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Five police officers were killed yesterday in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico in a two separate incidents. In the first attack, two officers were killed while on patrol. Witnesses say gunmen killed one officer in his vehicle and the other as he tried to escape. In the second attack, four police officers were shot at while filling up their vehicles at a gas station. Two died on the scene, another died at a local hospital, and the fourth officer is being treated for his injuries. The total number of police officers killed to 47 this year, making it one of the most...

This interview is the fifth installment of an on going series of conversations with the former Congressman and 2008 presidential candidate. It appears that the extended Idaho retirement vacation is coming to an end. Hunter and his wife Lynne were on the road, driving south through the Beehive State with the ultimate destination of their home in El Cajon, CA. Once again, we used the conference call service that allowed several of us to partake in this unique opportunity to query the man who is perhaps the most solid and consistent conservative legislator to have served our nation in modern...

We guess immigration is never not an issue, even in putting terrorists on trial. Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee today are demanding to know the immigration status of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other 9/11 plotters, should they be brought to the United States to stand trial. Their fear is that KSM and his henchmen might seek asylum under immigration laws, setting all kinds of worrisome precedents. “As you can imagine, even if they are not ultimately eligible for relief, terrorist detainees may seek legal rights under our immigration laws or assert such rights in federal court, thereby setting a...

On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee met to question Attorney General Eric Holder about his decision to prosecute Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others in criminal courts rather than military tribunals. As the father of Todd Beamer, who died on United Airlines Flight 93, I was able to attend that hearing. What transpired caused me great concern and shook my confidence in our current administration....How can we be assured that these enemies will be found guilty? Given that criminal courts are now the presumed venue for those captured on the battlefield, will soldiers need to read them their rights at...

Fort Hood Texas Shootings Free Republic Archives PART IIORIGINAL Fort Hood Archives... If you create a new thread, feel free to post a link to it here as well. If you post a link, you don't have to ping it to me..just take my name out of the ping field. The last time it filled my ping box pretty fast. My thanks to ALL who helped create the previous thread. Our prayers Continue...... Fort Hood's Fallen HeroesBy Freeper La Enchiladita...

The Justice Department intends to drop manslaughter and weapons charges against one of the Blackwater Worldwide security guards involved in a deadly 2007 Baghdad shooting, prosecutors said in court documents Friday. The shooting in busy Nisoor Square left 17 Iraqis dead and inflamed anti-American sentiment abroad. It touched off a string of investigations that ultimately led the State Department to cancel the company's lucrative contract to guard diplomats in Iraq. Iraqis have said they're watching closely to see how the U.S. judicial system handles the five men accused of unleashing an unprovoked attack on civilians with machine guns and grenades....

Sgt. Asan Akbar, a Muslim American soldier with the 326th Engineer Battalion, had an "attitude problem." According to his superiors and acquaintances, Akbar's attitude was bitterly anti-American and staunchly pro-Muslim. So how did this devout follower of the so-called Religion of Peace work out his attitudinal problems last weekend? By lobbing hand grenades and aiming his M-4 automatic rifle into three tents filled with sleeping commanding officers at the 101st Airborne Division's 1st Brigade operations center in Kuwait. Naturally, apologists for Islam-gone-awry are hard at work dismissing this traitorous act of murder as an "isolated, individual act and not an...

A suspected US drone aircraft fired two missiles in North Waziristan on Friday, killing eight people, the second such attack this week. Eight militants were killed in a US missile strike in northwest Pakistan on Friday, officials said. The United States has carried out 45 attacks with its pilotless, missile-firing aircraft in northwest Pakistan this year as its forces in neighbouring Afghanistan have faced an intensifying Taliban insurgency.

The sea lanes of the South Atlantic have become a favored route for drug traffickers carrying narcotics from Latin America to West and North Africa, where al Qaeda-related groups are increasingly involved in transporting the drugs to Europe, intelligence officials and counternarcotics specialists say. A Middle Eastern intelligence official said his agency has picked up "very worrisome reports" of rapidly growing cooperation between Islamic militants operating in North and West Africa and drug lords in Latin America. With U.S. attention focused on the Caribbean and Africans lacking the means to police their shores, the vast sea lanes of the South...

