A masked Iraqi soldier stands guard at a checkpoint in Baquba, about 65 km (40 miles) northeast of Baghdad, July 31, 2008.
FTA- "The monthly U.S. toll in Iraq fell to its lowest point since the war began, with at least 10 American deaths as July drew to a close Thursday after the departure of the last surge brigade.
Iraqis also are dying at dramatically lower numbers with the war in its sixth year. July saw the lowest civilian toll since December 2005, though a series of suicide bombings this week and rising ethnic tensions in northern Iraq reflect the fragility of the security successes."
Proving the war is going well, Libs yell and scream.-Riley
Iran has carried out missile tests for what could be a plan for a nuclear strike on the United States, the head of a national security panel has warned....“The only plausible explanation we can find is that the Iranians are figuring out how to launch a missile from a ship and get it up to altitude and then detonate it,” he said. “And that’s exactly what you would do if you had a nuclear weapon on a Scud or a Shahab-3 or other missile, and you wanted to explode it over the United States.”
During the past year, several federal agencies – including the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, and the National Counter Terrorism Center – have declared a war on words. Specifically, these agencies have issued memoranda discouraging their employees from naming the enemy in the War on Terror. The prohibition included words such as “jihad,” “Islamist,” “Islamofascism,” and “caliphate,” among others.
Four suicide bombers believed to be women struck a Shiite pilgrimage in Baghdad and a Kurdish protest rally in northern Iraq on Monday, killing at least 57 people and wounding nearly 300 in one of this year's deadliest attacks, police said.
Jim D. Adkisson, who is charged with Tennessee church murders, is led away by police
A 60-year-old church usher has been hailed a hero after shielding other members of his congregation from a gunman who opened fire during a Sunday morning gathering in Tennessee.
The attack began as the 200-strong congregation were watching a youth performance of the musical Annie at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville on Sunday.
As in past bombings in India, suspicion for both sets of explosions quickly fell on Muslim militants blamed for attacks such as the July 2006 bombings that ripped through Mumbai's commuter rail network, killing nearly 200 people.
Those fears were amplified by the history of Ahmadabad, a crowded and historic city that in 2002 was the scene of one of worst incidents of rioting between India's Hindu majority and its Muslim minority
The report of this finding, based on a poll of 600 Muslim and 800 non-Muslim students at 12 universities in the UK, and conducted by YouGov on behalf of the Center for Social Cohesion, will be released tomorrow as "Islam on Campus."
Among its findings of Muslim beliefs:
40 per cent support introduction of sharia into British law for Muslims
One-third back the idea of a worldwide Islamic caliphate based on sharia law
40 per believe it is unacceptable for Muslim men and women to associate freely
24 per cent do not think men and women are equal in the eyes of Allah
25 percent have little or no respect for homosexuals.
53 per cent believe killing in the name of religion is never justified (compared with 94 per cent of non-Muslims), while 32 per cent say it is
57 percent believe Muslim soldiers serving in the UK military should be able to refuse duty in Muslim countries
More than half favor an Islamic political party to support their views in parliament
One-third don't think or don't know if Islam is compatible with Western views of democracy
Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. greets an elderly man that was seated on the stage behind him, Friday, July 25, 2008, during a campaign stop at the American GI Forum Convention in Denver.
Republican presidential candidate John McCain, ridiculing Barack Obama for "the audacity of hopelessness" in his policies on Iraq, said Friday that the entire Middle East could have plunged into war had U.S. troops been withdrawn as his rival advocated.
Speaking to an audience of Hispanic military veterans, McCain stepped up his criticism of Obama while the Illinois senator continued his headline-grabbing tour of the Middle East and Europe. The Arizona Republican contended that Obama's policies - he opposed sending more troops to Iraq in the "surge" that McCain supported - would have led to defeat there and in Afghanistan.
"We rejected the audacity of hopelessness, and we were right," McCain said, a play on the title of Obama's book "The Audacity of Hope."
"We are in a lot of trouble," said IOActive security specialist Dan Kaminsky, who stumbled upon the Domain Name System (DNS) vulnerability about six months ago and reached out to industry giants to collaborate on a solution.
"This attack is very good. This attack is being weaponized out in the field. Everyone needs to patch, please. This is a big deal."
