There have been plenty of conspiracy theories surrounding the events of 9/11. These conspiracy theorists believe that the U.S. government manufactured the attacks while others believe that it was the Israeli Mossad who was behind them. They site claims such as the Pentagon was not hit by a plane but by a rocket, and that the World Trade center building number seven was brought down by a controlled demolition. The prescribers to these theories have been some scattered individuals here and there who do not posses the research capabilities and capacities that are only available to governments. However, there has been one exception: the government of Iran.

The Iranian government has professed on the tongue of its president Ahmadinejad that it does not believe that al Qaeda was behind 9/11 but rather, the U.S. government. So we may ask the question: why would Iran ascribe to such a ridiculous belief that stands in the face of all logic and evidence?

Since the start of the Iranian revolution, Iran wanted to project an image of antiAmericanism. This would serve as a rallying call for the millions of Muslims around the world who despise America for its aggression against them. Iran played this card very well and garnered a lot of support among the Muslims as being the country that is willing to stand up to America.

If Iran was genuine in its animosity towards the U.S., it would be pleased to see another entity striking a blow at the Great Satan but that’s not the case. For Iran, anti-Americanism is merely a game of politics. It is anti-America when it suits it and it is a collaborator with the U.S. when it suits it, as we have seen in the shameful assistance Iran gave to the U.S. in its invasion of Afghanistan and in the Shi`a of Iraq, backed by Iran, bringing the American forces into the country and welcoming them with open arms.

Therefore with 9/11, the Iranians saw a great operation that had brought damage to the U.S. like nothing they had ever dreamed of causing during their two decades in power. For them, al Qaeda was a competitor for the hearts and minds of the disenfranchised Muslims around the world. Al Qaeda, an organization under fire, with no state, succeeded in what Iran couldn’t. Therefore it was necessary for the Iranians to discredit 9/11 and what better way to do so? Conspiracy theories.

Iran and the Shi`a in general do not want to give al Qaeda credit for the greatest and biggest operation ever committed against America because this would expose their lip-service jihad against the Great Satan.

Leon Panetta

No doubt there will be naysayers who claim that Al Qaeda was a convenient fiction for the U.S. Government in the first place, but in any event it is certainly a change of tune to hear the U.S. Defense Secretary talk about victory over the bad guys. No doubt it means a change of strategy – but what? Mary Walsh reports for CBS News:

The United States is “within reach of strategically defeating al Qaeda,” Leon Panetta declared, as he traveled to Afghanistan for his first visit there as Secretary of Defense.

Speaking to reporters aboard a government flight to Kabul, Panetta said intelligence gathered during the raid at Osama bin Laden’s compound has lead the United States to target 10-20 key al Qaeda leaders.

“If we can go after them, I think we really can strategically defeat al Qaeda,” Panetta said.

The success of the May raid on the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan where bin Laden was killed, along with “operations that we conducted at the CIA,” has undermined the terror organization’s ability to conduct 9/11-type attacks, he added.

“I think we have them on the run,” Panetta said. “I think now is the moment, following what happened with bin Laden, to put maximum pressure on them, because I do believe that if we continue this effort we really can cripple al Qaeda as a threat to this country.

“Is it going to take some more work? You bet it is. But I think it’s within reach,” Panetta said.

Panetta also said he believes Aymin al Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s new commander, is living in the tribal areas of Pakistan, known as the FATA…

[continues at CBS News]

The clandestine American military campaign to combat Al Qaeda’s franchise in Yemen is expanding to fight the Islamist militancy in Somalia, as new evidence indicates that insurgents in the two countries are forging closer ties and possibly plotting attacks against the United States, American officials say.

An American military drone aircraft attacked several Somalis in the militant group the Shabab late last month, the officials said, killing at least one of its midlevel operatives and wounding others.

The strike was carried out by the same Special Operations Command unit now battling militants in Yemen, and it represented an intensification of an American military campaign in a mostly lawless region where weak governments have allowed groups with links to Al Qaeda to flourish.

