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WASHINGTON: The United States will begin formal talks with the Taliban, including the Haqqani network, in Doha, Qatar, in a couple of days, Obama administration officials said in a major announcement on Tuesday. The engagement, the first of its kind since the post 9/11 conflict, follows key concessions made by Washington, including dropping the pre-condition that Taliban immediately break ties with al-Qaida, in return for much broader, generic, self-serving commitments by the unyielding terrorist group. In a conference call from Northern Ireland where President Obama is attending the G8 summit, US officials said they expected Taliban to issue a statement...

CAIR Claims Victory Over AP Stylebook’s Restrictions on Word 'Islamist' April 5, 2013 By Elizabeth Harrington (CNSNews.com) – The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) praised the Associated Press (AP) for revising its stylebook to forbid the use of the word “Islamist,” if it is used to describe Islamic militants or extremists. In a press release on Friday, CAIR said revising the term is a "step in the right direction,” and that they helped influence the AP’s decision. “Late last year, the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) approached AP about modifying the reference, which had been added to its influential...

Now on Fox. Reporting that talks with Taliban have collapsed as our surrender date in 2014 is official. Talks were through intermediaries to get some sort of treaty with the terrorists to salvage some shred of respect from Obama's announced surrender. The Taliban refused to release the sole US soldier being held hostage no matter how many terrorists Obama would release from Gitmo. They told Obama, basically, to go to hell. Our surrender in Afghanistan is now complete, along with the Afghani "allies" upping the murders of US troops. Full coverage in The Boston Globe.

(CNN) — Jack Lew, the White House chief of staff, said Sunday the Supreme Court decision upholding President Barack Obama’s health care measure should put to rest the national debate over the law’s practicality. Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Lew said the Affordable Care Act, which was signed into law in 2010, needs to be fully implemented before Americans assess its merit, and that detractors of the law, including Obama’s opponent in the 2012 presidential election, were using it to divide the country. “This was a plan that Gov. Romney supported,” Lew said, “and it’s something that I...

American hostage Warren Weinstein says in a video released late Sunday by al Qaeda that he will be killed unless U.S. President Barack Obama agrees to the militant group's demands. "My life is in your hands, Mr. President," Mr. Weinstein said in the video. "If you accept the demands, I live; if you don't accept the demands, then I die."

President Barack Obama left Afghanistan on Wednesday, targeting a foreigners' housing compound with a suicide car bomb and militants disguised as women in an assault that killed at least seven people. It was the second major assault in Kabul in less than three weeks and highlighted the Taliban's continued ability to strike in the heavily guarded capital even when security had been tightened for Obama's visit and Wednesday's anniversary of the killing of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in neighboring Pakistan. Obama arrived at Bagram Air Field late Tuesday, then traveled to Kabul by helicopter for a meeting with President...

It remains to be seen how the media will cover the explosive revelation from ABC's Jake Tapper that Barack Obama asked Russian president Dmitri Medvedev to get Vladimir Putin to give him some "space" on missile defense so that he could be more "flexible" with the Russians in a second term. So far, the tepid coverage from National Journal and the Washington Post suggests that the media doesn't consider a request to another nation to pipe down so an American President can win a second term and deliver more favorable policy to a potential antagonist more than a "gaffe". They...

President Barack Obama offered a private request Monday to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for some “space” on missile defense ahead of November’s elections. “On all these issues, particularly on missile defense, this, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space,” Obama said, referring to incoming Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to a TV pool reporter who heard audio recorded by a Russian reporter who was in the room moments before the two leaders spoke to reporters after their 90-minute meeting. “Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you,” Medvedev responded. A...

Panetta Says Defeat of Al Qaeda ‘Within Reach’ By ELISABETH BUMILLER KABUL, Afghanistan — Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, who arrived in Kabul on Saturday, said that the United States was “within reach of strategically defeating Al Qaeda” and that the American focus had narrowed to capturing or killing 10 to 20 crucial leaders of the terrorist group in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. Mr. Panetta, who took over as defense secretary from Robert M. Gates on July 1, made his comments aboard his plane before arriving on an unannounced trip to Kabul, the Afghan capital. They were Mr. Panetta’s first...

The German government is mediating secret talks on German soil between the US government and representatives of the Taliban. Berlin is cautiously optimistic that the negotiations will deliver progress, but observers warn that the insurgents' morale remains high. It's still unknown where exactly in Germany the American and Afghan negotiators met, but when they met can be pinpointed fairly exactly: at the turn of the year and on the second weekend in May. It's also fairly clear who attends these talks on peace in the Hindu Kush. On the American side, representatives of the State Department and the CIA are...

