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Pentagon Makes Fighting Extremism Top Priority Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon on Thursday officially named "the long war" against global extremism as its top priority and pledged to avert any conventional military threat from China or Russia through dialogue. The Defense Department, in a new national defense strategy, also emphasized the need to subordinate military operations to "soft power" initiatives to undermine Islamist militancy by promoting economic, political and social development in vulnerable corners of the world. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he hoped the change would help establish permanent institutional support for counterinsurgency skills...

(IsraelNN.com) A Nigerian group threatened to break off negotiations for the release of kidnapped Israeli businessman on Thursday night, using the excuse that Israel National News had referred to its members as "terrorists" in a story published earlier Thursday. The group, the "Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta" (MEND), denied responsibility for kidnapping the 60-year-old Israeli businessman who was working in Nigeria but offered assistance in negotiations for his release. According to a report in Reuters, MEND, which is comprised of indigenous gunmen, said Thursday evening that the Israeli hostage "has been located and seems to be a...

Barack Obama's campaign hasn't advertised this a great deal this week, but the campaign's "Action Wire" has been waging large-scale campaigns against critics. That includes tens of thousands of e-mails to television stations running Harold Simmons' Bill Ayers ad, and to their advertisers — including a list of major automobile and telecommunications companies. And tonight, the campaign launched a more specific campaign: an effort to disrupt the appearance by a writer for National Review, Stanley Kurtz, on a Chicago radio program. Kurtz has been writing about Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers, and has suggested that papers housed at the University...

CAC DOCUMENTS LINK BARACK OBAMA TO 1960'S TERRORIST AYERS UPDATE: Newly Released Documents Highlight Obama’s Relationship With Ayers Fox News hat tip Carolyn Obama’s association with Ayers, who now teaches at the university, has become an issue in the Illinois senator’s presidential campaign. The Weather Underground took credit for several nonfatal bombings on targets that included the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol, and critics accuse Obama of rubbing elbows with an unabashed 1960s radical. Obama has said that, although he knew Ayers as a professor involved in community outreach efforts in Chicago, he doesn’t share Ayers’ extreme views. The massive...

The Chicago bully tactics aren’t going to work. While Obama sics his lawyers and Kossack minions on TV stations that dare to air an independent ad about his close relationship with Weather Underground terrorist-turned-academic Bill Ayers, the truth is seeping out. Thanks to the efforts of NRO’s Stanley Kurtz, blogger Steve Diamond, and intense pressure from Internet readers and talk radio listeners, the University of Illinois - Chicago was forced to release a trove of papers that a former official attempted to shield from public view. There are some 140 boxes and 1,000 files to sift through — and MSM...

Here is a clip provided by Citizens United, from their film to be released next week called, "Hype: The Obama Effect." HYPE: The Obama Effect examines the Junior Senator from Illinois and his record. Is he the new Kennedy or recycled Jimmy Carter? Is he the one who will finally change Washington, or will challenges like the Tony Rezko trial reveal politics as usual? Is he the uniter the country begs for, or a liberal divider? HYPE: The Obama Effect seeks the answers.

CHICAGO, Aug. 27 (UPI) -- Reporters reviewing records in Chicago have so far found nothing startling in documents linking Sen. Barack Obama to 1960s radical William Ayers. The man soon to become the Democratic presidential nominee served with Ayers on an education reform group, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, during the 1990s. Files detailing activities of the panel were made available to the media Tuesday after being restricted by the Daley Library at the University of Illinois in Chicago. The UIC records show that Obama and Ayers attended board meetings, retreats and at least one news conference together as the program...

Greta says there's new information on the relationship between Obama and William Ayers. Is this something new? She called it breaking news?

A BBC news girl attacked TV yesterday for failing to show viewers the Taliban’s “humanity”. Presenter Lyse Doucet’s astonishing statement comes as an Apache gunship hero revealed the fanatics aim to capture a British soldier and SKIN HIM LIVE on the internet. Military Cross winner Ed Macy — whose book Apache is serialised in The Sun from today — tells how an intelligence officer gave details of the Taliban butchers’ sick plan.....

* The Israeli Cabinet approved on August 17 the release of almost 200 Palestinian security prisoners as a "goodwill gesture" to Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas. The list includes several prisoners "with blood on their hands," who, by definition, were involved in the murder of Israelis. * According to an informal estimate by Israeli security bodies, about 50 percent of the terrorists freed for any reason whatsoever returned to the path of terror, either as a perpetrator, a planner, or as an accomplice. In the terror acts committed by these freed terrorists, hundreds of Israelis were murdered, and thousands were...

