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Author Topic: Shooting at Ft. Hood Texas 11/05/09 13 dead, 43 wounded-(Murder Charges)  (Read 730102 times)
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« Reply #940 on: December 29, 2009, 09:51:31 PM »

Obama Slams Security Breach
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126213211097909605.html?mod=WSJ_newsreel_us
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« Reply #941 on: December 29, 2009, 10:06:56 PM »


AFP/File – Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr Al-Qirbi, pictured in October 2009, called for more help from the Western


Yemen could have up to 300 Al-Qaeda suspects: minister
AFP
 
Yemen could have up to 300 Al-Qaeda suspects: minister AFP/File – Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr Al-Qirbi, pictured in October 2009, called for more help from the Western …
Tue Dec 29, 6:28 pm ET

LONDON (AFP) – Several hundred Al-Qaeda militants may be operating in Yemen and could be planning attacks like the alleged attempt to blow up a US-bound passenger jet, a Yemeni minister said Tuesday.

Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr Al-Qirbi called for more help from the Western community to train local security forces to crack down on militants.

"Of course there are a number of Al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen and some of their leaders. We realise this danger," he told the BBC.

"They may actually plan for attacks like the one we have just had in Detroit," he said.

Asked to specify the number of Al-Qaeda operatives, he said: "I can't give you really an exact figure. Maybe hundreds of them, 200, 300. I don't have a real figure."

The comments come after Yemen said the 23-year-old Nigerian accused of trying to blow up the US-bound passenger jet on Christmas Day was in the Middle Eastern country until a few weeks ago.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who allegedly tried to use a syringe to set off a high explosive called PETN sewn into his underwear, reportedly confessed to being trained for his mission by an Al-Qaeda bomb maker in Yemen.

Al-Qirbi called for countries to improve their intelligence sharing with Yemen, so it could be warned about the movement of suspects.

"We have to work in a very joint fashion in partnership to combat terrorism," he said. "If we do that, the problem will be under control."

He said the United States, Britain and the European Union could do "a lot" to improve Yemen's response to militants operating on its soil.

"There is support, but I must say it is inadequate," he said.

"We need more training, we have to expand our counter-terrorism units and this means providing them with the necessary training, military equipment, ways of transportation, we are very short of helicopters."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091229/wl_mideast_afp/usattacksnigeriayemenminister_20091229232843
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« Reply #942 on: December 29, 2009, 10:22:27 PM »

Yemen investigates Nigerian's al-Qaida contacts

AP

By AHMED AL-HAJ and DONNA ABU-NASR, Associated Press Writers Ahmed Al-haj And Donna Abu-nasr, Associated Press Writers – 8 mins ago

SAN'A, Yemen – Officials in Yemen were investigating Tuesday whether the Nigerian suspected in the attempted Christmas Day attack on a U.S. airliner spent time with al-Qaida militants in the country in the months leading up to the botched bombing.

Administrators, teachers and fellow students at the San'a Institute for the Arabic Language, where Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had enrolled to study Arabic, told The Associated Press that he attended school for only the month of Ramadan, which began in late August. That has raised questions about what he did during the rest of his stay, which continued into December.

Abdulmutallab, 23, told U.S. officials after his arrest he received training and instructions from al-Qaida operatives in Yemen, a law enforcement official has said.

According to Yemeni officials, Abdulmutallab spent another extended period in Yemen, from 2004-2005.

People at the school who knew Abdulmutallab said he was not openly extremist, though he expressed anger over Israel's actions against Palestinians in Gaza.

The possibility that he was involved with militants in Yemen has heightened concerns about the largely lawless country that has become an al-Qaida stronghold. Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, a group formed in January when operatives from Saudi Arabia and Yemen merged, claimed responsibility Monday for the attempted attack on the Detroit-bound airliner.

Information Minister Hassan al-Lozy suggested the U.S. was partly to blame for Yemen's failure to identify Abdulmutallab as a terror suspect. He told a news conference Washington never shared its suspicions about the man, who was flagged on a watchlist as a possible terrorist.

"We didn't get any notice from the Americans to put this man on a list," al-Lozy said. "America should have told Yemen about this man."

Al-Lozy said Abdulmutallab received a Yemeni visa to study Arabic after authorities were reassured that he had "several visas from a number of countries that we are cooperating with in the fight against terror." He noted that Abdulmutallab had a valid visa to the United States, which he had visited in the past.

"Our investigations are looking into who were the people or parties that were in touch with Umar here," al-Lozy told the AP.

He noted Abdulmutallab frequented a mosque in the old city, but did not say whether there was an al-Qaida link to that mosque.

The minister said Yemen was tightening controls on those seeking student visas to come to Yemen in the wake of Abdulmutallab's case.

The new revelations came a day after the al-Qaida offshoot in Yemen claimed responsibility for the failed attack, saying it was meant "to avenge the American attacks on al-Qaida in Yemen."

Yemeni forces, with U.S. intelligence help, launched two major strikes against al-Qaida this month, reportedly killing at least 64 militants. But the group's reference to the strikes was apparently propaganda because Abdulmutallab bought his ticket to the U.S. on Dec. 16, a day before the first of the two strikes. The second was on Dec. 24, a day before the airliner bombing attempt.

The strikes appear to be the result of heightened U.S.-Yemeni cooperation to wipe out al-Qaida in Yemen. The group, led by Naser Abdel Karim al-Wahishi, includes several Saudis who have been released from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay and have attended the kingdom's rehabilitation program designed to reform extremists.

The attempted bombing has raised questions in Congress about President Barack Obama's plans to shut down the Guantanamo facility, nearly half the remaining detainees are from Yemen.

Yemen's Foreign Minister Abu-Bakr al-Qirbi told BBC radio on Tuesday there could be up to 300 al-Qaida militants in his country, some of whom may be planning attacks on Western targets like the one in Detroit.

The Yemeni government's previous attempts against the militants amounted to scattered raids mixed with tolerance of some fighters in return for vague promises they would avoid terror activity domestically.

The Pentagon recently said it has poured nearly $70 million in military aid to Yemen this year — compared to none in 2008.

The U.S. has increasingly provided intelligence, surveillance and training to Yemeni forces during the past year, and has provided some firepower, according to a senior U.S. defense official, who requested anonymity in order to discuss sensitive security issues. Some of that assistance may be through the expanded use of unmanned drones, and the U.S. is providing funding to Yemen for helicopters and other equipment.

In its claim, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula said it provided Abdulmutallab with a sophisticated explosive that did not go off because of technical malfunction.

On Tuesday, a Saudi official in Riyadh confirmed for the first time that the same type of explosive was used in a failed assassination attempt in August against Saudi Arabia's counterterrorism chief Prince Mohammed bin Nayef. Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula has claimed responsibility for that attack.

According to U.S. court documents, a preliminary analysis of the device used Christmas Day showed it contained PETN, a high explosive also known as pentaerythritol.

Students and administrators at the San'a institute said Abdulmutallab was gregarious, had many Yemeni friends and was not overtly extremist. They noted, however, he was open about his sympathies toward the Palestinians and his anger over Israel's actions in Gaza. They spoke on condition of anonymity because Yemeni security authorities have ordered them not to talk to the media.

Administrators at the school said Monday that Yemeni security officials have been questioning the director, Muhammad al-Anisi, for two days.

