Free Republic

- A U.S.-led assault on a compound controlled by an extremist Islamic group turned up a list of names of suspected militants living in the United States and what may be the strongest evidence yet linking the group to al-Qaida, coalition commanders said Monday. The cache of documents at the Ansar al-Islam compound, including computer discs and foreign passports belonging to Arab fighters from around the Middle East, could bolster the Bush administration's claims that the two groups are connected, although there was no indication any of the evidence tied Ansar to Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) as Washington...

HALABJA, Iraq - U.S. specialists have discovered evidence that a Kurdish Islamic militant group that the Bush administration has linked to al-Qaida was concocting chemical weapons in the mountains of northeastern Iraq, a U.S. military commander said Tuesday. The special forces soldiers also found recipes for three forms of chlorine gas and for ricin, a deadly toxin derived from castor beans, American intelligence officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. U.S. aircraft, 100 American special forces and more than 8,000 Kurdish fighters on Friday swept the Ansar al Islam ("Partisans of Islam") militants out of the sliver of territory...