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President Biden addresses the nation about a counterterrorism operation in Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri has called on Muslims to attack U.S., European, Israeli and Russian targets in a speech on the 18th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks. SITE Intelligence Group reports that in a video released by the militant group, Zawahri also criticizes "backtrackers" from jihad, referring to former jihadis who changed their views in prison and called the 9/11 attacks unacceptable because innocent civilians were harmed. Zawahri, an Egyptian, became leader of al Qaeda following the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan by U.S. Navy SEALS. He is believed to be hiding somewhere in...

DUBAI, July 19 (Reuters) - An Iranian general collaborated with al Qaeda to arrange the transit through Iran of nine of the September 11 hijackers, the Arabic newspaper Asharq al-Awsat reported on Monday. "A general in the apparatus (Revolutionary Guard) coordinated with the number two man in al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahri, to provide 'safe passage' to around nine of those who carried out the attacks," the London-based paper said. It cited as its source an official in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and said Zawahri, who requested the help, had links with the general going back to the early 1990s. Iranian...

Diplomats and other observers in Libya say that with elections one month away, the National Transitional Council is struggling to exert control over various militia prominent in the uprising against Moammar Gadhafi. One source briefed by Western intelligence officials said that of particular concern is the city of Derna on the Mediterranean coast some 160 miles (260 kilometers) west of the Egyptian border. The source told CNN that hundreds of Islamist militants are in and around the town, and there are camps where weapons and physical training are provided to militants. He said one official had described the area as...

CAIRO, Egypt - Al-Qaida's No. 2 figure harshly criticized Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in a new audio tape Saturday, accusing him of being an enemy of Islam and threatening a wave of attacks against the North African country because it improved relations with the U.S. ADVERTISEMENT In the 28-minute audio tape called "Unity of the Ranks," Ayman al-Zawahri also announced that the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group was joining ranks with al-Qaida. "The Islamic nation is witnessing a blessed step ... The brothers are escalating the confrontation against the enemies of Islam: Gadhafi and his masters, the Washington crusaders," al-Zawahri said...

CAIRO (AP) — Al-Qaida's new leader praised Syrian protesters seeking to topple the regime of President Bashar Assad while trying to portray the uprising as an Islamic battle against American and Israeli interests. The video message posted on extremist websites Wednesday is Ayman al-Zawahri's first since al-Qaida named him its new leader in June following the death of Osama bin Laden in a U.S. commando raid in Pakistan. The Egyptian-born al-Zawahri, who long served as bin Laden's top deputy, directly addressed the Syrian protesters who have risen up against Assad's rule despite a bloody government crackdown. The message appeared to...

Osama bin Laden's deputy warned Wednesday that America faces not individual terrorists or groups but an international community of Muslims that seek to destroy it and its allies. He was delivering a 28-minute videotaped eulogy to slain al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. Ayman al-Zawahri, al-Qaida's longtime No. 2 and considered the network's operational head, also sought to cast a role for the terror group in the popular uprisings shaking Arab world. "Today, praise God, America is not facing an individual, a group or a faction," he said, wearing a white robe and turban with an assault rifle leaned on a...

WASHINGTON -- The health of terrorist cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman, the so-called Blind Sheik, is deteriorating _ renewing fears that his death in prison could trigger an attack on the United States, officials said Thursday. There is no credible indication that an attack on the U.S. is imminent, said several law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the situation. In a two-page bulletin, dated Dec. 8, the FBI reported to federal intelligence officials that Rahman was rushed from prison to a Missouri hospital two days earlier for a blood transfusion. There, doctors discovered...

The CIA has come closer to capturing or killing Osama bin Laden’s top deputy than was previously known, during a nine-year hunt at the root of a devastating 2009 suicide bombing at an agency base in Afghanistan, The Associated Press has learned. The CIA missed a chance to nab Ayman al-Zawahiri in 2003 in the northwest Pakistani city of Peshawar, where he met with another senior al-Qaeda leader who was apprehended the next day, several current and former U.S. intelligence officials said. The fugitive Egyptian doctor may also have narrowly survived a bombing by Pakistani military planes in 2004, the...

PESHAWAR: After fighting brief skirmishes against militants, the Pakistan Army plans to unfold in the next few days what military officials characterise as the mother of all battles in South Waziristan, senior military and security officials said on Thursday. ‘If we don’t take the battle to them, they will bring the battle to us,’ a senior military official said of the militants. ‘The epicentre of the behemoth called the Taliban lies in South Waziristan, and this is where we will be fighting the toughest of all battles.’ For three months, the military has been drawing up plans, holding in-depth deliberations...

Buried in a story in today’s New York Times is a fantastic notion - which is nevertheless entirely consistent with The Times’ worldview - that Obama’s win was a psychological defeat for terrorism. The story is about a tape released by Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s chief lieutenant, who referred to President-elect Obama as a “house Negro.” The article suggests that Al Qaeda is lashing out. The Times claims, “American antiterrorism officials and other experts dismissed the video as a desperate tactic by a terrorist group that suffered a defeat in the global war of ideas with Mr. Obama’s election”...