Insurgencies since World War II have worn down their enemies and then prevailed — with one major exception: Malaya (communist insurgency 1948-1960) before it became Malaysia. Iraq, where the final results will not be known until after U.S. troops leave everything to Iraqi security forces, may become the second. In 1946, the French in Indochina were up against a communist insurgency in decolonization disguise, and after eight years of guerrilla warfare were defeated at Dienbienphu in 1954, which clinched victory for North Vietnam's Marxist republic. Six months after Dienbienphu the French army faced a nationalist insurgency in Algeria, which was...

In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen ''I don't regret setting bombs,'' Bill Ayers said. ''I feel we didn't do enough.'' Mr. Ayers, who spent the 1970's as a fugitive in the Weather Underground, was sitting in the kitchen of his big turn-of-the-19th-century stone house in the Hyde Park district of Chicago. The long curly locks in his Wanted poster are shorn, though he wears earrings. He still has tattooed on his neck the rainbow-and-lightning Weathermen logo that appeared on letters taking responsibility for bombings. And he still has the ebullient, ingratiating manner,...

Click on link to see PDF of Obama's panicky letter to station managers across the country...

So for Democrats, the war on terrorism is over. Not the terrorism part, mind you. Just the war part. In 2004, the party's platform used the phrase "war against terror" or its equivalent ("war against Al Qaeda"; "war against a global terrorist movement") 12 times--beginning on page one, paragraph three. Typical language: "As Democrats and Americans, we yield to no one in our commitment to do everything necessary to win the war on terror." Foreign policy, led by "Defeating Terrorism," dominated the document. The economy was relegated to a sheepish second place. Four years ago, the war against terrorism was...

Five months in jail for driving Mr. bin Laden? Only in America! Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s former chauffeur, recently won an appallingly light sentence for aiding al-Qaeda. Hamdan’s apologists call him a hapless, innocent motorist. If so, anyone steering a bank-job getaway car is “just a driver.” Hamdan is no naïf. He is a camp-trained al-Qaeda member who a Guantanamo military tribunal convicted of giving “material support” to America’s chief enemy in the War on Terror. Hamdan transported weapons (including two shoulder-launched missiles with which he was caught), drove and hid bin Laden, and guarded this mass murderer with...

Several clashes in Afghanistan's south and east have killed 30 Taliban fighters, officials said Sunday. A group of Taliban insurgents attacked police checkpoints in Nad Ali district of southern Helmand province on Friday, sparking clashes that killed 23 militants, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. Four police were wounded and 13 other militants were detained, it said. Following the clash, the police abandoned the checkpoints, the statement said.

A federal appeals court today rejected lawsuits by victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks against Saudi Arabia and senior members of the Saudi royal family, alleging that they helped foster al-Qaeda and other Islamist terrorist groups. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, ruling in Manhattan, said Saudi Arabia and members of its royal family were protected from being sued because the State Department had not officially designated the desert kingdom as a supporter of terrorism. Under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, foreign governments are immune from such lawsuits unless the State Department finds in advance that...

Speaks for itself.

'So, let me get this straight,' Graham the co-pilot says over the intercom. 'We're up here getting shot at. We have some guy on board who has spent a morning trying to kill US soldiers, whose very desire is to die in battle. We are spending $4,000 per hour per bird. We're shipping his ass to Bagram to give him the best medical care available in Afghanistan.' He pauses for effect. 'Just so he can get better and come after us all over again.' Another pause. 'Everyone OK with that?'

Italy: 5 arrested on suspicion of planning attacks ROME - Police broke up a suspected terror cell Saturday and arrested five North Africans, including the alleged leader who Italian officials said recruited Islamic extremists for attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan.

(IsraelNN.com) Hamas terrorists have videoed themselves amidst the ruins of the former Jewish town of Atzmona in Gush Katif, Gaza - singing, dancing and play-acting their militaristic plans against Israel. The set for most of the act is the destroyed synagogue of Atzmona. It can be seen here in its former glory. Other former houses in Atzmona appear to be part of a training ground for urban-area fighting. The video, which also contains long sections of a woman terrorist speaking in Arabic, is being circulated by Jewish sites partly as a warning of what Hamas has in mind for additional...

