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How The West Was Won The rapid and unexpected decline of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq was officially recognized this week, when Maj. Gen. John Kelly, commanding the Marine Expeditionary Force, turned operational control of Anbar Province over to the Iraqi army and police. Anbar, a vast expanse of desert the size of North Carolina, had been the stronghold of the Sunni insurgency. For years, foreign fighters loyal to al-Qaida had sneaked across Iraq's northwestern border with Syria, into Anbar and down a "rat line" of safe houses in Haditha, Ramadi and Hit. From Fallujah, the arch terrorist Zarqawi...

September 11, 2008, 2:00 p.m. Meet Ingrid MattsonIslam professor mixes Islamism, academics, and politics. By Jonathan Schanzer Ingrid Mattson, a 45-year-old Canadian-born convert to Islam, caused an uproar in the blogosphere after she was invited by the Democratic party to a gathering of religious leaders in Denver on the eve of the convention. Other notable participants included Bishop Charles E. Blake, (Church of God In Christ) and Rabbi Tzvi Weinreb (Orthodox Union). The commotion stemmed from the fact that Mattson is the president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), an organization with close ties to the Muslim...

A federal judge has denied a request by defense attorneys in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case who asked that next month’s re-trial be delayed. In an opinion issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Jorge Solis called their claim that they cannot be ready for trial because of delays in payments of their court-appointed attorneys’ fees “hyperbolic and inaccurate.” Judge Solis chastised the court-appointed attorneys in the case for waiting until late March, about five months after the October mistrial, to file their budget for the re-trial, which includes expenses for pre-trial preparation such as pay for experts and air...

Pentagon Makes Fighting Extremism Top Priority Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon on Thursday officially named "the long war" against global extremism as its top priority and pledged to avert any conventional military threat from China or Russia through dialogue. The Defense Department, in a new national defense strategy, also emphasized the need to subordinate military operations to "soft power" initiatives to undermine Islamist militancy by promoting economic, political and social development in vulnerable corners of the world. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he hoped the change would help establish permanent institutional support for counterinsurgency skills...

Al-Qaeda Draws New Recruits Via Internet Al-Qaeda is using the Internet to recruit vulnerable young people to its terrorist network, according to a programme aired on Saudi Arabian TV late on Tuesday. Umm Osama, the founder of al-Qaeda's first women-only website, al-Khansa, joined several others on the programme to discuss how they renounced jihadist ideology. Among those who sought a response to this question was an imam from the Medina mosque, Saleh Ibn Awad al-Mudamsi, and the father of a young al-Qaeda suspect held in an Iraqi prison. Read More Qaeda Targets U.S. Oil Interests in North Africa U.S....

"CAIR-National had a picture of the World Trade Center on its website and asked readers to donate to help the survivors of the disaster. They offered a link to websites for Muslim and non-Muslim organizations collecting donations for 9/11 survivors, including the Holy Land Foundation's website." (Emphasis mine.)

Terror Financing: After the Holy Land Foundation case ended in a mistrial, Muslim groups cheered and scolded the U.S. for a witch hunt. But defendants got some help from the inside.t turns out that a Hamas-sympathizing juror sabotaged the biggest terror-funding case in U.S. history by bullying jurors who favored convictions. According to interviews conducted since the October mistrial, juror William Neal intimidated colleagues into voting for acquittals of Holy Land leaders accused of funneling millions to Hamas suicide bombers and their families. Neal, a Dallas graphic artist who voted not guilty across the board, launched into obscenity-laced tirades against...

Detention transformed doctor into man of peace Saudi carries no bitterness home as he ends San Antonio stay 05/25/2002 By DAVID McLEMORE / The Dallas Morning News SAN ANTONIO - Dr. Al-Badr Al-Hazmi sits easily on the carpeted floor of the mosque. He speaks with a soft intensity, the words spilling out as he describes the day his life was turned upside down. Stony-faced FBI agents whisked him from his San Antonio home a day after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He was flown to New York and secreted in a detention cell for nearly two weeks. Like hundreds...

In the terrorism case of two young Egyptian nationals and University of South Florida students arrested August 4 in South Carolina, fascinating twists and turns abound. There’s a secret recording of the defendants discussing strategy shortly after their arrest. There’s a You Tube video in which one of the defendants gave instructions in Arabic on converting a remote-control toy into a bomb detonator, which one defendant allegedly told police was made to help people in Arab countries “defend themselves against the infidels invading their countries,” specifically “against those who fought for the United States.” That’s not all. The father of...

THE trial of four key figures with the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development ended last week with a hung jury. Holy Land's defenders and allies are trumpeting the mistrial as a huge victory. Yet the defendants remain in legal jeopardy, with a new trial almost assured - and the prosecution has, at a minimum, closed a lucrative funding channel for the Palestinian terror group Hamas. ...The trial record conclusively demonstrated that Holy Land and several of its unindicted co-conspirators - including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) - grew out of Hamas. Moreover, it showed that they spent...