Ahmed Moajjib, the only teacher who agreed to be named, said Abdulmutallab was a "very quiet student, who was extremely smart, liked to help others and was not frivolous."

"He did not appear suicidal, depressed or frustrated," he added.

Internet postings purportedly written by Abdulmutallab suggest a fervently religious and lonely young man who fantasized about becoming a Muslim holy warrior. Throughout more than 300 posts, a user named "Farouk1986" reflects on a growing alienation from his family, his shame over sexual urges and his hopes that a "great jihad" will take place across the world.

While officials haven't verified that the postings were written by Abdulmutallab, details from the posts match his personal history.

On Tuesday, Nigerian Information Minister Dora Akunyili told reporters that Abdulmutallab told his parents a few months ago he wanted to study Sharia law, a strict Islamic code, something his father said he couldn't do. Abdulmutallab responded by sending a text message from an unknown cell phone number saying he never would talk to his family again, Akunyili said.

Abdulmutallab arrived in Yemen in August, shortly after leaving Dubai, where he took classes at University of Wollongong for about seven months.

____

Associated Press Writer Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091230/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_yemen_us_airliner_attack
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« Reply #943 on: December 29, 2009, 10:37:05 PM »

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab organised 'War on Terror Week' while studying at UCL

Sean O’Neill, Crime and Security Editor

According to isocnews.com, an online magazine for Muslim students, War on Terror Week at University College London was one of the events of the year in 2007. There was a slick video advertisement for the event, an eye-catching poster and packed lecture theatres for five days of discussions about Guantánamo Bay, allegations of torture and the subject of “Jihad v Terrorism”.

The website reported the week of talks as “informative, relevant and always entertaining — the audience got involved with a good mixture of Muslim and non-Muslim attendees asking tough questions of the speakers”. In a corner of the poster, the event is declared to have been “approved by Umar Farook, president of UCLU Islamic Society”. The speakers advertised included George Galloway, the Respect MP; Geoffrey Bindman, the human rights lawyer; and former Guantánamo Bay detainees.

The Nigerian student who organised “War on Terror Week” in January 2007 is now better known as Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be suicide bomber who tried to blow up a transatlantic airliner last week.

Mr Galloway said last night that he did not attend any of the events in War on Terror Week and had no record in his parliamentary diary of any contact with UCL Islamic Society. Mr Bindman, a visiting professor at UCL, said that he could not recall the event or meeting Mr Abdulmutallab.

UCL has confirmed that Mr Abdulmutallab was a mechanical engineering student on its Central London campus in 2005-08 and in the academic year 2006-07 was president of the student union’s Islamic Society.

His role in organising War on Terror Week is the first indication that during his years in London he was heavily involved in radical political activity. Experts believe that this would have put him at risk of being groomed by al-Qaeda recruiters who routinely prey on such radical religious and political gatherings. “Before someone goes off for explosives training they have to be converted to the cause of al-Qaeda,” said Professor Anthony Glees, of the University of Buckingham.

“I think that happened in London in the case of Abdulmutallab, as has happened to many others. He is one of a considerable number of people who have turned to al-Qaeda after being recruited in the UK. This recruitment often goes on where political events take place. Those who speak at such events are not terrorists, but they are being irresponsible if they do not realise that what they say could contribute to the radicalisation of people who could then be recruited into terror.”

The emerging picture of Mr Abdulmutallab is of a lonely young man who arrived in London as a devout, sometimes angry, figure and became increasingly radicalised while here.

He had previously joined discussions on an internet message board that revealed a confused and alienated personality. Writing in January 2005 under the name Farouk1986, he said: “I feel depressed and lonely. I do not know what to do. And then I think this loneliness leads me to other problems.” He talked of wrestling with liberalism and extremism and striving to live according to the Koran’s teaching.

And he confessed to having “jihad fantasies”, writing: “I imagine how the great jihad will take place, how the Muslims will win (Allah willing) and rule the whole world, and establish the greatest empire once again.” But many more of his posts were about football, suggesting that he was far from being the finished article as a mujahidin.

Within a year of arriving in London Mr Abdulmutallab started to adopt a more formal religious dress code, including a white robe and skullcap.

He is reported to have attended some of the radical meetings held at London colleges and mosques. He is understood to have attended talks given by the extremist US-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki at East London Mosque. Awlaki, who was later banned from Britain and is believed to be in hiding with al-Qaeda in Yemen, where Mr Abdulmutallab spent months.

Malcolm Grant, Provost of UCL, told the BBC: “We are very shocked by what has happened and we will be reflecting on it very carefully but — as presently advised — there was nothing about his conduct which gave his tutors any cause for concern.” Professor Grant said students were admitted to UCL on merit and there could not be vetting of their “political, racial or religious background or beliefs”.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6971071.ece
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« Reply #944 on: December 29, 2009, 11:34:05 PM »

Videos:

Who is Abdulmutallab?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCEFpNAI6Uo

Yemen: the New Afghanistan?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EmNinuFDwk&feature=channel

Abdulmutallab on Gov't Watch List?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MwTE53N41g

Terror Suspect in Federal Prison

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIxRW8akrIk&feature=related

Brian Ross: Abdulmutallab says "more like me" coming to America
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBB5Av6N3Xc&feature=player_embedded

Abdulmutallab's al Qaeda Ties

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phTzV6kEiyI&feature=player_embedded

Abdulmutallab s Internet Trail
http://www.strimoo.com/video/17764304/Abdulmutallab-s-Internet-Trail-Veoh.html

Northwest Airlines "Underwear Bomb" 29 Dec 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-6N-gx6FPg

Jasper Schuringa: flying HERO dutchman 29-12-2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xd0tZIyPzBY

Man Videotaped Underwear Bomber On Flight 253
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl9bGejeSSk

Would-be Bomber’s Family Speaks Out
http://www.hulu.com/watch/117766/nbc-today-show-would-be-bomber%E2%80%99s-family-speaks-out

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« Reply #945 on: December 30, 2009, 08:46:47 AM »

Somali arrested at airport with chemicals, syringe

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — Officials say a Somali national tried to board a commercial airliner in Mogadishu last month with powdered chemicals, liquid and a syringe that together could have caused an explosion. The hallmarks bear chilling similarities to the terrorist plot to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner.

Police spokesman Abdulahi Hassan Barise says the suspect was arrested before the Nov. 13 Daallo Airlines flight departed. It was scheduled to travel from Mogadishu to the northern Somali city of Hargeisa, then to Djibouti and Dubai.

Two international officials in Nairobi said Wednesday the incident is similar to the Detroit attack in that the Somali man had a syringe, a bag of powdered chemicals and liquid. U.S. officials are aware of the incident and hastening to investigate any possible links with the Detroit attack.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009-12-30-Somalia_N.htm
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« Reply #946 on: December 30, 2009, 08:55:31 AM »

Somali Arrested at Airport with Chemicals

By AP / MOHAMED OLAD HASSAN, KATHARINE HOURELD and JASON STRAZIUSO Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2009

(MOGADISHU, Somalia) — A man tried to board a commercial airliner in Mogadishu last month carrying powdered chemicals, liquid and a syringe that could have caused an explosion in a case bearing chillingly similarities to the terrorist plot to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner, officials told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The Somali man — whose name has not yet been released — was arrested by African Union peacekeeping troops before the Nov. 13 Daallo Airlines flight took off. It had been scheduled to travel from Mogadishu to the northern Somali city of Hargeisa, then to Djibouti and Dubai. A Somali police spokesman, Abdulahi Hassan Barise, said the suspect is in Somali custody. (See the Top 10 News Stories of 2009.)