The Obama administration’s increased focus on Somalia comes as the White House has unveiled a new strategy to battle Al Qaeda in the post-Osama bin Laden era, and as some American military and intelligence officials view Qaeda affiliates in Yemen and Somalia as a greater threat to the United States than the group of operatives in Pakistan who have been barraged with hundreds of drone strikes directed by the Central Intelligence Agency in recent years.

Article continues at The New York Times.

Photo: Hamid Mir (CC)

After the disposal of Osama Bin Laden’s body at sea many were skeptical, including Bill Warren. While everyone else was talking up their conspiracy theories Warren decided there was only one way to know the  truth, go down there and get him. Via TIME:

Talk is cheap. That’s why Bill Warren won’t elaborate on his conspiracy theory regarding bin Laden’s death. Instead, he’s taking action. The Fallbrook, Calif. salvage diver is planning a mission to retrieve bin Laden’s body from the bottom of the Arabian Sea.

Having been in the business of salvage diving for more than 30 years, Warren is aware of the dangers and difficulties of rescue missions. The body, he says, “will look like a cigar at the bottom of the ocean.” It’s a mission that will require some heavy – and costly – technology. So is the proof worth the purchase?

To Warren, that’s affirmative. Casting aside all money concerns, the 59-year-old Warren is seeking to confirm bin Laden’s death and sea burial. “I want to prove to myself and probably 50% of the world that he was killed,” he says. Indeed, Warren has found a network of other skeptics: he’s rounded up donors from across the U.S. and as far away as London to help fund the mission, which could cost up to $400,000.

[Continues at TIME]

Photo: Jenn Vargas (CC)

The last major breakout of Al-Qaeda members from a Yemen prison was in 2006, but this escape consisted of nearly three times as many prisoners. Yemen Times reports:

At least 65 prisoner’s escaped on Tuesday from Al-Mukalla Central Prison. Some of the escaped prisoners have been confirmed as Al-Qaeda members who had been transferred from another prison in Al-Mukalla to the central prison.

Civilians claim that heavy gunfire broke out around 8am between security forces and escapees. The situation in the city has now returned to normal, with only one armored vehicle guarding the entrance of Jol Al-Saifa’a where the central prison is located.

The General-Secretary of Mukala’s Local Council, Mohammad Bin Ziad, who has been following the incident, told the Yemen Times that the confirmed number of escapees is 65 so far. However, he also said more details will be released after investigations have been carried out and eyewitnesses questioned.

“There was an external attack on the prison,” said Bin Ziad. “People broke into the prison from outside and slaughtered the guards. There are eyewitnesses and fatalities on both sides.”

[Continues at Yemen Times]

The Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad knew he was a marked man. Mr. Shahzad, who covered national security and terrorism, had received repeated threats from Pakistan’s powerful spy agency. Yet he courageously kept doing his job — until somebody silenced him. His body, his face horribly beaten, was buried on Wednesday.

Suspicion inevitably falls on Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s chief intelligence agency. For the sake of justice, and the shredded credibility of Pakistan’s government, his murderers must be found quickly and held accountable.

Mr. Shahzad disappeared from Islamabad on Sunday, two days after he published an article suggesting a militant attack on a naval base in Karachi was retaliation for the navy’s attempt to crack down on Al Qaeda militants in the armed forces. American analysts doubt an Al Qaeda cell infiltrated Pakistani security, but they have long worried about individual sympathizers.

Whatever the case, the attack humiliated the ISI and the armed services. They were already fending off allegations that they sheltered Osama bin Laden and criticism for failing to stop the American raid that killed him.

For more information, see original article.

Photo: Joy (CC)

This is quite a sweet hack. The Telegraph reports:

The cyber-warfare operation was launched by MI6 and GCHQ in an attempt to disrupt efforts by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular to recruit “lone-wolf” terrorists with a new English-language magazine, the Daily Telegraph understands.

When followers tried to download the 67-page colour magazine, instead of instructions about how to “Make a bomb in the Kitchen of your Mom” by “The AQ Chef” they were greeted with garbled computer code.

