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On December 11, 2009, Sean Hannity hosted a town hall meeting on the decision to prosecute Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four additional 9/11 conspirators in federal court and to do so in lower Manhattan, a mere six blocks from Ground Zero. Attending were 9/11 family members, first responders, and post-attack rescue and recovery workers. The show also featured interviews of Ranking Member on the Senate Judiciary Committee Senator Jeff Sessions, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former Navy Secretary and 9/11 Commissioner John Lehman, former Governor and 9/11 Commission co-chair Tom Kean, Andrew McCarthy who led the...

Given a chance to clear away some of the mystery surrounding the whereabouts of the world's most wanted terrorist, U.S. officials seemed to add to it with what appeared to be conflicting assessments. National Security Adviser James Jones said Sunday that Osama bin Laden, believed hiding mainly in a rugged area of western Pakistan, may be periodically slipping back into Afghanistan. But Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Sunday the United States has lacked good intelligence on Mr. bin Laden for a long time — “I think it has been years.” When asked whether the United States planned a fresh attempt...

A Taliban detainee in Pakistan claims to have information about Osama Bin Laden's whereabouts in January or February of this year. His claims cannot be verified, but a leading American expert says his account should be investigated. The detainee claims to have met Osama Bin Laden numerous times before 9/11. He claims that in January or February he met a trusted contact who had seen Bin Laden about 15 to 20 days earlier in Afghanistan. "In 2009, in January or February I met this friend of mine. He said he had come from meeting Sheikh Osama, and he could arrange...

LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL UNITED STATES SENATE, COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, Washington, DC, November 30, 2009 DEAR COLLEAGUE: This report by the Committee majority staff is part of our continuing examination of the conflict in Afghanistan. When we went to war less than a month after the attacks of September 11, the objective was to destroy Al Qaeda and kill or capture its leader, Osama bin Laden, and other senior figures in the terrorist group and the Taliban, which had hosted them. Today, more than eight years later, we find ourselves fighting an increasingly lethal insurgency in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan...

As President Obama vows to “finish the job” in Afghanistan by sending more troops, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has completed a detailed look back at a crucial failure early in the battle against Al Qaeda: the escape of Osama bin Laden from American forces in the Afghan mountains of Tora Bora in December 2001. “Removing the Al Qaeda leader from the battlefield eight years ago would not have eliminated the worldwide extremist threat,” the committee’s report concludes. “But the decisions that opened the door for his escape to Pakistan allowed bin Laden to emerge as a potent symbolic figure...

Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to give a federal court trial instead of a military commission hearing to five Guantanamo detainees the government has linked to the 9/11 attacks has led to criticism that the Obama Administration is transforming the war on terror from a military to law-enforcement affair. This has led some critics to wonder if captured terrorist suspects would have to be read their Miranda rights on being captured by U.S. military or law enforcement representatives. In one of the highlights of Wednesday's Justice Department oversight hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina...

Andrew Neatty of AFP previews a book to be published at the end of the month, written by his first wife and her son, revealing something of the personal side of the man. This is one angry, mean, cruel man. Not just to infidels. Some highlights: Soon after, bin Laden began to travel to Pakistan and Afghanistan to fight against the Soviet occupation, returning to tell his sons tales of battles in Afghan caves and mountains under Soviet fire. He eventually returned to Saudi Arabia a hero, but at home was increasingly disciplinarian, punishing his children -- who eventually numbered...

Jimmy Carter's loathing for Israel and preference for Palestinian Jew-Killers has been well-documented. And his tireless Israel bashing on behalf of Palestinian terrorists has won him at least one devoted fan. In his latest tape, Osama bin Laden, or his ghost, recommends several books for Americans to read, including Jimmy Carter's Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. While the voice on the tape does not mention this book by name, it calls on Americans to “read what your former president, Carter, wrote regarding Israeli racism against our people in Palestine.” The book in question was too ridiculously one-sided even for the New...

WASHINGTON – In a tape released Sunday by al-Qaida's media wing, terrorist leader Osama bin Laden said President Barack Obama is "powerless" to stop the war in Afghanistan. SITE Intelligence Group, a terrorist-monitoring firm that translated the address, said bin Laden, whose al-Qaida organization was behind the Sept. 11 attacks, blamed the war on the "pro-Israel lobby" and corporate interests. IntelCenter, another company that monitors terrorist propaganda, said the 11-minute video shows a still picture of bin Laden while audio of the address plays. Bin Laden's address to the American people comes two days after the eighth anniversary of the...