"We don't know whether he's linked with al-Qaeda or other foreign organizations, but his actions were the acts of a terrorist. We caught him red-handed," said Barise.

A Nairobi-based diplomat said the incident in Somalia is similar to the attempted attack on the Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day in that the Somali man had a syringe, a bag of powdered chemicals and liquid — tools similar to those used in the Detroit attack. The diplomat spoke on condition he not be identified because he isn't authorized to release the information. (Read: "Airline Terrorism: What Can We Learn From Flight 253?")

Barigye Bahoku, the spokesman for the African Union military force in Mogadishu, said the chemicals from the Somali suspect could have caused an explosion that would have caused air decompression inside the plane. However, Bahoku said he doesn't believe an explosion would have brought the plane down.

A second international official familiar with the incident, also speaking on condition of anonymity because he isn't authorized to discuss the case, confirmed that the substances carried by the Somali passenger could have been used as an explosive device.

In the Detroit case, alleged attacker Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab hid explosive PETN in a condom or condom-like bag just below his torso when he traveled from Amsterdam to Detroit. Like the captured Somali, Abdulmutallab also had a syringe filled with liquid. The substances seized from the Somali passenger are being tested.

The November incident garnered little attention before the Dec. 25 attack aboard a flight on final approach to Detroit. U.S. officials have now learned of the Somali case and are hastening to investigate any possible links between it and the Detroit attack, though no officials would speak on the record about the probe.

U.S. investigators said Abdulmutallab told them he received training and instructions from al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen — which lies across the Gulf of Aden from Somalia. Similarly, large swaths of Somalia are controlled by an insurgent group, al-Shabab, which has ties to al-Qaeda.

Western officials say many of the hundreds of foreign jihadi fighters in Somalia come in small boats across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen. The officials also say that examination of equipment used in some Somali suicide attacks leads them to believe it was originally assembled in Yemen.

Law enforcement officials believe the suspect in the Detroit incident tried to ignite a two-part concoction of the high explosive PETN and possibly a glycol-based liquid explosive, setting off popping, smoke and some fire but no deadly detonation. Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian national, is charged with trying to destroy an aircraft.

A Somali security official involved in the capture of the suspect in Mogadishu said he had a 1-kilogram (2.2-pound) package of chemical powder and a container of liquid chemicals. The security official said the suspect was the last passenger to try to board.

Once security officials detected the powder chemicals and syringe, the suspect tried to bribe the security team that detained him, the Somali security official said. The security official said the suspect had a white shampoo bottle with a black acid-like substance in it. He also had a clear plastic bag with a light green chalky substance and a syringe containing a green liquid. The security official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the information.

The powdered material had the strong scent of ammonia, Bahoku said, and samples have been sent to London for testing.

The Somali security officials said the Daallo Airlines flight was scheduled to go from Mogadishu to Hargeisa, to Djibouti and then to Dubai.

A spokeswoman for Daallo Airlines said that company officials weren't aware of the incident and would have to seek more information before commenting. Daallo Airlines is based in Dubai and has offices in Djibouti and France.

Associated Press reporter Katharine Houreld contributed reporting from Baghdad. Jason Straziuso contributed reporting from Nairobi, Kenya.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1950623,00.html#ixzz0bBDwJT3Z

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1950623,00.html
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« Reply #947 on: December 30, 2009, 09:04:09 AM »

Kiel soldier slain at Fort Hood in Nov.: Krueger was ready to go to Afghanistan

By Cindy Hodgson • Herald Times Reporter • December 30, 2009

KIEL — Staff Sgt. Amy Krueger, a 1999 graduate of Kiel High School, was one of 13 people killed Nov. 5 in Fort Hood, Texas, by a fellow soldier, 39-year-old Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.

Krueger, 29, was scheduled for deployment to Afghanistan in December. It would have been her second deployment to Afghanistan, having served three months in 2003.

Krueger visited an Army Reserve recruiting office the day after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, because she wanted to serve her country. Her mother, Jeri Krueger, told her daughter she would not be able to take on Osama bin Laden by herself, but the younger Krueger said, "Watch me."

Krueger served with the Madison-based 467th Medical Detachment and was called to active duty last year.

"She wanted to serve. She was excited about it. She wanted to help people," said Kristin Thayer, a high school friend who had accompanied Krueger to the recruiting office in 2001 and also enlisted.

Thayer said Krueger was scheduled to be discharged on Oct. 29, 2010, but was considering re-enlisting to pursue a career as a military police officer.

At Krueger's visitation at Kiel High School, Maj. Gen. Richard Stone, deputy surgeon general for mobilization, readiness and reserve affairs, said he was impressed with Krueger's "easy smile," and he used words like "focused," "solid" and "determined" in describing her.

"This was an absolute patriot who believed in this country," he said.

"Amy was ... just a bright star," said Capt. Robert LaFountain, rear detachment commander for the 467th Medical Detachment. "She was a very dedicated soldier. She was able to take tasks and get them done but still have people like her, which is kind of rare at times in the military. She was a patriot through and through."

Her promotion to staff sergeant had come just four days before her death, LaFountain said.

"She knew how to laugh, but she could be serious. She was compassionate and caring," he said.

At Krueger's funeral, which was held at Kiel High School, the Rev. David Mercer of St. Peter's United Church of Christ told the 1,000 or so people in attendance that not everything happens for a reason.

"Amy's death did not happen for a reason," Mercer said. "Amy's life did happen for a reason."

Mercer addressed a question people may have been asking following the shooting — why did God take Amy? He said the answer is God didn't take her.

The world isn't the stage of a puppet show with God pulling the strings, controlling people's actions, Mercer said. Instead, because God wants people to come to Him of their own choosing, He gave humans free will.

Sometimes they exercise that free will by making decisions for good, and sometimes, as in the case of the Fort Hood murders, for evil, Mercer said.

http://www.htrnews.com/article/20091230/MAN0101/912300461/Year-in-Review-Kiel-soldier-slain-at-Fort-Hood-in-Nov.-Krueger-was-ready-to-go-to-Afghanistan
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« Reply #948 on: December 30, 2009, 09:09:56 AM »


Fort Hood: Hasan Asked Awlaki If It Was Okay to Kill American Soldiers


al-Qaeda Recruiter Mocks U.S. Intelligence, Says Accused Shooter Asked for Guidance About Shooting In 2008

By MARK SCHONE and REHAB EL-BURI
Dec. 23, 2009

In an interview published on Al Jazeera's Web site, radical Muslim cleric Anwar al Awlaki says that Maj. Nidal Hasan, charged with killing 13 in last month's Fort Hood massacre, asked for guidance about killing American military personnel in his very first e-mail.
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Apartment manager John Thompson shows us around the suspected gunman's place.

Awlaki claims that Hasan initiated the e-mail correspondence with a message on Dec. 17, 2008. "He was asking about killing U.S. soldiers and officers," says Awlaki. "His question was is it legitimate [under Islamic law]."

