THE JIHAD CANDIDATE

Islam has nothing to do with any of this...

NORTH AMERICA

Paintball was practice, says terror-cell mole
http://www.terrorismawareness.org/news/171/paintball-was-practice-says-terror-cell-mole/
Key witness in Toronto 18 trial testifies battlefield simulations were acted out in rural, wooded area

June 11, 2008
Isabel Teotonio
Staff Reporter
They were supposed to be like the “Mujahideen in Chechnya,” so they followed a simple diet of canned tuna and pita bread.
Their paintball games were designed to mimic the “battlefield,” so they played games in which they were instructed to kill the non-believers.
And they wanted to show that they were “serious” so they made a video that was to be sent to “the leadership of Afghanistan” and to imams in Toronto who were “sympathetic” to their cause.
Those were just some of the activities alleged members of a homegrown terror cell participated in when they attended a so-called terrorist training camp, the Crown’s star witness said yesterday when he testified for the first time in open court.
“We weren’t there picking daisies, that’s for sure,” said Mubin Shaikh, a police mole who infiltrated the Toronto 18 and gained the trust of its alleged ringleader.
“There was clear, overt, military context to the training,” said Shaikh, adding attendees at the December 2005 camp also went through an elaborate obstacle course, fired a 9-mm Luger handgun, and listened to extremist Islamist indoctrination.
The 32-year-old began his much anticipated testimony in a Brampton court by revealing how he was tasked by authorities to infiltrate the group.
It was later busted during a massive police sweep in the summer of 2006 that netted 14 adults and four youths.
Charges have since been stayed against four adults and three youths. A court ruling prohibits identifying the adult accused.
During Shaikh’s testimony at the trial of the remaining youth, he said a terror plot was already in the works and specific targets already selected when he infiltrated the group on Nov. 27.
The scope of the plot became apparent when, two days later, the alleged leader told Shaikh that it included power grids, Parliament buildings, CBC headquarters and the Toronto offices of the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
“Front Street will definitely be taken care of,” Shaikh recalled the alleged leader saying and pointed out that the CSIS and CBC offices in Toronto are on that same bustling downtown street.
“Two birds with one bomb.”
The gravity of the scheme was underscored when the alleged leader arranged a meeting for them with a man named Qari Kifayatullah, who explained that truck bombs were more destructive than firearms, such as AK-47s.
“How many people can you kill with AKs?” Shaikh recalled Kifayatullah asking.
“ ‘You can kill more people with truck bombs.’ That was the first time I heard about ammonium nitrate.”
But a key obstacle to his plot was finding people with the necessary skills to carry out such an assault, confided the alleged ringleader, who asked Shaikh to be a trainer at an upcoming camp.
Shaikh was an ideal candidate since he possessed a firearms licence, had extensive military training as an army cadet, and had practised martial arts for years, court was told.
He agreed and on Dec. 18, various members made their way up to a rural wooded area in Washago, about an hour and a half north of Toronto.
Although not everyone was aware of the camp’s purpose, all in attendance ran the obstacle course, played paintball and participated in the making of the video.
The paintball games were supposed to resemble the Chechen rebellion against Russia, with the alleged leader telling participants “this is like the battlefield in Chechnya” said Shaikh, who played the role of a sniper instructed to kill the “kuffar,” an Arabic word meaning non-believers.
During the games, the alleged leader could often be found on the sidelines “encouraging, exhorting, frequently yelling out” at the players words of encouragement such as: “Don’t you have any honour in your religion? Fight them, fight them.”
Shaikh also said that a video was shot to “advertise,” and demonstrate “that we were serious about what we wanted to do.”
They even choreographed a scene of them walking up the hill in an arrowhead formation with a black flag that contained religious text in white writing. Such a flag, said Shaikh, is commonly associated with terrorism.
The “primary target audience of the video,” said Shaikh, was “the leadership in Afghanistan.”
It was later revealed that it was also intended for “select imams in the city (the alleged leader) thought were sympathetic to his cause and knowledgeable.”
The trial resumes today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KnWiK2kroI
YouTube video on the threat of Islamists training for Jihad using paint ball skills

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Anthrax suspect dies in apparent suicide
http://www.kansascity.com/811/story/729504.html
By DAVID WILLMAN
Los Angeles Times
One of the nation’s top biodefense researchers has died in Maryland from an apparent suicide, just as the Justice Department was to file criminal charges against him in the anthrax mailing assaults of 2001 that killed five, the Los Angeles Times has learned.
Bruce E. Ivins, 62, who for the past 18 years worked at the government’s elite biodefense research laboratories at Fort Detrick, Md., had been informed of the impending prosecution, people familiar with Ivins, his suspicious death and with the FBI investigation said.
Ivins’ name had not been disclosed publicly as a suspect in the case that disrupted mail service and Senate business three weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The Maryland scientist had for years played a pivotal role in research to improve anthrax vaccines, preparing anthrax formulations used in experiments on animals.
Regarded as a skilled microbiologist, Ivins also had helped the FBI analyze the powdery material recovered from one of the anthrax-tainted envelopes sent to a U.S. senator’s office in Washington, D.C.
Ivins died Tuesday at Frederick Memorial Hospital after having ingested a massive dose of prescription Tylenol mixed with codeine, said a friend and colleague who declined to be identified out of concern, he said, that he would be harassed by the FBI.
The death — without any mention of suicide — was announced to Ivins’ colleagues at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID, through a staffwide e-mail.
“People here are pretty shook up about it,” said Caree Vander Linden, a spokewoman for USAMRIID, who said that she was not at liberty to discuss details surrounding the death.
