apr. 10, 2003 'No place in new Iraq for Palestinians' By DOUGLAS DAVIS There will be strong ties with Israel but no place for Palestinians in the new Iraq, a leading member of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) told me late Wednesday night. The Washington-backed organization, a secular, democratic umbrella for Iraq's Shi'ite, Sunni, and Kurdish communities, is committed to a unitary state, with a large measure of autonomy for what they envisage will be three federal components. Until recently, the vigorously pro-Western movement was based in London. Now most of its leaders have relocated to various parts of Iraq,...