The Al Jazeera questioner asks for confirmation that Hasan forwarded this query nearly a year before the shooting.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/FtHoodInvestigation/fort-hood-hasan-asked-awlaki-kill-american-soldiers/story?id=9410718
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« Reply #949 on: December 30, 2009, 09:14:16 AM »



Fort Hood shooting victim recovering
By Jessica Miller (Standard-Examiner staff )

Last Edit: 5 sec ago (Dec 29 2009 - 11:59pm)

OGDEN -- Shawn Manning considers himself lucky despite being shot six times at Fort Hood, Texas, in November and still having a bullet lodged in his back.

"All of the bullets basically missed pretty much all my major organs except my liver," he said.

"It missed my heart by about an inch. It missed all my bones and caused no nerve damage. I was lucky in that respect."

Manning, who is stationed in Washington state with his wife, Autumn, has family members in the Ogden area and Idaho.

His mother, Shari Taylor, lives in Twin Falls, Idaho, and graduated from Ogden High School in 1968. She said she heard about her son being shot before she had heard news of the shootings on TV or the Internet.

"I hadn't heard anything about the Fort Hood shooting," she said.

"I immediately went on the computer (at work) and saw what was going on. We didn't know much at that time. We just knew that he had been shot. We didn't know where or how many times."

After she heard about her son being shot, she called her sister, Marilee Merritts, of South Ogden.

"I was just really upset and in shock, and she said she'd call me when she knew more," Merritts said.

"We kept watching the news and watching the news."

On Nov. 5, while Manning was waiting at the Soldier Readiness Center at Fort Hood, he saw a man jump up on a table and open fire.

Manning thought it was training.

"At first, I think a lot of us thought it was an exercise," he said. "I thought it was a joke or something."

Manning was one of the first soldiers shot.

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is charged with being the shooter who killed 13 and wounded 30 others. Hasan remains paralyzed after being shot by police.

Even after Manning was shot in the chest, he said, he still thought it was a joke.

"There was no blood right there, so at first, I thought I got shot by a rubber bullet or a paintball gun," he said.

"But it wasn't until about 30 seconds or a minute later when I saw the blood."

Manning was shot six times: once in the chest, in the back, and in the abdomen, leg and foot.

He said he was able to leave the SRC after Hasan got distracted, so he ran 10 or 15 feet into another building.

Manning was taken to a hospital in Queens, Texas.

Doctors removed five bullets, but one remains in his back.

"They might remove it if it bothers me later," Manning said.

"It stayed in my muscle tissues. It's still pretty painful."

He has since returned home to Washington, where he continues to recover from his wounds.

Manning considers himself lucky to be alive.

"I'm extremely lucky -- the fact that the bullets missed every vital organ, arteries and bones.

"There are a lot of people a lot worse off who were shot one time."

Taylor said the family feels fortunate Manning survived the ordeal and will recover.

"We're very lucky to even have him, and fortunate that he will be fully recovered. I wouldn't think he would survive all that."

Manning is a staff sergeant with the Combat Stress Unit in the 467th Medical Detachment Unit. He was in Fort Hood preparing for his third deployment. He joined the Army in 2000 and served in Iraq in 2003 and 2006.

Merritts said the family was shocked to learn that a shooting could happen at a military base. She said when she worked at Hill Air Force Base, it always felt like a safe haven, where no one would be hurt.

"I know when you're on the base, you always felt safe," she said. "You just don't feel you are in jeopardy. He was in a safety zone where he thought he was safe. You just would never ever think that would happen."

Ogden native Joey Foster, 21, also was shot at Fort Hood. He is a private first class who was preparing to be deployed to Afghanistan. He was shot in the hip.

His mother, Aggie Foster, said he is recovering well.

"He's doing great," she said. "He's doing really good. He's healing, and the wound looks a lot better.

"He is doing OK emotionally right now."

http://www.standard.net/topics/military/2009/12/29/fort-hood-shooting-victim-recovering
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« Reply #950 on: December 30, 2009, 11:37:23 AM »

The diversity of our force is one of its greatest strengths

Soldiers of Allah Or of America: Does Military Know — Or Care?
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/18427
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« Reply #951 on: December 30, 2009, 11:41:05 AM »

Upper Crust Is Often Drawn to Terrorism

 
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
Published: December 30, 2009

NEW YORK — That Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, fated to go down in history as the failed underwear bomber, comes from a prominent and prosperous family in Nigeria invites comparison with Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the U.S. Army psychiatrist who is accused of killing 13 fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, in November.

Both men came from middle- or upper-class families, went to good schools and would seem to have had much better prospects than to destroy numerous lives, as well as their own, in acts of terrorist mayhem.

Both men seem to illustrate the observation made by historians of violent political extremists from Robespierre to Pol Pot: that they tend more often to be intellectuals with a grievance, a concept, and a thirst for power than the desperate and wretched of the earth on whose behalf they usually claim to have acted.

The way recent Islamic terrorists embody this notion is quite striking. Mr. Abdulmutallab, who is accused of trying to set off a bomb on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day, didn’t come from the sprawling, desperate slums of Lagos but from the upper crust of Nigerian society. He went to the elite British School of Lomé, Togo, and to University College London, where he graduated with honors in 2008.

Then, apparently because of a false statement on his a application to continue his studies in London, the British authorities did not renew his visa. He was accepted for a master’s degree program in Dubai, but he told his family that he wanted to go to Yemen to study Shariah, or Islamic law.

Those recruited as suicide bombers are supposedly poor and without prospects. Many are, yet most of the Islamic radicals who have attacked the United States or have tried to in the last decade come, like Mr. Abdulmutallab, from the elite of their countries. Osama bin Laden himself came from fabulous wealth in Saudi Arabia; his chief deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, was — like the Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara — a medical doctor from a distinguished family.

Though not from the same elite social class as Mr. bin Laden or Mr. Zawahiri, the operational leaders of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States were uniformly from upwardly striving middle-class families. Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker, studied architecture and engineering in Cairo. His father was a successful lawyer who had the connections to get his son a spot at the Technical University of Hamburg, which is where he seems to have volunteered for the jihadist cause.

Another of the 2001 attacks’ operational leaders, Ziad Jarrah, came from Lebanon, where his father was a senior government official in the social security administration and his mother a schoolteacher. His family sent him not to a Muslim school but to a private, Christian school in Beirut, because they were more interested in helping him to get ahead than in furthering his religious affiliation.

Whether Major Hasan, accused in the Fort Hood killings, could be a classical Islamic terrorist is a matter of dispute. What is clear is that he was an upper-middle-class Muslim influenced by radical Middle East preachers. His parents, Palestinian immigrants, operated an upscale restaurant in Virginia. Major Hasan got a degree in biochemistry from Virginia Tech, went to medical school at the expense of the U.S. Army and did his residency in psychiatry at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

The one exception to this pattern is the person who otherwise most resembles Mr. Abdulmuttalab. This is Richard C. Reid, the shoe-bomber whose attempt to blow up an airliner in 2001 was, like Mr. Abdulmutallab’s, foiled by what would seem to be a combination of incompetence and quick action by fellow passengers.