A federal judge in Dallas declared a mistrial in the case of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) when a jury was unable to reach a verdict on 197 counts brought by the government that accused the Muslim charity of funding terrorism. A hung jury, however, is not an acquittal and even if the Holy Land Foundation eventually is acquitted (the government has indicated it will retry the case) it doesn't necessarily mean the accused is innocent (think O.J. Simpson's murder trial). Anyone in doubt about the game plan for infiltrating, undermining and attacking America from within...

Trail Of Terror: The Council on American-Islamic Relations is cheering a mistrial in a major terror case as a "stunning defeat" for the U.S. government. But the celebration may be premature. Federal prosecutors say they'll retry the case against leaders of the Holy Land Foundation, the nation's largest Muslim charity, which they accused of funneling more than $12 million to Hamas terrorists. CAIR, an unindicted co-conspirator in the case, also cheered a similar outcome in a federal case against Muslim activist Sami al-Arian in Florida. As in the Holy Land case, jurors deadlocked on several terror counts. But prosecutors threatened...

DALLAS — A mistrial has been declared for five of six defendants in the case of a Muslim charity charged with financing Middle Eastern terrorists. The read verdict said the jurors found three leaders of a group that was once America's largest Muslim charity not guilty of funneling illegal aid to terrorists, but the panel was sent back to deliberate on the other defendants after three jurors said the verdicts read in court were wrong. Because of the confusion, the judge did not officially accept those verdicts, which aquitted charity fundraiser Mufid Abdulqader on all counts and two others on...

Terror Funding: Inviting Americans to convert, Osama bin Laden says Islam requires no tax, just a 2.5% tithe to Allah. What he doesn't say is much of those funds benefit terrorists like him. The shocking truth is that Islamic religious giving — called "zakat," the third pillar of Islam — supports terrorism. And millions of the blood money is donated by American Muslims through mosques and various charities once considered mainstream. Since 9/11, U.S. counterterrorism authorities have had to put a whopping six major Muslim charities out of business, including the biggest — the Holy Land Foundation. All have been...

<p>Amid the mountain of evidence released in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial, the most provocative has turned out to be a handful of previously classified evidence detailing Islamist extremists' ambitious plans for a U.S. takeover. A knot of terrorism researchers say the memos and audiotapes, many translated from Arabic and containing detailed strategies by the international Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood, are proof that extremists have long sought to replace the Constitution with Shariah, or Islamic law.</p>

The on-going Holy Land Foundation trial has established important facts about the resident domestic Islamic jihad threat inside the United States. Although evidence brought forward in documents and testimony has explosive implications for US Homeland Security, the intelligence community, and every American citizen, relatively little media attention has been paid to it. This information also has serious implications for professionals, military and civilian, involved in homeland security, DoD plans and strategy as well as national agency intelligence analysts and local law enforcement. The raw documents outlining the strategic goals and activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in America, now exposed for...

A 1991 strategy paper for the Brotherhood, often referred to as the Ikhwan in Arabic, found in the Virginia home of an unindicted co-conspirator in the case, describes the group's U.S. goals, referred to as a "civilization-jihadist process." "The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions," it states. This process requires a "mastery of the...

Amid the mountain of evidence released in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial, the most provocative has turned out to be a handful of previously classified evidence detailing Islamist extremists' ambitious plans for a U.S. takeover. Also Online Link: See the documents presented as evidence in the case Archive: Read previous DMN stories about the Holy Land Foundation case A knot of terrorism researchers say the memos and audiotapes, many translated from Arabic and containing detailed strategies by the international Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood, are proof that extremists have long sought to replace the Constitution with Shariah, or...

The on-going Holy Land Foundation trial has established important facts about the resident domestic Islamic jihad threat inside the United States. Although evidence brought forward in documents and testimony has explosive implications for US Homeland Security, the intelligence community, and every American citizen, relatively little media attention has been paid to it. This information also has serious implications for professionals, military and civilian, involved in homeland security...The raw documents outlining the strategic goals and activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in America, now exposed for public view, are substantiating the concerns.. From an intelligence perspective, the first thing in evaluating these...

DALLAS Prosecutors have produced scores of documents, audio and video tapes, and intercepted phone calls in their attempt to prove that a Muslim charity based in a suburban Dallas office park was actually a fund-raising arm of Middle Eastern terrorists.Much of the evidence has surfaced before in books, newspaper articles and previous trials. But those who track terror-financing say the document haul from the trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development has also produced new information.They say the documents shed light on a web of related organizations of militant Palestinian supporters in the United States, some of...