Secure Reporting Sarah Carlsruh, November 20, 2009 What do media have to do with Homeland Security? A November 13th forum at the Heritage Foundation addressed this issue, with panelists explaining how the media shapes American and global perceptions of domestic security issues. CBS News Correspondent Kimberly Dozier illustrated the slow death of responsible journalism. Why are Americans inundated with a barrage of fluff stories rather than informed of the daily atrocities of war? The answer, explained Dozier, is that interest in foreign news has declined. Major news stations that realize the import of sustaining coverage of overseas wars have to...

November 17, 2009 MURTHA CONTINUES TO UNDERMINE TROOPS By William RussellIn recent interviews defending President Obama’s slow decision making on Afghanistan, Congressman John Murtha continues to undermine our troops, embolden our enemies, and place our country in greater danger. He does this by drawing on the wrong lessons from his own experience in Vietnam, and endorsing the enemy’s propaganda.  By continually questioning the request for more troops, Mr. Obama and Mr. Murtha are signaling the possibility that America might withdraw as we did in Vietnam. But unlike Vietnam, we do not have the choice of leaving and withdrawing to our...

A menorah stands outside of the White House. The national Hanukkah Menorah on the Ellipse near the White House is seen during the lighting ceremony in December 2003. | Photo by APClose The White House's forthcoming state dinner with the Prime Minister of India is expected to be larger than those of President Barack Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush. But another upcoming White House event will be smaller than in years past: The White House's annual Hanukkah party. The guest list is expected to be shrunk by more than half, according to the Jerusalem Post. "Though several Jewish leaders expressed...

Conservative Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, who is emerging as a top contender for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012, is gaining some attention this week for his comments in defense of President Obama. As first reported on the Huffington Post, Huckabee said some of the recent criticisms of Obama have been unfair and even "shameful." Huckabee made the comments to the Hudson Union Society. "When he [Barack Obama] was at Dover the other day, and went there to pay respect for soldiers, I heard a lot of people on the Right say "Aw, that's just a cheap photo-op."...

Connecticut Senate candidate Rob Simmons just announced on a local radio show some of the 9/11 suspects maybe tried in Connecticut. He didn't elaborate.

A former horse riding school in the tiny Baltic state of Lithuania was used as a secret CIA prison to hold and interrogate top al-Qaeda terrorists, it has been claimed. The prison was reportedly built from scratch on the territory of a former horse riding school about 15 miles from Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, and included an underground annex. Pictures of the building said to be the former CIA jail show a bland-looking two-storey house surrounded by a fence and CCTV cameras. Locals say the building, which is now used as a training facility by Lithuania's state security service, originally...

WASHINGTON -- The Nobel Peace crown lies uneasy on President Barack Obama’s head as he ponders the next U.S. move in Afghanistan, with hints and leaks showering down to tell us that he will eventually send thousands more troops there. His decision -- which could be announced soon -- was triggered by the request from Gen. Stanley McChrystal for 40,000 more troops to secure the cities and protect the citizens of Afghanistan, in addition to the 68,000 U.S. troops there now. Obama has been reviewing the U.S. role in Afghanistan for months, a time-consuming study that has led to accusations...

The FBI is worried a group linked to al-Qaeda is training up a new generation of terrorists. They're thought to be targeting young Somali immigrants, radicalising them to carry out attacks on their home country and possibly the US in the future. The grey high rise flats in Cedar-Riverside, Minneapolis, are clustered together and are home to hundreds of Somali immigrants. It's not clear why teenagers like these are giving up their comfortable lives in America and returning to their war torn homeland. But over the past three years, authorities believe 20 young Somali men have gone back to fight...

The Grassroots Fight Against Terrorism Sarah Carlsruh, November 19, 2009 Are we winning the war on terror? The Cultural Strategies Institute hosted a panel addressing this question at the National Press Club on October 11th. Host Lowell Christy said that the military is over-professionalized, and thus the only real solution is concrete actions focusing on the “invisible dynamics” of terrorism. Panelist Dr. Dominick Donald, who works with the Aegis U.S. Liaison Teams in Iraq to “establish ground truth,” discussed the work being done by the Department of Defense to understand and maintain order at a grassroots level in conflict zones....