Mr. Reid, the son of a Jamaican father and an English mother, grew up on the margins of British society and turned early to petty street crime and drugs. He became a Muslim in prison, and, after he was released, fell under the influence of radical Muslim preachers like Abu Hamzi al-Masri, who was convicted in Britain in 2006 for soliciting murder and racial hatred.

Though their origins are very different, Mr. Reid and Mr. Abdulmutallab ended up on strikingly similar paths, finding meaning in Islamic practice and then traveling to Qaeda-infested regions: Mr. Reid to Afghanistan when Osama bin Laden ran training camps there, and Mr. Abdulmutallab to Yemen, which is now deemed by U.S. intelligence to be a major center of Qaeda recruitment and training.

Mr. Reid admitted to U.S. investigators that he had technical help in making his bomb, and it seems unlikely that the 23-year-old Mr. Abdulmutallab would have had the technical expertise or the access to the bomb material without similar help.

That so many jihadist combatants are from middle-class backgrounds doesn’t mean that the grinding poverty of many Islamic countries — and its contrast with the badly distributed wealth of some of those same societies — plays no role in fueling Muslim anger and desperation. Clearly it does.

But it’s also a measure of that anger and desperation — and of the superheated, paranoid cult that sees the United States as the Great Satan — that it is so often young men with good prospects who are willing to sacrifice themselves to strike a blow for what has become their cause.

It’s a good thing that the two most recent attempts to blow up airplanes were amateurishly bungled. This could, as some commentators have said, indicate that Al Qaeda itself is much less fearsome than we generally believe. But other would-be martyrs could be learning from the mistakes of Mr. Reid and Mr. Abdulmutallab and engage in more effective attacks in the future.

In this sense, ABC News reported Monday on what may be the most worrisome aspect of the Abdulmutallab case. He is said to have told F.B.I. investigators that there are many more like him being trained in Yemen — and they are ready to attack.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/us/31iht-letter.html
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« Reply #952 on: December 30, 2009, 11:55:33 AM »

Al-Awlaki, a new public enemy

Zahed Amanullah: As reports claim would-be plane bomber Abdulmutallab may have met Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical's profile grows
Wednesday, 30 December 2009

When Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23 year-old Nigerian Muslim, failed in his attempt to detonate explosives smuggled aboard Northwest Airlines flight 253 on Christmas Day, the trail leading back to Yemen brought a familiar name back into the spotlight.

"Informed reports" indicated that Abdulmutallab met Anwar al-Awlaki, a 38 year-old American-born imam who studied and preached in the US before leaving in 2002 to reside permanently in Yemen, escaping the FBI scrutiny that followed his close contact with two of the 9/11 hijackers while in San Diego.
Article Continues

Barely two months earlier, when US army major Nidal Hasan killed 13 soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, al-Awlaki's name had also surfaced when it was found that Nidal had many email exchanges with the imam, whom he greatly admired. Al-Awlaki recently confirmed his contact with – and support of – Hasan as he taunted US intelligence for failing to put the pieces together earlier.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemeni al-Qaida affiliate which al-Awlaki is linked to, has now claimed credit for the Northwest Airlines bombing attempt. There were also conflicting reports of Al-Awlaki's death in a Yemeni army air strike on 24 December. Whether he is alive or not, his status has been propelled, within a few short months, to match that of Ayman al-Zawahiri and the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Who would have thought that a senior commander of al-Qaida could be an American citizen, raised in the US and having attended various universities there? This appears to contradict some long-held views about American Muslims, who are often touted as the most integrated and prosperous Muslim minorities in the world. Despite this, there are reasons to stay optimistic.

The radicalisation that does occur in America, as with Nidal Hasan, is largely self-guided and emerges from non-domestic sources. Al-Awlaki's own radicalisation in the US over a 10 year period between 1991 and 2001 (he lived in Yemen during his teenage years) consists vaguely of "a few months' study here and there with various scholars," according to a defence of his Islamic credentials on his website (now deleted).

Al-Awlaki also admits in his how-to guide, "44 Ways to Support Jihad," that "most of the Jihad literature is available only in Arabic and publishers are not willing to take the risk of translating it," positioning himself as gatekeeper and importer to western Muslims of an otherwise foreign ideology.

Anwar al-Awlaki is a unique example of both of these phenomena. He is an American who self-radicalised largely as a result of influence from abroad before leaving America to become a resource for others in the west to self-radicalise.

Al-Awlaki's recent writings and lectures, available online and elsewhere, have given him a considerable following among young English-speaking Muslims (although, it must be noted, much of this interest has turned to disapproval following al-Awlaki's endorsement of Nidal Hasan). But the climate among Muslims in America, institutional and otherwise, is so hostile to al-Awlaki's views that his only real influence came when he left America for Yemen seven years ago.

This is reinforced in part by the responses of American Muslims to the radicalisation of their own in the past six months. The families of the Minnesotans who joined al-Shabaab in Somalia and the families of the five Taliban-bound Americans arrested in Pakistan all provided information to law enforcement before the stories became news.

"My support to the operation was because the operation brother Nidal carried out was a courageous one," said al-Awlaki in a recent al-Jazeera interview. "And I endeavoured to explain my position regarding what happened because many Islamic organisations and preachers in the west condemned the operation." Al-Awlaki, who has no recognised Islamic credentials, would not have been accepted in America by any of the organisations and preachers he refers to if his views were widely known at the time. As he fled to Yemen, he knew this.

And as his comments also show, Muslims in America have succeeded in placing a wide and definitive gap between them and the ideology of al-Qaida. Even as we continue trying to curb the influence of such individuals, wherever they may be, al-Awlaki's exclusion from the American Muslim landscape should be seen as at least one victory against violent extremism.

http://u.tv/News/Al-Awlaki-a-new-public-enemy/2181421d-c4d2-4ca7-ac3c-d29c57fdb645
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« Reply #953 on: December 30, 2009, 12:06:47 PM »

Commentary: Unholy war in cyberspace

Published: Dec. 30, 2009 at 6:00 AM
By ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE, UPI Editor at Large

WASHINGTON, Dec. 29 (UPI) -- For America's 16 intelligence agencies, employing some 100,000 spies and analysts with a budget of $50 billion, it is almost mission impossible to figure out what terrorists and would-be terrorists are up to in cyberspace.

The Internet is an electronic jungle but also a global environment where al-Qaida operatives and sympathizers can operate with impunity. The 'Net also serves as radio-cum-TV station for would-be terrorists who can watch suicide bomb attacks as videoed by insurgents, beheadings in gory color and download a two-volume Sabotage Handbook online.

Google, like the National Security Agency, can sift through a gazillion documents in less than a second but that doesn't begin to tell you how a radical imam in a rundown Muslim suburb of Paris, or another imam in northern Nigeria, has recruited an impressionable teenager for the higher cause of jihad (which should be renamed unholy war). Nor does it tell you how and when this youngster left for Yemen, where al-Qaida operatives taught him how to bring down an airliner with a hard-to-detect, easily concealable, lethal chemical cocktail.

Hundreds of LOCs (Library of Congress with its 40 million volumes, 130 million documents, 10,000 new items arriving daily and 525 miles of shelf space) move on millions of ether infobahns in less than a day. Born in this humongous mix, long before Sept. 11, 2001, was a virtual electronic caliphate, or a global radical Muslim community whose main enemy is the United States and its Israeli ally, whose principal objective is to push back the frontiers of Islam by crushing Muslim governments and denying the Palestinians the right of statehood.

