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The New York Times reports today that before his death, top al Qaeda terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi trained about 300 foreign fighters in Iraq and sent them back to their home countries, where they awaited orders to carry out strikes. But the paper makes no mention of Zarqawi's most ambitious foreign attack plot, which nearly succeeded two years ago: a weapons of mass destruction strike that intelligence officials estimated would have killed 20,000. The death toll planned by Zarqawi would have far exceeded the destruction wrought by Osama bin Laden on Sept. 11. The April 2004 attack, which was...

Grassroots Democrats weighing in on several popular liberal web sites Thursday morning said that they were troubled by reports that al Qaeda's top operational terrorist, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, had been killed in a U.S. air strike. Reacting to the news, one visitor to the Daily Kos complained that using military force to kill Zarqawi "violates everything my America stands for." "It violates the rule of law and invokes the rule of force in what should be a criminal, not a military, matter." Another Daily Kos'er was irked because he thought the news would benefit President Bush: "No doubt Karl...

Conservative author Ann Coulter is firing back at Sen. Hillary Clinton, after the former first lady attacked her for being "vicious [and] mean-spirited" towards a group of politically active 9/11 widows. "I think if she's worried about people being mean to women she should have a talk with her husband," Coulter told radio host Sean Hannity, who was hosting a book signing for the conservative firebrand on Long Island. "This is, I remind you, Bill Clinton's wife," Coulter added. "[And I'm the one who's] mean to women?" Earlier in the day, Mrs. Clinton complained about Coulter's attacks on the Jersey...

Senators Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer have been complaining for a week now about an $80 million cutback in New York City's anti-terrorism funding by the Department of Homeland Security. But it turns out that they both voted to make substantial cuts in the city's terrorism funding last year. According to Newsday, the Democratic duo backed a $95 million cut last December in funding from the Centers for Disease Control for bioterrorism programs around the nation. Of that amount, approximately $3 million would have gone directly to New York City. Mrs. Clinton and her Democratic co-hort actually wanted to cut...

New York politicians allowed up to one-third of the $20 billion in federal aid awarded to the city in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks to be squandered right under their noses, an analysis by the New York Daily News found last December. But that hasn't stopped some of the same politicians from complaining all weekend about a mere $80 million cut in New York City's federal anti-terrorism budget. Senators Hillary Clinton, Charles Schumer and Rep. Peter King say they're outraged over the new cuts, with Clinton and King teaming up to launch a post-card writing campaign against the Department...

A 12-year old survivor of the alleged massacre of innocent civilians by U.S. Marines patrolling Haditha has admitted she had prior knowledge of the plot to detonate an IED as their convoy was passing by her house on the morning of Nov. 19, 2005. In a CNN interview broadcast Wednesday, Safa Younis - who says eight members of her family were killed by U.S. troops - recalled that she was getting ready for school as the Marine Humvee approached. "I was planning to go to school. I was about to go out of bed. I knew the bomb would explode...

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King is lashing out at his fellow Republicans in Washington after Homeland Security Czar Michael Chertoff cut anti-terrorism funding for New York City, warning Thursday morning that unless the cuts are restored, he'll launch an investigation into what he called "orgies" involving CIA agents at the Watergate hotel. "[The cut] to me raises very serious questions about the judgment and the sincerity of the Department [of Homeland Security] and everything they do," King told WABC Radio's John Gambling. "If they can't get something like this right, how can we trust them to get anything...

2008 presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton said Monday that she's horrified over allegations that U.S. Marines executed innocent Iraqis in the town of Haditha last November after their convoy was hit by a roadside bomb - and she's vowing to expose any cover-up by Marine brass. "This is the kind of horrific allegation that has to be investigated, and we're going to start in the Senate doing just that," she told the New York Daily News, after marching in Chappaqua's Memorial Day parade. The comments by Clinton, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, seemed to contradict remarks by committee...

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner urged Rep. Jack Murtha on Sunday to stop prejudging allegations that U.S. Marines massacred 24 Iraqi civilians after their convoy was attacked by a IED last November. Asked about Murtha's claim that Marines executed residents of the village of Haditha "in cold blood," Sen. Warner told ABC's "This Week": "At this time, particularly on Memorial Day . . . I think we should be calm and reassuring to the American people that the men and women of our armed forces are admirably and professionally conducting their heavy responsibilities." The top Republican said: "I...

The press is already salivating over the prospect of the next Abu Ghraib-like public relations disaster for the U.S. in the war on terror - ballyhooing as yet unproven allegations that a group of U.S. Marines launched an "unprovoked" attack that killed 24 Iraqi civilians in town of Haditha on November 19, 2005. But was the Marine response really "unprovoked" - as at least 40 press reports have claimed in recent days? The Boston Globe reports that the confrontation was touched off when a roadside bomb struck a supply convoy of Kilo Company, Third Battalion, First Marine Regiment. The explosion...