WASHINGTON, Sept 13, 2009 (AFP) - A new audio purported to be an "address to the American public" from Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden has been released by the militant network's media branch, a US-based terror monitoring group said Sunday. Al-Qaeda's As-Sahab media released a video featuring a still image of bin Laden and an audio statement, said IntelCenter, noting that there were no subtitles or transcript yet available.

President Bush last month signed an intelligence order directing the CIA to undertake its most sweeping and lethal covert action since the founding of the agency in 1947, explicitly calling for the destruction of Osama bin Laden and his worldwide al Qaeda network, according to senior government officials. Bush's order, called an intelligence "finding," instructs the agency to attack bin Laden's communications, security apparatus and infrastructure, senior government officials said. U.S. intelligence has identified new and important specific weaknesses in the bin Laden organization that are not publicly known, and these vulnerabilities will be the focus of the lethal covert...

WASHINGTON — Armed with new authority from President Bush for a global campaign against al-Qaida, the Central Intelligence Agency is contemplating clandestine missions expressly aimed at killing specified individuals for the first time since the assassination scandals and consequent legal restraints of the 1970s. Drawing on two classified legal memoranda, one written for President Bill Clinton in 1998 and one since the attacks of Sept. 11, the Bush administration has concluded that executive orders banning assassination do not prevent the president from lawfully singling out a terrorist for death by covert action. The CIA is reluctant to accept a broad...

"Message to the People of Pakistan from the Sheikh and Mujahid: Sheikh Usamah bin Ladin (Hafidhullah) July 12, 2009 by ummahmedia"

Stop bombing us: Osama isn’t here, says Pakistan Christina Lamb in Karachi Osama bin Laden and the top Al-Qaeda leadership are not in Pakistan, making US missile attacks against them futile, according to the country’s interior minister. “If Osama was in Pakistan we would know, with all the thousands of troops we have sent into the tribal areas in recent months,” Rehman Malik told The Sunday Times. “If he and all these four or five top people were in our area they would have been caught, the way we are searching.” He added: “According to our information Osama is in...

North African extremist group, whose senior leaders were crucial allies of Osama bin Laden, has denounced terrorism and become the first organisation ever to leave al-Qaeda. The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), which once sought to overthrow Col Muammar Gaddafi, dealt a blow to bin Laden by reversing a decision made in 2007 to join al-Qaeda. A statement from the LIFG leadership criticised "indiscriminate bombings" and the "targeting of civilians", saying that violence "did not achieve the aims of the group in removing oppression". Al-Qaeda has come under mounting pressure in recent months. Missile attacks executed by American drones in...

Al Qaeda Leader Spent Weeks in USA ByPaul L. Williams, Ph.D.thelastcrusade.org. After years of speculation, the rumors finally have been confirmed. Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were not the only top al Qaeda operatives to spend some time in the U.S.A. Osama bin Laden made the trek from Saudi Arabia to the land of the free and the home of the brave in 1978 with his first wife Najwa and his son Omar. The account of the trip is reported by Najwa bin Laden, Osama’s first wife, in Growing Up Bin Laden, soon to be published by St....

From Lexis Nexis transcript: BECK: Yes, sir. OK. So you have seen this. Do you really, honestly believe that we have come to a place to where those very senior people in the highest offices of the land, Congress and the White House, really will not do the right thing in the end, that they won't see the error of their ways? SCHEUER: No, sir, they will not. Not -- the only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States. Because it's going to...

Note: The following text is a quote: Minneapolis Man Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy to Provide Material Support to Al-Qaeda Mohammed Abdullah Warsame, a 35-year-old resident of Minneapolis, has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to provide material support and resources to al-Qaeda Warsame, a naturalized Canadian citizen of Somali descent, entered his plea of guilty this afternoon before U.S. District Judge John R. Tunheim in federal court in Minneapolis. At sentencing, which was set for 1:30 pm on July 9, 2009, Warsame faces a statutory maximum sentence of 15 years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine. He has agreed to...

News reports described the meeting as a touching and powerful coming together of the president and these long-suffering families. Mr. Obama had won over even those who opposed his decision to close Gitmo by assuaging their fears that the review of some 245 current detainees would result in dangerous jihadists being set free. “I did not vote for the man, but the way he talks to you, you can’t help but believe in him,” said John Clodfelter to the New York Times. His son, Kenneth, was killed in the Cole bombing. “[Mr. Obama] left me with a very positive feeling...