The caliphate is a unique global entity that would unite all Muslims under the rule of the caliph. Shiite and Sunni Muslims presumably would spend decades fighting over an appropriate caliph who would then rule over a global dictatorship with an advisory Shura, or the Muslim equivalent of a College of Cardinals. Pie in the Muslim sky, but all too real on the Internet, and pretty heady stuff and certainly more exciting than the drab existence of looking for jobs that are not available.

The electronic caliphate's Web sites, chat rooms, blogs, message boards and instant messaging, with seemingly innocuous coded messages, coupled with state-of-the-art encryption devices and techniques, all reflect a sizable number of computer engineers and scientists at the service of al-Qaida and transnational terrorism.

Al-Qaida's breeding grounds stretch from the madrassas -- Koranic schools for the poor -- of Mindanao in the Philippines to identical madrassas in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Yemen, Somalia and suburban slums all over Western Europe. But the exciting vision of fighting for Islam against Christian and Jewish heathens also ensnares middle- and upper-class misfits who are either bored or in rebellion against their parents' capitalist values. That's clearly how the prominent Nigerian banker's son, who almost caused a major disaster on a Northwest flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, got radicalized and joined al-Qaida in Yemen as a suicide volunteer.

One of Europe's best intelligence services -- the Dutch AIVD -- concluded years ago that radical Islam in the Netherlands encompasses a multitude of movements, organizations and groups that sympathize with militant Islam. AIVD has identified 20 different Islamist groups. And their lingua franca is the Internet.

British authorities have verified that as many as 3,000 veterans of al-Qaida training camps over the years, in Afghanistan prior to Sept. 11, in Pakistan's tribal areas after Sept. 11, were born and raised in the United Kingdom. British polls also showed that about 100,000 British Muslims, mostly from Pakistani families, were in favor of the July 7, 2005, subway and bus attacks in London. Some 200 embryonic plots trailed by Britain's internal intelligence service MI5 tracked back to Pakistani Britons, mostly well-educated youth from middle-class families.

Following Sept. 11, in the early 2000s, France's internal intelligence services -- the DST and the RG -- estimated that 40 percent of the imams in France's 1,000 principal mosques -- all told there are more than 1,500 -- had no religious training and simply picked up the content of their Friday sermons from pro-al-Qaida Web sites.

Imbibing from the same electronic fountain of hate was Maj. Nidal Hassan, the 39-year-old U.S. Army psychiatrist who on Nov. 5 killed 13, including 11 U.S. soldiers, and wounded 30, at Fort Hood, Texas. He was proselytized on the Internet by a U.S.-born Yemeni cleric who had left the United States and moved to Yemen -- now far more important, along with Somalia, across the Gulf of Aden, than Afghanistan.

Barack Obama was against the Iraq war from Day 1. But he couldn't also be against Afghanistan and expect to be elected U.S. president. He would have been denounced as a pacifist afraid to fight America's self-avowed enemies. Nor could he expect to be re-elected to a second term if he lost what is now his war. First he ordered 17,000 additional troops for Afghanistan in February, and now 30,000, at a cost of $1 million per soldier per year. Why? Because that's where al-Qaida is located, we are told. Al-Qaida left Afghanistan years ago and is now scattered in Pakistan's tribal areas, in Karachi, a port city of 18 million, in Yemen and Somalia -- and all over the Internet.

Meanwhile, the Taliban insurgency has created a shadow "government in waiting" with Cabinet ministers and provincial and district governors in 33 out of 34 provinces, waiting for NATO and U.S. forces to fall victim to the Vietnam syndrome. CENTCOM Commander Gen. David H. Petraeus says we should be prepared to fight as long as it takes to defeat the Taliban's guerrilla insurgency. The history of insurgencies since World War II is of little comfort to those who say "as long as it takes."

Moderate Arab leaders from Morocco in North Africa to Saudi Arabia to Pakistan, interviewed by this reporter, invariably come up with the same wet-finger-to-the-wind stats: No more than 1 percent of their populations are religious extremists, and 10 percent fundamentalist, essentially in sympathy with the extremists' agenda. Extrapolating these figures on the global scale of 1.3 billion Muslims, we get 13 million extremists and 130 million sympathizers. That should provide intelligence and security services and Special Operations decades of derring-do -- Green Berets, Rangers, SEALs -- not infantrymen lugging 120 pounds up and down Afghan mountains where eyes are only for where you put your combat boot next.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Analysis/2009/12/30/Commentary-Unholy-war-in-cyberspace/UPI-96621262170800/
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« Reply #954 on: December 30, 2009, 05:29:06 PM »

Questions, accusations in wake of Fort Hood rampage

By Megan McCloskey, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Thursday, December 31, 2009

On Nov. 5, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, went on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, killing 12 soldiers and one civilian and wounding 29 others.

Four minutes after 911 was dialed, Hasan was taken down by two civilian police officers. He is paralyzed, and remains at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio.

Various government organizations have launched investigations into the shooting. The White House ordered a review of interagency intelligence sharing after it became known that an FBI terrorism task force had monitored Hasan’s e-mail communication with a radical cleric in Yemen, as well as Internet postings in which Hasan allegedly defended suicide bombers. The Army, however, was not told about these activities. A preliminary report has been completed but has not been made public or shared with Congress. The FBI is doing its own internal investigation into the matter.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon appointed former Army Secretary Togo West and former Chief of Naval Operations Vern Clark to conduct a 45-day review of military policies to determine if anything hindered identifying Hasan as a threat. It will be completed by Jan. 15.

The Senate Homeland Security Committee is also investigating whether the Army ignored or downplayed warning signs because of the shortage of mental health professionals.

Before transferring to Fort Hood, Hasan spent years at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., as a psychiatry student and resident. At times, his superiors and colleagues questioned his competence and were uncomfortable with his religious fervor. He was once formally counseled for proselytizing patients, and later attempted to have patients charged with war crimes following confessions during therapy. Acquaintances said he was vocal in his belief that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are wars on Islam.

Still, Hasan was continually promoted. He made major in spring 2009 and transferred to Fort Hood in July.

Hasan has been charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder. A sanity board is determining now whether Hasan had a mental illness at the time of the crime and if so whether that prevented him from knowing his actions were wrong. It will also decide if he is competent to stand trial and assist in his own defense. Should he be ruled competent and the case goes to court martial, Hasan’s jury will likely be made up of majors, lieutenant colonels, colonels and possibly generals.

Military justice experts expect the entire trial process, including appeals, to take at least 10 years. Authorities have not said whether they will seek the death penalty.

http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=66960
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« Reply #955 on: December 30, 2009, 05:46:36 PM »

December 30, 2009     
Special Dispatch No.2721

    Al-Arabiya TV Director: 'Al-Awlaki is An Important Character… the Bin Laden of the Internet'; We 'Need to Wage War Against Extremist Websites'


On December 29, 2009, Abdul Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, Al-Arabiya TV director-general and former editor-in-chief of the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, published an op-ed titled "In Search of the Instructor in Yemen."

The following is the article, in the original English.[1]

    * To view the MEMRI page for Democratization in the Arab and Muslim World, visit http://www.memri.org/subject/en/804.htm.
    * To view the MEMRI page for Abdul Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, vist http://www.memri.org/subject/en/824.htm.


