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KABUL – British forces killed an alleged Taliban leader in southern Afghanistan, U.K. and Afghan officials said Tuesday, in what they claimed was a major victory against the insurgency there. Mullah Mansur was killed in a strike by helicopters in Helmand province, the British defense ministry said. Helmand government spokesman Daoud Ahmadi said Mansur was the aviation minister in the Taliban regime that was ousted by the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

U.S. Wary Of Small Boat Terrorism As boating season approaches, the Bush administration wants to enlist America's 80 million recreational boaters to help reduce the chances that a small boat could deliver a nuclear or radiological bomb somewhere along the 95,000 miles of U.S. coastline and inland waterways. According to an April 23 intelligence assessment obtained by The Associated Press, "The use of a small boat as a weapon is likely to remain al Qaeda's weapon of choice in the maritime environment, given its ease in arming and deploying, low cost, and record of success." While the United States...

Iran's Shiites seek expansion, power By SALIM MANSUR Toronto Sun Saturday, February 3, 2007 Even as Democrats in the U.S. Congress work overtime to manufacture a U.S. defeat in Iraq, and their domestic supporters and well-wishers outside of America cheer them on, there is another devious battle unfolding in the Middle East. The sectarian conflict inside Iraq was ignited with demonic precision by the al-Qaida forces. Their publicly announced purpose was to derail the unfolding democratic process set in motion by elections within a constitutional framework, and wreck the hopes of the Iraqi people for freedom and decent living....

Surinamese Deepak Kalpoe, 21, arrives to court in Oranjestad, Aruba, Friday, Aug. 26, 2005. Aruban police arrested Kalpoe and his brother Satish, 18, along with a third person according to government spokesman Ruben Trapenberg, saying he doesn't know if the arrests are connected to the disappearance of Natalee Holloway. The two brothers had been previously detained and released. (AP Photo/Pedro Famous Diaz) Surinamese Satish Kalpoe, 18, front, gets in a car to go to court in Oranjestad, Aruba, Friday, Aug. 26, 2005. Two Surinamese brothers, Satish and Deepak Kalpoe, who had been detained and released in the disappearance of Natalee...

Profile of Natalee Holloway Missing: Natalee Holloway participated in a trip with 125 seniors from Mountain Brook High School to Aruba in the Caribbean. In the early morning hours on May 30, 2005 Natalee was seen leaving a nightclub and getting into a vehicle. She failed to turn up Monday morning for her return flight home and she has not been seen since. Foul play is suspected in her disappearance. Profile: Natalee Holloway was born on October 21, 1986 to Beth and Dave Holloway. She grew up in the close-knit community of Mountain Brook, a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama. She...

NEW - Read a letter to the Governor of Alabama from Natalee Holloway's father Aruba Message Board

Natalee Holloway is shown in this undated family photo. (AP Photo/family photo)

Previous Natalee Holloway ThreadsFirefighters drain a lake, Tuesday, July 26, 2005, in Oranjestad, Aruba searching for Alabama teenager, Natalee Holloway, who vanished nearly two months ago while vacationing in the island. Edwin Comemencia, a police spokesman, confirmed that the draining of the lake across from the Marriott Hotel was part of the investigation into Holloway's disappearance but would not comment further. The draining was expected to take up to 24 hours. (AP Photo/Pedro Famous Diaz)

Natalee Holloway and friends in Aruba 5/30/05

SADDAM'S SON 'SEEN ALIVE' Baghdad residents have said Saddam Hussein's younger son Qusay survived the bomb attack aimed at wiping out the Iraqi leadership. Locals near the restaurant flattened by US bombs told a Reuters journalist they saw Qusay leave the area alive. A B-1 bomber dropped four 2,000-pound bombs on the building in the Mansur district on Monday after the CIA received a tip that Saddam and sons Qusay and Uday were inside. One local couple said they saw Qusay, Saddam's heir, driven away in a government-issue Peugeot 306 car with an AK-47 rifle on his lap about 15...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. soldiers with tanks secured a key section of the Iraqi capital on Saturday, seizing a last known stronghold in central Baghdad of foreign fighters loyal to Saddam Hussein. Reuters correspondent Khaled Yacoub Oweis accompanied the U.S. troops across a bridge over the Tigris river into the once top security district containing the Information and Foreign ministries on the west bank. U.S. army Staff Sergeant David Richards said there had been considerable resistance from remnants of paramilitary forces and foreign volunteers from across the Arab world in the past three days, but opposition petered out on...

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/4/9/163800.shtml The Death of Saddam Hussein Charles R. Smith Thursday, April 10, 2003 Freedom Comes to Baghdad In the late afternoon of April 17, 1943, a top-secret message arrived at Army Air Force headquarters on Guadalcanal. Code breakers working for the U.S. Navy had deciphered a critical message sent by the Imperial Japanese Navy. Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, commander in chief of the Imperial Navy and the architect of the attack on Pearl Harbor, was scheduled to arrive in Bougainville the next morning. The admiral's arrival placed him in range of American P-38 Lighting fighters based on Guadalcanal. Unknown to Yamamoto,...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A U.S. war plane Monday pulverized a "leadership target" in Baghdad believed to have been occupied by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and at least one of his two sons, U.S. officials said. A U.S. military official in Washington confirmed that Saddam and his second son, Qusai, were the targets, but there was no immediate confirmation that they were inside the building during an attack so ferocious it carved a 30-foot-wide crater in the Mansour residential neighborhood. Other reports said Saddam's oldest son, Odai, also might have been inside the building, which was reduced to rubble. The...

BAGHDAD (AFP) - A missile crashed into a residential neighborhood in central Baghdad on Monday, AFP correspondents said. A building collapsed and several others were damaged on Ramadan 14th, a main commercial artery in the al-Mansur area, they said. Shattered glass and stones covered the sidewalk along the road. There was no immediate word on casualties, but two ambulances were seen rushing out of the area with sirens wailing.

Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion. Plot to blow up four embassies revealed on Afghan video: SINGAPORE BOMB CONSPIRACY By JOHN BURTON and ROEL LANDINGIN Financial Times (London) AL QAEDA: TERRORISM AFTER AFGHANISTAN; Pg. 12 February 22, 2002, Friday London Edition 1 John Burton and Roel Landingin on how an al-Qaeda affiliate came close to carrying out a devastating act of terrorism Looming on a small rise overlooking the eight lanes of Napier Road, the US Embassy in Singapore is a forbidding building of dark gray granite. Flanked on ...

WASHINGTON AND CAIRO - In the war on terror, the US is careful to show how fairly it's treating the hundreds of orange-suited Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters locked behind the razor-wire of the US base at Guantanamo, Cuba. But what the US isn't trumpeting is a quiet practice of shipping key Al Qaeda suspects to the Middle East for interrogation. One reason for this new approach, US officials privately say, is that in some cases these militants' home countries have a better understanding of Islamist groups, their contacts, customs, and language. But there's another reason, say US sources. These...