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The strategy for getting U.S. forces out of Afghanistan depends on training Afghan soldiers and police to protect the country themselves, but on Monday the U.S. military suspended most joint field operations with Afghan forces because so many Americans are being killed by the men they are training. Afghan government troops -- our allies -- have turned their guns on NATO forces 36 times this year, killing 51, most of them Americans. That is more attacks than the last two years combined.

Fighting between Yemeni security forces and members of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has left people on both sides dead over the past two days, Yemeni security forces said. The reports came as President Ali Abdullah Saleh has been fighting to hold onto power, arguing that he is best equipped to lead the fight against Islamists. Three "al Qaeda terrorists were killed" and six others were arrested in Lawdar district, Yemen's official news agency Saba reported Saturday. On Sunday, seven Yemeni soldiers were killed and seven others were wounded when members of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula attacked...

Ayman al-Zawahiri, a cerebral Egyptian surgeon who joined his first jihadist cell at age 15, is as much the force behind al-Qaeda as his more famous friend Osama bin Laden. Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1187180,00.html#ixzz1CkBTyIVo

Headline and link only, due to evil AP article. Pakistani Troops/Police Abducted

BAGHDAD (AP) - U.S. and Iraqi forces detained a suspect linked to networks bringing sophisticated roadside bombs into Iraq during a raid Friday in the main Shiite district in Baghdad. Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr meanwhile issued a statement, his first since his call for peaceful resistance earlier this month. In it he blamed the United States for Iraq's problems. The suspect, who was detained by U.S. and Iraqi forces during a raid in the Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City, was believed to be tied to networks bringing the weapons known as explosively formed projectiles, or EFPs, into Iraq,...

The DNC's mantra that President Bush "misled the nation into war" is losing whatever clout it once had as more and more people become better informed. The massive post-invasion evidence mounts confirming that it was the mainstream media and leading Democrats -- not the Bush Administration -- who lied to the American people on the issue of pre-war ties between Saddam Hussein's regime and al-Qaida terrorists. We now know that during the years before 9/11/01 and the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, over 8,000 terrorists were trained inside Iraq by the Iraqi military.

"You are exactly right, and let me tell you one thing: those people, who say Iraq is not ready for democracy, are racists. They are absolute racists! They are saying that the Iraqi people are neither intelligent enough nor mature enough to be able to experience democracy."

The U.S. Predator strike inside Pakistan's border area, aimed at al-Zawahri's possible stay in a village may or may not have missed its target. But the missile attack triggered a series of political explosions in the region. In short, the issues are out. I addressed them in a series of interviews over the weekend. Here is a summary:

Opponents of the war say the only Al Qaeda elements in Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion were those in Kurdish areas not controlled by Saddam. This simply is not so, but for the sake of argument, let’s say it is. And if so, would not the U.S. – as a critical front in the global war on terror – have to invade those areas to shut down the Al Qaeda cells? Of course. And that in itself would have been a far more dangerous “limited war” with Iraq involving a direct ground confrontation with Saddam’s army anyway.

Al-Qaeda knew it was under surveillance in America, but it didn't know much about that system. Soon, it will know and will use this knowledge to its advantage. While some among us are rotating their pre-9/11 planet back in time, future jihad is railing against another of its enemies' fatal weaknesses.

By Mehmet Kalyoncu This provocative analysis of Turkey's nuclear ambitions, informed by current political realities and a historical summary of the country's previous plans and nuclear partnerships, asks the devil's advocate question: what do the US and EU plan to give Turkey to keep it from going nuclear? Recent heated statements of a nuclear variety made by both Iran and Israel toward each other introduce a whole new dimension for Turkey’s security concerns in its neighborhood. Given the current circumstances, Turkey could even be considered late in developing nuclear capabilities for defense purposes. However, that Turkey can and that Turkey...

Insurgencies are not put down in a fortnight. But considering the successes in the recent counter-insurgency sweep in Iraq's Al Anbar Province, one fact becomes obvious to anyone with so much as a sliver of an understanding of ground combat operations: Eliminating the insurgency in Iraq is best left to those who best know how to do it.

In the middle of the War on Terror, October 15 was a great achievement of the United States, but above all an Iraqi victory. If we divide the number of US soldiers who died in the conflict till October 15, we'd realize that for each fallen hero, 4,500 Iraqi voters were given the right to vote against Terror. In the global conflict with Jihadism, U.S. efforts and sacrifices are triggering greater resources against the empire projected by Ayman Thawahiri and Usama Bin Laden.

Finally, we have a solution to the threat of Islamic Jihad. Just shy of a year after the Jihadist murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh and only weeks past the four-year anniversary of 9/11, that fateful day when the world discovered such a war even existed, Holland’s Princess Irene, sister to Queen Beatrix, offers up a strategy for world peace: “Let’s talk.”

An interesting Newsweek story this week – that references CT Blog among its sources – claims scoring a point against what it paints as a “questionable” Bush administration portrayal of Abu Azzam. In short, the authors of the article, Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball claim the Administration’s leaders aggrandized the real importance of the killed al Qaida commander basing their conclusion on a number of non-identified U.S. counter-terrorism officials and a report posted by our colleague Evan Kohlman on the blog. The “charge” by Newsweek is about the hierarchy of the man. Was he or was he not the “number...

By Abigail R. Esman World Defense Review columnist "WE WILL NEVER FORGET!" declared the posters taped across the city, the banner strung above the massive hole that once had been the World Trade Center, in the months after 9/11. And for a year, anyway, tourists came to pay respects at Ground Zero while New Yorkers brought flowers to their local fire departments, contributed to funds benefiting the families of those killed, pasted American flags to the windshields of their cars, and somberly marked the eleventh day of every month that passed. But four years later, to walk the streets of...

Unlike the easy ambush of Private Jessica Lynch and her ordnance maintenance unit that made a wrong turn in a bad neighborhood back in 2003, insurgents today are learning that striking any American unit – combat arms or not – can be costly. "When the guys we're training today get hit, they'll fight their asses off," Reece says. Recruits are certainly learning from those who've been in the fight.

13 July 2005: Britain is seeking the special assistance of the Indian government to deal with Asian Islamic terrorism, and relations are also being strengthened with Spain and France to combat North African terrorism. Diplomats said that Britain is also actively considering creating a US homeland security-type department, and a bill will be brought for this in the British Parliament soon, and as part of a new anti-terror regime, following the London bombings last week, mosques will be compulsorily registered, and visitors to them would have to reveal their identities.

That all is not well between Pakistan and Afghanistan was apparent when the U.S. President George W. Bush indulged in some telephonic diplomacy on June 21, 2005, to resolve friction between two key allies in the 'war on terror', urging both to exercise restraint. Shortly after President Bush's call to General Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani President called his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai and both of them reportedly promised to 'continue co-operation' in combating terrorism. But the seriousness of the situation was evident in the fact that the General called Karzai a second time on June 23 to reiterate Pakistan's claim...

"ETA has no experience in carrying out simultaneous attacks on such a scale, and it has limited resources, while al-Qaeda has deep pockets and has already demonstrated its capacity to mount co-ordinated spectaculars. It is a big job for ETA so there are reasons to think they could be doing it with somebody else. "They have a history of collaborating with others, the IRA for example, and I don’t see why they shouldn’t have established a relationship with an al-Qaeda group."