Who Turned Abdulmutallab into a Terrorist?

"Less than a day after the failed attempt to bomb a plane that was flying over the U.S. city of Detroit, a different kind of hunt began – the hunt for the person who instructed Omar Abdulmutallab [to carry out the operation], the person who turned Abdulmutallab into a terrorist. Omar Abdulmutallab is a Nigerian man who left Nigeria young and innocent and left London a prepared terrorist.

"Attention turned towards the Yemeni Sheikh Anwar Al-Awlaki, once again, who believes that he is the Sheikh of the new terrorists. It was this same Sheikh who instructed Major Nidal Hasan, an American of Arab origin, to commit the Fort Hood killings."

"The First Priority Should Be To Confront Extremist Ideology, Its Theorists, and Its Scholars, Before Its Students and Its Soldiers"

"So as not to further complicate this already complex issue, we can sum up the incident as follows: attention turned from pursuing Al Qaeda's army to pursuing its Sheikhs.

"After years of violent war, the image has become clear to everybody today; that 'Al Qaeda' is an ideological problem rather than an organizational one. Whilst there is a lot to do on the ground in order to eradicate this malignant disease, the first priority should be to confront extremist ideology, its theorists, and its scholars before its students and its soldiers. They are the secret to the organization and the reason for its continuation and its ability to recruit [people] and raise money, despite the great losses it has suffered all over the world.

"Abdulmuttalab, who was arrested in Detroit, and is only 23 years of age, spent three years studying mechanical engineering at a London university, and comes from a very moderate Muslim family; his father is a well-known banker in Nigeria and former chairman of First Bank, one of Nigeria's biggest banks.

"Farouk, Abdulmuttalab's father, was so concerned about his son that he alerted authorities, which is quite a rare thing to happen.

"The important question remains: Who convinced the young man [to carry out the operation] and prepared him for the operation? Abdulmuttalab is now in prison, whereas dozens of others or even hundreds like him are still at large."
 

Al-Awlaki, "The Source of the Problem," is "The Bin Laden of the Internet"


"Al Awlaki is now most wanted – and the source of the problem with regards to at least two crimes: that of [Major] Nidal Hasan, charged with killing 13 people, and [Omar] Farouk Abdulmuttalab, charged with attempting to blow up a plane and with the attempted murder of the 279 passengers on board.

"Al-Awlaki is an important character and it seems he is the bin Laden of the Internet, the leader of an organization that brings together thousands of young men who are communicated with firstly via websites and then dealt with on the ground later. He became a leader and a Mufti who communicated with his students electronically, and he takes part in extensive Daawa [Islamic preaching] through the World Wide Web.

"Just like bin Laden, a cat with nine lives, he was targeted in two similar raids a few days ago and it is possible that he escaped despite news reports of his death."

"Al-Qaeda is an Extremist Ideology That Must First Be Tackled Ideologically"

"The events of the last few weeks have revealed that the war on terror did not end with George W. Bush's absence, and that terrorism did not stop after the release of dozens [of prisoners] from Guantanamo Bay. The retirement or capture of leaders such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed did not and will not stop the recruitment and activity of this terrorist ideology.
"In fact, all of this has only confirmed the old truth that Al-Qaeda is an extremist ideology that must first be tackled ideologically, along with the prosecution of those who support it and the need to wage war against extremist websites in general – which have become larger camps than the first camp that gave its name to the 'Al-Qaeda' organization."

Endnotes:

[1] Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (London), December 29, 2009. The text has been lightly edited for style.

http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/3869.htm
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« Reply #956 on: December 30, 2009, 06:39:55 PM »

Yemeni forces storm al-Qaida hide-out, arrest 1
Posted Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2009 Comments 

By AHMED AL-HAJ

Associated Press Writer

SAN'A, Yemen — Yemeni security forces stormed an al-Qaida hide-out Wednesday in a principle militant stronghold in the country's west, setting off clashes, officials said, as a security chief vowed to fight the group's powerful local branch until it was eliminated.

A government statement said at least one suspected al-Qaida member was arrested during the fighting in Hudaydah province. The province, along Yemen's Red Sea coast, was home to most of the assailants in a bombing and shooting attack outside the U.S. Embassy in 2008 that killed 10 Yemeni guards and four civilians.

"The (Interior) Ministry will continue tracking down al-Qaida terrorists and will continue its strikes against the group until it is totally eliminated," said Deputy Interior Minister Brig. Gen. Saleh al-Zawari.

He was speaking to senior military officials at a meeting in Mareb, one of three provinces where al-Qaida militants are believed to have taken shelter.

The group's growing presence in Yemen, an impoverished and lawless country on the edge of the Arabian Peninsula, has drawn attention with the attempted attack on a U.S. airliner on Friday. U.S. investigators say the Nigerian suspect in the attack told them that he received training and instructions from al-Qaida operatives in Yemen.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula set up its Yemen base in January when operatives from Saudi Arabia and Yemen merged.

A security official who gave more details on Wednesday's raid said it resulted from a tip and targeted a home five miles (eight kilometers) north of the Bajil district. He said one suspected al-Qaida member was injured and several who fled were being pursued.

The owner of the home, a sympathizer of the group, was arrested, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

Yemen will continue to coordinate its military efforts with the United States to track down al-Qaida in several areas of the country, said Tarek al-Shami, spokesman of the ruling National Congress Party.

The U.S. has increasingly provided intelligence, surveillance and training to Yemeni forces during the past year, and has provided some firepower, a senior U.S. defense official said recently, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive security issues. Some of that assistance may be through the expanded use of unmanned drones, and the U.S. is providing funding to Yemen for helicopters and other equipment.

The Pentagon recently said it poured nearly $70 million in military aid into Yemen this year - compared with none in 2008.

More details surfaced Wednesday about the Nigerian man suspected in Friday's attempted airliner attack. While in Yemen, he led a devout Islamic life, shunning TV and music and avoiding women, said students and staff at an institute where he studied Arabic.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab spent two periods in Yemen, from 2004-2005 and from August to December of this year, just before the attempted attack, Yemeni officials have said. Administrators at the institute said Wednesday he was enrolled at the school during both periods to study Arabic.

http://www.star-telegram.com/news/breaking_news/story/1858358.html
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« Reply #957 on: December 30, 2009, 07:15:24 PM »

No, madam secretary: The system is not working
By Evan F. Kohlmann

As someone who generally considers himself a supporter of the Obama administration -- and who recognizes the exceptionally complex and at times intractable nature of the problems it faces -- I watched with a sense of deep dismay on Sunday as Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano attempted to defend the handling of would-be terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

According to Napolitano, the fact that ordinary passengers stepped in and intervened to stop Abdulmutallab's failed effort to down a U.S. airliner is a positive sign that the “system is working smoothly.” In fact, nothing could be farther from the truth -- and this fiasco is only further evidence of the ongoing mismanagement of U.S. national security.

Although this breakdown began during the chaos of the last Bush administration, Obama and his advisors are now looking down the barrel at their own “Brownie” moment -- when Bush publicly praised Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown for his response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster. The current administration does not seem to grasp that the solution lies in finally fixing the system, not more empty excuses or a further expansion of ineffective bureaucratic policies.