ANAHEIM — Disneyland officials have reached an agreement with a Muslim college intern allowing her to wear a head covering while on the job, Muslim community leaders and Disney officials said Monday. Officials with the Council on American-Islamic Relations say the scarf acts as an Islamic head covering, called a hijab, in accordance with her Muslim religion. Disney officials don’t call it a hijab — just a head scarf to accommodate an employees needs. The woman, who was not identified by name, is the second Disney employee in recent weeks to complain that Disney did not allow her to wear...

9/11/2010. This is the day that our government surrendered to the radical Muslim hoardes. Those radical muslims threatened our armed forces, if we are to believe General Petraeus. In response, the President of the United States, the Secretary of Defense, the FBI (3 times), and General Petraeus all responded to the threat against our troops -- by actively and publicly intervening to stop the exercise of free speech (as defined by the Supreme Court) that was objected to by those who threatened us with war. In response to the overwhelming force of government threats and intimidation, the citizen of our...

PARIS (AP) - France has declared war on al-Qaida, and matched its fighting words with a first attack on a base camp of the terror network's North African branch, after the terror network killed a French aid worker it took hostage in April. The declaration and attack marked a shift in strategy for France, usually discrete about its behind-the-scenes battle against terrorism. "We are at war with al-Qaida," Prime Minister Francois Fillon said Tuesday, a day after President Nicolas Sarkozy announced the death of 78-year-old hostage Michel Germaneau. The humanitarian worker had been abducted April 20 or 22 in Niger...

Bravely entering the lion’s den — delivering a speech in praise of left-wing, “pro bono” lawyering to a group of left-wing, pro bono lawyers — Attorney General Eric Holder recently declared that “lawyers who provide counsel for the unpopular are, and should be, treated as what they are: patriots.” Sure they are. After all, Holder explained, they “reaffirm our nation’s most essential and enduring values” — like the value we place on coming to the aid of our enemies in wartime. And let’s not forget the value we place on advocating for the release of those enemies who, as night...

A cushy Saudi Arabian "rehab" center where terrorists are encouraged to express themselves through crayon drawings, water sports and video games is under scrutiny after one of its graduates re-emerged as a leader in the al Qaeda branch claiming responsibility for trying to blow up an airliner on Christmas. Said Ali al Shihri -- a former Guantanamo Bay detainee who now heads the terror group al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula -- obviously didn't get to the bottom of his America-hating issues while undergoing the controversial rehab for jihadists. Inmates like Shihri are supposed to while away the days playing...

...Obama's ambitious plan to begin phasing out nuclear weapons has run up against powerful resistance from officials in the Pentagon and other U.S. agencies, posing a threat to one of his most important foreign policy initiatives. Obama laid out his vision of a nuclear-free world in a speech in Prague in April, vowing the U.S. would take dramatic steps to lead the way. Eight months later, the administration is locked in internal debate... Officials in the Pentagon and elsewhere have pushed back against administration proposals to cut the number of weapons and narrow their mission.... The debate represents another collision...

You may not have noticed because most of the plots were foiled, but 2009 saw an unprecedented surge in terror "events" on U.S. soil. When analysts tally these events, they refer to anything from a disrupted plot to U.S. citizens traveling abroad to seek terror training or a lone gunman running amok in the U.S. And by the calculations of Rand Corporation expert Brian Jenkins, more terrorist threats were uncovered in the U.S. during 2009 than in any year since 2001.

President Barack Obama does not plan to accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, pushing instead for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government, a senior administration official said Wednesday. Obama is still close to announcing his revamped war strategy — most likely shortly after he returns from a trip to Asia that ends on Nov. 19. But the president raised questions at a war council meeting Wednesday that could alter the dynamic of both how many additional troops are sent to Afghanistan and what...

War On Terror: Sen. John Kerry, who was so wrong about Iraq, now says our commander in Afghanistan is "reaching too far, too fast" and that a "good enough" policy should suffice. It won't. Offering his advice on how to micromanage the war against the Taliban, Kerry said Gen. Stanley McChrystal, President Obama's hand-picked general to fight what he called a "war of necessity," is wrong in saying he needs 40,000 more troops to fight and win it. Speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations on Monday, Kerry advocated a "good enough" policy designed not to achieve victory in al-Qaida's...