Over half of American voters (51%) now believe the United States and its allies are winning the war on terror, the highest figure recorded in nearly four years by Rasmussen Reports in a nationwide survey.
Only 16% now think the terrorists are on top, while 27% view it as a stalemate. Prior to this week's survey, the number who believe the terrorists are winning had never fallen below 20%
A Palestinian man from east Jerusalem rammed a construction vehicle into three cars and a city bus in downtown Jerusalem on Tuesday, wounding four people before he was shot dead, in a chilling imitation of another attack in the city earlier this month.
FTA-"Arab League states have agreed to introduce a biometric system to protect their borders and also speed security procedures.
Arab border security chiefs have endorsed the procurement and installation of biometric systems at airports and sea ports. The chiefs convened in an Arab League session in Tunisia on July 17 as part of efforts to bolster security coordination."
We can't build a fence to close our borders because we might offend someone or it's to expensive. But it seems the Arabs have taken a proactive stance that somehow seems to complex for us. Check this out...
Is anyone paying attention to what Obama is saying?
In his interview with CBS News, Obama says:
Logan: Because you do have a situation seven years on into this war where Osama bin Laden and all his lieutenants and all the leaders of the Taliban, they’re still there. And they’re inside Pakistan.
Obama: Right. It’s a huge problem. And first of all, if we hadn’t taken our eye off the ball, we might have caught them before they got into Pakistan and were able to reconstitute themselves.
Several times in recent interviews, Obama has referred to "taken our eye off the ball" in terms of the invasion of Iraq, which began in March of 2003. We don't know precisely when Osama bin Laden entered Pakistan, but it is generally believed that he escaped Tora Bora and crossed the border sometime in late November or the beginning of December 2001.
Somehow the U.S. took its collective eyes off the ball to prevent an event that occurred in December 2001 by sending troops to another country starting in March 2002 for an invasion that began in 2003
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.
According to security officials coordinating deployments of forces with the PA for Obama's Ramallah visit, members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Fatah's declared military wing, have been called upon by the PA to participate in the protection of Obama, particularly in securing the perimeter during a scheduled meeting with PA President Mahmoud Abbas.
When the order came to return to prison, the Iranian dissident had no time to lose. Ahmad Batebi’s body had already been broken by torture after eight years of a 15-year prison sentence. He had been beaten with metal cables, suspended by his arms from the ceiling and taunted with mock execution and had had his head dunked in excrement until he was suffocating. Batebi fled the country with the help of a Kurdish underground movement
It is doubtful that too many ordinary Afghans know or care who Barack Obama is. Nevertheless, the messiah disembarked in Kabul this morning after a brief stop in Kuwait to visit the troops. He is scheduled to travel to a base in eastern Afghanistan today and get a briefing from the military on the situation and meet with President Karzai tomorrow.
In Beirut, the five freed prisoners dressed in military fatigues walked a red carpet laid out for them to the grave of Imad Mughniyeh, a shadowy figure Israel and the West accused of masterminding terrorist bombings in the 1980s and 1990s...."We swear by God ... to continue on your same path and not to retreat until we achieve the same stature that God bestowed on you," said Samir Kantar, who had been the longest-held Lebanese prisoner in Israel.
He referred to Mughniyeh's "martyrdom," saying, "This is our great wish. We envy you and we will achieve it, God willing."...Kantar had been convicted of a notorious 1979 attack where he allegedly killed a father in front of his 4-year-old daughter, and then killed the girl by crushing her skull with a rifle butt.
Hizbullah is bolstering its presence in south Lebanon villages with non-Shi'ite majorities by buying land and using it to build military positions and store missiles and launchers, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
Does Osama bin Laden possess nuclear weapons? Has he smuggled these weapons into the United States? Does he have a plan to detonate these weapons in multiple American cities if Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear facilities? Dr. Hugh Cort, president of the American Foundation for Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research, believes the answer to all of these questions is yes.
THESE days in Peshawar, where al-Qaeda was founded 20 years ago, the only glimpse of Osama bin Laden comes on little green packets of safety matches strewn around town by American officials (see picture). They bear the portrait of the world’s most wanted man, along with the promise that America will pay up to $5 million for information leading to his capture.
