Free Republic

Extremist websites have lauded Libyan immigrant Mohammed Game’ s botched bombing of a military barracks in northern Italy – the country’s first attempted suicide attack. Police have arrested two people suspected of helping Game in Monday’s attack, in which he lost a hand, his eyesight and suffered injuries to his face. An Italian soldier was slightly injured in the attack. “Well done, God will reward you,” wrote a user of an Al-Qaeda linked website who called himself ‘Abdelaziz the Algerian’. “What great men are those who are accompanied by their God. Death to the tyrants! No regrets, no recrimination, only...

"Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril. When you are ignorant of the enemy, but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal. If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril."-Sun Tzu, The Art of War. Sun Tzu is credited with writing those words 2,500 years ago, but they could have been written as a warning to President Obama as he refuses to acknowledge who we are fighting against, Islamist extremists. He refuses to even understand how our enemy...

Over 40 Murders Reported this Week CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - New details on a deadly discovery across the border from El Paso. This morning police in Ciudad Juarez say at least 12 masked gun men opened fire inside an upscale seafood restaurant and killed at least eight people. The attack comes a day after seven men were found executed in a school soccer field in an upper class neighborhood in Juarez. In all, 40 murders were reported over the holiday week along the border near El Paso. Police say the men were armed with AK-47 and fired off more than...

Seven years ago we suffered the worst attack on the American homeland in our history. The material damage proved far greater than the 1814 British burning of Washington, the human losses more grievous than the almost 2,400 Americans lost at Pearl Harbor. Years later, we tend to forget all the dimensions of that sinister homicidal bombing of our institutions. Radical Islam brazenly signaled that it need not have missiles or sophisticated bombers to burn 16 acres in the heart of Manhattan and set the Pentagon afire. Instead, it could turn from the inside out our own technology against us, in...

Sarajevo, 27 July (AKI) - Miroslav Lajcak, the high representative of the international community in Bosnia, has called for the extradition of foreigners with suspected links to Islamic terrorist organizations, including Syrian-born Imad al-Husseini, known as Abu Hamza. Bosnian daily Nezavisne novine said on Friday that Lajcak, who took office of high representative (OHR) on July 1 warned Bosnian security chief Tarik Sadovic he would be fired if his ministry was too slow in extraditing foreigners, including Abu Hamza, whose citizenships have been revoked. Thousands of mujahadeen from Islamic countries flocked to Bosnia to fight for local Muslims in 1992-1995...

A BANGLADESH-born American artist has gone to extreme lengths to ensure he is never accused of being a terrorist. Hasan Elahi, an arts professor from New Jersey, has fitted himself with an ankle bracelet that tracks his every movement and posts them on the internet, CBS news reports. Every time he moves, he takes a picture and a GPS pinpoints his location. Then it's all posted on his website. Web wanderers can then view every airport he passes through, every meal he eats and every pit stop along the way. Plenty are watching - his site gets 160,000 hits a...

One reason for Islamic terrorism is there are too many Moslems. At least in the sense that the economies of Islamic countries cannot create enough jobs for all the young people coming of age. Consider that for the last fifty years, the population of all Moslem countries has tripled. That's population growth that is more than double the rate of the world as a whole, and about ten times the rate of Europe. It's about five times the rate in the United States. Many of those unemployed young men are angry, and making war is a typical activity of angry...

"Ideally, in the case of a right (for example, the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures) that could be asserted against government measures for protecting national security, one would like to locate the point at which a slight expansion in the scope of the right would subtract more from public safety than it would add to personal liberty and [conversely]. That is the point of balance, that determines the optimal scope of the right." -- Richard A. Posner, Not a Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency, p. 31 Judge Richard Posner's new book...

But while this might help explain Assad's blunders, an explanation for Syrian belligerency requires that one dig deeper into the nature of the regime. Assad came out strongly in favor of the armed Palestinian intifada in 2001, was dead set against the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, and he opened Syria's borders up to jihadists wishing to fight the Americans there. ...his security apparatus seems to have played a major role in orchestrating the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, among other violent acts. This is an impressive record for a young president after less than six...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the Bush administration did not have the legal authority to go forward with military tribunals for detainees at the Guantanamo Bay military base in Cuba. The 5-3 ruling means officials will either have to come up with new procedures to prosecute at least 10 so-called enemy combatants awaiting trial, or release them from U.S. military custody. The case was a major test of President Bush's authority as commander in chief in a wartime setting. Bush has aggressively asserted the power of the government to capture, detain, and prosecute suspected...