War On Terror: Sen. John Kerry, who was so wrong about Iraq, now says our commander in Afghanistan is "reaching too far, too fast" and that a "good enough" policy should suffice. It won't. Offering his advice on how to micromanage the war against the Taliban, Kerry said Gen. Stanley McChrystal, President Obama's hand-picked general to fight what he called a "war of necessity," is wrong in saying he needs 40,000 more troops to fight and win it. Speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations on Monday, Kerry advocated a "good enough" policy designed not to achieve victory in al-Qaida's...

The Washington Post reports tonight that Barack Obama and top administration officials have concluded the Taliban cannot be beaten and that they are looking for ways to cede parts of Afghanistan to the Taliban without those regions becoming safe havens for al Qaeda.The article also reports that Obama may wait until after he returns from a 10 day visit to Asia that begins November 11 to decide his policy for Afghanistan.The Post article is largely about Obama's request made this week, two months after he received Gen. Stanley McChrystal's request for tens of thousands more troops to fulfill Obama's counter-insuregency...

<p>Just announced by Jennifer Griffith in a live interview, WH has asked Pentagon for a formal assessment of a withdrawal from Afghanistan, that the Afghan Wart is no longer in our nations interest, blamed the Afghan elections.</p>

George F. Will, the elite conservative commentator, will call in his next column for U.S. ground troops to leave Afghanistan, according to publishing sources. “[F]orces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent special forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters,” Will writes in the column, scheduled for publication later this week. Obama ordered a total of 21,000 more U.S. troops into Afghanistan in February and March, and casualties have mounted...

'JUSTICE Secretary Kenny MacAskill freed Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al- Megrahi over fears Scotland would suffer a terrorist backlash if he died behind bars. He believed Megrahi would have been seen as a MARTYR by Islamic extremists if he had been left to die in Greenock Prison. And last night a source close to the Cabinet Secretary said: "Kenny feared the repercussions would have haunted Scotland for a generation and more. "If Megrahi had died in a Scottish jail, we'd have seen burning Saltires across the Middle East." MacAskill and SNP First Minister Alex Salmond are preparing to publish...

Tourists are being warned to steer clear of Asian hornets that are colonising France, after swarms of the aggressive predators attacked seven people. An Asian predatory wasp (vespa velutina), a predator of honey bee hives An Asian Hornets' nest A beekeeper holds an Asian Hornets' nest The bee-eating hornets, instantly recognisable by their yellow feet, are rapidly spreading round France Hundreds of the insects attacked a mother on a stroll with her five-month-old baby in the Lot-et-Garonne department, southwestern France, at the weekend before turning on a neighbour who ran over to help. The baby was unharmed. They then pursued...

Here is video of John Brennan, Obama's top Homeland Security and Counterterrorism official, giving a speech today where he said the United States is not engaged in a "War on Terror," and also does not believe we are in a "global war" nor are we fighting "jihadists." He said the only acceptable term is that we are fighting "Al-Qaeda." Who does he think Al-Qaeda is? The are "Jihadists!" But political correctness will not allow Obama to say what is true, that Islamic Jihadists have declared war on the United States and we do face a Global War against those who...

Obama, Medvedev Call for Cut to 1,500-1,675 Nuclear Warheads Title only - story to follow

Mexico got tough with the U.S. today, raising tariffs on $2.4 billion in U.S. exports to retaliate for the ending of a pilot program that allowed illegal Mexican day laborers to wait on U.S. curbs for work. President b. Hussein, in his first big trade policy test, immediately wimped out, issuing an executive order that gives a tax break to any American employer who pulls their pickup into the parking lot of a Mexican grocery and flashes five fingers on one hand, then all 10 fingers twice. (Translation: “Five laborers needed, at $20 an hour.”) Tax breaks will be calculated...

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration is leaning toward making a major diplomatic overture to Iran before the country's presidential elections in June. This initiative could come in the form of a letter from President Obama to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to two senior European diplomats who have met in recent weeks with key State Department officials crafting a new US policy toward Iran. The letter would be aimed at initiating talks over the Iranian nuclear program and Iran's role in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan, the diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the...

President Obama said the military was not winning the counter insurgency war in Afghanistan as he opened the door for peace negotiations. By persuading Iraqi Sunni insurgents to turn on al-Qaeda extremists, US commanders engineered a sharply drop in violence in Iraq. President Obama said deals similar to those implemented by General David Petraeus in Iraq could be cut in Afghanistan and Pakistan. "If you talk to General Petraeus, I think he would argue that part of the success in Iraq involved reaching out to people that we would consider to be Islamic fundamentalists, but who were willing to work...