Osama bin Laden is dead, according to Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari. This week he stunned the world with the exciting news that Pakistan's intelligence services have "obviously" concluded that bin Laden "does not exist any more, that he is dead."

Claims of the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden seem to be as common as sightings of David Duchovny at porn shops. It is tempting to dismiss all such accounts as hearsay and rumors, but current reports focus on three areas of the world as the most likely hideout for the globe’s most wanted man: Parachinar, Pakistan; Chitra, Pakistan; and most shockingly, the Islamic Republic of Iran. While it is often argued bin Laden would never receive harbor on Iranian territory, this is the location most identified by eyewitness reports available to the public, allowing for a detailed chronology of his...

Osama bin Laden’s passion for falcon hunting may have come close to doing him in two years ago, when an American falconer working with a Tajik smuggler and a team of former special forces operators planned to kidnap the fugitive terrorist during a hunt in northeastern Iran, according to one of the people involved in the scheme. The plan was scuttled when FBI officials in Boston threatened to arrest members of the snatch team for violating the Neutrality Act — even though the State Department has been running a “Rewards for Justice” program offering private citizens up to $25 million...

We have plenty of basis and evidence that [Binyam] Mohammed is dangerous. But Holder’s sense of “responsibility ... as attorney general ... for the safety of this nation” did not stop him from agreeing to Mohammed’s release and transfer to England — where he now plots freely while on the British dole. Naturally, having discerned that all the tough talk was just that, talk, British authorities are back on the administration’s doorstep, demanding the release of Shaker Aamer. He’s a bin Laden confidant who trained aspiring terrorists at al-Qaeda camps, met with shoe-bomber Richard Reid, and traveled widely in the...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the United States to release a prisoner from the Guantanamo detention center.</p> <p>U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle issued a one-page judgment ordering the release of Yasin Muhammed Basardh, a 33-year-old from Yemen.</p>

The United States will deploy 4,000 extra troops to train Afghan security forces in a revamp of its Afghan strategy that aims to disrupt al Qaeda and roll back the advances of the Taliban, U.S. officials said on Thursday. The officials said that al Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden, were believed to be in an unknown location in Pakistan plotting fresh attacks on the United States and its allies. U.S.-led forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to topple the Taliban for harboring al Qaeda leaders behind the September 11 attacks on the United States.

.."60 percent of the detainees who were released and returned to these areas have returned to fighting."

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Obama administration's initiative to deploy additional federal resources in the fight against rising drug-related violence along the Mexican border was criticized as insufficient in a Senate committee hearing Wednesday. Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Connecticut, said the administration's plan to send hundreds of extra federal agents and new crime-fighting equipment to the border "represents a significant step forward" but is not enough. Mexican drug cartels, believed to be operating in more than 230 American cities "from Appalachia to Alaska," represent a "clear and present" danger to the United States, Lieberman said at a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing...

Jakarta - Riduan “Hambali” Isamudin is the mastermind who planned the massacre in Bali in 2002, and the attacks against Christian churches and buildings in 2000. The accusation comes from Mubarok and Ali Imron, both members of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), who say they are willing to testify against the operational chief of the Islamic fundamentalist movement in southeast Asia, who is being held in the detention center in Guantanamo. Mubarok and Ali Imron are being held in the prison in Jakarta, where they are serving a life sentence for their involvement in the attack against churches in the country. In...

Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden accused moderate Arab leaders of plotting with the West against Muslims and urged his followers to prepare for jihad, in a recording aired by Al Jazeera television. "It is clear that some Arab leaders have plotted with the Zionist-crusader coalition against our [Muslim] people, these [Arab countries] the United States calls the moderate states," bin Laden said, without naming any of the leaders. Excerpt: read more at link

Normally I give press interviews to just about anybody who asks - even Pravda and MSNBC. But when a pesky little guy from Al Jazeera kept trying to get me to talk to him, I drew the line. This week a producer from Osama bin Laden's favorite propaganda outlet called and emailed me at my office, and again at my magazine. I ignored him. He tracked down some of my friends and associates, some of whom frantically called me: "Al Jazeera wants to talk to you." Something about Blackwater. Phinney heaped praise on an article I'd written about Blackwater's great...

