Free Republic

WASHINGTON - Army brass in Iraq whitewashed an incident of a soldier killed by his own lieutenant by blaming the dead hero, stonewalling his family and promoting his killer, the Daily News has learned. The friendly-fire victim, Pfc. David Sharrett, 27, of Oakton, Va., was "misidentified" by 1stLt. Timothy Hanson as an enemy gunman during a botched night raid Jan. 16, 2008, against an Al Qaeda in Iraq stronghold north of Baghdad, the Army belatedly acknowledged. Sharrett bled to death as his buddies searched frantically for him for 25 minutes after the firefight ended. For four months after the Army...

Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed at the home of an FBI-wanted Taliban lackey who was once given a platform by the New York Times. The jihadist, one of the planners of the Sept. 11 attacks, was taken out by a CIA drone strike Sunday morning at a Kabul home belonging to senior Taliban official Sirajuddin Haqqani, according to initial reporting by the Gray Lady herself. The publication infamously published an op-ed penned by Haqqani — the leader of the insurgent Haqqani Network in Afghanistan linked to brutal and deadly attacks — to ask for a peace agreement between...

A convicted felon accused by the US government of supporting “the cause of violent jihad” — and promoting 9/11 mastermind Osama Bin Laden — donated to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign and a host of progressive Democrats following his release from prison, records show. Emadeddin Muntasser, 57, and two of his associates were convicted in January 2008 on counts of conspiring to defraud the United States government, lying to the FBI and engaging in a scheme to conceal evidence. The charges stemmed from their operation of an Islamic charity that acted as a front to finance Islamic jihad abroad and lying...

Several “national security experts” interviewed for an essay in The Root published on Thursday, attacked the Republican Party, claiming it behaves “like a terror group,” is rife with “terrorist sympathizers,” and should be viewed as “enemy combatants.” The essay, penned by senior reporter Terrell Jermaine Starr and titled “Democrats Are Stuck With a Republican Party Rife With Conspiracy Theorists, Anarchists and Terrorist Sympathizers,” begins by asserting that the GOP is “authoritarian” and only cares for whites. “[W]e have an entire political party that has converted into an authoritarian—albeit Americanized version—style of politics that cares nothing about U.S. democracy or anyone...

UNITED NATIONS - A former Russian top spy says his agents helped the Russian government steal nearly $500 million from the U.N.'s oil-for-food program in Iraq before the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Sergei Tretyakov, who defected to the United States in 2000 as a double agent, says he oversaw an operation that helped Saddam's regime manipulate the price of Iraqi oil sold under the program — and allow Russia to skim profits. Tretyakov, former deputy head of intelligence at Russia's U.N. mission from 1995 to 2000, names some names, but sticks mainly to code names. Among the spies...

In recent years, Hezbollah has stepped up its activities beyond Lebanon’s borders. This uptick has been clearest in the Middle East—in Iraq, Yemen, and especially Syria—but plots have also been thwarted in South America, Asia, Europe, and now, possibly, the United States. Reports of Hezbollah activity in North America are not new, though such reporting tends to focus on the group’s fundraising, money laundering, procurement, or other logistical activities from Vancouver to Miami. But last month, the criminal prosecution and conviction in New York of the Hezbollah operative Ali Kourani revealed disturbing new information about the extent of Hezbollah’s operations...

….The details of the charges against Whelan from a special court-martial that resulted in his discharge for bad conduct two years later add to an increasingly complex picture of the 48-year-old former Marine, whom Russian officials have accused of spying. His case grew more perplexing on Friday after Ireland became the fourth nation to acknowledge him as a citizen and seek consular access.

Rocky Anderson, it turns out, is not stepping aside quietly. Joining a list of liberal luminaries, including Noam Chomsky and George McGovern, Salt Lake City's outgoing mayor submitted a letter Friday that calls on the House Judiciary Committee to investigate the Bush administration for abuses of power. The letter, signed by 18 political and cultural figures, asks House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., to hold hearings on alleged violations of the law under President Bush that include kidnapping and torture, warrantless wiretapping, a war of aggression against Iraq and disseminating false propaganda to deceive the American people. It came...

1. Ahmad Abu Adass In 2005, the last year of his life, Ahmad Abu Adass was 22 and still living with his parents in Beirut, Lebanon. He was kind and liked people, his friends later told investigators, but none of them thought he was very sophisticated. The best way to describe him was simple, one said. He was generous and a little naïve. He was very weak, physically. A Sunni Muslim of Palestinian descent, Adass had become interested in religion and now spent many hours at the Arab University Mosque near his home. It was there, after a prayer session,...

