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An audio produced by the group's media arm, the al-Malahem Foundation, and posted on militant websites said it offered three kilograms of gold worth $160,000 (£99,000) for killing the ambassador, Gerald Feierstein. The group said it will pay 5 million Yemeni riyals (£14,000) to anyone who kills an American soldier inside Yemen. It said the offer is valid for six months. The bounties were set to "inspire and encourage our Muslim nation for jihad," the statement said.

I know. Foreign policy has been largely an afterthought in the presidential campaign. Iraq, for all intents and purposes, is off the radar screen entirely -- except as a Democratic talking point, Bush's misbegotten war that Obama allegedly "ended." So a post on the plight of a rather obscure Iraqi politician -- and the merits of the Kurdish region he now calls home -- amounts to so much spitting in the wind, right? Probably. On the other hand this week's news - rampaging anti-American mobs across the Arab world, skyrocketing U.S.-Israeli tensions - has brought into sharp relief one of...

With the midterm elections fast approaching, the panic over Iraq seems more intense than ever. That country, the thinking goes, is a hopeless mess, and there could be a precipitous American withdrawal, especially if the Democrats win. But doing so would leave the silent majority of Iraqis hostage to the most vicious extremists, abandoning those Iraqi leaders who have championed liberal democratic values. One of them is Mithal al-Alusi, a 53-year-old Sunni Arab who won a seat in parliament last December after having served as director general of the National Commission on de-Baathification. Mr. al-Alusi ran on a platform of...

Coiffed, groomed and impeccably suited, Mithal al-Alusi cuts an imposing figure at this trendy hotel. In the empty bar lounge, he makes himself at home to a breakfast of fresh fruit, strong coffee and a constant flow of cigarettes. The leader of the Democratic Party of the Iraqi Nation is in town to promote his vision for a new Iraq and accept an accolade from an unlikely sponsor – the American Jewish Committee – who honored him with a Moral Courage award at their annual dinner last week. His act of courage was an attempt to break Iraq's long-standing taboo...

We all know CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN or Fox wasn't going to do it. "Imam’s Terrorist Ties Exposed by Local News Station," from Judicial Watch, November 26 (thanks to Pamela Geller): While the Obama Justice Department tours the nation condemning unfounded discrimination against Muslims at their place of worship, a local Florida news station uncovers an imam’s ties to a blind sheik behind the first World Trade Center bombing in the early 90s. Not surprisingly, the administration’s campaign to combat mosque intolerance is being heavily promoted while the shocking imam terrorist story gets swept under the rug. We only know...

October 12 marks the 12th anniversary of the bombing of the USS Cole. The grim milestone comes as President Obama faces mounting questions about his administration's dereliction of duty during the murderous attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya. And it comes just a day after resurgent al-Qaida thugs pulled off the drive-by assassination of a top Yemeni security official who worked at the U.S. embassy in Sanaa. These are not "bumps in the road." These are gravesites on the blood-spattered path to surrender. Seventeen U.S. sailors died in the brutal suicide attack on the guided Navy missile destroyer as...

OCTOBER 17, 2009 Rajaratnam Surfaced in U.S. Terrorism Probe By EVAN PEREZ and MATTHEW ROSENBERG WASHINGTON—The hedge-fund billionaire charged as part of a vast insider-trading case surfaced in an earlier, separate probe into U.S. fundraising by a Sri Lankan terrorist group, people familiar with the probe said. As part of that investigation, federal agents said they uncovered documents showing that Raj Rajaratnam, founder of the Galleon Group, was among several wealthy Sri Lankans in the U.S. whose donations to a Maryland-based charity made their way to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, according to people familiar with the probe. Raj...

...Litvinenko "was giving Scaramella lots of information about Russian and criminal infiltrations in Italy, but most of it was very difficult to verify and crosscheck. It was a little bit out on a limb." In the old days, Litvinenko had been familiar with criminal clans in Russia, now he was making risky approaches to the Italian mafia. Scaramella believed if they could get inside this network, they would be able to leverage much more damaging intelligence about Italian politicians. They spread their net wider. The Litvinenko dossier lists a dizzying roll call of names investigated by the pair, among them...

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...