The code, which had been inserted into the original magazine by the British intelligence hackers, was actually a web page of recipes for “The Best Cupcakes in America” published by the Ellen DeGeneres chat show.

Written by Dulcy Israel and produced by Main Street Cupcakes in Hudson, Ohio, it said “the little cupcake is big again” adding: “Self-contained and satisfying, it summons memories of childhood even as it’s updated for today’s sweet-toothed hipsters.”

It included a recipe for the Mojito Cupcake – “made of white rum cake and draped in vanilla buttercream”- and the Rocky Road Cupcake – “warning: sugar rush ahead!”

[Continues at The Telegraph]

Flag of Al-Qaeda in Iraq

Hindustan Times reports:

A fierce succession battle appears to be gripping the senior ranks of al Qaeda in the wake of the death of leader Osama bin Laden, pitting regional affiliates against the central “hardcore” of the organisation. Reports from Pakistan have named an Egyptian former special forces officer, ,as the acting leader of al Qaeda.

Adel, who is in his late 40s, is a veteran militant who was close to bin Laden in the 1990s. He was detained in Iran after fleeing Afghanistan following the ouster of the Taliban in 2001. According to Noman Benotman, a former Libyan militant now living in London, al-Adel, also known as Muhamad Ibrahim Makkawi, was released from Iranian detention and returned to Pakistan last year.

The report in the News newspaper of Pakistan identified al-Adel as having been chosen as “interim leader” after a meeting at “an undisclosed location”. It said none of the sons of bin Laden had shown willingness to take up a formal position within the organisation.

If confirmed, the appointment of al-Adel is a major blow to bin Laden’s close associate Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian extremist who has long been seen as the group’s number two and key strategist.

[Continues at Hindustan Times]

The Times Of India reports:

Al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden was a prisoner in US custody for “sometime” before he was killed by the American military, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said.

“I have exact information that bin Laden was held by the American military for sometime… until the day they killed him he was a prisoner held by them,” the hardline president said in a live interview on Iranian state television.

“Please pay attention. This is important. He was held by them for sometime. They made him sick and while he was sick they killed him,” Ahmadinejad added.

He accused US President Barack Obama for announcing the al-Qaida leader’s death for “political gain.”

“What the US president has done is for domestic political gain. In other words, they killed him for Mr Obama’s election and now they are seeking to replace him with someone else,” Ahmadinejad said without elaborating.

Bin Laden was shot dead on May 2 in a US commando raid on a heavily fortified compound near Islamabad, Pakistan.

On May 4, Iranian Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi too had cast doubt on bin Laden’s death, saying there were “ambiguities” over the way he was killed

[Continues at The Times Of India]

Al-Qaida has confirmed the death of its leader, Osama bin Laden, and vowed vengeance, pledging in a statement posted on militant websites that his blood “will not be wasted”.

In what is apparently the first official reaction from the militant Islamist group since Bin Laden was gunned down by US special forces troops who raided his hideout in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad, the group called on the people of Pakistan, “where Sheik Osama was killed”, to rise up against their leaders.

The group would soon release an audio message from Bin Laden recorded a week before his death, said the statement, dated 3 May and signed by “the general leadership of al-Qaida”. There was no independent confirmation that the message was authentic but it was posted on websites through which al-Qaida habitually issues statements.

It continued: “We stress that the blood of the holy warrior sheikh, Osama bin Laden, God bless him, is precious to us and to all Muslims and will not go in vain.

“We will remain, God willing, a curse chasing the Americans and their agents, following them outside and inside their countries. Soon, God willing, their happiness will turn to sadness, their blood will be mingled with their tears.”

The statement came as US intelligence officials said Bin Laden had remained in close touch with the rest of the al-Qaida network from his safe house and had continued to plot potential terrorist attacks, including one against the US railway system…

[continues in the Guardian]

Michael Moore. Photo: nicolas genin (CC)

Michael Moore gives his take on the Osama affair exclusively to TheWrap:

Osama bin Laden wasn’t killed by a Navy SEAL team, he was straight up executed, Michael Moore told TheWrap on Wednesday,

The “Fahrenheit 9/11” director has been setting Twitter aflame Wednesday afternoon urging the Obama administration to come clean about the circumstances surrounding the terrorist leader’s death — particularly in light of the White House’s shifting account of last weekend’s firefight in Abbottabad.