The extraordinary turn of events followed the government’s payment in June of a settlement valued at $5.82 million to a former government scientist, Steven J. Hatfill, who was long targeted as the FBI’s chief suspect despite a lack of any evidence that he had ever possessed anthrax.
The payout to Hatfill, a highly unusual development that all but exonerated him of committing the anthrax mailings, was an essential step to clear the way for prosecuting Ivins, according to lawyers familiar with the matter.
Federal investigators moved away from Hatfill — for years the only publicly identified “person of interest” — and ultimately concluded that Ivins was the culprit after FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III changed leadership of the investigation in late 2006.
The FBI’s new top investigators — Vincent B. Lisi and Edward W. Montooth — instructed agents to re-examine leads or potential suspects that may have received insufficient attention. Moreover, significant progress was made in analyzing properties of the anthrax powder recovered from separate letters that were addressed to two U.S. senators.
The renewed efforts led the FBI back to USAMRIID, where agents had first questioned scientists in December 2001, a few weeks after the fatal mailings.
By spring of this year, FBI agents were still contacting present and former colleagues of Ivins. At USAMRIID and elsewhere, scientists acquainted with Ivins were asked to sign confidentiality agreements in order to prevent leaks of new investigative details.
Soon after the government’s settlement with Hatfill was announced June 27, Ivins began showing signs of serious strain. One of his longtime colleagues told the Times that Ivins, who was being treated for depression, indicated to a therapist that he was considering suicide. Soon thereafter, family members and local police officers escorted Ivins away from USAMRIID, where his access to sensitive areas was curtailed, the colleague said.
Ivins was committed to a facility in Frederick for treatment of his depression. On July 24, he was released from the facility, operated by Sheppard Pratt Health System. A telephone call that same day by the Times verified that Ivins’s government voicemail was still functioning.
The scientist faced forced retirement, planned for September, said his longtime colleague, who described Ivins as emotionally fractured by the federal scrutiny.
“He didn’t have any more money to spend on legal fees. He was much more emotionally labile, in terms of sensitivity to things, than most scientists. ... He was very thin skinned.”
A spokeswoman for the FBI, Debra Weierman, said Thursday that the bureau would not comment regarding the death of Ivins. Last week, however, FBI Director Mueller told CNN that, “in some sense, there have been breakthroughs” in the case.
“I’ll tell you we made great progress in the investigation,” Mueller added. “And it’s in no way dormant.”
Ivins, the son of a Princeton-educated pharmacist, was born and raised in Lebanon, Ohio, and received undergraduate and graduate degrees, including a Ph.D. in microbiology, from the University of Cincinnati.
The eldest of his two brothers, Thomas Ivins, said that he was not surprised by the events that have unfolded.
“He buckled under the pressure from the federal government,” Thomas Ivins said, adding that FBI agents came to Ohio last year to question him about his brother.
“I was questioned by the feds, and I sung like a canary,” Thomas Ivins said, referring to his efforts to describe his brother’s personality and tendencies. “He had in his mind that he was omnipotent.”
Ivins’s widow declined to be interviewed when reached Thursday at her home in Frederick. The couple raised twins, who are now 24 years old.
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Additional older articles concerning the deaths of scientists since 9/11 can be found at these two sites:
2004 -http://www.businessreform.com/article.php?articleID=10744
Dead scientist conspiracy? by Marilyn Barnewall November 16, 2004
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List of murdered scientists
http://www.stevequayle.com/News.alert/03_Disease/031121.dead.scientists.2.html
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Pictures and bios of scientists who have been murdered or died since 9/11
http://www.stevequayle.com/index1.html
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U.S. says Pakistani spies forewarn al Qaeda allies
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSISL360520080731?sp=true
Thu Jul 31, 2008 4:11am EDT
By Zeeshan Haider
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - The United States has accused members of Pakistan’s main spy agency of tipping off al Qaeda-linked militants before U.S. missile attacks on targets in Pakistani tribal lands, Pakistan’s defense minister said.
defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar openly acknowledged American mistrust of Pakistan’s main military spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), in remarks aired on Thursday on Pakistani television.
“They think that there are some elements in the ISI at some level that when the government of Pakistan is informed of targets, then leak it to them (militants) at some level,” Mukhtar told Geo in Washington, having accompanied Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani on a maiden visit to the United States.
“This is an issue on which they were a bit annoyed.”
The disclosure of American displeasure by a minister in the four-month-old civilian government of American could embarrass President Pervez Musharraf and the Pakistani military, and reawaken concern about the stability of the nuclear armed state.
The U.S. no longer gives Pakistan advance notice when it targets militants in tribal areas.
The News, a Pakistani daily from the same media group as Geo, reported that Bush had asked who was controlling the ISI.
The ISI is the main intelligence arm of the military, which directs its operations, though under the law it reports to the prime minister.
Pakistan’s security apparatus consists of the ISI, and Military Intelligence, which deals solely with military matters, and their civilian cousins, the Intelligence Bureau, Federal Investigation Agency, and the police Special Branch.
Pakistan is going through a transition to civilian rule after 8 years of military-led government, and the new leaders want to streamline reporting lines.
Last Saturday the government issued a decree saying the ISI and the Intelligence Bureau would be placed under the Interior Ministry, but backtracked the next day with a clarification that raised doubts in sections of the media about its own competence.
The coalition government has still to find its feet, and is fraught with internal tensions while also dealing with a economic and energy crisis, and analysts say it would be unwise to get into a confrontation with the military.
Past civilian rulers, including Nawaz Sharif and the late Benazir Bhutto, appointed men of their choice as head of ISI, but each time it led to differences with the army, which has led the Muslim nation for more than half the 61 years since it was carved out of the partition of India.
