Free Republic

Muhammad’s father, Melvin Bledsoe, told the New York Times that he does not believe his son has ties to al-Qaeda. This despite the fact that in the fall of 2007, his son went to Yemen, where he lived for 16 months. He married a woman from Yemen and was imprisoned for using a false passport. Sometime after his release from the Yemeni prison he returned to America, where the JTTF picked up his trail. In his interview with the Times, Melvin Beldsoe “suggested that [his son] might be trying to link himself to al-Qaeda because he believes it will lead...

HONOLULU (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama said on Friday it appeared the man suspected of trying to bomb a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas was a member of al Qaeda and had been trained and equipped by the Islamic militant network. Defending his administration's counterterrorism efforts amid scathing Republican criticism, Obama said he received preliminary results of the reviews he ordered into air travel screening procedures and a "terrorist watchlist system" and expected final results in the days to come. Obama, who is on vacation in Hawaii, had called for an immediate study of what he termed "human and systemic...