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Saddam's Ambassador to al-QaedaBy Jonathan SchanzerWeekly Standard | February 23, 2004 A RECENTLY INTERCEPTED MESSAGE from Iraq-based terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi asking the al Qaeda leadership for reinforcements reignited the debate over al-Qaeda ties with Saddam Hussein's fallen Baath regime. William Safire of the New York Times called the message a "smoking gun," while the University of Michigan's Juan Cole says that Safire "offers not even one document to prove" the Saddam/al-Qaeda nexus. What you are about to read bears directly on that debate. It is based on a recent interview with Abdul Rahman al-Shamari, who served in...

MOSCOW (AP) - Russia's foreign spy agency denied Saturday that Moscow gave Saddam Hussein information on U.S. troop movements and plans during the invasion of Iraq, while analysts speculated the Pentagon claim was tied to a growing rift between the West and the Kremlin. A Pentagon report Friday cited two captured Iraqi documents as saying Russia obtained information from sources "inside the American Central Command" in Qatar and passed battlefield intelligence to Saddam through the former Russian ambassador in Baghdad, Vladimir Titorenko. The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service dismissed the claims. "Similar, baseless accusations concerning Russia's intelligence have been made more...

The captured archives are starting to show that post-Soviet Russia hadn't stopped its old Soviet ways in Iraq. Among the initial revelations: Russia's SVR foreign-intelligence service recently spied on British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, eavesdropping on their conversations and passing the information to Saddam Hussein's regime. As recently as last fall, Russia was continuing to train the Iraqi secret police. Rooting through an office of the Mukhabarat secret police, Robert Collier of the San Francisco Chronicle discovered documents showing that the SVR trained five Iraqi officers in "phototechnical and optical means" and "acoustic-surveillance means"...

Angry Sierra Leoneans jeer Sankoh's body August 02, 2003, 09:27 PM Hundreds of angry Sierra Leoneans turned out in the capital Freetown today to jeer the body of former rebel leader Foday Sankoh, a man reviled for launching one of Africa's most horrific wars. "Take his body to hell or give it to us, the crowd, to burn his body to ashes," shouted Dowu Johnson, a woman in the crowd. The former warlord, who had been indicted for war crimes by a UN-backed court investigating atrocities during the West African nation's decade-long civil war, died in hospital on Tuesday. His...

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - A bomb exploded in western Venezuela near the frontier with Colombia on Wednesday, damaging the headquarters of a local ranchers' association which had denounced cross-border activity by leftist Colombian rebels, witnesses and police said. No one was injured in the early morning explosion which tore through the car park and the entrance of the building in San Cristobal in Tachira state, shattering windows and scattering debris. Officials said two men were arrested in connection with the explosion. The blast came four days after a bomb badly damaged a Caracas office building where Venezuelan government and opposition...

More On Nancy Pelosi's Socialist TiesSarasota Herald-Tribune (Florida) March 13, 1999What to call left-wing politicians I find it interesting that the mass media uses such terms as Christian radical right, radical right, far right, conspiratorial right, etc. When the left is mentioned, such terms as liberal, progressive, etc., are used. As an independent but conservative, I have found some information that I consider interesting. I wonder how many people are familiar with the Democratic Socialists of America, which is affiliated with Socialist International of London. At least 58 Democrats in the House of Representatives - about one-fourth of the Democrats...

AP: Administration Freed Terror Suspect By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - Nabil al-Marabh was No. 27 on the FBI (news - web sites)'s list of terror suspects after Sept. 11. He trained in Afghanistan (news - web sites)'s militant camps, sent money to a roommate convicted in a foiled plot to bomb a hotel and boasted to an informant about plans to blow up a fuel truck inside a New York tunnel, FBI documents allege. The Bush administration set him free — to Syria — even though prosecutors had sought to bring criminal cases against him and judges...

TERRORIST CONNECTIONS Not only was Mr. Norquist entangled with the criminal dealings of Jack Abramoff, but documentation shows that he has deep ties to supporters of Hamas and other terrorist organizations that are sworn enemies of the United States and our ally Israel. According to Senate lobbying disclosure records of his now defunct lobbying firm, Janus-Merritt Strategies, around the years 2000 and 2001 Mr. Norquist’s firm represented Abdurahman Alamoudi, who was convicted two years later for his role in a terrorist plot and who is presently serving a 23-year sentence in federal prison. Court documents and a October 15, 2004,...

Biyara, controlled by militant Islamists until the US-led war, is wary of news that such groups may be returning. By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor BIYARA, IRAQ - The merchant shuddered when told that Islamic militants of Ansar Al Islam - the Al Qaeda-backed group dispersed by American bombs last March - may be returning to Iraq. "If they come to my orchard, I will shoot them myself!" vows Shaho Abdulkarim, a merchant-smuggler with a perfect moustache. Such a visceral reaction is common in this village on Iraq's northeastern border with Iran, where Ansar imposed...