U.S. ally Musharraf stepped down as army chief last November, and promoted General Ashfaq Kayani, who had been head of the ISI, to succeed himself, and also chose the current ISI chief, Lieutenant-General Nadeem Taj.
After abandoning support for the Taliban government in Afghanistan after al Qaeda’s September 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. cities, Musharraf ordered a clear out of the ISI’s Afghan desk dealing with the Islamist militia, but has defend the agency from periodic criticism that it retains links.
Gilani, whose Pakistan People’s Party has its own history of mistrust with the army, spoke up for the ISI calling it a “great institution” and saying he found reports that some members of the ISI were sympathetic to the militants to be unbelievable.
On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that a top Central Intelligence Agency official confronted Pakistani officials earlier this month with evidence of ISI ties to militants, and involvement in a suicide car bomb attack outside the Indian embassy in Kabul that killed 58 people, including two senior Indian diplomats.
(Writing by Simon Cameron-Moore; Editing by David Fox)

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Gates: Terrorism top priority for decades
http://www.politicalgateway.com/news/read/162617
WASHINGTON, July 31 (UPI) — U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says terrorism should remain the top U.S. defense priority in the coming decades, a new National Defense Strategy said.
The document, approved but not released, calls for the military to shift its concentration on conventional warfare to a broader focus that includes economic development and recommends working with China and Russia to keep them from becoming adversaries, The Washington Post reported Thursday.
The strategy climaxes Gates’s work since he became defense secretary in 2006, detailing his view that military force is only one aspect of fighting the war on terror.
“Iraq and Afghanistan remain the central fronts in the struggle but we cannot lose sight of the implications of fighting a long-term, episodic, multi-front, and multi-dimensional conflict more complex and diverse than the Cold War confrontation with communism,” said the document provided to the Post by InsideDefense.com, a defense industry news service. “Success in Iraq and Afghanistan is crucial to winning this conflict but it alone will not bring victory.”
In the report, Gates said the Unites States should work with other countries to eradicate conditions cultivating extremism. Use of force has a role, he said, but promoting government participation and encouraging programs spurring economic development are among tools available to counter insurgencies.
“For these reasons, arguably the most important military component of the struggle against violent extremists is not the fighting we do ourselves, but how well we help prepare our partners to defend and govern themselves,” Gates wrote.
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For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
July 31, 2008
Fact Sheet: A Lasting Framework for United States Intelligence Activities
President Bush Updates Executive Order To Create A More Unified, Integrated, And Collaborative Intelligence Community
White House News
Executive Order: Further Amendments to Executive Order 12333, United States Intelligence Activities
President Bush issued an Executive Order to advance and institutionalize the reforms enacted into law by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 and to provide a durable framework for the conduct of the Nation’s intelligence activities. The Executive Order – which updates Executive Order 12333 originally issued by President Reagan in 1981 – responds to the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (IRTPA). The updated Executive Order directs the Intelligence Community to produce timely, accurate, and insightful intelligence with special emphasis on the threats posed by international terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction. The revised Executive Order will accelerate efforts to build a more effective Intelligence Community capable of providing the President and his advisors with information necessary to defend our national and homeland security.
· The Executive Order reaffirms that the Intelligence Community will use “all reasonable and lawful means” to ensure that the United States receives “the best intelligence possible.” The Executive Order similarly reinforces the directive that United States intelligence activities are to be conducted in a manner that protects the constitutional rights of Americans.
· The Executive Order retains key features of the original Executive Order 12333, which has served the Nation well for over 25 years, and updates the original Order to account for today’s national security challenges and to reflect the IRTPA structures, including the post of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI).
· The Executive Order will provide a lasting framework for the conduct of the Nation’s intelligence activities by:
o Describing the roles and responsibilities of the DNI, the Intelligence Community, and the agencies composing the Intelligence Community;
o Stressing the need for collaboration in the collection, analysis, and production of intelligence;
o Emphasizing the importance of preparing and providing intelligence in manner that results in robust information sharing; and
o Underscoring and renewing the commitment to conduct intelligence activities in manner that fully protects the civil liberties and privacy rights of Americans.
A Revision Of Executive Order 12333 Was Necessary To Reflect The Current Structures And Priorities Of The Intelligence Community
With the benefit of more than three years of experience with the IRTPA structures, the President concluded this was an opportune time to update and revise Executive Order 12333. The President also took full advantage of, and benefited from, the insights and knowledge of respected intelligence professionals with decades of Intelligence Community leadership experience, including Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, CIA Director Michael Hayden, and Undersecretary of Defense James Clapper.
The Executive Order clarifies the responsibilities and strengthens the authorities of the DNI in important ways. The DNI will set goals for the conduct of the Nation’s intelligence activities by, among other things, issuing guidelines governing collection, analysis, and intelligence sharing and formulating policies to guide our intelligence relationships with foreign countries. The DNI also will participate more fully in decisions regarding the selection and, if necessary, the removal of senior intelligence officials. In addition, the DNI will have flexibility to create national intelligence centers and designate Intelligence Community mission and functional managers.
The Executive Order maintains and strengthens existing protections for Americans’ civil liberties and privacy rights. The Executive Order retains and reinforces the provisions in place in the original Executive Order 12333 to ensure that all intelligence activities are conducted in a manner that protects the civil liberties and privacy rights of Americans. All collection, retention, and dissemination of information regarding United States persons must be conducted in accordance with procedures approved by the Attorney General.
The Executive Order also retains the existing ban on assassination and the limitations on human experimentation. Intelligence officials will continue to be obligated to report possible violations of federal law to the Attorney General, as well as to the DNI and the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board.
The Executive Order preserves and reinforces existing responsibilities of members of the Intelligence Community.