The Oscar-winning director has been tweeting about his belief that Bin Laden should have received a trial, and his theory that Pakistan was keeping the Al Qaeda head under house arrest. TheWrap grilled Moore about his controversial views.

Is Obama lying about how Bin Laden died?

Common sense tells you he was executed. That was the plan all along. Just tell us that and quit treating us like children.

I have a lot of faith in Obama, but we’ve received three different stories in three days. We heard, “There was a firefight.” “He used a woman as a shield.” Now it turns out none of these things were true. He wasn’t armed.

Does it matter if he was executed? Do you think he deserved a trial?

I am a Catholic, and the position of the Catholic Church and the Pope is that we are 100 percent against the death penalty unless it is in self-defense. Look at the Nuremberg Trials. We didn’t just pop a bullet in the heads of the worst scum in history. We thought it was important to put them on trial and expose their evil. In a democracy we believe in a system of justice and we believe in a judicial system that gives people a day in court…and then we hung them.

It doesn’t mean we can’t hang them afterward…

[continues at TheWrap]

Cover Of Osama Bin Laden's Book.

Robert F. Worth writes in the New York Times:

Jihadis around the world reacted on Monday to the news of Osama bin Laden’s death with a mix of sorrow, disbelief and determination that Al Qaeda and its affiliates would continue their struggle against the West and its allies.

Although the group’s leaders have not yet issued any formal statements on the subject, jihadis vented their feelings throughout the day in Internet forums, gatherings, and interviews throughout the Arab and Muslim world and beyond.

“It is a sad moment and also a happy moment,” said Omar Bakri Muhammad, a radical religious leader who was exiled from Britain and spoke by telephone from Lebanon. “Sad because the ummah was in need of such a charismatic leader. Happy moment because, he died as a martyr, he was not humiliated and fought until the last moment.”

Some jihadis expressed doubt that Bin Laden was dead, citing what they called doctored photographs that shot around the Web on Monday. But most conceded that the news appeared to be true. Many insisted that the news was not unexpected, and tried to shift focus to the organization the Qaeda leader helped build.

“Bin Laden is dead, but the movement is not,” said one member of an Al Qaeda affiliate active in North Africa and Europe, speaking by phone Monday. “And if one Osama is dead, there are thousands more Osamas.”

For more information, see original article.

By Marcin n® ☼ (CC)

A story from March 25, 2011 by Christopher Hope, Robert Winnett, Holly Watt and Heidi Blake for the Telegraph hints at what we might have to look forward to now that Osama is fish food:

Al-Qaeda terrorists have threatened to unleash a “nuclear hellstorm” on the West if Osama Bin Laden is caught or assassinated, according to documents to be released by the WikiLeaks website, which contain details of the interrogations of more than 700 Guantanamo detainees…

A senior Al-Qaeda commander claimed that the terrorist group has hidden a nuclear bomb in Europe which will be detonated if Bin-Laden is ever caught or assassinated. The US authorities uncovered numerous attempts by Al-Qaeda to obtain nuclear materials and fear that terrorists have already bought uranium. Sheikh Mohammed told interrogators that Al-Qaeda would unleash a “nuclear hellstorm”…

Abbottabad in the hills to the north of the capital of Islamabad, is in an area where much of the land is controlled or owned by the Pakistan Army and retired army officers. The city is most notable for housing the Pakistan Military Academy, the Pakistan Army’s premier training college, equivalent to West Point.

Looking at maps and satellite photos, I saw the wide expanse of the Academy not far from where the million-dollar, heavily secured mansion where bin Laden lived was constructed in 2005. The maps I looked at had sections of land nearby marked off as “restricted area,” indicating that it was under military control. It stretches credulity to think that a mansion of that scale could have been built and occupied by bin Laden for six years without it coming to the attention of anyone in Pakistan’s Army.