Former Vice President Al Gore's new global warming movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," warns in emphatic terms that the world is facing a "planetary emergency" unless America curbs its penchant for fossil fuel pollution. Despite widespread coverage of Gore's cinematic debut, however, the press has declined to mention a few inconvenient truths about the ex-veep's own environmental record. One of the most glaring tidbits, for instance, is the pollution Gore and his family caused by maintaining their own toxic waste dump on their farm in Carthage, Tennessee. During the 1992 presidential campaign, Nashville's CBS network affiliate WTVF broadcast video of the...

Speaker of the House wannabe Nancy Pelosi is desperately trying to reassure the public that Democrats won't launch an impeachment jihad against President Bush if they win back the House in November. In fact, lead House Bush-basher John Conyers has canceled his plans for impeachment hearings, she insists. However, Mr. Conyers - who will chair the committee where impeachment would begin if his party regains control - seems to be disregarding the message. Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly insisted to the Washington Post on Friday that his boss had "told her caucus members during their weekly closed meeting Wednesday that impeachment...

Patrick Kennedy's Capitol Hill car crash in the early hours of Thursday morning was the second vehicular mishap suffered by the Rhode Island Democrat in three weeks. Appearing on ABC Radio's Mark Levin Show last night, WRKO Boston radio host Howie Carr detailed the earlier accident, which went unnoted outside of the local press in Providence, Rhode Island. "The accident wasn't reported in the newspapers until almost a week after it happened," Carr complained in his own Boston Herald column last week. "The story ended up in the D section of the Providence Journal, under the East Bay Sports Bulletin...

New York Gov. George Pataki is blasting a nationwide boycott by illegal aliens planned for Monday, calling it a "terrible" idea. "I think it's just terrible," Pataki told WABC Radio host Larry Kudlow on Saturday. "You don't take a demonstration to the streets for a political cause that's going to threaten our schools and close down businesses." The New York Republican suggested that if illegal immigrants participate in a work boycott, they might be fired. "They have to show up for work if they want to continue to have a job," he said. "There are far better ways to gain...

Responding to polls showing that a strong majority of Americans support building a wall across the U.S.-Mexican border, 2008 presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton announced Saturday that she backs a border wall plan that would be supplemented by a "smart fence." "A physical structure is obviously important," Mrs. Clinton told the New York Daily News. "A wall in certain areas would be appropriate." The News said she also supported deploying a high-tech "smart fence" that could spot people approaching from 200 or 300 yards. Clinton also said the deployment of surveillance drones and infrared cameras should also be considered. A Time...

National Republicans may pay a huge price for not doing more to oppose Hillary Clinton's Senate reelection bid this year. In fact, it may cost them control of the House. Bloomberg News reports that the former first lady, along with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Eliot Spitzer, now lead their opponents by such wide margins that their coattails could help Democrats "pick up as many as six New York congressional seats - more than one-third of the 15 they need nationally to gain a House majority." Lee Miringoff, director of the Institute for Public Opinion at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, agrees that...

Former CENTCOM Commander, Gen. Anthony Zinni - who has called for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign because of his alleged incompetence in running the Iraq war - admitted six years ago that he made the disastrous decision to have the U.S.S. Cole use the port of Aden, Yemen for refueling, where the ship was blown up by al Qaeda terrorists. Worse still, at least one report indicates that Gen. Zinni may have played a role in an August 1998 leak that tipped off Osama bin Laden to an impending U.S. cruise missile attack - allowing the top terrorist to...

In one of the largest sums ever donated to charity by a U.S. public official, Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife Lynne gave away nearly $7 million last year to help the poor and to medical research. According to income tax information released by the White House on Friday, the Cheneys' adjusted gross income in 2005 was $8,819,006. The sum was largely the result of Mr. Cheney's stock options from Halliburton and royalties from three books written by Mrs. Cheney. The Cheneys gave more than three-quarters of their income - $6,869,655 - to several charities, including George Washington University's...

Some of the biggest pro-illegal immigration rallies lately have featured a disturbing phenomenon: Democratic Party operatives conducting voter registration drives. After Sunday's massive illegal-immigration rally in Dallas, for instance, the Dallas Morning News headlined their coverage: "Activists sign up protesters to put them on road to polls." The paper quoted Lena Levario, a criminal defense lawyer who's running as a Democrat to be a judge: "I am so optimistic that I have 5,000 voter registration cards," she told the News. By the day's end, the paper said - Levario had yet to tally the new voters she'd harvested from the...

In a hairbrained scheme that was personally approved six years ago by then-President Clinton, the CIA deliberately gave Iranian physicists blueprints for part of a nuclear bomb that likely helped Tehran advance its nuclear weapons development program. The allegation, detailed recently in the book "State of War," by New York Times reporter James Risen, comes as the Iranian nuclear crisis turns white hot, with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boasting ominously on Wednesday that his nation has joined the world's nuclear club. Reports Risen: "It's not clear who originally came up with the idea [to give Tehran nuclear blueprints], but the...