Free Republic

Libyans protesting the Prophet Muhammad cartoons set fire to the Italian consulate in Benghazi on Friday in a riot that killed at least 10 people, an Italian diplomat said. Libyan security officials said 11 people were killed or wounded during the six-hour riot when police firing bullets and tear gas tried to contain more than 1,000 demonstrators hurling rocks and bottles. The casualties included police officers, but the officials declined to say how many people had died. Italian diplomat Domenico Bellantone said between 10 and 11 people had died, and all were Libyan _ either police or protesters. He spoke...

Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough in today’s Washington Times provide the perspective of Army Colonel H.R. McMaster, who is leading the campaign in Iraq to retake the border town of Tal Afar, on the Islamo-fascists he is confronting: Col. McMaster appeared in the Pentagon this week via a video hookup to describe how his 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, joined by 3rd Iraqi Army Division, routed most of the extremists. But it was his description of how the enemy occupied their safe haven that got the most attention. Col. McMaster told of beheadings, gunshot killings, a booby-trapped dead child and kidnappings....

Al-Qaida has a master plan to take over the world and turn it into an Islamic state - by the year 2020. Wishful thinking? Not in the minds of the top terrorist lieutenants interviewed by Jordanian journalist Fouad Hussein for a new book - including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, mastermind of many atrocities in Iraq. The plan, which is revealed for the first time in the Australian publication The Age, has seven phases: Phase 1: The "awakening" in the consciousness of Muslims around the world following the 9/11 attacks, which were aimed at provoking the U.S. into declaring war on the...