Scores of Lilburn residents finally got their wish Wednesday night when the City Council rejected plans for a giant mosque in their neighborhood "I'm so happy I can't even talk," homeowner Lorraine Lobos said. "Our needs have been answered." In a 4-0vote, city leaders denied a rezoning request by the local Muslim congregation of Dar-E-Abbas for a 20,000-square-foot mosque, cemetery and gymnasium on about 8 acres at U.S. 29 and Hood Road. The congregation, which has worshiped there for the past 11 years, was looking to expand to accommodate the city's growing Muslim population. One estimate puts the number of...

Senator Lindsey Graham, of all people, destroys Our Attorney General (and Obama) on their idiotic decision to fight this war as a law enforcement issue: Ann Althouse: Holder imagines that he can hide inside that “thoughtful” routine that Obama so often relies on, but it is utterly pathetic here. Either he knows damned well what he’s doing and he’s lying or he’s outrageously unqualified for his job. His evasive style is so similar to Obama’s that he makes Obama look worse. Dan Karipides at Wizbang isn’t buying it. He doesn’t believe Holder is this much of an amateur: Which unfortunately...

War On Terror: Sen. Dick Durbin calls a plan to transfer 100 Guantanamo detainees to northwest Illinois "a dream come true." It would paint a bull's-eye on America's heartland in time for the 2012 Iowa caucuses. It seems the question of where to put the Guantanamo detainees is being settled as we speak, with liberal Democrats in the very blue state of Illinois welcoming them with open arms and outstretched hands for the federal dollars that will come with them. Federal officials last Friday inspected the Thomson Correctional Center in Thomson, Ill., a town of 500 on the Iowa border,...

The greatest hurdle Americans need to get over in order to properly respond to the growing threat of radical Islam is purely intellectual in nature; specifically, it is epistemological, and revolves around the abstract realm of “knowledge.” Before attempting to formulate a long-term strategy to counter radical Islam, Americans must first and foremost understand Islam, particularly its laws and doctrines, the same way Muslims understand it—without giving it undue Western (liberal) interpretations. This is apparently not as simple as expected: all peoples of whatever civilizations and religions tend to assume that other peoples more or less share in their worldview,...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 18, 2009 – A range of decisions still remain for President Barack Obama and his administration to finalize the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, the president said in Beijing today. In separate interviews with traveling press, Obama said Afghans have to responsible for their own security and Pakistan has to be more effectively involved. “There are a range of things that we know we have to do,” the president told CBS correspondent Chip Reid. “At this point, it’s a matter of fine-tuning a strategy that we can be confident will be successful and also won’t be open-ended.” Obama has...

In recent years there has been a significant rise in the number of non-Palestinians who describe themselves as "pro-Palestinian" activists. These people can be found mostly on university campuses in North America and Europe. What is striking is that many of these "pro-Palestinian" activists have never been to the Middle East, let alone the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. In most cases, they are not even Arabs or Muslims. What makes them "pro-Palestinian"? In their view, inciting against Israel on a university campus or publishing "anti-Zionist" material on the Internet is sufficient to earn them the title of "pro-Palestinian."...

A total of 15 people were killed in separate incidents in Juarez Friday. State prosecutor's spokesman Arturo Sandoval said a university professor, three women and a 7-year-old boy were among those who were killed.

They are in recess after opening statements and initial rounds of questions. Here are some of the Attorney General's whoppers so far: 1. The "tragic shooting" at Ft. Hood. What happened at Ft. Hood was a jihadist massacre — a terrorist act, not a tragedy. 2. The civilian justice system has been handling terrorism cases successfully for years. No mention of Mamdouh Salim, the al-Qaeda founder who was never brought to trial for 1998 U.S. embassy bombings because he maimed a Bureau of Prisons guard in an escape attempt during which he attempted to kidnap is taxpayer-funded defense lawyers.

For if we are at war, why is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed headed for trial in federal court in the Southern District of New York? Why is he entitled to a presumption of innocence...? And if we must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that KSM was complicit in mass murder, by what right do we send Predators and Special Forces to kill his al-Qaida comrades wherever we find them? For none of them has been granted a fair trial. We conduct those strikes in good conscience because we believe we are at war. But if we are at war, what is...