· The Executive Order assigns to CIA the role of coordinating intelligence collection from human sources overseas and managing foreign intelligence relationships. It also designates the CIA Director as the Functional Manager for human intelligence and affirms the CIA’s existing responsibility to conduct covert action activities approved by the President.
· The Executive Order recognizes the important role played by the FBI in the collection, dissemination, and analysis of intelligence information. It also affirms the FBI’s responsibility for the coordination of intelligence collection from human sources within the United States.
· The Executive Order fully respects and preserves the military chain of command and will ensure intelligence support is provided to our armed forces.
· The Executive Order underscores that the Attorney General continues to be the Nation’s top law enforcement officer. The revised Order does not insert the DNI into law enforcement activities.
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Return to this article at:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/07/20080731-4.html

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Thursday, July 31, 2008
Bush signs new rules, roles for spy agencies
http://news.findlaw.com/ap/a/w/1152/07-31-2008/20080731005006_48.html
By PAMELA HESS Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush approved an order that rewrites the rules governing spying by U.S. intelligence agencies, both in the United States and abroad, and strengthens the authority of the national intelligence director, according to a U.S. official and government documents.
Executive Order 12333, which lays out the responsibilities of each of the 16 agencies, maintains the decades-old prohibitions on assassination and using unwitting human subjects for scientific experiments, according to a power point briefing given to Congress that was reviewed by The Associated Press. The CIA notoriously tested LSD on human subjects in the 1950s, which was revealed by a Senate investigation in 1977.
The new order gives the national intelligence director, a position created in 2005, new authority over any intelligence information collected that pertains to more than one agency - an attempt to force greater information exchange among agencies traditionally reluctant to share their most prized intelligence. The order directs the attorney general to develop guidelines to allow agencies access to information held by other agencies. That could potentially include the sharing of sensitive information about Americans.
The order has been under revision for more than a year, an attempt to update a nearly 30-year-old presidential order to reflect organizational changes made in the intelligence agencies after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
It was carried on in secret in the midst of pitched national debate about the appropriate balance between civil liberties and security, spurred by the president’s warrantless wiretapping program.
The briefing charts assert that the new order maintains or improves civil liberties protections for Americans.
Interest in the rewrite inside the 16 agencies has been high because it establishes what agencies’ powers and limitations will be.
The order, which has not yet been publicly released, is expected to cut into one of the CIA’s traditional roles. The CIA has for 50 years set the policy and largely called the shots on relationships between U.S. intelligence agencies and their foreign counterparts. According to the briefing charts, the national intelligence director will now set the rules for engaging with foreign intelligence and security services. The CIA will now just “coordinate implementation,” according to the briefing charts.
The order also gives the national intelligence director’s office the power of the purse: It was granted the authority to make acquisition decisions on certain national intelligence programs. It is also updated to include the national intelligence director and two major defense spy agencies - the National Reconnaissance Office, which operates spy satellites, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which analyzes imagery. It did not explain the FBI’s domestic intelligence mission, which has gotten increasing attention since 9/11.
2008-07-31 07:28:56 GMT Copyright 2008. The Associated Press All Rights Reserved.
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INTERNATIONAL
Newspaper: New group claims Greek bomb attack
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1103ap_greece_terror_group.html?source=rss
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
ATHENS, Greece — A previously unknown terrorist group has sent a statement to a Greek newspaper claiming responsibility for the 2004 bombing of a courthouse in central Greece and two failed bombings in Athens, the newspaper said Thursday.
Police said all three bombs had been set up to detonate with the use of a mobile phone - a tactic not used before in Greece.
The group, which calls itself Popular Will, sent a seven-page statement on a CD-ROM to the Eleftherotypia newspaper on Wednesday, the paper said.
The statement claimed responsibility for the May 2004 courthouse bombing in the town of Larissa, two months before Athens was to host the Olympic Games. The court was empty, but a passer-by was slightly injured.
The group said it had acted when it knew the courthouse was empty, to minimize casualties, and that it had carried out the attack because authorities had been planning to move arrested members of the November 17 terrorist group to a prison in Larissa, the newspaper said.
November 17 was Greece’s deadliest terrorist organization. It killed 23 people, including U.S., British and Turkish nationals, between 1975 and 2002, when a botched bombing led police to capture several members.
In its statement, the Popular Will group also claimed it was behind a failed bombing in June 2007 at an Athens building housing offices of German pharmaceutical company Bayer and electronics company Siemens, and an attempted bombing Monday against the Economic and Social Committee of Greece, a policy research institute affiliated with the European Union, the newspaper said.
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Al-Qaeda in Iraq Leader May Be in Afghanistan
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/30/AR2008073003239.html
By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, July 31, 2008; A01
BAGHDAD, July 30 — The leader of the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq and several of his top lieutenants have recently left Iraq for Afghanistan, according to group leaders and Iraqi intelligence officials, a possible further sign of what Iraqi and U.S. officials call growing disarray and weakness in the organization.
U.S. officials say there are indications that al-Qaeda is diverting new recruits from going to Iraq, where its fighters have suffered dramatic setbacks, to going to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they appear to be making gains.
“We do believe al-Qaida is doing some measure of re-assessment regarding the continued viability of its fight in Iraq and whether Iraq should remain the focus of its efforts,” Brig. Gen. Brian Keller, senior intelligence officer for Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, wrote in an e-mail. But Keller said that the reliability of indications that recruits have been diverted has “not yet been determined” and that U.S. officials have no evidence that top al-Qaeda in Iraq leaders have gone to Afghanistan.
A largely homegrown insurgent group that American officials believe is led by foreigners, al-Qaeda in Iraq has long been one of the most ruthless and dangerous organizations in the country. But even some of its leaders acknowledge that it has been seriously weakened over the past year.