Gems, al-Qaida and murder. Mystery over killing of Osama Bin Laden's friend · Saudi man's death was political, say his family· US secret service was monitoring his activities Nick Fielding Friday March 2, 2007 The Guardian (UK) Pallbearers carry the coffin of Muhammad Jamal Khalifa at Ivato airport in Antananarivo, in Madagascar. Photograph: Jasleen Sethi/Reuters When Muhammad Jamal Khalifa was found dead at a remote gemstone mine in south-eastern Madagascar at the end of January, local police quickly put the murder down to a business deal gone wrong. The Saudi businessman, 49, had had to call in local police to...

Khalifa had an extensive history in funding, plotting al-Qaeda terrorist activities; Task Force 145 likely scored the kill Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, one of Osama bin Laden's brother-in-laws with deep roots in al-Qaeda as a financier and facilitator, has been reported to have been murdered in his bedroom in Madagascar. Khalifa, "who mined and traded precious stones in Madagascar," was reported to have been murdered by "a gang of 20 to 30 gunmen broke into his brother's bedroom, shot him dead 'in cold blood' and stole his belongings." "I don't think [his death] was politically motivated," said Malek Khalifa, Mohammed Jamal's...

Two days ago we linked to an article about financial giant HSBC’s continued and growing embrace of Shariah-Compliant Finance. Today we would like to elaborate on HSBC’s connections in this area by focusing on the firm’s close ties to a creepy Mufti who has no business being associated with any respected Western financial institution. HSBC has one of the most extensive Shariah advisory boards in the entire financial services industry. But our focus today is on the name atop HSBC’s Global Shariah Advisory Board: Muhammad Taqi Usmani. To be sure, Usmani is one of the most prolific Shariah scholars in...

Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine: Founding Fodder One of the founders of Al Qaeda has written a book repudiating terrorism and railing against Usama bin Laden and deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri. The Daily Telegraph newspaper reports Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, better known as Doctor Fadl, led an Islamist insurgency in Egypt in the 1990s. Now he writes that the terrorist attacks on 9/11 were both immoral and counterproductive: "Ramming America has become the shortest road to fame and leadership among the Arabs and Muslims. But what good is it if you destroy one of your enemy's buildings, and he...

A local man lied to obtain citizenship, a U.S. passport, and about a trip to Pakistan in 2005 – information he is believed to have falsified to hide alleged connections to terrorists and terrorist organizations abroad, authorities said. Ahmadullah Sais Niazi, a 34-year-old man from Tustin who was born in Afghanistan, was taken into custody by federal authorities this morning in the 13000 block of Charloma Drive, officials said. He is facing several charges, ranging from perjury to naturalization fraud, misuse of a passport obtained by fraud and making a false statement to a federal agency. Court documents also show...

Fugitive terrorist Osama bin Laden is most likely hiding out in a walled compound in a Pakistani border town, according to a satellite-aided geographic analysis released today. A research team led by geographer Thomas Gillespie of the University of California-Los Angeles used geographic analytical tools that have been successful in locating urban criminals and endangered species. Basing their conclusion on nighttime satellite images and other techniques, the scientists suggest bin Laden may well be in one of three compounds in Parachinar, a town 12 miles from the Pakistan border. The research incorporates public reports of bin Laden's habits and whereabouts...

One of Baitullah Mehsud's key deputies survived an assassination attempt while traveling home yesterday after attending a Taliban leadership meeting in South Waziristan. Mullah Noor Sayyed Mehsud was wounded in a roadside bomb attack that killed another Taliban commander named Abdul Malik Shimankhel and wounded another leader. The bomb was detonated as Noor was returning from a meeting that was held in the town of Makeen. The vehicle was "smashed into pieces" by the blast, the Associated Press of Pakistan reported. Makeen is the home town of Baitullah Mehsud, the emir or leader of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or the Movement...

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., introduced Gov. Janet Napolitano to his fellow senators Thursday, saying she has a "no-nonsense" attitude that will serve her well as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. McCain introduced Napolitano to the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, which questioned the Arizona Democrat about her credentials. McCain told committee members that Napolitano has served Arizona as a United States Attorney, Attorney General and governor and that, in 2005, she was named one of America's Top Five Governors by "Time" magazine, which stated, "Positioning herself as a no-nonsense, pro-business centrist, she has worked outside party...

Link only, per FR copyright and posting policy

Anyone care to guess who will state that OBL succeded in bringing down America financialy by bringing down the Twin Towers.