The initial circumstantial evidence suggests the opposite is more likely—that bin Laden was effectively being housed under Pakistani state control. Pakistan will deny this, it seems safe to predict, and perhaps no convincing evidence will ever surface to prove the case.

If I were a prosecutor at the United States Department of Justice, however, I would be tempted to call a grand jury. Who owned the land on which the house was constructed? How was the land acquired, and from whom? Who designed the house, which seems to have been purpose-built to secure bin Laden? Who was the general contractor? Who installed the security systems? Who worked there? Are there witnesses who will now testify as to who visited the house, how often, and for what purpose? These questions are not relevant only to the full realization of justice for the victims of September 11th. They are also relevant to the victims of terrorist attacks conducted or inspired by bin Laden while he lived in the house, and these include many Pakistanis as well as Afghans, Indians, Jordanians, and Britons. They are rightly subjects of American criminal law.

It’s one of the oldest tricks in the spying book: Tempt a guy with sex; record him in a compromising position, and then blackmail him into working for you. According to a new file released by WikiLeaks, that’s exactly what happened to one inmate there. But be wary of this espionage tale. As with a lot of Gitmo detainee accounts, the detainee’s history of trying to please interrogators and his experience being tortured make it difficult to say for sure what really happened.

Abd Al Rahim Abdul Raza Janko told interrogators at Guantanamo Bay that his journey into an al-Qaida guest house began with blackmail while he was studying Islamic law and Arabic literature in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). He claimed Prince Fisal Sudid Qasmi invited him to hang out with his college friends at a local hotel. When he arrived, he said a raging sex party was already in progress and he promptly took part in it. Weeks later, Janko said Qasmi confronted him with a videotape of the party, threatening to send it to a television station or his family if he didn’t agree to spy for the UAE. The confrontation, according to Janko, kicked off an odyssey that began with him snooping on Filipino classmates’ plans to smuggle fighters back home and ended with him heading to Afghanistan in early 2000 to spy on al-Qaida.

Read More: WIRED’s Danger Room

Abu Qatada and Abu Hamza, two preachers who lived off state benefits after claiming asylum, are identified by the American authorities as the key recruiters responsible for sending dozens of extremists from throughout the world to Pakistan and Afghanistan via London mosques.

The leaked WikiLeaks documents, written by senior US military commanders at Guantánamo Bay, illustrate how, for two decades, Britain effectively became a crucible of terrorism, with dozens of extremists, home-grown and from abroad, radicalised here.

Finsbury Park mosque, in north London, is described as a “haven” for extremists. United States intelligence officials concluded the mosque served as “an attack planning and propaganda production base”.

The files will raise questions over why the Government and security services failed to take action sooner to tackle the capital’s reputation as a staging post for terrorism, which became so established that the city was termed “Londonistan”.

The documents show that at least 35 detainees at Guantánamo had passed through Britain before being sent to fight against Allied forces in Afghanistan. This is thought to be more than from any other Western nation…

[continues in the Telegraph]

Arts & Crafts on the Victory Base Complex, Iraq Photo: Staff Sgt. Joy Pariante

Christmas isn’t always accompanied with holiday cheer, sometimes it comes with death threats. MSNBC reports:

Iraqi Christians on Wednesday called off Christmas festivities across the country as al-Qaida insurgents threatened more attacks on a beleaguered community still terrified from a bloody siege at a Baghdad church two months earlier.

A council representing Christian denominations across Iraq advised its followers to cancel public Christmas celebrations out of concern over new terror attacks and as a show of mourning for the victims of the church siege and other violence.

Church officials in the northern cities of Kirkuk and Mosul, the southern city of Basra and in the capital confirmed they will not put up Christmas decorations or hold evening Mass and have urged worshippers to refrain from decorating their homes.

Even an appearance by Santa Claus was called off.

“Nobody can ignore the threats of al-Qaida against Iraqi Christians,” said Chaldean Archbishop Louis Sako in Kirkuk. “We cannot find a single source of joy that makes us celebrate. The situation of the Christians is bleak.”

Christians across Iraq have been living in fear since a Baghdad church attack in October that left 68 people dead.