The number of foreign fighters entering Iraq has dropped to 20 a month, down from about 110 a month last summer and as many as 50 a month earlier this year, according to a senior U.S. intelligence analyst who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the nature of his work.
Some al-Qaeda in Iraq members blamed the group’s troubles on failed leadership by its head since 2006, an Egyptian who has used the pseudonyms Abu Hamza al-Muhajer and Abu Ayyub al-Masri. Some of the fighters said they have become so frustrated by Masri that they recently split off to form their own Sunni insurgent group.
Abdullah al-Ansari, an al-Qaeda in Iraq leader in Fallujah, said in an interview with a Washington Post special correspondent that Masri had traveled to Afghanistan through Iran and designated Abu Khalil al-Souri, the pseudonym of another top leader of the group who came to Iraq in 2003, to run the organization in his absence.
“It’s not known yet whether he would come back or not,” he said, referring to Masri.
Col. Hatim Abdullah, an Iraqi intelligence official in the Anbar province capital of Ramadi, said Masri and two foreign fighters were believed to have crossed into Iran on June 12 through the border town of Zorbatia. He said the information was based in part on interrogations of al-Qaeda in Iraq members.
One of those al-Qaeda in Iraq detainees, Abu Abeer al-Muhajer, a senior leader in Ramadi whose real name is believed to be Ibrahim Salih Hassan al-Fahdawi, said after his July 9 arrest that Masri had traveled through Iran with 15 leaders, according to a police report and an interview with police officer Nihad Jassim Mohammed Saleh, who has questioned Fahdawi.
Makki Fawaz al-Milehmi, a senior leader of the group north of Fallujah, said in an interview with the Post special correspondent that Masri has left Iraq twice before and was going to meet with “some of our brothers” in Afghanistan. “The rumors now are saying that he escaped and this is not true. He just traveled,” said Milehmi, who accused the U.S. government of spreading the rumors to hurt the morale of the group. “He will come back to Iraq anytime he wants, like he has done before.”
Masri “did not escape or turn his back to us or abandon al-Qaeda in Iraq,” said Ali al-Qaisi, 32, the commander of a recruitment unit who lost a leg during a battle with U.S. troops in Samra. “We have been informed he left Iraq to Afghanistan for several things such as reviewing the situation of al-Qaeda in Iraq with [Osama] bin Laden.”
In a Tuesday briefing arranged by the U.S. military command in Baghdad, the senior intelligence analyst said he had not seen any indication of Masri’s location since January, when the United States believed he was in Iraq.
Col. Steven A. Boylan, a spokesman for Petraeus, said, “Our current assessment is that he remains in Iraq.” Some top Iraqi officials continue to say that Masri was killed last year, but the assertion has never been corroborated by the U.S. military.
A recent communique to al-Qaeda in Iraq leaders, however, suggests that a fighter known as Abdul Khalil al-Souri has taken on an increased leadership role in the group. The document, dated July 10, was signed by Souri instead of Masri, whose name is typically attached to such missives.
Souri, who is largely unknown outside al-Qaeda in Iraq, is part of a group of 33 fighters, known as “the first line,” who came to the country in 2003 with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to Milehmi, the leader north of Fallujah. He called Souri “the second personality” in al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Abu Taha al-Lihebi, an al-Qaeda in Iraq leader in eastern Anbar province who recently split from the group, said he believed the communique was proof that Masri had left Iraq and was likely to be replaced.
Lihebi, a former Iraqi air force technician in his 40s, said one of Masri’s key errors was fiercely attacking the Awakening movement, former Sunni insurgents who are now paid by the U.S. military, instead of trying to win back their support.
Indiscriminate attacks on civilians also caused the group to lose the support of local Sunni residents, Lihebi said.
“Al-Qaeda losing the Sunni population is like a human being losing the ability to drink water,” he said. “Because of Masri’s weak personality and leadership, al-Qaeda in Iraq was weakened and split and lost the Sunni population.”
Earlier this month, Lihebi said his fighters would no longer pledge obedience to Masri and were withdrawing from al-Qaeda in Iraq because of the “escalating hate against them by Sunnis due to the useless operations that ignored the main enemy, which is the head of evil, the United States.”
The splinter group, which named itself after Abu Anas al-Shami, an al-Qaeda in Iraq fighter it said had been killed by U.S. troops, also announced it would suspend suicide operations so that people would distinguish between the new group and al-Qaeda in Iraq.
In a sign of what U.S. officials describe as their success in eliminating Sunni insurgents inside Iraq, the American military has recently identified an al-Qaeda in Iraq leader outside the country as a major target, according to the senior U.S. intelligence analyst.
The leader, Abu Ghadiya, the nom de guerre of a Mosul native whose real name is said to be Badran Turki Hishan al-Mazidih, was identified in February as a senior al-Qaeda in Iraq leader based in Syria who controls the flow of the majority of the group’s foreign fighters, money and weapons into Iraq, according to U.S. intelligence officials.
Keller, the senior intelligence officer, said uncertainties remain about the diversion of fighters.
“We continue to wrestle with the question of whether this represents a strategic shift on the part of al-Qaida,” Keller said in the e-mail. “We do know that al-Qaida leaders will never give up entirely on Iraq, but they may in the future see Afghanistan or some other location yet to be determined as a place where their resources may be more effectively employed.”
Special correspondents Zaid Sabah and Qais Mizher in Baghdad and Washington Post staff in Anbar province contributed to this report.
