UPDATE...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1322095/posts
"Police: No War Stress for Marine Who Killed Cop"
WPVI.COM ^ | Jan 16 2005 | AP
Posted on 01/16/2005 4:05:48 PM PST by pickemuphere
ARTICLE SNIPPET: "CERES, CA-January 16, 2005 — A Marine who killed one town police officer and wounded another one was a gang member who was high on cocaine, not a combat veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress, police said.
Investigators said they are discounting a theory that Lance Cpl. Andres Raya, 19, may have instigated a "suicide by cop" – provoking officers to shoot him – because he did not want to return to Iraq.
"During our investigation, we found he wasn't due to go back to Iraq, never faced combat situations and never even fired his gun," Stanislaus County Sheriff's Deputy Jason Woodman said Saturday.
Raya shot the two officers with a rifle outside a liquor store on Jan. 9 before police returned fire and killed him."
Exclusive: Ashcroft on Triumphs—And Threats
Jan. 24 issue - Last May, Attorney General John Ashcroft made headlines when he declared the Feds had "credible intelligence" that Al Qaeda was planning a major attack inside the United States "in the next few months." But no attack materialized. So what happened? Last week, in a NEWSWEEK interview, the departing A.G. took credit for tough actions that disrupted plots, "significantly damaged" Al Qaeda and "made it far more difficult" for the terrorists to operate. He pointed in particular to the obscure arrest of a New York taxi-driver student who, Ashcroft aides say, was ensnared with the help of one of the most controversial provisions of the Patriot Act: the section giving the Feds new powers to obtain records of public-library users.
Ashcroft's claims may be impossible to prove; some counterterror officials insist the original intel about a Qaeda plot was both hyped and misinterpreted. The real strike, it now appears, was being planned for Great Britain, not the United States. Still, the case of Qaeda sympathizer Mohammed Junaid Babar may have been a key part of the story. A 29-year-old former student at New York's St. John's University, Babar was tracked flying off last winter to South Waziristan in Pakistan, where he attended what some analysts believe was a terror summit that included the notorious Qaeda pilot Adnan Shukrijumah and Dhiren Barot, the operative suspected of casing New York financial institutions a few years earlier. Justice officials say they learned of Babar's activities in part through a highly contentious method: monitoring his Internet use at a New York City public library, where he allegedly exchanged messages with Qaeda confederates abroad. (Ashcroft had previously told Congress that Justice had never used the library-snooping provision—an assertion he has conspicuously declined to repeat since the Babar case.)
Babar: pleaded guilty and told the Feds about an ongoing plot to blow up targets in London
NBC
Babar: pleaded guilty and told the Feds about an ongoing plot to blow up targets in London
Arrested in Long Island City last April, Babar flipped, pleaded guilty and told the Feds about an ongoing plot to blow up London pubs and train stations. Babar also confessed to supplying Qaeda members with ammonium-nitrate fertilizer to make bombs. Ashcroft says Babar's cooperation shows how the threat of fixed, lengthy prison terms produces valuable intel about terror plots—a tool he warned could be jeopardized by last week's Supreme Court ruling overturning federal sentencing guidelines. (The Supremes made the guidelines advisory, not mandatory.) "I'm more than a little distressed," Ashcroft said of the ruling. If judges have more discretion, terror suspects may conclude " 'I may be able to con the judge'," and their cooperation will dry up, he said.
For all Justice's purported triumphs, Ashcroft warned that the threat remains: Al Qaeda, he said, is "morphing" its approach and forging alliances with jihadi activists and other "extremists" abroad and inside the country. While vague about Qaeda operatives still in the United States, Ashcroft added: "I'm saying we have individuals in this country whose extremism is associated with the kind of objectives espoused by Al Qaeda and other radical extreme groups." And, he believes, they must continue to be watched.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6831937/site/newsweek/
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1322078/posts
"Breaking News Venezuela: Chavez breaks with Colombia over FARC affair"
VCrisis ^ | Jan. 15, 2005 | Aleksander Boyd
Posted on 01/16/2005 3:26:11 PM PST by Kitten Festival
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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1322083/posts
"Whatever happened to Chavez' participatory democracy in Venezuela?"
The Devil's Excrement (Venezuela) ^ | Jan. 16, 2005 | Miguel Octavio
Posted on 01/16/2005 3:42:23 PM PST by Kitten Festival