[Continues at MSNBC]

Michael Mukasey

Agence France Presse reports via AlterNet:

In a statement, the department said that after an “exhaustive investigation” an official heading the probe decided that he “will not pursue criminal charges” for the destruction of the interrogation tapes filmed at secret prisons.

In January 2008, then-US attorney general Michael Mukasey opened the inquiry after the revelation that the CIA three years earlier had destroyed tapes showing harsh interrogations of two Al-Qaeda suspects.

Federal prosecutor John Durham was tapped to lead the FBI probe in possible crimes after the CIA acknowledged that it had destroyed 92 interrogation videos.

The probe was launched to examine whether intelligence officials broke the law by destroying the videos of the interrogations, which were conducted in the the months following the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

At the time the probe was launched, then-CIA director Michael Hayden said the tapes had been destroyed to protect the identities of intelligence agents tasked with interrogating the terror suspects.

But some US lawmakers and international rights campaigners dismissed the explanation, charging that the destruction of the tapes was meant to cover up alleged detainee torture.

Read more here.

Renowned scholar Noam Chomsky says US invasion of Afghanistan was illegal since to date there is no evidence that al-Qaeda has carried out the 9/11 attacks.

“The explicit and declared motive of the [Afghanistan] war was to compel the Taliban to turn over to the United States, the people who they accused of having been involved in World Trade Center and Pentagon terrorist acts. The Taliban…they requested evidence…and the Bush administration refused to provide any,” the 81-year-old senior academic made the remarks on Press TV’s program A Simple Question.

“We later discovered one of the reasons why they did not bring evidence: they did not have any.”

The political analyst also said that nonexistence of such evidence was confirmed by FBI eight months later.

“The head of FBI, after the most intense international investigation in history, informed the press that the FBI believed that the plot may have been hatched in Afghanistan, but was probably implemented in the United Arab Emirates and Germany.”

[continues at PressTV]

ANSWER: Never!

Anwar Al Awlaki - Terrorist? Pentagon/CIA Employee? Same Thing!

Al-Qaeda terror mastermind Anwar Al-Awlaki, the man who helped plot the aborted Christmas Day bombing, the Fort Hood shooting, the Times Square bombing attempt, and who also preached to the alleged September 11 hijackers, dined at the Pentagon just months after 9/11 documents obtained by Fox News show. Thursday, October 21, 2010

American-born cleric Awlaki’s role as a key figure in almost every recent terror plot targeting the United States and Canada, coupled with his visit to the Pentagon, only confirms our long stated position that Awlaki is a chief terrorist patsy-handler for the CIA: he is the federal government’s premier false flag agent.

“Documents exclusively obtained by Fox News, including an FBI interview conducted after the Fort Hood shooting in November 2009, state that Awlaki was taken to the Pentagon as part of the military’s outreach to the Muslim community in the immediate aftermath of the attacks,” states the report…

Al-Awlaki is a U.S. Citizen, who pursued a Doctorate in Education at George Washington University in Washington D.C.

Al-Awlaki is a U.S. Citizen, who pursued a Doctorate in Education at George Washington University in Washington D.C.

George Washington University is known for having close ties to the intelligence community, the most public of which is that GWU maintains the National Security Archive.

The Washington Post has reported that George Washington University has CIA employees teaching courses on their campus, as part of the CIA’s “Officers in Residence” program….

Osama bin Laden is dead. The news first came from sources in Afghanistan and Pakistan almost six months ago: the fugitive died in December [2001] and was buried in the mountains of southeast Afghanistan. Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, echoed the information. The remnants of Osama’s gang, however, have mostly stayed silent, either to keep Osama’s ghost alive or because they have no means of communication.

With an ego the size of Mount Everest, Osama bin Laden would not have, could not have, remained silent for so long if he were still alive. He always liked to take credit even for things he had nothing to do with. Would he remain silent for nine months and not trumpet his own survival? [New York Times, July 11, 2002]

“I have no doubts that Osama either visited Yemen or is actually based there,” Atwan told Gulf News in an interview.