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Foreign missions advise their nationals caution in India
http://www.indiaenews.com/india/20080731/135839.htm
In the wake of serial bomb blasts in Bangalore and Ahmedabad and explosives being found in Gujarat’s Surat city, various embassies and missions in India have issued special advisories to their citizens to exercise ‘high degree of caution’ while travelling in the country.
From correspondents in Delhi, India, 31 Jul 2008 7:31 PM - (www.indiaenews.com)
In the wake of serial bomb blasts in Bangalore and Ahmedabad and explosives being found in Gujarat’s Surat city, various embassies and missions in India have issued special advisories to their citizens to exercise ‘high degree of caution’ while travelling in the country.
In an advisory issued Wednesday, the US government has appealed to its citizens travelling or residing in India to maintain a high level of vigilance following serial blasts in the country.’
‘Several bombs were detected and defused Tuesday in Surat, Gujarat. The discovery of these bombs follows blasts in Bangalore in Karnataka and Ahmedabad in Gujarat that left 50 dead and many injured. Police are actively investigating bomb threats across the country, including in Kolkata and Chennai,’ the advisory said.
The advisory added: ‘The American citizens are encouraged to maintain a high level of vigilance, remain aware of their surroundings, monitor local news reports, avoid crowded places, and take appropriate steps to bolster their personal security.’
Besides the US, many other countries, including Australia, Britain and Canada have issued similar travel alerts to their citizens.
‘We advise you to exercise a high degree of caution in India because of the high risk of terrorist activity by militant groups,’ said the travel alert from the Australian government’s department of foreign affairs and trade.
The alert, issued after the serial blasts, urged Australians to avoid unnecessary local travel in the areas affected by the blasts and to heed the advice of local authorities.
Canada’s department of foreign affairs has appealed to its citizens to be vigilant during the days of national significance for India, such as Republic Day (January 26) and Independence Day (August 15), as militants have used such occasions to mount attacks in the past.
‘Celebration venues, prominent government buildings, public transport, places of worship and public areas are potential targets for such attacks,’ the advisory said.
Giving a detailed account of the terrorist attack after 2006, the advisory appeals to foreign citizens to avoid visiting places on the hit list of terrorists.
‘Cities such as New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Varanasi may be placed on heightened alert by local authorities at short notice. An increased police presence and tighter security restrictions may be imposed any time,’ the advisory by Canadian government said.
The violent protests by Gujjars in Rajasthan and demonstrations in Darjeeling have also found space in the advisory issued by Australia.
‘You should avoid protests and demonstrations throughout India as they may become violent. Australians are urged to monitor international and local media, to avoid protests where possible,’ the advisory said.
(© IANS)
© Copyright 2008 India eNews (www.indiaenews.com). All Rights Reserved.

MIDDLE EAST

SPOTLIGHT
Busting the Anthrax Myth
http://www.stratfor.com:80/weekly/busting_anthrax_myth
July 30, 2008 | 1902 GMT
By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart
Dr. Jeffrey W. Runge, chief medical officer at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, told a congressional subcommittee on July 22 that the risk of a large-scale biological attack on the nation is significant and that the U.S. government knows its terrorist enemies have sought to use biological agents as instruments of warfare. Runge also said that the United States believes that capability is within the terrorists’ reach.
Runge gave his testimony before a subcommittee on Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity, and Science and Technology that was holding a field hearing in Providence, R.I., to discuss the topic of “Emerging Biological Threats and Public Health Preparedness.”
During his testimony, Runge specifically pointed to al Qaeda as the most significant threat and testified that the United States had determined that the terrorist organization is seeking to develop and use a biological weapon to cause mass casualties in an attack. According to Runge, U.S. analysis indicates that anthrax is the most likely choice, and a successful single-city attack on an unprepared population could kill hundreds of thousands of citizens.
Later in his testimony, Runge remarked that many do not perceive the threat of bioterrorism to be as significant as that of a nuclear or conventional strike, even though such an attack could kill as many people as a nuclear detonation and have its own long-term environmental effects.
We must admit to being among those who do not perceive the threat of bioterrorism to be as significant as that posed by a nuclear strike. To be fair, it must be noted that we also do not see strikes using chemical or radiological weapons rising to the threshold of a true weapon of mass destruction either. The successful detonation of a nuclear weapon in an American city would be far more devastating than any of these other forms of attack.
In fact, based on the past history of nonstate actors conducting attacks using biological weapons, we remain skeptical that a nonstate actor could conduct a biological weapons strike capable of creating as many casualties as a large strike using conventional explosives — such as the October 2002 Bali bombings that resulted in 202 deaths or the March 2004 train bombings in Madrid that killed 191.
We do not disagree with Runge’s statements that actors such as al Qaeda have demonstrated an interest in biological weapons. There is ample evidence that al Qaeda has a rudimentary biological weapons capability. However, there is a huge chasm of capability that separates intent and a rudimentary biological weapons program from a biological weapons program that is capable of killing hundreds of thousands of people.
Misconceptions About Biological Weapons
There are many misconceptions involving biological weapons. The three most common are that they are easy to obtain, that they are easy to deploy effectively, and that, when used, they always cause massive casualties.
While it is certainly true that there are many different types of actors who can easily gain access to rudimentary biological agents, there are far fewer actors who can actually isolate virulent strains of the agents, weaponize them and then effectively employ these agents in a manner that will realistically pose a significant threat of causing mass casualties. While organisms such as anthrax are present in the environment and are not difficult to obtain, more highly virulent strains of these tend to be far more difficult to locate, isolate and replicate. Such efforts require highly skilled individuals and sophisticated laboratory equipment.