In the March 9, 2009 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, March 2), "Radical Islam is A Fact of Life. How To Live With it" Fareed Zakaria makes the case for why the West needs to adopt a more sophisticated strategy toward Radical Islam. Plus: Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman discuss the country's future in their first foreign media interview since winning in the recent election. Lastly: A review of the latest comic book inspired movie, "Watchmen."

In his latest “Memo from Cairo,” New York Times correspondent Michael Slackman virtually begs the Obama administration to avoid using the word “terrorist” in reference to Hamas and Hezbollah. According to Slackman... calling these groups “terrorists” turns off the Arab world, in which people view Israel as the “real terrorist,” whereas Hamas and Hezbollah are just “trying to liberate their countries.” In turn, intimates Slackman, using a “loaded word” like “terrorist” when describing Hamas or Hezbollah makes peace impossible. Let’s leave aside for a moment that Slackman has managed to pass off his own view on the mind-numbingly dull one-man’s-terrorist-is-another-man’s-freedom-fighter...

U.S. Senate Republicans are not planning to try and use procedural maneuvers to delay passage of a proposed $789 billion economic stimulus bill, the party's leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, said on Wednesday. McConnell said there was a widespread feeling in the minority party that they "ought to vote and move on." He spoke after congressional negotiators said they had reached a deal on the massive package of spending and tax cuts to try and rescue the flailing economy.

I'm with David Frum on this from yesterday: But Obama? McCain’s attack on him is the equivalent of the William McKinley campaign attacking William Jennings Bryan for having kept company with Nathan Bedford Forrest decades after the Civil War. Yes, the old rebel was an unrepentant traitor. Mostly though, he was all washed up. Republicans have been fighting this second American civil war for eleven election cycles now. It’s been a good run! But just as 19th-Century Republicans eventually ran out of Union generals from Ohio, so the modern Republican Party has bumped up against the statute of limitations on...

Judging by the reaction to Thursday night's CNN debate, everything seems to be falling into place for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign for president. After flirting with subjecting her to some scrutiny, the media seem to be coming to the conclusion that her nomination as the Democratic presidential candidate is inevitable. The moderator, Wolf Blitzer, let Hillary off the hook on the issue of illegal immigration while luring Hillary's main competitor, Barack Obama, into a Wolf trap, and he stiffed candidate John Edwards on air time during the debate. It was Hillary's moment to shine, which is what CNN intended....

BARRINGTON, N.H. (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate Chris Dodd said Saturday the United States cannot afford to wait for President Bush's successor to end the war in Iraq. "We really can't wait another 18 months," the U.S. senator from Connecticut said while campaigning. "We have to have the convictions to stand up to this president." Dodd said the war has been waged "for all the wrong reasons" and that it is eroding both the nation's security and its moral leadership. For those reasons, he said, it was not difficult for him to vote in the Senate against continued funding...

GREEN OAK TOWNSHIP -- Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney started a two-day campaign swing through Michigan by accusing Democrats of surrendering in the Iraq war. Romney said the United States must defeat the Islamic jihad movement, and that President Bush will do whatever it takes to protect the American people. "When we're dealing with nations of the world, we stand united,'' Romney said Friday night at the Livingston County Lincoln Day Dinner at the Barnstormer Banquet Center on M-36 in Green Oak Township. Romney also was scheduled to speak at GOP events today in Flint, Saginaw and the Lansing area....

Michael Ramirez's latest cartoon commentary on Harry Reid is here.

In an effort to put a stop to Israeli overflights in Lebanon, the French Armed Forces has deployed an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) squadron in southern Lebanon to conduct intelligence-gathering missions in place of the IDF. France, a member of UNIFIL, has expressed adamant opposition to IAF overflights in Lebanon. Last month, OC Planning Division Maj.-Gen. Ido Nehushtan traveled to Paris for meetings with senior military officials during which he tried to explain Israel's operational needs. The flights, the IDF claims, are necessary for gathering intelligence and keeping an eye on the Lebanese-Syrian border through which weapons are smuggled to...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 — Democrats sought on Friday to put their new political power to use in shaping the debate over Iraq, promising stepped-up Congressional oversight of the war and a resolution demanding a schedule for reducing the number of troops there. David Scull for The New York Times President Bush met Friday with the Senate’s incoming majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada. After the meeting, Mr. Reid said Democrats will increase the focus on Iraq when they formally take over in January. After two days in which both sides pledged bipartisanship in the aftermath of the Democratic victory in...