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba — America's first war crimes trial since World War II went to the jury Monday as a panel of six U.S. military officers began deliberating whether to send Osama bin Laden's former driver away for life. The jurors, who were hand-picked by the Pentagon, were reviewing evidence from a two-week trial at the Guantanamo Bay Navy base that has become the first full test of the Bush administration's system for prosecuting alleged terrorists. Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni held here since May 2002, faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted of conspiracy and...

Six years ago last week, a bomb went off in the Frank Sinatra Cafeteria at Hebrew University's Mt. Scopus campus. Seven students were murdered. The attack was the work of a Hamas cell from the Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan. The Silwan cell was one of the most prolific and murderous cells Israel has seen. In addition to the massacre at Hebrew University, its four members carried out the massacre at Moment Café in Jerusalem in which 12 were murdered; the Sheffield billiards club bombing in Rishon Lezion, which left 16 dead; and the bombing of railroad tracks in Lod. The...

It’s Time Israel Woke Up By Burt Prelutsky Because December 7, 1941, was when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, FDR quite aptly called it a day that would live in infamy. For Israel, July 15, 2008, is just such a date. That was the day that Ehud Olmert’s government swapped child murderer Samir Kuntar and four of his Lebanese cohorts to Hezbollah for the corpses of Israeli army reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. Israel agreed to do this even though the Arabs reneged on their promise to disclose the present whereabouts of Israeli airman Ron Arad. While one can...

A top commander for al-Qaida says American people are as responsible for the U.S. military's ability to "wage war and spill the blood of Muslims" as is the American government. "Islam does not distinguish between the American people and the American government, since both are in a state of war with Islam," Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid said in a recent interview. The comments came in a report from Pakistan's independent television network Geo News, which was monitored and translated the Middle East Media Research Institute. The MEMRI report said al-Yazid is considered al-Qaida's No. 3 man and "top commander in Afghanistan."...

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba -- The commander of the Guantanamo Bay detention center said Saturday he has been researching new potential accommodations for Osama bin Laden's driver, who could be held here indefinitely regardless of the verdict at his war crimes trial. A jury of American military officers is expected to begin deliberations Monday in the case of Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni who faces a maximum life sentence on charges of conspiracy and supporting terrorism. Even if he is found innocent, he may not leave this U.S. Navy base. The military retains the right to hold those considered to...

Al Qaeda’s second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, may be injured or even dead, according to a CBS News report based on an intercepted letter that urgently requests a doctor to treat Zawahiri

BAGHDAD — The operation now under way to clear enemies from Iraq’s Diyala province is Iraqi-conceived, Iraqi-planned and Iraqi-led, a senior coalition officer said July 30. U.S. Army Brig. Gen. David Perkins, Multinational Force Iraq spokesman, along with Iraqi Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Mohammed al-Askari, spoke with reporters at a Baghdad news conference. Perkins said Coalition forces will provide capabilities such as air support, helicopter support, some logistical support and engineer support for the operation in Diyala. “[These are] those things that complete the capabilities of the Iraqi Security Forces and enable them to accomplish their mission,” Perkins said. Askari...

When Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg announced a new antismoking campaign the other day, they put their money in line with their mouths. The former Microsoft chairman and the mayor of New York together pledged $500 million to target what Mr. Gates called "one of the greatest health challenges facing developing countries." AP This Blackwater helicopter could become an angel of hope. The same day they were announcing their campaign, the president of Sudan was on a visit to Darfur. Presumably it was his way of responding to news that the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court is seeking an...

The real test of moral courage is how one acts—not just talks—in real-life situations. And in the one concrete instance when the Illinois senator was called upon to stand up for justice, he was nowhere to be seen. In fact, Barack Obama demonstrated a level of moral cowardice unmatched by anyone in either the US House or Senate. The case in point....the case of Muslim Zionist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury.

KABUL (Reuters) - Iran has become the main transit route for militants trying to join insurgents in Afghanistan, an Afghan government daily said on Sunday. Some Western nations with troops in Afghanistan have said that Iranian weapons destined for the Taliban have been seized in Afghanistan, although they are unsure whether Tehran knew about the shipments. The Shii'te Islamic Republic, which is facing growing international pressure over its nuclear program, has denied funding or arming the radical Sunni Taliban in Afghanistan. The daily Anis said three foreign militants, two from the Middle East and one from Turkey, were captured during...

