Free Republic

One of the more amusing spectacles of these less-than- amusing times is the emergence of a Kerry fan club among European anti-war enthusiasts. The letter-writing campaign of The Guardian to the voters of Clark County, Ohio, is especially silly, but is only one of many examples. Of course many people support John Kerry for the next president of the United States for a variety of reasons - he is credible when he promises to cut the Federal deficit, for example. But to support him in the hope that he would make American military policy more doveish is absurd. All the...

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- European officials conducted a simulation showing how al-Qaida could kill 40,000 people and plunge the continent into chaos if a crude nuclear device were detonated outside NATO headquarters in Brussels. In first part of the scenario, European officials were asked how they would respond to intelligence that al-Qaida had obtained enough highly enriched uranium to build a nuclear bomb. In the second, they were confronted with computer projections and video displays illustrating the impact of terrorists exploding the device at NATO's headquarters on the outskirts of Brussels, immediately killing 40,000 people, overwhelming hospitals with hundreds of thousands...

Canadians will be madder than hell after they read Stewart Bell's shocking account of how the Canadian government has allowed Sikh, Tamil and Islamic terrorists to come into our home and turn it into a safe house for international terror. Bell, who writes for the National Post and is, in my view, Canada's leading reporter on national security and terrorism, has taken on the courageous task of warning Canadians about the terrorists living among us. This has stirred up a real hornets' nest. He has been threatened by many who don't like his message and has been branded as anti-Islamic...

Politicians and officials from two US administrations traded accusations last week over failures to act against terrorism before and after September 11, 2001. Their claims and counter-claims obscured a crucial weakness in the US military's readiness at the very time when al-Qaeda was at its most vulnerable. In 1998, when Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda training camps were identified as a serious threat, plans were drawn up to attack both him and them. At that time Afghanistan had no air defence perimeter, so that any aircraft could fly in and out unmolested, and it had no ground patrols along...

Spanish Rail Attack Serves Notice to U.S. By CURT ANDERSON, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - Despite security upgrades, new surveillance systems and tightened explosives regulations, America remains vulnerable to a terrorist attack like the deadly bombings on Spanish trains, U.S. officials and terrorism experts said Friday. The simplicity of the timed backpack bombs placed on Spanish commuter trains demonstrates that such an attack can be carried out, they said. "We can't stop terrorism. All we can do is reduce the risks to levels that people can accept," said Anthony Cordesman, a national security analyst at the Center for Strategic and...

HYDERABAD: An Indian man said he killed his family and attempted suicide in despair after being wrongly told he had Aids. "I found that my world had come crashing down" after receiving the faulty diagnosis by telephone, factory welder Madhava Rao, 35, said in a hospital. He wept over the killing of his wife, Shanta Kumari, 28, and sons, aged one and three years. "I was worried my family will have to suffer after my death and I did not want that to happen," Rao said. Meanwhile, the US Centre for Strategic and International Studies has said India was a...

EU prostitute corridor may let in terror bomb AP[ SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2003 11:07:46 AM ] ROTTERDAM : Efforts to tighten security for sea-borne containers won't lessen the risk that terrorists could team up with criminal gangs to sneak a nuclear weapon into Europe by land, through the poorly policed Balkans, some security experts warn. Al-Qaeda or some other terrorist group could send a Soviet-built tactical warhead along the same, well-traveled routes that traffickers use to smuggle prostitutes and drugs into western Europe, said Tom Sanderson of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington...

This is only a part of the report; the section pertaining to the following U.S. Army division; it begins on the report's page 17: A Visit to the 4th Infantry Division/Taskforce Ironhorse --- November 6, 2003 Part One: General Observations As a preface to this report, I should note that flying into Tikrit on a Blackhawk is an experience in itself. The flight profile is a low altitude, high-speed dash, avoiding roads and populated areas, until the outskirts of Tikrit, when the helicopter must slow down and fly a more predictable path. The helipad is near the 4th ID HQ,...

The CIA's search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has found no evidence that former president Saddam Hussein tried to transfer chemical or biological technology or weapons to terrorists, according to a military and intelligence expert. Anthony Cordesman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, provided new details about the weapons search and Iraqi insurgency in a report released Friday. It was based on briefings over the past two weeks in Iraq from David Kay, the CIA representative who is directing the search for unconventional weapons in Iraq; L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civil administrator...

The Bush administration's reaction to the deaths of 16 American soldiers in the downing of a helicopter on Sunday morning was the same as it was to the suicide bombings at police stations and the Red Cross headquarters in Baghdad a week earlier — and the same as it has been to every other setback the coalition has faced: insistence that there is no need for more American troops beyond the 133,000 now in Iraq. It is part of any president's job to inspire confidence under pressure, but given the true number of troops in Iraq — actual armed soldiers...

NINE ISRAELI NATIONALS --- who CSIS suspects are possible foreign agents -- were arrested by Immigration and Ottawa police tactical officers last Friday, blocks from Parliament Hill. The nine have all been charged by Immigration for working in Canada illegally. All are in their 20s and were apparently selling art in Ottawa. The arrests follow similar takedowns of Israelis in Toronto and Calgary over the past few weeks. An Ottawa police source said police were told members of the group were possible agents from Mossad, Israel's spy agency, but given no further information by CSIS. CSIS declined to comment yesterday....

Having achieved a military victory in Iraq and with U.S. ground forces engaged in post war operations in that country, Washington is likely to redeploy a sizable proportion of its air and naval power to East Asia, according to the former Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Command. Speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington on Tuesday, Admiral Dennis Blair noted that while the war in Iraq has had very little direct impact on East Asia, the war had "very important indirect effects." U.S. Navy carrier battle groups and Air Force expeditionary units no...

<p>Walter Laqueur holds the Kissinger Chair for Security Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. He is a prolific author and editor of some 136 books and anthologies on a variety of subjects ranging from the histories of Europe, Fascism, and Russia to Zionism, the Arab-Israeli conflict and terrorism. Many of these books are revisions and updates of previous works, and "No End to War" is the latest version of 10 previous volumes on terrorism, and it is a compelling one.</p>