“When I met him in Tora Bora [in November 1996] I asked him, ‘One of these days you will be kicked out of Afghanistan like you were from Sudan. Have you considered an alternative?’ His answer was Yemen because ‘its mountains are like Tora Bora’s and the country will embrace me and will be warm towards me’.” (For more National Security Industrial Complex/Job Security BS, read here.)

More on [redacted] news

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) — Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri are believed to be hiding close to each other in houses in northwest Pakistan, but are not together, a senior NATO official said. “Nobody in al Qaeda is living in a cave,” said the official, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the intelligence matters involved.

Rather, al Qaeda’s top leadership is believed to be living in relative comfort, protected by locals and some members of the Pakistani intelligence services, the official said.

Pakistan has repeatedly denied protecting members of the al Qaeda leadership.

The official said the general region where bin Laden is likely to have moved around in recent years ranges from the mountainous Chitral area in the far northwest near the Chinese border, to the Kurram Valley which neighbors Afghanistan’s Tora Bora, one of the Taliban strongholds during the U.S. invasion in 2001.

Tora Bora is also the region from which bin Laden is believed to have escaped during a U.S. bombing raid in late 2001. U.S. officials have long said there have been no confirmed sightings of bin Laden or Zawahiri for several years.

The area that the official described covers hundreds of square miles of some of the most rugged terrain in Pakistan inhabited by fiercely independent tribes.

The official also confirmed the U.S. assessment that Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban, has moved between the cities of Quetta and Karachi in Pakistan over the last several months.

The official would not discuss how the coalition has come to know any of this information, but he has access to some of the most sensitive information in the NATO alliance…

[continues at CNN]

UK Current threat level

A US terror alert issued this week about al-Qaida  plots to attack targets in western Europe was politically motivated and not based on credible new information, senior Pakistani diplomats and European intelligence officials have told the Guardian.

The non-specific US warning, which despite its vagueness led Britain, France and other countries to raise their overseas terror alert levels, was an attempt to justify a recent escalation in US drone and helicopter attacks inside Pakistan that have “set the country on fire”, said Wajid Shamsul Hasan, the high commissioner to Britain.

Hasan, a veteran diplomat who is close to Pakistan’s president, suggested the Obama administration was playing politics with the terror threat before next month’s mid-term congressional elections, in which the Republicans are expected to make big gains.

He also claimed President Obama was reacting to pressure to demonstrate that his Afghan war strategy and this year’s troop surge, which are unpopular with the American public, were necessary.

“I will not deny the fact that there may be internal political dynamics, including the forthcoming mid-term American elections. If the Americans have definite information about terrorists and al-Qaida people, we should be provided [with] that and we could go after them ourselves,” Hasan said.

“Such reports are a mixture of frustrations, ineptitude and lack of appreciation of ground realities. Any attempt to infringe the sovereignty of Pakistan would not bring about stability in Afghanistan, which is presumably the primary objective of the American and Nato forces.”

Dismissing claims of a developed, co-ordinated plot aimed at Britain, France and Germany, European intelligence officials also pointed the finger at the US, and specifically at the White House. “To stitch together [the terror plot claims] in a seamless narrative is nonsensical,” said one well-placed official.

Read more here.

Lawrence Wright spent five years conducting hundreds of interviews in at least ten countries in order to write “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11”. The book, a best-selling history about Islamic fundamentalism, weaves the stories of terrorists, intelligence officers and government officials in a remarkable narrative that helps to explain both the cult of Osama bin Laden and the flaws in American intelligence that let him get away with murder.

“When I finished my book,” Mr Wright said in an interview with Prospero, “I had countless people asking me ‘What were they like?’ and ‘How did it affect you?’” He ultimately answered these questions in his one-man play, “My Trip to al-Qaeda”, a gripping personal account of the people he met and what it all felt like. On September 7th HBO will premiere Alex Gibney’s elegant screen adaptation, which mixes theatrical footage with more photographs and videos to help tell Mr Wright’s story about the lure of radicalism in the Islamic world.

Read More on the Economist’s Prospero

Rachel Corrie in front of Israeli bulldozers

Was every human being on the face of the Earth just drafted?

