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If President Obama needed a clarifying moment to help him decide whether to try Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in civilian court, a federal judge's decision last week to bar the testimony of a key witness in the trial of Ahmed Ghailani should have provided it. Ghailani's prosecution for the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in East Africa was supposed to be a slam dunk, which Attorney General Eric Holder would then hold up as evidence that civilian courts could handle the prosecutions of other Guantanamo detainees with more complicated cases. But then Judge Lewis Kaplan threw...

Well, the bubble of Obama supremacy has finally exploded in all our faces and is now lying in tatters, with little giblets of its former hot-air glory spread from here to kingdom come. The candidate who played his "Peace is just an Obama speech away" tune to the easily bamboozled left has just been dealt the final blow that crashed the big, fat hot air balloon. The very first test case was just last week: a former Gitmo detainee, brought to NYC to be tried as a civilian with all the rights of a genuine American citizen, was found guilty...

Unless you've been hiding under a rock I'm sure you heard about the one and only terrorist President Obama sent to our civilian justice system from Gitmo was found not guilty on all 200+ charges except one, conspiracy: A federal jury in Manhattan has returned what is transparently a compromise verdict in the terrorism trial of Ahmed Ghailani. The case centered on al-Qaeda’s bombing of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998. There were 285 counts, including separate murder charges for each of the 224 people killed. Ghailani was acquitted on 284 of them and convicted...

Israeli agents assassinated Al Qaeda's No. 2 official in a shooting in Tehran three months ago, eliminating a mastermind behind the deadly 1998 attacks on American embassies in Africa. Intelligence officials confirmed to The New York Times that two Israeli agents were acting at the behest of the U.S. when they shot Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah from a motorcycle on Aug. 7, the anniversary of the embassy bombings. His daughter Miriam, the widow of Osama bin Laden's son Hamza bin Laden, was also killed.

Available online at: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/01/al_qaedas_operations.php Osama al Kini, also known as Fahid Mohammed Ally Msalam. The US killed al Qaeda's chief of operations in the New Year's Day missile strike in Pakistan's Taliban-controlled tribal agency of South Waziristan, according to a report. The Jan. 1 attack in the town of Karikot in South Waziristan killed Osama al Kini and his senior aide Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan, intelligence officials told The Washington Post. Two other unnamed operatives were also killed in the airstrike. Osama al Kini's is an alias for Fahid Mohammed Ally Msalam, a Kenyan national and a senior al Qaeda...

Called Off the Trail? FBI Agents Probing Terror Links Say They Were Told, ‘Let Sleeping Dogs Lie’ By Brian Ross and Vic Walter Dec. 19 — Two veteran FBI investigators say they were ordered to stop investigations into a suspected terror cell linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and the Sept. 11 attacks. Print This Page Email This Page See Most Sent • Why It's Better to Give Than to Receive • How Did Oprah Shed Those Pounds? • 'Out of Office' Scam May Cost You Dearly MORE ON THIS STORY RELATED STORIES • FBI Let Go Terror...

Somali officials confirmed today that Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, al Qaeda's leader in East Africa and a senior Shabaab commander, was killed at a Somali military checkpoint in Mogadishu earlier this week. Fazul is one of the most wanted terrorists in East Africa for his role in attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania as well as his role within Shabaab. Somalia's minister of information confirmed Fazul's death, according to The Associated Press. "We've compared the pictures of the body to his old pictures," he said. "They are the same. It is confirmed. He is the man and he is...

Judge Lewis Kaplan yesterday deliv ered strong evidence of why terrorist trials don't belong in civilian court. He brought the federal trial of accused al Qaeda bomber Ahmed Ghailani to a halt on its opening day by barring the testimony of the government's key witness. Ghailani faces life in prison for his role in the 1998 bombings of three US embassies in Africa. The witness, Hussein Abebe, sold Ghailani the TNT used in the deadly bombings, and prosecutors say his testimony is critical to their case. But Kaplan ruled that, because the government only learned about Abebe from Ghailani himself...

CNN) -- An al Qaeda operative wanted in connection with the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings was killed in April in Pakistan, American officials have confirmed. Pakistani officials had said that Muhsin Musa Matwalli Atwah was killed in North Waziristan during an airstrike by Pakistani forces near the border with Afghanistan. DNA testing confirmed the Pakistani government's claim, U.S. officials said, and Atwah's name was removed from the FBI's list of Most Wanted Terrorists. Atwah, 42, was born in Egypt. He was indicted in connection with al Qaeda's suicide bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania....