<p>BIYARA, Iraq - A terrorist group with ties to al-Qaida that escaped a U.S.-led attack last March has reconstituted itself and is involved in the recent wave of car bombings and other suicide attacks that have killed and wounded hundreds in Iraq, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.</p>

Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned. John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, "almost certainly" removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad.

The ALA Library: Terrorist SanctuaryBy Paul WalfieldFrontPageMagazine.com | May 8, 2003 The American Library Association has signed up for battle in the War on Terrorism; unfortunately, it has signed up to fight the Bush Administration and the USA PATRIOT Act. Siding with civil libertarians against public safety is just the ALA’s most recent leftist act of political defiance. However, this is their most corrosive stance for the well-being of all Americans, undermining and sabotaging public efforts to stave off terrorism..Part of the war on terror is learning how America’s enemies work. It was found that terrorists like to use computer...

Not In Our Name and the World Wide Terrorism WebBy Michael TremoglieFrontPageMagazine.com | March 19, 2003 In the run-up to this war, Not In Our Name became one of the major “peace” organizers and coalitions in the United States. Not In Our Name has spared no cost purchasing ads in newspapers around the world to publish its anti-American Statement of Conscience.  Its signatories include scores of Hate America bigwigs, like Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Michael Parenti, Gloria Steinem and Barbara Kingsolver.  Hollywood icons (and many more has-beens) like Danny Glover, Jessica Lange, Tyne Daly, Martin Sheen and Ed Harris have...

PM Anders Fogh Rasmussen warned fellow EU countries that joint defence is still realistic, but urged continued military cooperation with the US The Danish government will support a series of small steps to reinforce the EU's joint foreign and security policy this autumn, when member nations begin the dirty work of negotiating a new constitutional treaty for the European partnership. Denmark will neither contribute to majority-rule resolutions on defence, nor move to withdraw the military defence of Europe from the NATO alliance with the US, Rasmussen said Monday at an EU conference at Copenhagen's Industriens Hus. The prime minister warned...

A closed-door meeting of left-wing non-governmental organizations (NGOs) was held on January 16, 2003, in Washington, D.C. to consider how to apply international financial pressure through a global tax on the U.S. Bruno Jetin, a representative of ATTAC France, spoke to the gathering and acknowledged in private conversation that his group works hand-in-glove with the French Communist Party and the "Socialist parties on the Left." A representative of the embassy of France in the U.S. was listed as a participant. ATTAC stands for the Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens. The International ATTAC Movement...

The Department of Homeland Security will turn 1 year old March 1, but the past year has not been without challenges, one official said today. Janet Hale, homeland security undersecretary for management, told members of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association that the past year has been extraordinary and that standing up the department has been one of the "largest management challenges the federal government has ever seen." Hale was the keynote speaker for the opening day of AFCEA's 2004 Homeland Security Conference here. She said when the department was stood up in March 2003, some 180,000 employees had...

Politicians serious about preventing another Sept. 11 should listen to the leader of Hizballah, and then read an indictment unsealed this month in Detroit."Let the entire world hear me," said Sheik Hassan Nasrallah on Sept. 27, 2002. "Our hostility to the Great Satan is absolute."There's good reason to take this sheik seriously. In 1983, his Iranian-backed Lebanese terrorist group attacked the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 Americans. According to the opinion of U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth in the case of Peterson v. the Islamic Republic of Iran, Nasrallah attended the meeting in Baalbek, Lebanon, where the...

WASHINGTON, Aug 3: Five years after her mysterious disappearance in Karachi, the FBI has finally conceded that an MIT-trained Pakistani neuroscientist is alive and is in US custody in Afghanistan. Aafia Siddiqui, 36, disappeared with her three children while visiting her parents’ home in Karachi in March 2003, around the same time the FBI announced that it wanted to question her over her alleged links to Al Qaeda. Her family’s lawyer Elaine Whitfield Sharp said she believed recent media reports about Mrs Siddiqui’s incarceration increased pressure on the US and Pakistani authorities to divulge more information. “I don’t believe that...

NEW YORK - A Pakistani man can use statements from al-Qaida prisoners to defend himself against charges alleging he agreed to help terrorists sneak into the United States, but he won't be allowed to call Khalid Sheik Mohammed or two other al-Qaida operatives as witnesses, a judge ruled Monday. Uzair Paracha's lawyer said it would be the first time al-Qaida prisoners' statements would be used before a jury since the 2001 terrorist attacks. "The statements completely contradict the government's theory of the case," said the attorney, Anthony Ricco. Opening statements in Paracha's trial are expected as early as Wednesday. U.S....

The Iraqi Survey Group also found that supposed "humanitarian" imports under Oil-for-Food gave Saddam the ability to restart his biological and chemical warfare programs at a moment's notice. Spertzel said what scared him the most in Iraq was the discovery of secret labs to make deadly weapons like the nerve agent, sarin, and the biological poison, ricin, in spray form. "If that were released in a closed [area], such as Madison Square Garden or, even some, some of your smaller closed malls, shopping malls, it would have a devastating effect … killing hundreds or thousands," Spertzel said. But Spertzel believes...