Free Republic

WASHINGTON - While al-Qaeda renegade armies were seizing Iraqi territory over the weekend and closing in on Baghdad, President Obama was jetting into Palm Springs, Calif. for 18 holes of golf. The blood-soaked, terrorist rampage across Iraq by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was drawing close enough to the Iraqi capital to force the administration to begin withdrawing some of our U.S. embassy staff there. While Obama was lining up his shot on the green, our country was in a full blown, foreign policy-national security crisis, one of many that confronts his failed presidency. Russian tanks, ordered...

McCain blasted Obama on the Al-Qaeda takeover of Fallujah about 3 days ago and the raising of their flag there. This flag-raising and takeover of Fallujah is indeed an abomination in the sight of anyone with a conscience, but can anyone say that McCain has a strict adherence to principles? Would McCain shake hands with Saddam, then later bomb him? Would he pal around with Pinochet, and then later seek to bomb him? Would he seek to overthrow an elected Iranian leader in 1953, only later to regret it? And thus the lesson on why Washington said that we must...

WASHINGTON — A suspected Al Qaeda organizer once called "the highest value detainee" at Guantanamo Bay was ordered released by a federal judge in an order issued Monday. Mohamedou Ould Slahi was accused in the 9/11 Commission report of helping recruit Mohammed Atta and other members of the Al Qaeda cell in Hamburg, Germany, that took part in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Military prosecutors suspected Slahi of links to other Al Qaeda operations, and considered seeking the death penalty against him while preparing possible charges in 2003 and 2004.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has frozen the assets of two Saudi nationals for allegedly providing support to al Qaeda, and asked the United Nations to take similar action. The U.S. Treasury said on Tuesday it had listed the two men -- London-based dissident Saad al-Fagih and Adel Batterjee, another Saudi national -- as "specially designated global terrorists" for providing financial and material support to al Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden. "The U.S. is submitting both names to the United Nations (Security Council) 1267 Committee, which will consider adding them to the consolidated list of terrorists tied...

ISLAMABAD, Oct 20: Law-enforcement agencies have arrested a Yemeni national who is an important figure in Al Qaeda's new leadership and another foreign national who is one of the network's communications specialists, officials said on Wednesday. The Yemeni, identified as Saleh Nauman, was arrested in the eastern city of Lahore about 10 days ago while trying to slip out of Pakistan, an intelligence official told Reuters. "He is an important figure in Al Qaeda's new leadership," said the official, who asked not to be named. "He had been here in Pakistan and Afghanistan for the last eight years and wanted...

JEMAAH Islamiah's infrastructure was still very much intact and more attacks could be launched within weeks, terror experts said yesterday. Author Rohan Gunaratna said JI was the only group capable of the carnage witnessed in the biggest bomb attack to hit Indonesia since October's Bali blasts. Dr Gunaratna said Indonesian authorities had left the nation vulnerable to attack because they had failed to give police the power to arrest all members of JI. "In Indonesia it is not a crime to be a member of JI, so it is impossible for police to have the power to arrest enough JI...

Now that Saddam's sons are dead, there is talk the "resistance" againts US troops should decrease. This makes sense in that these two brothers most likely oversaw the cash to pay those attacking US troops. And it has killed their liason with al Qaeda, Qusay. Back in 1999 Yossef Bodansky had this to say: The other state that is rising up -- and I've elaborated a lot in the book about that -- is Iraq. Bin Laden has been dealing with Iraq intelligence since the early 1990s, where they cooperated in Sudan and in Somalia. This has been a love-hate...

US forces have all but wiped out an alleged al-Qaeda linked group in northern Iraq with help from their Kurdish allies - and Iranians who have sealed off the Islamist militants' only exit. US special forces set out today from Halabja in Iraqi Kurdistan with Kurdish fighters to track down militants of the Ansar al-Islam group who might have survived the bombing and the onslaught on their stronghold. The US forces kept mum on the location of their hunting ground, but a Kurdish official said it was a mountainous region on the border with Iran because "they have nowhere else...

Worldwide Caution October 10, 2002 This Worldwide Caution Public Announcement supersedes the Worldwide Caution Public Announcement dated September 9, 2002. In light of the recent audio tape attributed to Usama bin Laden and other reports of threats to American interests, this Worldwide Caution is being issued to alert Americans to the need to remain vigilant and to remind them of the continuing threat of terrorist actions that may target civilians. This Worldwide Caution expires on April 8, 2003. The U.S. Government continues to receive credible indications that extremist groups and individuals are planning additional terrorist actions against U.S. interests....

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US authorities prepared to take custody of top al-Qaeda lieutenant Ramzi bin al-Shaiba, a suspected planner of the September 11 attacks who was captured last week in a raid in Pakistan. Bin al-Shaiba, one of the world's most hunted men, was arrested in Karachi on Wednesday by Pakistani security forces accompanied by US FBI agents and detained in a raid in which at least two people were killed and several others were arrested, the sources said. Another suspected top al-Qaeda figure seized in Karachi was expected to be handed over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation...

MILAN, Italy (AP) — An Italian judge indicted three North African men Thursday on charges of arms possession and supplying forged documents to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, a lawyer for one of the defendants said. Nabil Benattia of Tunisia, Yassine Chekkouri of Morocco and Abdelhalim Hafed Remadna of Algeria, were arrested in Milan in November in connection with an investigation of the city's mosque and Islamic cultural center. U.S. authorities have described the center as the main al-Qaida station house in Europe. Benattia's lawyer, Antonio Nebuloni, said all three suspects were indicted Thursday on charges of criminal association, possession...