Ramón Mercader from Barcelona killed Trotsky with an ice axe in Mexico City. On 20th August 1940, the exiled Leon Trotsky was fatally wounded at his home in a suburb of Mexico City when an ice axe was driven into his skull. He cried out to his guards as they burst into his study, ‘Don’t kill him! He must talk.’ Despite struggling fiercely, and even managing to bite the hand of his assassin, Trotsky died the next day, and the man who wielded the murder weapon was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He insisted throughout his trial and his...

memory hole reminder The first documentary evidence that Vietnamese communists were directly steering John Kerry’s group Vietnam Veterans Against the War has been discovered in a U.S. archive, according to a researcher who spoke with WorldNetDaily. Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2004/10/27207/#615wufvA5oZXKuWK.99

MANAGUA, Nicaragua — The classical definition of a hero is a person who puts himself at risk for the benefit of others. That certainly describes Adolfo Calero, who died June 2 at the age of 80. The obituaries of this remarkable man hardly do justice to his courage, perseverance, faithfulness and humility. Here is the Adolfo Calero I knew, admired and called a friend for nearly three decades: A graduate of Holy Cross High School in New Orleans and the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., he was a devout Roman Catholic and educated to be a...

CAIRO—The United States and Israel plotted the killing of Egyptian protesters during last year's 18-day uprising that toppled longtime leader Hosni Mubarak, a lawyer for his former interior minister claimed Thursday. Lawyer Mohammed el-Gendi also accused security guards at the American University in Cairo of opening fire on protesters. The university's historical main building borders Tahrir Square, which was the focus of the anti-Mubarak revolt. El-Gendi is a lawyer for former Interior Minister Habib el-Adly. El-Adly, Mubarak, and four top security officers are being tried for complicity in the deaths of hundreds of protesters at the hands of security forces...

If ever there were a moment for President Obama to learn from history, it is now, in the wake of Friday’s shootings at the elementary school at Newtown, Conn. The timely lesson for Obama, drawn from the experience of Lyndon B. Johnson — the last president to aggressively fight for comprehensive gun control — is this: Demand action on comprehensive gun control immediately from this Congress or lose the opportunity during your presidency. In the aftermath of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy (just weeks after the fatal shooting of Martin Luther King Jr. and only a few years after...

On August 23, 2011 the FBI arrested Imam Abu Taubah aka Marcus Dwayne Robertson. The charge was possession of a firearm by a previously convicted felon, Case Number: 6:11-mj-1380 Attached to Imam Abu Robertson’s case is a Notice of Intent To Use Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Information (FISA). The U.S. Government’s intention to use its FISA powers signals probable cause to charge Imam “Taubah” Robertson “the target of such search is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power”. The facts presented in these filed charges leads this reporter to suspect an element of foreign intrigue may be...

Parallels: A mission was attacked after warnings, Americans were killed after security requests were denied, and a diplomat went on TV to explain it all — our current U.N. ambassador, after embassy bombings in 1998. 'What troubles me so much is the Benghazi attack in many ways echoes the attacks on both embassies in 1998, when Susan Rice was head of the African region for our State Department," Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said Wednesday after two hours with our U.N. ambassador. "In both cases, the ambassador begged for additional security." In both cases, Susan Rice was involved more than she...

We know the Obama administration has been actively engaged in a cover-up as to why the U.S. consulate in Benghazi came under attack on September 11th, killing Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other diplomats. How else to explain the weeks-long campaign to convince people that the attacks were not terrorism. Now we're finding out more details as to why they may have engaged in such a wide-ranging cover-up. But the real smoking gun is whether the Obama administration was warned in advance that al-Qaeda was planning an attack. A number of Israeli newspapers have suggested that Washington was warned as...

An American fugitive, accused of murdering an aide to the late Shah of Iran in the United States, was made an editor of Iran’s English-language television network in Tehran. Hassan Abdulrahman, who is wanted by the FBI for shooting dead Ali Akbar Tabatabai in Maryland, worked for Iran’s flagship broadcaster Press TV, which has bureaus across the world, including London. A Press TV journalist who resigned in protest over the channel’s coverage of the apparently rigged Iranian election in June told The Times yesterday that Mr Abdulrahman was chief editor at the head office of the network. The journalist, who...

Americans were stunned on October 11 when the Justice Department unsealed its complaint against Mansour Arbabsiar, a 56-year-old used-car dealer from Corpus Christi now in federal custody, and Ali Gholam Shakuri, a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force. Shakuri remains inside Iran. The pair have been charged with conspiring to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington, Adel Al-Jubeir. As disclosed by the Treasury Department, the plot was coordinated by Arbabsiar’s cousin, Abdul Reza Shahlai, a top Quds Force functionary whom the Treasury designated in 2008 as one of several “individuals and entities fueling violence in Iraq.” Shahlai was...

Encouraging Iran by doing nothing Washington Post (blog) - May 28, 2012 By Jennifer Rubin This is just the latest incident in Iran's war against the West, and against the United States specifically. Iran has facilitated deaths of Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan. It plotted to kill a Saudi diplomat on our soil. And now this. Does the Obama administration retaliate for these acts of aggression? No, and in fairness the Bush administration enacted no penalty either for the deaths of U.S. troops in Iraq or Afghanistan attributable to Iranian IEDs.