INTRODUCTION The natural born citizen requirement in Article II of the United States Constitution has been called the “stupidest provision” in the Constitution,1 “undecidedly unAmerican,”2 “blatantly discriminatory,”3 and the “Constitution’s worst provision.”4 ... snip The natural born citizen clause of the United States Constitution should be repealed for numerous reasons. Limiting presidential eligibility to natural born citizens discriminates against naturalized citizens, is out-dated and undemocratic, and incorrectly assumes that birthplace is a proxy for loyalty. The increased globalization of the world continues to make each of these reasons more persuasive...the natural born citizen clause has increasingly become out of place...

Former Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, who served as both Democratic foil and dealmaker with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, has joined the high-powered public relations firm whose California office is currently occupied by Schwarzenegger's former campaign manager and communications director. Núñez, a Los Angeles Democrat, will be the newest partner and co-chair of Mercury Public Affairs, LLC, a political firm with offices in seven cities across the country, according to a letter he has sent to supporters. Steve Schmidt, who was the architect of Schwarzenegger's reelection campaign, and Adam Mendelsohn, the governor's former communications director and deputy chief of staff, are the...

President-elect Barack Obama and his former general election rival, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz), have come to an agreement on immigration, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid told the Detroit Free Press in a recent interview. Reid said the two standard-bearers have agreed to move forward on immigration legislation during Obama's White House tenure. "On immigration, there's been an agreement between Obama and McCain to move forward on that," Reidsaid when how Congress would handle immigration and healthcare with expanded Democratic majorities and Obama in the White House. Early on in their general election campaign, both McCain and Obama pledged to enact...

OSAMA bin Laden's former driver Salim Hamdan will be transferred out of Guantanamo Bay to Yemen, CNN has reported citing unnamed US sources. A jury of six US military officers at a Guantanamo terrorism trial in August sentenced Hamdan to five years and six months in prison for supporting terrorism - which taking into account time served, amounted to only an additional five months. The Pentagon refused to confirm the report. "In general we don't talk about transfers until they are completed," Pentagon spokesman Mark Ballesteros said. Hamdan, a native of Yemen and about 40 years old, was picked up...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry tells a story of a conversation that he had with his predecessor George W. Bush five months after both men took office, it occurred in June of 2001, shortly after the president had his first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Perry explains that typically a Bush conversation is pretty quick to the chase, asking about his wife and kids and good-bye. But nearly forty minutes later Bush is still on the phone asking about who got the best of who in the Texas state legislature and catching up on all of the intrigues of Texas...

A recently released propaganda video by the Islamic extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir is quite revealing. Not only does the video demonstrate the group’s growing effort to package arguments in a manner designed to appeal to Westerners on the political left, but it also serves as a barometer of radical Muslim groups’ broader shift in rhetorical strategy. The video, “Iraq: Past and Present Colonialism,” appears for the first twenty-seven minutes to be a standard leftist critique of the Iraq war, indistinguishable from Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. The slickly-produced video begins with the history of past colonialism in Iraq—including the Mongol conquest...

If the audio message purportedly from al Qaeda's deputy leader is authentic, we have finally heard from a representative of the terror organization about the American election. It was wholly expected that there would be such a tape, though the content, with its references to Malcolm X might be considered somewhat surprising --although in recent tapes al Qaeda's leaders have occasionally referenced critics of American society and foreign policy such as Noam Chomsky and Malcolm X. On the tape, the deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, seeks to make President-elect Barack Obama seem like an apostate for his support of Israel and...

(CBS) Shortly after 9/11, the Pentagon ordered a top secret team of American commandos into Afghanistan with a single, simple order: kill Osama bin Laden. It was America's best chance to eliminate the leader of al Qaeda. The inside story of exactly what happened in that mission, and how close it came to its objective has never been told until now.

The Sayyid Qutb Reader Selected Writings on Politics, Religion, and Society Edited by Albert J. Bergesen Routledge, 2008 0415954258 (paperback; $34.95) 041595424X (hardback; $135.00) Preface It has been said that perhaps no writer has occupied so central a place within the universe of political Islam in the second half of the twentieth century as Egypt's Sayyid Qutb, and if one wants to understand the mind of radical Muslims, one needs to know what they read, or have read, and they read Sayyid Qutb. In general, his work has been divided into three periods. The earliest (1920-1947) centers on more literary...