Bloomberg cannot be posted to FR, so here is a link to the story:http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aBZvrM76tIlk&refer=worldwide_news

Jihadi Journalist: The Real Peter Jennings By Debbie Schlussel While the rest of the world is blindly singing the praises of Peter Jennings, here's a reality check: Peter Jennings did more for the cause of Islamic terrorism than any media figure today. And that's nothing to celebrate, honor, or even memorialize. Before there was Al Jazeerah, there was Peter Jennings. From the beginning of Jennings career until his death, Jennings' biased coverage went beyond the pale, bending over backward in "understanding" the terrorists who hate us-- from seeing "their side" when he covered the seige and then murder of innocent...

(CNSNews.com) - Fourteen miles from the U.S. Capitol, a basement-run organization with alleged ties to Hamas and al Qaeda is a crucial link in the planning of any future terrorist attacks against the United States, according to several terrorism experts who analyzed documents and other information obtained in a CNSNews.com investigation. The United Association for Studies and Research (UASR), based in Springfield, Va., is publicly identified as a Muslim think tank but has multiple ties to the terrorism underworld, according to the CNSNews.com sources, who are both inside and outside government. "UASR is a front organization for a terrorist group,"...

How soon (and conveniently) the media forget. Behold this passage from the May 2002 issue of the DNC organ, Newsweek: US District Judge Royce C. Lamberth WHAT WENT WRONGThe inside story of the missed signals and intelligence failures that raise a chilling question: did September 11 have to happen?By Michael Hirsh and Michael Isikoff May 27/02...NEWSWEEK has learned there was one other major complication as America headed into that threat-spiked summer. In Washington, Royce Lamberth, chief judge of the special federal court [the FISA Court] that reviews national-security wiretaps, erupted in anger when he found that an FBI official was...

CYNTHIA McKINNEYPOSITION: Democrat Congresswoman from GeorgiaDONOR: Abdurahman Alamoudi AMMOUNT: $2000 on September 11, 2001 DETAILS: Alamoudi, President of the American Muslim Foundation, is a well known radical mohammedan activist known for publicly praising terrorist organizations. He worked closely as an informal advisor and affiliate of several Clinton administration officials (source). At an October 2000 rally in Washington, D.C. Alamoudi spoke to a radical islamic crowd announcing ""I have been labeled by the media in New York as being a supporter of Hamas. Any supporters of Hamas here? (cheers) Hear that, Bill Clinton? We are all supporters of Hamas ... I...

If there is any one serious person in America whose prior knowledge might have affected events of Sept. 11, that person is presidential aspirant, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts. On Sept. 11, 2001, as we have reported earlier, Sen. Kerry appeared on the Larry King Show. Kerry's honest admission to King bears scrutiny: We have always known this could happen. We've warned about it. We've talked about it. I regret to say, as I served on the Intelligence Committee up until last year, I can remember after the bombings of the embassies, after TWA 800, we went through this flurry...

<p>The American Muslim leader charged with smuggling $340,000 out of Libya was suspected of funneling cash from Osama bin Laden to blind Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman in the failed 1993 attempt to blow up New York City landmarks, The Post has learned.</p>

PRINCETON, NJ -- An Unfinished Life, historian Robert Dallek's new book about the life of President John F. Kennedy, was released this week. The book, among other things, illustrates the gravity of Kennedy's medical problems, describes an alleged affair with a White House intern, and speculates about how Kennedy would have handled the Vietnam War. The publication of this new Kennedy biography raises the question of where Kennedy ranks in the eyes of Americans. Lincoln, Kennedy Have Slight Edge on Greatest U.S. President This Year An April CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll asked Americans: "Who do you regard as the greatest United...

On Meet the Press Vice President Cheney ticked off a list of attacks on Americans that have largely gone unanswered: the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon, the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the destruction of the Khobar Towers military complex in Saudi Arabia in 1996, the east Africa embassy bombings in 1998, and the attack on the USS Cole in 2000. Cheney said that "each time there was almost no credible response from the United States to those attacks." He left one out – the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 by Libya over Lockerbie,...

There is a full page advertisement in the March 31st edition of the Gainesville Sun. Student Government is bringing The "Honorable" Former President Bill Clinton to Gainesville, FL. April 3 at the Stephen C. OConnell Center. The gates open at 3 pm and admission is FREE. Easy access via I-75.