Ask people outside the French immigrant community why the Jews are leaving their country, and the usual answer is that they are making aliya to escape the rising tide of anti-Semitism. Ask the French olim themselves, however, and the responses become more diverse and complex. Many recent arrivals say in no uncertain terms that it was primarily anti-Semitism that brought them from France to Israel. Others acknowledge that while anti-Semitism has increased in recent years, the phenomenon has been due largely to the intifada and emanates mainly from young Muslim immigrant men, mostly from North Africa and poorly integrated into...

Nicolas Sarkozy is campaigning hard to be the next president of France on the jogging trails of Central Park and in the corridors of the White House. On a four-day trip to the United States, the 51-year-old minister of the interior, France’s leading presidential hopeful on the right, pinned the Legion of Honor on the police commissioner of New York, honored firefighters in Midtown Manhattan for their losses on 9/11 and signed hundreds of copies of his new best-selling book on France’s future. He told Jewish leaders of his love of Israel, American business leaders of his love of free...

Lib/Dem/Soc/Commies -- You've Forgotten The Lessons Of 9/11 Written by Doc Farmer Monday, September 11, 2006 Author's Note: This is a request to most of my conservative, patriotic readers. Please don't read it with yourself in mind. Instead, send it along to every lib/dem/soc/commie discussion board, mailing list or group you can find. Send it to every lib/dem/soc/commie media outlet. Call every lib/dem/soc/commie talk show with it. This message is for them, and it's high time they heard it. Five years. It's not that long a time, when you consider the history of our nation. It's a mere blink of...

Post-9/11 policy hasn’t made world safer: Rather than occupying Iraq, we must destroy al-Qaeda By John Kerry Saturday, September 9, 2006 Five years after Sept. 11, where are we? Bogged down in Baghdad, beleaguered around the world and bitterly divided at home. Democrats have a unique responsibility not just to oppose what has failed but to propose a new course that can defeat jihadist terrorism once and for all. There are many things we can and must do better, but there are five steps to start: Redeploy from Iraq, recommit to Afghanistan, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, reform our...

Imagine it's 1939 all over again. Imagine we haven't learned the tragic lessons of appeasement. Imagine there are still people in the world – in powerful and influential positions – who believe that you can build lasting peace with evil forces upon foundations of paper. You don't have to imagine such a world. It's here. You can see it in the U.S. State Department's eagerness for a cease-fire in Lebanon. You can hear it in the cries for same from the four corners of the world. And you can read it for yourself in yesterday's editorial in the New York...

Former vice presidential candidate John Edwards, who is considering another run for the Democratic presidential nomination, said Saturday the United States should start pulling troops out of Iraq immediately. The former senator from North Carolina told reporters America should "make it clear (to Iraqis) we are leaving, and the best way is to start leaving. We should take 40,000 combat troops out now." Edwards, who has said he regretted his vote as a U.S. senator authorizing President Bush to invade Iraq, said he would ask the country's military leaders for a strategy "to have the (rest of the) troops out...

But we Americans seem to have short memories. What else could explain the fact that we, generally speaking, so-often lambaste the French, calling them “cowards” for not allying themselves fully with us in every instance? We constantly throw in their faces the fact that we came to their rescue in World Wars I and II. And we’ve all heard the jokes: “Surplus French military rifles for sale. Never fired. Dropped once.”

Peretz: An IDF escalation would bring more Qassams on Sderot Defense Minister Amir Peretz said Monday that a sharpened military response to Palestinian rocket fire would lead to intensified bombardments of the southern city of Sderot. "I will do everything possible in order to avoid an escalation because it would lead to days of Qassam barrages," Peretz said during his meeting with President Moshe Katsav in Sderot on Monday afternoon. Peretz was joined by President Moshe Katsav for a meeting Monday afternoon in Sderot with bereaved families and city officials, including Mayor Eli Moyal. The "Red Dawn" Qassam early-warning system...

NICE, France — At least 21 people have gone from France to Iraq to join the anti-coalition fighters since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, national police said Thursday. National Police Chief Michel Gaudin told The Associated Press that nine of them had been killed, and 10 were believed to be alive and still in Iraq. Five of those killed were French citizens, while the other four had traveled to Iraq from France. "We are working with international authorities to determine their identities," Gaudin said. Two more French people were in custody after having been detained by coalition forces operating in...