On the Proposed AmnestyFirst of all, I don't think it makes any sense. IED makers and planters kill more Iraqis than Americans, just like the rest of the "resistance". They kill children. They kill motorists. They lack fire discipline and a certain degree of conscience. It is a fallacious belief that there exist Iraqis who make bombs destined only American stryker vehicles and none for Shi'a mosques; and that those making bombs don't collaborate with those recruiting human bombs for Iraqi neighborhoods. Secondly, I don't think it will have the desired effect: ending the insurgency. Because the amnesty is general,...

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi Killed In Air Raid... BAGHDAD, IRAQ (NS/AP) - I woke up early, as I do every weekday morning, around 0330 ET to the news that al-Zarqawi had been killed in an air strike in a remote area 30 miles northeast of Baghdad in the volatile province of Diyala, just east of the provincial capital of Baqouba, in a heavily forrested area... His own al-Qaida people, along with Iraqi Civilians and Jordanians helped to pinpoint where this evil man was hiding... This tells me one very important thing right off the bat, the Iraqi people have had enough...

The growth in the number of agents patrolling US borders has slowed in the 4½ years since the September 11 terrorist attacks and concerns over illegal immigration override fears of terrorist infiltration in the allocation of border resources, according to a new analysis

Reacting to a recent wave of arrests of activists and others in Syria and yesterday's sentencing of a civil society activist to five years in prison, Amnesty International today called on the Syrian government to immediately release all those arrested for peacefully expressing their opinions. "This new crackdown on suspected government opponents is deeply troubling," said Malcolm Smart, Director of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa programme. "We are particularly concerned that many of these people are being held in incommunicado detention, where they are at risk of torture." Scores have been arrested from across the social and political...

Muslim Mob 'Terrorizes' Children in Indonesian Sunday School(CNSNews.com) - Approximately 30 Christian children fled in panic after a mob of Islamic militants raided and vandalized their Sunday school class, which was being held in a private home last weekend in Curug, Indonesia, according to a Christian group called Voice of the Martyrs (VOM). The violence came less than a month after three teenaged Christian schoolgirls were attacked and beheaded as they walked through a cocoa plantation on their way to school. One girl's severed head was reportedly placed in front of a church, eight miles from where the bodies were...

In a devastating 81-page audit, released in 2005, Glenn A. Fine, the U.S. Department of Justice's inspector general, described eight factors that contributed to the VCF's failure. Among them: poorly defined and slowly evolving design requirements; overly ambitious schedules; and the lack of a plan to guide hardware purchases, network deployments, and software development for the bureau. Fine concluded that four years after terrorists crashed jetliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the FBI, which had been criticized for not "connecting the dots" in time to prevent the attacks, still did not have the software necessary to connect...

The US military is for the first time making its own plans for dealing with domestic terrorist attacks. Under the plans, quick-reaction forces will be prepared to deal with 15 potential scenarios, including simultaneous bomb attacks. The civilian authorities would usually expect to plan for and provide the vast majority of the resources and personnel for major domestic emergencies. Now military resources such as sniffer dogs will be easier to deploy. The Department of Defense has not traditionally taken a major role in domestic operations. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prevents the military from taking part in any law...

LES COMBES, Italy (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI decried a wave of "abominable terrorist attacks" in Egypt, Turkey, Iraq and Britain and called on God to convert the hearts of those responsible for the bloodshed. Such violent attacks "offend God and humanity," the pope said after praying the Angelus July 24 from the Alpine retreat where he was vacationing. May "God stay the murderous hand" of the terrorists who are driven by "fanaticism and hatred" and may he "convert their hearts" to the ideals of reconciliation and peace, he said. Bomb blasts July 23 at the Egyptian resort town of...

The Muslim Brotherhood has struggled for more than 75 years to impose radical Islam on the nation. Successive regimes — British, Royal, Nasserite and most recently that of Hosni Mubarak — have, in their own autocratic ways, successfully kept the organization under wraps. Today’s MB leadership has adopted a moderate face, including even saying Coptic Christians are welcome as members, but the Brotherhood remains true to its Islamist core beliefs. Islamism can be defined as a movement that seeks control of government, establishment of Islam as the state religion, and imposition and enforcement of Shari’a law. The Muslim Brotherhood, established...