The detention center at Guantánamo hangs on the US like a ball and chain. Both presidential candidates and President Bush want it closed. But that won't be easy without broad consensus on how to deal with current and future detainees. On the tip of Cuba at a US naval base, the facility was set up in 2002 for the interrogation and detention of terrorist suspects after the 9/11 attacks. It now holds about 265 prisoners, including 14 of "high value." It may have helped prevent any other 9/11-style attacks, but Guantánamo has cost America considerable moral standing in the war...

Yesterday I saw the World Net Daily article suggesting Islamofascist terrorist organizations, including the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, will be providing security for Obama in Palestinian territory. Tony Blair, in a recent trip to Israel, cancelled a trip into Palestinian territory because the Palestinians intended that arrangement for him.I did not blog this then because I tend to want other sources to back up what World Net Daily says. Today, I think it is safe to say the Obama campaign confirmed the story in an indirect way.Major Garrett reports there is some squabbling over Obama's speech in Berlin. Obama wants...

A weekly SATIRICAL feature from your friends at Not WRIGHT for America Not WRIGHT for America has learned that Barack Obama will make the bold and surprising move of calling for a Bill of Rights. Senator Obama will use the occasion of his meeting with Palestinian leaders to unveil his new plan. Readers may recall that Not WRIGHT for America noted Obama's support for special new rights for terrorists in early July. Not WRIGHT for America was able to obtain an advance copy of Obama's remarks, including the candidate's own notes, which he plans to make Wednesday in the West...

JERUSALEM – Members of the most active West Bank terror organization are set to serve in security forces being deployed to protect Sen. Barack Obama during his trip to the West Bank tomorrow, WND has learned.

BEIJING - Three separate bus explosions killed at least three people and injured 14 in the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming on Monday, media said, amid a security clampdown ahead of next month's Beijing Olympics. The causes were not immediately clear, but the blasts came within a matter of hours of each other in the capital of Yunnan province and less than three weeks before the Beijing Games, which China has warned could be a target of terrorist attacks. An explosion on one bus happened at the Panjiawan stop at 7.10 a.m. and the second blast was nearby, the official...

On his first day in office, President Barack Obama will head to the situation room for a video conference with his most important commander, General David Petraeus. If the conversation is chilly, it is not just the awkwardness of virtual chatting. Obama and Petraeus have a history. While Obama has called for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq, Petraeus oversaw the deployment of more than 30,000 additional troops. To win support from the left, Obama postured as a skeptic of the general's Iraq strategy during congressional hearings. Meanwhile, Petraeus has emerged as something of a hero to the right--and, despite his...

Homeland Security: In a sign background checks are far too lax, an alarming number of Arabs and Muslims have landed sensitive government jobs only to be caught later spying for the enemy.Guarding against penetration by terrorist agents and sympathizers should be a top concern of public agencies, but it's not. Guarding against charges of job discrimination is. Multiculturalism and political correctness have made it easier for the terrorists to use Arabs and Muslims to infiltrate the government and steal security secrets. In the latest example, a former city 911 operator faces multiple felony counts for allegedly searching the names of...

[Arab racism against Jews even inside Israel] Fear of calling a terrorist a terrorist Ha'aretz, Israel - Jul 7, 2008 If justifying the murder of innocents because they belong to a certain hated group is not abject racism, I'd like to know what is. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/999795.html

This article originally appeared in the Washington Post this past weekend, and should make it abundantly clear to our nation's leaders as well as to our citizens, that our nation has serious reasons to be concerned about terror cells operating in the United States. After the attacks of September 11, the President kept repeating the mantra that "We are fighting them over there so we won't have to fight them over here!" As I often pointed out, I believe that we already have them "over here!" The report notes that terror suspects arrested in the far-flung corners of the world...

Three Indonesian Muslim militants on death row for the 2002 Bali bombings have reaffirmed their readiness to die, provided the execution is done in accordance to the Islamic laws. Their lawyers have told Antara news agency the planned execution will only go ahead if the Supreme Court denies their third legal review; the latest attempt to stall their executions. The three men, Ali Ghufron, alias Muhklas, his younger brother Amrozi and Imam Samudra, are currently waiting for the legal decision. Indonesia's Supreme Court turned down the three men's final appeal in March 2004, and rejected a similar request for a...

