Free Republic

The White House confirmed to Fox News what the Investigative Project on Terrorism reported two days ago — that the administration met with the deputy of a radical cleric who is barred from entering the United States, and whose organization supports Hamas.  Sheik Abdullah bin Bayyah served as vice president of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, a group headed by Egyptian cleric Yusuf Qaradawi, who has urged Muslim nations to acquire nuclear weapons, demanded the death of American soldiers in Iraq, and defended Hitler. So what did the White House want to discuss with bin Bayyah? Moderation: A senior...

Two prisoners released from Guantanamo Bay have appeared in a video posted on a jihadist website. The AFP reports that "one of the two former inmates, a Saudi man identified as Abu Sufyan al-Azdi al-Shahri, or prisoner number 372, has been elevated to the senior ranks of Al-Qaeda in Yemen." Further, "three other men appear in the video, including Abu al-Hareth Muhammad al-Oufi, identified as an Al-Qaeda field commander," a man who was formerly known as prisoner No. 333. "By Allah, imprisonment only increased our persistence in our principles for which we went out, did jihad for, and were imprisoned...

After weeks of fighting between the Pakistan Army and militants, the declaration of a month-long cease-fire may give the Taliban time to regroup. Pakistan's Taliban might be getting stronger, wreaking havoc along the country's border with Afghanistan, but they are also growing wildly unpopular, inciting their own tribesmen to turn against them. In the latest of a series of incidents, a lashkar, or private army comprised of Pakistani tribesmen, torched the houses of Taliban commanders in Bajaur, near the Afghan border, vowing to fight them until they are expelled, the Daily Times, a Pakistani newspaper, reports. Tribesmen in Bajaur Agency's...

BAGHDAD: Iraq's most feared terror group yesterday warned foreign diplomats to flee the country after announcing it will put to death two kidnapped Moroccan Embassy employees. Insurgents killed 20 people, including 11 Iraqi security troops and an American, in separate attacks around the country. The warning came in a statement posted on an Islamist website in the name of Al Qaeda in Iraq, which also claimed responsibility for the July kidnap-slaying of two envoys from Algeria and one from Egypt as well as the abduction and beheading of many foreign hostages. Another web statement attributed to Al Qaeda said the...

TORONTO - A newly disclosed Canadian intelligence study says al-Qaeda might try to spread the deadly avian flu virus as part of its campaign to sow terror in Western nations. The report by the federal government's Integrated Threat Assessment Centre describes the avian flu as a "potential terrorist-induced" pandemic and specifically mentions Osama bin Laden. "It is significant to note that Osama bin Laden views chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons as legitimate," says the report, titled "Pandemics: Avian Flu." "In addition, Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda representatives have repeatedly named Canada as a target," it says under the heading...

Within the heavily guarded perimeters of the Defense Department's much-discussed Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, the CIA has maintained a detention facility for valuable al Qaeda captives that has never been mentioned in public, according to military officials and several current and former intelligence officers. The buildings used by the CIA are shrouded by high fences covered with thick green mesh plastic and ringed with floodlights, officials said. They sit within the larger Camp Echo complex, which was erected to house the Defense Department's high-value detainees and those awaiting military trials on terrorism charges. The facility has housed detainees from...

War in Iraq is coming. The demonstrators shout, "No blood for oil!" In his State of the Union address, President Bush declares, "We exercise power without conquest, and we sacrifice for the liberty of strangers." Which is it? Well, it ain't for oil. And it is for more than liberty. What the demonstrators, who have the historical memory of a gnat, don't understand is that, on the contrary, oil is why America kept its distance from the region for so long. Ever since Franklin Roosevelt made alliance with Saudi Arabia, the U.S. chose to leave the Arab world to its...