The nation's first serious black candidate for president should be outraged that al-Qaida would try to exploit African-Americans for the terror cause. Oddly, he's not. Osama bin Laden's deputy last week made a sinister pitch to blacks in the U.S., and Barack Obama shrugged.Al-Qaida's Ayman al-Zawahri earlier this month courted blacks by frequently invoking Malcolm X, aka Al-Hajj Malik al-Shabazz, a past leader of the Nation of Islam.Shamelessly, al-Zawahri encouraged blacks to join al-Qaida's holy war against the American "oppressor," and sacrifice their blood against "injustice" like the "struggler and martyr" Malcolm X.He noted that the Muslim civil-rights leader condoned...

CAIRO, Egypt - Al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri, rejecting criticism of attacks by the terror network's followers that have killed thousands, maintained Wednesday that it does not kill innocent people. His comment came during a 90-minute audio response that was billed as the first installment of answers to the more than 900 questions submitted on extremist Internet sites by al-Qaida supporters, critics and journalists in December. "We haven't killed the innocents, not in Baghdad, nor in Morocco, nor in Algeria, nor anywhere else," al-Zawahri said, according to a 46-page English transcript that accompanied the audio message posted on Web sites...

<p>CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Al-Qaida's No. 2 has issued a new video tape calling on Muslims to unite in jihad, or holy war, and support the Islamist movement in Iraq, a U.S.-based intelligence monitoring group said Wednesday.</p> <p>Ayman al-Zawahri is seen in the one-hour and 35 minutes tape dressed in white and addressing topics from Iraq to Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian territories and Egypt, said the U.S.-based SITE intelligence group, which monitors al-Qaida messages.</p>

Al-Qaida leader calls moderate Arabs 'traitors'http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.world31dec31,0,4421031.story?coll=bal-attack-headlines CAIRO, Egypt // The deputy leader of al-Qaida accused moderate Arab leaders of being traitors for cooperating with the United States in a message posted on the Internet yesterday to mark the most important Islamic holiday. Ayman al-Zawahri's wished the Palestinian people a happy Eid al-Adha, but lashed out at moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah movement. "Those who had sold Palestine, the secular traitors, cannot be your brothers. Do not recognize their legitimacy. ... And don't sit with them," al-Zawahri said in a 15-minute audiotape message that was posted on a...

Brian Ross and Hoda Osman Report: Al Qaeda has sent a message to leaders of the Democratic party that credit for the defeat of congressional Republicans belongs to the terrorists. In a portion of the tape from al Qaeda No. 2 man, Ayman al Zawahri, made available only today, Zawahri says he has two messages for American Democrats. "The first is that you aren't the ones who won the midterm elections, nor are the Republicans the ones who lost. Rather, the Mujahideen -- the Muslim Ummah's vanguard in Afghanistan and Iraq -- are the ones who won, and the American...

Reuters - AL QAEDA'S ZAWAHRI, IN NEW VIDEO, SAYS ARAB GULF STATES, ISRAEL TO BE TARGETED

Saudi Wealth Fuels Global Jihadism Posted Oct. 27, 2003 By Kenneth R. Timmerman Generations of Muslims in the Middle East have been raised on the anti-Western, anti-Semitic theologies of Ayatollah Khomeini and in the Saudi Wahhabi system of madrassas (religious schools). This foundation set the stage for the rise of Osama bin Laden. Doaa 'Amer is a professional TV anchor who hosts Muslim Woman Magazine on IQRAA TV, a satellite channel broadcasting throughout the Arab world. As she tells it, her job is to educate the next generation of children to be "true Muslims." Readers accustomed to hearing Islam described...

An ultra-radical Islamic ideology mixing zealot-like devotion and holy war creed is drawing more scrutiny in anti-terrorist probes from the Middle East to Europe — with increasing indications that its base on the fringes of Islamic extremism could be widening. In existence since the 1960s, al-Takfir wa al-Hijra has offered intellectual inspiration to al-Qaida and other militant groups. But authorities now worry about followers becoming more aggressive with recruitment and retaliation against perceived foes of Islam, such as Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh. Officials in the Netherlands say the Dutch-Moroccan suspect — accused of killing Van Gogh on a busy...

I disagree with the president on immigration, education and McCain-Finegold, but I remain one of his biggest supporters. Having said that, I must say that I worry most of all about the safety and security of my children and my grandchildren if a Democrat succeeds to the presidency in 2008. I have this worry because, although President Bush has been immense in protecting us from Islamic terrorists and in standing up to the vituperation heaped on him for so doing, he has NOT succeeded in convincing enough of the country that a global terrorist war is ongoing against us, and...