Even incredibly deadly biological substances such as ricin and botulinum toxin are difficult to use in mass attacks. This difficulty arises when one attempts to take a rudimentary biological substance and then convert it into a weaponized form — a form that is potent enough to be deadly and yet readily dispersed. Even if this weaponization hurdle can be overcome, once developed, the weaponized agent must then be integrated with a weapons system that can effectively take large quantities of the agent and evenly distribute it in lethal doses to the intended targets.
During the past several decades in the era of modern terrorism, biological weapons have been used very infrequently and with very little success. This fact alone serves to highlight the gap between the biological warfare misconceptions and reality. Militant groups desperately want to kill people and are constantly seeking new innovations that will allow them to kill larger numbers of people. Certainly if biological weapons were as easily obtained, as easily weaponized and as effective at producing mass casualties as commonly portrayed, militant groups would have used them far more frequently than they have.
Militant groups are generally adaptive and responsive to failure. If something works, they will use it. If it does not, they will seek more effective means of achieving their deadly goals. A good example of this was the rise and fall of the use of chlorine in militant attacks in Iraq.
Anthrax
As noted by Runge, the spore-forming bacterium Bacillus anthracis is readily available in nature and can be deadly if inhaled, if ingested or if it comes into contact with a person’s skin. What constitutes a deadly dose of inhalation anthrax has not been precisely quantified, but is estimated to be somewhere between 8,000 and 50,000 spores. One gram of weaponized anthrax, such as that contained in the letters mailed to U.S. Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy in October 2001, can contain up to one trillion spores — enough to cause somewhere between 20 and 100 million deaths. The letters mailed to Daschle and Leahy reportedly contained about one gram each for a total estimated quantity of two grams of anthrax spores: enough to have theoretically killed between 40 and 200 million people. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that the current population of the United States is 304.7 million. In a worst-case scenario, the letters mailed to Daschle and Leahy theoretically contained enough anthrax spores to kill nearly two-thirds of the U.S. population.
Yet, in spite of their incredibly deadly potential, those letters (along with an estimated five other anthrax letters mailed in a prior wave to media outlets such as the New York Post and the major television networks) killed only five people; another 22 victims were infected by the spores but recovered after receiving medical treatment. This difference between the theoretical number of fatal victims — hundreds of millions — and the actual number of victims — five — highlights the challenges in effectively distributing even a highly virulent and weaponized strain of an organism to a large number of potential victims.
To summarize: obtaining a biological agent is fairly simple. Isolating a virulent strain and then weaponizing that strain is somewhat more difficult. But the key to biological warfare — effectively distributing a weaponized agent to the intended target — is the really difficult part of the process. Anyone planning a biological attack against a large target such as a city needs to be concerned about a host of factors such as dilution, wind velocity and direction, particle size and weight, the susceptibility of the disease to ultraviolet light, heat, dryness or even rain. Small-scale localized attacks such as the 2001 anthrax letters or the 1984 salmonella attack undertaken by the Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh cult are far easier to commit.
It is also important to remember that anthrax is not some sort of untreatable super disease. While anthrax does form hardy spores that can remain inert for a period of time, the disease is not easily transmitted from person to person, and therefore is unlikely to create an epidemic outside of the area targeted by the attack. Anthrax infections can be treated by the use of readily available antibiotics. The spores’ incubation period also permits time for early treatment if the attack is noticed.
The deadliest known anthrax incident in recent years occurred in 1979 when an accidental release of aerosolized spores from a Soviet biological weapons facility in Sverdlovsk affected some 94 people — reportedly killing 68 of them. This facility was one of dozens of laboratories that were part of the Soviet Union’s massive and well-funded biological weapons program, one that employed thousands of the country’s brightest scientists. In fact, it was the largest biological weapons program in history.
Perhaps the largest attempt by a nonstate actor to cause mass casualties using anthrax was the series of attacks conducted in 1993 by the Japanese cult group Aum Shinrikyo in Tokyo.
In the late 1980s, Aum’s team of trained scientists spent millions of dollars to develop a series of state-of-the-art biological weapons research and production laboratories. The group experimented with botulinum toxin, anthrax, cholera and Q fever and even tried to acquire the Ebola virus. The group hoped to produce enough biological agent to trigger a global Armageddon. Its first attempts at unleashing mega-death on the world involved the use of botulinum toxin. In April 1990, the group used a fleet of three trucks equipped with aerosol sprayers to release liquid botulinum toxin on targets that included the Imperial Palace, the National Diet of Japan, the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, two U.S. naval bases and the airport in Narita. In spite of the massive quantities of toxin released, there were no mass casualties, and, in fact, nobody outside of the cult was even aware the attacks had taken place.
When the botulinum operations failed to produce results, Aum’s scientists went back to the drawing board and retooled their biological weapons facilities to produce anthrax. By mid-1993, they were ready to launch attacks involving anthrax; between June and August of 1993, the group sprayed thousands of gallons of aerosolized liquid anthrax in Tokyo. This time, Aum not only employed its fleet of sprayer trucks but also used aerosol sprayers mounted on the roof of their headquarters to disperse a cloud of aerosolized anthrax over the city. Again, the attacks produced no results and were not even noticed. It was only after the group’s successful 1995 subway attacks using sarin nerve agent that a Japanese government investigation discovered that the 1990 and 1993 biological attacks had occurred.
Biological Weapons Production
Aum Shinrikyo’s team of highly trained scientists worked under ideal conditions in a first-world country with a virtually unlimited budget. They were able to travel the world in search of deadly organisms and even received technical advice from former Soviet scientists. The team worked in large, modern laboratory facilities to produce substantial quantities of biological weapons. They were able to operate these facilities inside industrial parks and openly order the large quantities of laboratory equipment they required. Yet, in spite of the millions of dollars the group spent on its biological weapons program — and the lack of any meaningful interference from the Japanese government — Aum still experienced problems in creating virulent biological agents and also found it difficult to dispense those agents effectively.