RELEASE: The Podesta Emails Part 17 October 24th E-mail Drop

London, Jan. 05 - Iran's Bank Saderat has lost a third of its foreign partners because of unilateral sanctions by the United States, the Financial Times quoted the institution’s managing director as saying on Saturday. In an interview with the Financial Times, Hamid Borhani said that of 600 foreign banks that used to do business with Bank Saderat before the U.S. imposed sanctions in September 2006, some 200 had halted their transactions. Borhani said that Middle Eastern banks were continuing contacts and becoming the institution’s top foreign partners, as sanctions shifted trade from west to east. China became Iran’s main...

"He finally broke and he walked them through what he had done. "They totted up his losses and by Sunday night they worked out that the losses were about £1.2 billion. The bank's bosses decided it had to cancel the bets immediately when the markets opened on Monday. "They started unwinding them on Monday morning - but because the market was failing the £1.2 billion loss became a £3.7 billion loss." Some senior City figures said the "positions" were so huge that dumping them on one day could have been enough to trigger Monday's stock market meltdown, the worst since...

The name of President Obama came into play this afternoon at the political corruption trial of former governor Rod Blagojevich as an associate of political fund-raiser Tony Rezko testified that Rezko asked him to write a $10,000 check to Friends of Obama. The Chicago Sun-Times reported in January 2008 that Glenview businessman Joseph Aramanda, who is testifying today, made the donation as part of a scheme orchestrated by Rezko. Aramanda gave $10,000 in campaign cash to Obama’s U.S. Senate campaign on March 5, 2004, according to records. The money came from part of a finder’s fee Aramanda received, but did...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The CEO of a company whose employee is accused of improperly looking at the passport files of presidential candidates is a consultant to the Barack Obama campaign, a source said Saturday. John Brennan, president of the Analysis Corp., advises the Illinois Democrat on foreign policy and intelligence issues, the source said. Brennan briefed the media on behalf of the campaign this month. The executive is a former senior CIA official and former interim director of the National Counterterrorism Center. He contributed $2,300 to the Obama campaign in January.

Kuwait City, 5 Feb. (AKI) - The US air raid that killed al-Qaeda leader Abu Layth al-Libi in Pakistan is reported to have also killed three other leaders from the terrorist network. According to the Kuwaiti daily, al-Watan, two Kuwaitis and a Libyan also died in the missile attack conducted by a Predator aircraft on January 25 in Mir Ali, in North Waziristan on the border of Afghanistan. The daily said the attack was aimed at what was believed to have been an al-Qaeda summit meeting. Abu Obeida Tawari al-Obeidi and Abu Adel al-Kuwaiti were reportedly there with al-Libi.Abu Adel...

If what follows sounds like a scene from the sci-fi disaster flick Independence Day, imagine what President George W. Bush must have thought on the night of January 8, 2008 as he contemplated his ranch home in Crawford, Texas. At around 8:00 pm, an enormous, hovering craft with ridiculously bright lights, at least 1,000 feet long (though some witnesses said a mile long), was tracked on multiple radars heading straight for the president's ranch at low speed. The craft lacked a required transponder, was totally unidentified, did not respond to any attempts at communication, and was flying through restricted airspace....

The sudden death of an exiled Georgian billionaire may have been another "Alexander Litvinenko-style" murder, it is feared. A major crime squad is investigating the death of 52-year-old Badri Patarkatsishvili, whose body was found at his country mansion in Surrey at about 11pm last night. His family said he suffered a heart attack - but Surrey Police have launched an investigation to confirm the exact cause of death after reports of a plot to kill him. Sky News' home affairs correspondent Mark White said: "The police want to leave no stone uncovered. "In the light of Litvinenko's death in 2006...

A woman who wrote a leaflet encouraging people to carry out jihad, or holy war, has been sentenced to a community order at Manchester Crown Court. Shella Roma, 29, of Oldham, had pleaded guilty to dissemination of a terrorist publication, and received a three-year order, with supervision for two years. Roma was arrested after a photocopy shop employee was alarmed by a document she had produced, and alerted police. The pamphlet contained an essay, "The Call", encouraging jihad. The eight-page essay mentioned the 9/11 attacks and the war on terror, and repeatedly asked: "Will you go to Jihad (holy war)?"...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The CEO of a company whose employee is accused of improperly looking at the passport files of presidential candidates is a consultant to the Barack Obama campaign, a source said Saturday. John O. Brennan, president and CEO of the Analysis Corp., advises the Illinois Democrat on foreign policy and intelligence issues, the source said. Brennan briefed the media on behalf of the campaign this month. The executive is a former senior CIA official and former interim director of the National Counterterrorism Center. He contributed $2,300 to the Obama campaign in January.