Three German mountaineers were kidnapped by terrorists in Turkey's eastern province of Agri, the state-run Anatolian Agency reported Wednesday quoting the governor. (UPDATED) PKK terrorists seized the climbers, part of a group of 13 mountaineers, as they were ascending the mountain in Agri province, provincial governor Mehmet Cetin told the AA. "The terrorists said they carried out this action because of the German government's recent moves against PKK associations and sympathizers," the Anatolian Agency reported the Governor Mehmet Cetin as saying. Cetin said the terrorists kidnapped the three late on Tuesday, adding the gendarmerie had launched a wide-scale search and...

The biggest loser of last week's Hollywood-styled Colombian army rescue of 15 hostages in the hands of the FARC guerrillas, in addition to the rebels themselves, was Venezuela's narcissist-Leninist President Hugo Chavez. Judging from Chavez's own public statements and the contents of thousands of e-mails found in FARC laptop computers seized March 1 when Colombia's military raided a guerrilla camp inside Ecuador, Chavez was hoping to use the hostage crisis to become the ultimate power broker in the Colombian armed conflict and become South America's most powerful political leader. Chavez, as well as Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, had been openly...

Walt Disney World fired a security guard on Monday after he protested the company's decision not to allow people with concealed weapons permits to keep guns in their cars on Disney property. Disney terminated Edwin Sotomayor, 36, of Orlando for violating three Disney employee policies, essentially for failing to cooperate with an internal investigation, said spokeswoman Zoraya Suarez. Sotomayor vowed to continue his fight. At issue is Florida's new law that allows people with concealed weapons permits to keep firearms in their vehicles in employee parking lots. Disney advised its employees late last month that the theme-park resort is exempt...

It's the sort of sight that too often makes Canadian politicians go weak in the spine: ethnic voters rallying for a parochial, unsavory cause. Over the weekend, thousands of Tamil Canadians gathered in a Toronto park to denounce Ottawa's decision to outlaw the World Tamil Movement (WTM), which the RCMP believes is nothing but a fundraising front for the Tamil Tigers, a Sri Lankan-based terrorist group that has been outlawed in Canada since 2006. Even by the standards of terrorist insurgencies, the Tigers are a brutal organization -- a creepy cult-like outfit that habitually engages in massacres of civilians, and...

A Ketchikan jury correctly convicted a Greenpeace ship's captain of criminal negligence for sailing in Alaska waters without the proper oil spill response plan, the state appeals court ruled Thursday. The opinion partly cancels a 2005 decision by a Ketchikan judge to overturn guilty verdicts against Greenpeace Inc. and Arctic Sunrise Capt. Arne Sorensen of misdemeanor charges. At the time of its anti-logging campaign, the ship was carrying more than 70,000 gallons of "petroleum products," according to district court documents. In Alaska, non-tank vessels larger than 400 gross tons must file an oil spill response plan application five days before...

In the six-and-a-half years that the U.S. government has been fingerprinting insurgents, detainees and ordinary people in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Horn of Africa, hundreds have turned out to share an unexpected background, FBI and military officials said. They have criminal arrest records in the United States. There was the suspected militant fleeing Somalia who had been arrested on a drug charge in New Jersey. And the man stopped at a checkpoint in Tikrit who claimed to be a dirt farmer but had 11 felony charges in the United States, including assault with a deadly weapon. The records suggest that...

Post 9/11 dragnet turns up surprises Biometrics link foreign detainees to arrests in U.S. By Ellen Nakashima The Washington Post updated 2:49 a.m. ET, Sun., July. 6, 2008 In the six-and-a-half years that the U.S. government has been fingerprinting insurgents, detainees and ordinary people in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Horn of Africa, hundreds have turned out to share an unexpected background, FBI and military officials said. They have criminal arrest records in the United States. There was the suspected militant fleeing Somalia who had been arrested on a drug charge in New Jersey. And the man stopped at a checkpoint...

It isn't every morning that you wake up and read in the newspaper that one of the worlds most dangerous terrorists has been released on bail but that is exactly what happened today when the New York Times reported on the release of Abu Doha (aka Amar Makhlouf, aka the Doctor, aka Rachid) from custody in the UK. For those that aren't familiar with Abu Doha it is worth re-stating the threat he posed to American and western interests during the late 1990s and period prior to 9/11. He is widely known to have been a senior leader within the...

Should be a no-brainer, but just in case, here’s a recommendation for Keith Olbermann’s Worst Person In The World Award tonight. Husam Taysir Dwayat. He’s the terrorist who killed three people and wounded 66 during his bulldozer rampage in Jerusalem today. Certainly that’s the caliber of person Olbermann’s award is designed to recognize?