According to Al Jazeera there’s been an unseemly instance of honesty:

“During war there are no civilians,” that’s what “Yossi,” an Israeli military (IDF) training unit leader simply stated during a round of questioning on day two of the Rachel Corrie trials, held in Haifa’s District Court earlier this week. “When you write a [protocol] manual, that manual is for war,” he added.

For the human rights activists and friends and family of Rachel Corrie sitting in the courtroom, this open admission of an Israeli policy of indiscrimination towards civilians — Palestinian or foreign — created an audible gasp.

Yet, put into context, this policy comes as no surprise. The Israeli military’s track record of insouciance towards the killings of Palestinians, from the 1948 massacre of Deir Yassin in Jerusalem to the 2008-2009 attacks on Gaza that killed upwards of 1400 men, women and children, has illustrated that not only is this an entrenched operational framework but rarely has it been challenged until recently.

Rachel Corrie, the young American peace activist from Olympia, Washington, was crushed to death by a Caterpillar D9-R bulldozer, as she and other members of the nonviolent International Solidarity Movement attempted to protect a Palestinian home from imminent demolition on March 16, 2003 in Rafah, Gaza Strip. Corrie has since become a symbol of Palestinian solidarity as her family continues to fight for justice in her name.

Her parents, Cindy and Craig Corrie, filed a civil lawsuit against the State of Israel for Rachel’s unlawful killing — what they allege was an intentional act — and this round of testimonies called by the State’s defense team follows the Corries’ witness testimonies last March. The Corries’ lawsuit charges the State with recklessness and a failure to take appropriate measures to protect human life, actions that violate both Israeli and international laws.

Witnesses insisted that the bulldozer driver couldn’t see Rachel Corrie from his perch. The State attorneys called three witnesses to the stand on Sunday and Monday to prove that the killing was unintentional and took place in an area designated as a “closed military zone.”  Falling under the definition of an Act of War, their argument sought to absolve the soldiers of liability under Israeli law.

It’s obvious Al Qaeda feels it’s okay to murder “civilians,” and I understand Obama has claimed that same right.  Are the New Dark Ages here yet?  Have corporations replaced democracy with feudalism?  Can we stop pretending our so-called “civilization” is anything more than a facade of big words and shiny machines now and get down to slaughtering the weak by the millions like Charles Manson says?

Former Cuban president Fidel Castro meets Lithuanian author and conspiracy theorist Daniel Estulin in Havana. Photograph: Alex Castro/EPA

Why should it take Castro for this to make headlines? It’s not exactly new news after all… Good publicity for Daniel Estulin though! From the Guardian:

Fidel Castro has more reason than most to believe conspiracy theories involving dark forces in Washington. After all, the CIA tried to blow his head off with an exploding cigar.

But the ageing Cuban revolutionary may have gone too far for all but the most ardent believer in the reach and competence of America’s intelligence agency. He has claimed that Osama bin Laden is in the pay of the CIA and that President George Bush summoned up the al-Qaida leader whenever he needed to increase the fear quotient. The former Cuban president said he knows it because he has read WikiLeaks.

Castro told a visiting Lithuanian writer, who is known as a font of intriguing conspiracy theories about plots for world domination, that Bin Laden was working for the White House.

“Bush never lacked for Bin Laden’s support. He was a subordinate,” Castro said, according to the Communist party daily, Granma. “Any time Bush would stir up fear and make a big speech, Bin Laden would appear, threatening people with a story about what he was going to do.”

He said that thousands of pages of American classified documents made public by WikiLeaks pointed to who the al-Qaida leader is really working for.

“Who showed that he [Bin Laden] is indeed a CIA agent was WikiLeaks. It proved it with documents,” he said, but did not explain exactly how.

He made his comments during a meeting with Daniel Estulin, the author of three books about the secretive Bilderberg Club which includes men such as Henry Kissinger, the former US secretary of state, leading European officials and business executives. Estulin says that the club is form of secret world government, manipulating economies and political systems…

[continues at the Guardian]