Free Republic

Recent reports outlining what Time magazine has called the "untold story" of a cancelled al Qaeda plot against the New York subway system have excited considerable media hype and public consternation. The account is part of Ron Suskind's new book, The One Percent Doctrine, that was excerpted in the June 26 edition of Time. According to Suskind, al Qaeda developed a "revolutionary new WMD device" that would generate cyanide gas, and these weapons -- which he refers to as "mubtakkar" devices -- were to have been planted on subways by operatives who were in place and preparing to act in...

US forces have all but wiped out an alleged al-Qaeda linked group in northern Iraq with help from their Kurdish allies - and Iranians who have sealed off the Islamist militants' only exit. US special forces set out today from Halabja in Iraqi Kurdistan with Kurdish fighters to track down militants of the Ansar al-Islam group who might have survived the bombing and the onslaught on their stronghold. The US forces kept mum on the location of their hunting ground, but a Kurdish official said it was a mountainous region on the border with Iran because "they have nowhere else...