Indeed, the Obama administration must fundamentally rethink the U.S. approach to homeland security. There is very little reason to believe that -- even with the added security measures now in place -- the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) would be capable of finding and stopping the next Abdulmutallab. Neither taking a laptop bag apart piece by piece nor sharply limiting carry-on luggage would have had any significance to Abdulmutallab, who carried just one small bag and had carefully secreted an incendiary device inside his underwear. It is doubtful that anything less than a full strip search would have revealed his plans. Disabling onboard GPS flight maps means precious little to anyone with a window seat -- it doesn't take a great deal of intellectual acumen to simply peer out the window and tell the difference between empty ocean and heavily populated urban areas.

More broadly, the notion of stopping terrorists when they are already inside airports, or even airplanes en route to the United States, is not only foolish, but reckless. This bizarre fortress mentality is bound for inevitable (and spectacular) failure. The United States is essentially a free country and, realistically, creative adversaries will always find a loophole to exploit. The real way to keep intended terrorists out of the United States is not to force wheelchair-bound seniors to take their shoes off when boarding a flight, nor to have mothers sip their pre-packaged infant formula. Terrorism is not a mass phenomenon. It is a problem of a small number of people working in groups of twos and threes. The real answer to this challenge is intelligence -- and recognizing the threat long before it ever reaches U.S. shores.

It so happens that -- as of late -- some of the most important incoming intelligence leads have not originated from spy satellites or undercover operatives, but rather from the frightened families of young men who have fallen under the sway of al-Qaeda. For both the group of Minnesotans who left their homes to join al-Shabaab in Somalia and the five Americans from Washington D.C. arrested by Pakistani police en route to the Taliban, families came forward with critical information allowing U.S. government agencies to jump into action. If Abdulmutallab's banker father is truthful in asserting that he repeatedly sent warnings to the U.S. embassy in Nigeria, there simply is no excuse for ignoring him. The elder Abdulmutallab is a wealthy and well-regarded member of Nigerian society, who owns properties in London and the United States. His statements are hardly the equivalent of anonymous 911 tips from teenage pranksters. It would have taken a minimal amount of effort to ensure that this man's son was never allowed to board a U.S.-bound airliner. Traveling to the United States as a foreign national is not an absolute right. It is already a heavily regulated privilege.

Even the United States' enemies are starting to recognize how threadbare our current approach to gathering, sharing, and interpreting intelligence is. In describing the e-mail exchanges between himself and alleged Ft. Hood shooter Maj. Malik Nidal Hasan, radical Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki smugly boasted of how Hasan had sought explicit advice on the killing of U.S. soldiers and Jews. Awlaki scoffed, “I wonder where were the American security forces who once claimed that they can read the numbers of any license plate, anywhere in the world, from space.” Indeed, one is only left to wonder what other critical warning signs are being missed by our often piecemeal effort to address terrorist threats.

If Obama truly wishes to bring his slogan of “change” to his nation's counterterrorism strategy, he should avoid falling into the trap of his predecessors. He should resist the urge to sweep shortcomings under the rug in order to save face and score political points. The country's homeland security efforts require leadership that takes responsibility for marshaling the tremendous technological, financial, and human resources of the United States and puts them to proper use. Scanning millions of airline passengers in the hopes of finding a needle in a haystack is clearly not the right way to tackle this issue. Relying on civilians to step in and fill the gaps left by the CIA, FBI, and DHS is obviously not the answer either. Nearly a decade after the events of September 11, 2001, the American public is owed a frank explanation of how the system has failed, and a fresh approach to ensuring their safety.

(Source: Foreign Policy
http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=211032
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« Reply #958 on: December 30, 2009, 07:25:06 PM »

Ex-detainees fuel al-Qaeda cell in Yemen

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post

SAN'A, Yemen - Former detainees of the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have led and fueled the growing assertiveness of the al-Qaeda branch that claimed responsibility for the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a U.S. jet, potentially complicating the Obama administration's efforts to shut down the facility.

They include two Saudi nationals: al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's deputy leader, Said al-Shihri, and its chief theological adviser, Ibrahim Suleiman al Rubaish. Months after their release to Saudi Arabia, both crossed the porous border into Yemen and rejoined the terrorist network.

Both Shihri and Rubaish were released under the Bush administration, as was a Yemeni man killed in a government raid earlier this month while allegedly plotting an attack on the British Embassy. A Yemeni official said yesterday that the government thinks he was the first Yemeni to have joined al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula after being released from Guantanamo.

That a group partly led by former Guantanamo detainees may have equipped and trained bombing suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is likely to raise more questions about plans to repatriate the Yemen prisoners.

Six were released last week, and 80 Yemenis are now at Guantanamo - nearly half the remaining detainee population. Many are heavily radicalized, with strong ties to extremist individuals or groups in Yemen, according to U.S. officials and terrorism analysts.

Republicans have in recent months urged the Obama administration to rethink sending detainees to Yemen. They have cited al-Qaeda's growing footprint in the country, its instability, and the case of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the man charged with killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, who had exchanged e-mail with a radical Yemeni American cleric.

"This is a very dangerous policy that threatens the safety and security of the U.S. people," said Rep. Frank Wolf (R., Va.).

A senior Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said al-Qaeda had used Guantanamo "as a rallying cry and recruiting tool." Closing the prison, the official said, "is a national security imperative."

A second administration official said the government had little choice with the six detainees released last week. A federal judge had already ordered one released. The officials said the government concluded it lacked enough evidence to win against the remaining five in hearings in which the detainees had challenged their imprisonment under the doctrine of habeas corpus. The prospect of losing in federal court is likely to trigger other releases, the official said.

"We do not want a situation where the executive is defying the courts," the official said. "That's a recipe for a constitutional crisis."

Wolf, who did not object when the Bush administration repatriated 14 Yemeni detainees, said "conditions in Yemen have dramatically changed" with the emergence of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Wolf added that he had access to classified biographies of the six Yemenis sent back last week. "Did they read the bios? They are dangerous people," Wolf said.

The Yemeni former Guantanamo detainee who joined al-Qaeda, Hani Abdo Shaalan, was among four suspects killed by Yemeni forces in a Dec. 17 raid, according to a Yemeni official and a rights activist. Shaalan, who was released from Guantanamo in June 2007, and three other suspected extremists were planning to bomb the British Embassy and other Western sites, said a Yemeni official who was briefed on the operation.

Shaalan, 30, had traveled to Afghanistan by way of Pakistan in July 2001, seeking work. He eventually found work as a chef's assistant in a Taliban camp and was at Tora Bora during the U.S. air campaign there. Pakistani forces captured him in their country, near the Afghan border.

Shaalan's family reported his disappearance last year, said Ahmed Amran, a human-rights lawyer who assists the repatriated detainees.

After their release from Guantanamo, Shihri and Rubaish, who both trained and fought with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, were sent to a Saudi rehabilitation program that uses dialogue and art therapy to reform extremists. In February, the Saudi government released a list of 85 most-wanted Saudi extremists. At least 11 were graduates of the program, including Shihri and Rubaish.

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/world_us/80324312.html
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« Reply #959 on: December 30, 2009, 07:42:05 PM »

Video:US bomb plot puts Yemen in spotlight - 31 Dec 09
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/world_us/80324312.html
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