Since the 9/11 attacks, conventional wisdom has held that acts of terror on U.S. soil would most likely come from abroad. Much time and effort have been spent on beefing up border security to make sure the next Mohammad Atta never reaches the homeland. Yet the massacre at Fort Hood by Major Nidal Hasan underscored what has long been known in counterterrorism circles: Muslims born and raised in the U.S. might become radicalized and perpetrate acts of terror here at home, and more resources need to be directed inward. Now, a string of arrests by the FBI over the past...

... private guards on board the U.S.-flagged ship repelled the attack with gunfire...

Live Senate Hearing on holding terrorism trials in NY. Erik Holder being brought in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four co-conspirators detained at Gitmo are to face trial in a federal district court in New York City, where the death penalty may be sought. They had been facing trial by a military commission at Gitmo, but President Obama decided that he would prefer that the trial be in a civilian court. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder expressed confidence that the cases were strong, and said the trials would not be impaired by the harsh interrogations of Mohammed and others: I am confident in the ability of our courts to provide these defendants a fair trial,...

So now Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) and five self-confessed 9/11 co-conspirators are to be tried not as war criminals in a military tribunal but rather in civilian court just blocks from Ground Zero. A civilian format will allow challenges of evidence obtained under duress (ie. water-boarding), question the legality of KSM’s 2003 capture, and even negate confessions extracted without the full protections of the Constitution being first explained to the detainees. And thus do I have a horrible feeling that these trials will degenerate into a case against the Bush Administration as much as the terrorists themselves. As for demonstrating...

Capt. John Gaffaney Capt. John Gaffaney, 56, was a psychiatric nurse who worked for San Diego County, Calif., for more than 20 years and had arrived at Fort Hood the day before the shooting to prepare for a deployment to Iraq. Born in Williston, N.D., Gaffney had served in the Navy and later the California National Guard as a younger man, his family said.

It all boils down to this simple question: Do you want to win the war or not? Barry O, Sen. Kerry and others are frittering the days away while the man that knows -- General McChrystal -- has stated he needs 40,000 more troops to win the war in Afghanistan. And he’s also said that if we don’t do this smart, hard and fast we will -- within a year -- be unable to defeat the Taliban. So what did Barry do? Nothing. So far, he’s wasted almost ninety days of that year working hard to feed Fedzilla another one-sixth...

A federal grand jury has indicted two Minnesota men in connection with the recruitment of Somali immigrants to fight with Islamic insurgents in their home country. Salah Osman Ahmed and Abdifatah Yusuf Isse are charged with one count each of providing material support to terrorists and conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim or injure people overseas, the indictment states. The recruiting effort took place between September 2007 and December 2008, according to the charges.

Fifty-one percent (51%) of U.S. voters oppose the Obama administration’s decision to try the confessed chief planner of the 9/11 attacks and other suspected terrorists in a civilian court in New York City. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 29% of voters favor the president’s decision not to try the suspects by military tribunal at the Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba where they are now imprisoned. Nineteen percent (19%) are not sure whether it was the right decision or not. Only 30% of Americans said suspected terrorists should have access to U.S. courts, while 54% favored...

SARAROGHA, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistani forces have captured most main Taliban bases in their offensive in South Waziristan and will soon fan out into the rugged countryside to hunt for militants there, commanders said on Tuesday. Soldiers have advanced faster than expected in their month-long offensive, seizing main roads and Taliban bases but militant leaders have apparently melted away while their bombers have unleashed carnage in towns. The United States, weighing options for how to turn an intensifying insurgency in Afghanistan, has welcomed the offensive but is keen to see Pakistan tackle Afghan Taliban factions based in lawless enclaves along...

One of the most wanted Taliban leaders in Pakistan has escaped to Afghanistan and is planning new attacks on Pakistani forces, he has told the BBC. Maulana Fazlullah founded the Swat Taliban to enforce a hardline version of Islamic law. The government at first accepted his demands, but later accused the militants of reneging on a peace deal and sent troops into the valley. Maulana Fazlullah was said by officials to have been wounded or killed in July. Threats "I have reached Afghanistan safely," Maulana Fazlullah told BBC Urdu. "We are soon going to launch full-fledged punitive raids against the...