It is an appropriate image. Like one of these matches, Mr bin Laden caused a flash with the September 11th attacks on America in 2001, then vanished into smoke, leaving a burning trail of militancy stretching from Indonesia to Afghanistan, Iraq, north Africa and Europe. And despite the reward offered for his capture, now $25m, nobody has yet betrayed the whereabouts of “the Sheikh”, who periodically emerges on the internet to deliver some doom-laden warning to the West.
President Bush has the legal power to order the indefinite military detentions of civilians captured in the United States, the federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., ruled on Tuesday in a fractured 5-to-4 decision. But a second, overlapping 5-to-4 majority of the court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, ruled that Ali al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar now in military custody in Charleston, S.C., must be given an additional opportunity
Now it's time to rebuild the country, and create a pluralistic, stable and peaceful Iraq. That will be long, hard work. But by my estimation, the Iraq War is over. We won. Which means the Iraqi people won. more»
French media loses big court case proving Palestinian propaganda false, New York Times ignores shocking story... Why?
France TV 2 has lost a major court case in France that makes the lie to a major piece of Palestinian propaganda. In 2000 an incident occurred in the Palestinian areas that has since been used as propaganda for the Palestinian cause all across the world and the New York Times has repeatedly been a willing host for this propaganda.
Asked how the United States ought to respond to last week's Iranian missile tests, Barack Obama told CNN that it was important "we avoid provocation." Just as last year, Obama criticized a Senate bill designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization because it was too "provocative." This has us wondering: Is the problem with Iran that the United States seems provocative?
Iran revealed to the world in late 2002 that it had been conducting a secret uranium enrichment program for 15 years. This was a violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Iran is a signatory. Uranium enrichment is the first step on the road to building an atomic bomb. Most everyone seems to agree that Iranian nukes would destabilize the Middle East.
As al-Qaeda in Iraq’s fortunes wane, it has no one but itself to blame. President Bush’s troop surge indisputably has crushed al-Qaeda and other terrorists, while Iraqi soldiers have honed their ability to hammer deadly insurgents. But much of al-Qaeda’s damage has been self-inflicted. Largely overlooked is the Islamo-puritanism that it inflicted on the Iraqi territories it seized. Rank-and-file Iraqis tasted life under bin Laden-style Islam, and they gagged.
Once again, a congressional commission is warning that an electromagnetic pulse attack against the United States could wipe out the nation's electronics-dependent civilization. And again, hardly anyone is listening. Only a handful of the 60 members of the House Armed Services Committee showed up for a hearing on the EMP threat July 10, and most didn't stick around for the whole two-hour session.
The Bush administration on Wednesday symbolically opened the nation's arms to as many as 27,500 endangered Iraqis who have rendered ''faithful and valuable service" to Uncle Sam since the invasion of Iraq.The branch of the Department of Homeland Security that handles immigration applications unveiled guidelines for admitting up to an estimated 5,000 additional Iraqis in each of the next five years who face ''an ongoing serious threat" stemming from their ties ..
President Bush is poised to sign a bill that overhauls the bitterly disputed rules on secret government eavesdropping and grants immunity to telecommunications companies that helped the U.S. spy on Americans in suspected terrorism cases. The Senate sent the measure to the president on Wednesday and he is to sign it in a Rose Garden ceremony Thursday afternoon.
"Defense officials are criticizing what they say is the failure to capture or kill top al Qaeda leaders because of timidity on the part of policy officials in the Pentagon, diplomats at the State Department and risk-averse bureaucrats within the intelligence community."
But we have to keep the bureaucrats from wetting their pants. -Riley
Blogger Doug Ross describes, with pics, the threat that high-altitude EMP blasts represent to the free world and how a well-motivated terrorist group or regime could make it a reality. Based on Warfooting: Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the US from EMP Attack
The background on that $207 million cash seizure –supposedly the largest seizure of drug cash–is interesting. It was found in a March 2007 raid on the Mexico City home of a Chinese-Mexican businessman named Zhenli Ye Gon. His business was importing pharmaceuticals, and allegedly that included a hefty sideline in pseudoephedrine–the active ingredient in Sudafed.
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