Today, al Qaeda finds itself operating in a very different environment than that experienced by Aum Shinrikyo in 1993. At that time, nobody was looking for Aum or its biological and chemical weapons program. By contrast, since the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States and its allies have actively pursued al Qaeda leaders and sought to dismantle and defang the organization. The United States and its allies have focused a considerable amount of resources in tracking and disassembling al Qaeda’s chemical and biological warfare efforts. The al Qaeda network has had millions of dollars of its assets seized in a number of countries, and it no longer has the safe haven of Afghanistan from which to operate. The chemical and biological facilities the group established in the 1990s in Afghanistan — such as the Deronta training camp, where cyanide and other toxins were used to kill dogs, and a crude anthrax production facility in Kandahar — have been found and destroyed by U.S. troops.
Operating in the badlands along the Pakistani-Afghan border, al Qaeda cannot easily build large modern factories capable of producing large quantities of agents or toxins. Such fixed facilities are expensive and consume a lot of resources. Even if al Qaeda had the spare capacity to invest in such facilities, the fixed nature of them means that they could be compromised and quickly destroyed by the United States.
If al Qaeda could somehow create and hide a fixed biological weapons facility in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas or North-West Frontier Province, it would still face the daunting task of transporting large quantities of biological agents from the Pakistani badlands to targets in the United States or Europe. Al Qaeda operatives certainly can create and transport small quantities of these compounds, but not enough to wreak the kind of massive damage it desires.
Al Qaeda’s lead chemical and biological weapons expert, Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri, was reportedly killed on July 28, 2008, by a U.S. missile strike on his home in Pakistan. Al-Sayid, who had a $5 million dollar bounty on his head, was initially reported to have been one of those killed in the January 2006 strike in Damadola. If he was indeed killed, his death should be another significant blow to the group’s biological warfare efforts.
Of course, we must recognize that the jihadist threat goes just beyond the al Qaeda core. As we have been writing for several years now, al Qaeda has undergone a metamorphosis from a smaller core group of professional operatives into an operational model that encourages independent grassroots jihadists to conduct attacks. The core al Qaeda group, through men like al-Sayid, has published manuals in hard copy and on the Internet that provide instructions on how to manufacture rudimentary biological weapons.

It is our belief that independent jihadist cells and lone-wolf jihadists will almost certainly attempt to brew up some of the recipes from the al Qaeda cookbook. There also exists a very real threat that a jihadist sympathizer could obtain a small quantity of deadly biological organisms by infiltrating a research facility.
This means that we likely will see some limited attempts at employing biological weapons. That does not mean, however, that such attacks will be large-scale or create mass casualties.
The Bottom Line
While there has been much consternation and alarm-raising over the potential for widespread proliferation of biological weapons and the possible use of such weapons on a massive scale, there are significant constraints on such designs. The current dearth of substantial biological weapons programs and arsenals by governments worldwide, and the even smaller number of cases in which systems were actually used, seems to belie — or at least bring into question — the intense concern about such programs.
While we would like to believe that countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Russia have halted their biological warfare programs for some noble ideological or humanitarian reason, we simply can’t. If biological weapons were in practice as effective as some would lead us to believe, these states would surely maintain stockpiles of them, just as they have maintained their nuclear weapons programs. Biological weapons programs were abandoned because they proved to be not as effective as advertised and because conventional munitions proved to provide more bang for the buck.
In some ways, the psychological fear of a “super weapon” — undetectable, microscopic, easily delivered and extremely deadly — shapes assessment of the threat, more so than an objective understanding of actual capability and intent (not to mention the extreme difficulties of ever creating some sort of a super bug). Conventional weapons systems, and unconventional tactics, continue to be the most cost-effective and proven methods of warfare, whether between state actors or between state and nonstate actors. Nuclear weapons have also been shown to have true weapons of mass destruction power.
To help keep the cost-benefit calculation of a biological warfare program in perspective, consider that Seung-Hui Cho, the man who committed the shooting at Virginia Tech, killed 32 people — more than six times as many as were killed by the 2001 anthrax letters. John Mohammed, the so-called “D.C. Sniper,” was able to cause a considerable amount of panic and kill twice as many people (10) by simply purchasing and using one assault rifle. Compare Mohammed’s effort and expenses to that of the Aum Shinrikyo anthrax program that took years of work by a huge team and millions of dollars to develop but infected no one.
Now, just because biological weapons are not all they are cracked up to be does not mean that efforts to undermine the biological warfare plans and efforts of militant groups such as al Qaeda should not continue or that programs to detect such agents or develop more effective treatments and vaccines should be halted. Even though an anthrax attack probably will not kill huge numbers of people, as we saw in the case of the anthrax letters, such an attack can be quite disruptive. Cleaning up after such an attack is expensive and takes considerable time and effort. Like a dirty bomb, an anthrax attack will more likely serve as a weapon of mass disruption and not a weapon of mass destruction.
Due to the disruption and the potential for some deaths as a result of an anthrax attack, the threat against the United States does remain a significant concern. However, the threat it represents is not as great as that of conventional attacks using firearms and explosives against soft targets, and it certainly does not rise anywhere near the level of a threat posed by a terrorist attack using a nuclear weapon.
Homeland security resources are very limited and have been shrinking as we move further from 9/11 and as other items begin to take precedence in the federal budget. This means that an array of different programs is being forced to scramble for an ever-shrinking piece of the funding pie. In such an environment, it is often a temptation to overstate the threat. Such overstatements are harmful because they can sometimes prevent a rational distribution of resources and prevent resources from being allocated to where they are needed most.
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