Here's a quiz that may appear some day on history tests: Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in November 2009, was: a) Part of a terror network that had planned attacks on the United States since the 1990s; b) A deranged psychotic who snapped under the pressure of treating soldiers returning from Iraq and who happened to be a Muslim; c) A prime example of "The True Believer," the lonely, frustrated individual who attaches himself to an overarching cause as a way of compensating for personal disappointments. The answer, of course, is "c," the true...

Are we at war -- or not? For if we are at war, why is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed headed for trial in federal court in the Southern District of New York? Why is he entitled to a presumption of innocence and all of the constitutional protections of a U.S. citizen? Is it possible we have done an injustice to this man by keeping him locked up all these years without trial? For that is what this trial implies -- that he may not be guilty. And if we must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that KSM was complicit in mass...

The CIA has paid millions of dollars to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) since 9/11, "accounting for as much as one-third of the foreign spy agency's annual budget", says a media report. The ISI also collected "tens of millions of dollars through a classified CIA programme", which pays for the capture or killing of wanted militants, a newspaper reported on Monday citing current and former US officials. An intense debate has been triggered within the US government due to "long-standing suspicions that the ISI continues to help Taliban extremists who undermine US efforts in Afghanistan and provide sanctuary to Al Qaeda...

After a week of blame throwing centered around the Fort Hood shooting, including a round of highly placed stories leaked by anonymous government sources, the shooters motivations are still cloudy. Was he motivated by radical jihadist hatred of America, mental illness, alienation, fear of deployment, or all of the above? As details emerge, President Barack Obama has called for a review of all intelligence surrounding Hasan and whether agencies shared information and acted correctly. The review, headed by John Brenan, assistant to the president for homeland security, is due Nov. 30th. Meanwhile the critics on the right are using the...

I have long thought it would be a good idea to bring 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his accomplices to lower Manhattan. In my concept, the men would be taken by helicopter to a height of about 1,000 feet over Ground Zero and pushed out the door, so that they, too, could experience what so many of their victims did in the awful final flickering seconds of their lives. And since al Qaeda intended the attacks as a spectacle for the benefit of its would-be recruits, I'd give al Jazeera the exclusive TV rights. This, however, is not Eric...

Ill. town would rather get Gitmo prisonersBy Deanna Bellandi, Associated Press Writer – 42 mins ago THOMSON, Ill. – Some folks in this dying Mississippi River town would rather take their chances with suspected terrorists in their backyard than watch their neighbors continue to move away in despair over the lack of jobs. **SNIP** "This town is slowly but surely dying off, and I mean that literally because the people that are retired are dying off and there's no young people coming back in to take their place. There's nothing here to draw them," said Richard Groharing, a 68-year-old retired...

...We ask God to be released .. And about his brothers .. World will never forget .. It was the remains of a creature, and nine brothers and ten righteous - think them - what we are seeing the collapse of the global economy .. I have sabotaged the economic heart of the world .. Since then, we see the economy of disbelief falters wounded Kr .. Derek O God, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed .. I will not bury your world to be buried before the might of the U.S. entity dying .. And an economy based on Raby .. And...

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has decided that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be tried in federal court in New York. Holder’s decision was driven by the need for the U.S. government to decide how to dispose of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, a U.S. Naval base outside the boundaries of the United States selected as the camp in which to hold suspected al Qaeda members. We very carefully use the word “camp” rather than prison or prisoner of war camp. This is because of an ongoing and profound ambiguity not only in U.S. government perceptions of how to define those held...

Thankfully non-Muslims of the world are slowly waking up to the threat that Islam brings to freedom loving nations. While most of the readers of this site are obviously happy with this, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is not. They are now pushing forward in attempt to try and make it against international law to criticize Islam. As they know that if we cannot name our enemy, we cannot defeat it. In the past the OIC was able to get the United Nations to ban all criticism of Islam in regards to human rights. Will they be able...

It's not just a defensive game; cyber-security includes attack plans too, and the U.S. has already used some of them successfully. In May 2007, President Bush authorized the National Security Agency, based at Fort Meade, Md., to launch a sophisticated attack on an enemy thousands of miles away without firing a bullet or dropping a bomb. At the request of his national intelligence director, Bush ordered an NSA cyberattack on the cellular phones and computers that insurgents in Iraq were using to plan roadside bombings. The devices allowed the fighters to coordinate their strikes and, later, post videos of the...

Video with Obama in 2006 making statement :