U.S. Taxpayers Risk $9.7 Trillion on Bailouts as Senate Votes

The stimulus package the U.S. Congress is completing would raise the government’s commitment to solving the financial crisis to $9.7 trillion, enough to pay off more than 90 percent of the nation’s home mortgages..... bailout

John Esposito: In praise of Obama and dhimmitude

Profundity of thought?

The overarching theme of this wonderful piece of literary dhimmitude is the great need for Americans to "respect" Islam and exhibit "humility" towards Muslims. The logic is that these two approaches will ameliorate "radicalism" in the Muslim world. That the reverse appears to be true; that those two traits in and of themselves -- "respect" and "humility" -- often exacerbate radicalism and are seen as signs of weakness, is of no interest to the professor.

"Obama reaches out: rebuilding relations with the Muslim world," by John L. Esposito for Today's Zaman, February 9:

President Barack Obama has moved quickly to follow up on his inaugural statement: "To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect." He appointed and sent his special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, to the region on an eight-day trip.

Then, on Jan. 28, Obama, on Al Arabiya, the prominent Arab satellite TV network, addressed the Arab and Muslim worlds in his first televised interview from the White House.

For many Muslims, eight years of the Bush administration's war against global terrorism has looked more like the use of terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and then the promotion of democracy to legitimate a neo-colonial design to redraw the political map of the Muslim world. Conscious of the popular perception and fear that the US has been fighting a war against Islam and Muslims, President Obama sought to counter soaring anti-Americanism and reassure Muslims that "the Americans are not your enemy." Signaling a shift from the global perception of US arrogance and interventionism, Obama declared that, while "we sometimes make mistakes," America is not a colonial power and expressed his hope for a restoration of "the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago."

Now one knows why Iran feels smugly entitled to an(other) apology from the US: it sees that they are being issued uncritically. Also, why think that the "respect and partnership" the US had with the Muslim world 20-30 years ago disappeared because the US has made "mistakes"? Sounds more reasonable to believe that "respect and partnership" went the way of the dodo 20-30 years ago precisely because radical Islam, with all its disdain for infidels, began spreading like wildfire in the Islamic world right around then (e.g., Iran's Islamic revolution).

Obama's message did strike many of the right chords. He spoke directly to the peoples of the Muslim world, not to its rulers. He communicated a sense of respect, humility and, at the same time, confidence and conviction. His message was one that emphasized the importance of mutual understanding and respect for the peoples of the Muslim world, declaring: "My job is to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people. … My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy." Obama also emphasized a new readiness to listen rather than to dictate.

No quarrel here: To be sure, "humility" (i.e., dhimmitude) is a trait Muslims expect from infidels; moreover, the Islamic world is certainly "filled with extraordinary people."

Gallup World Poll findings in 2007 from more than 35 countries, extending from North Africa to Southeast Asia, underscore the importance of Obama addressing this sense of powerlessness, humiliation and lack of respect. (See, John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, "Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think").

A book that was also heavily criticized in reviews for distorting and misrepresenting data.

When asked in an open-ended question what the West could do to improve relations, the most frequent response was respect Islam and Muslims, not consider them inferior. Obama clearly spoke to this concern both in his inaugural speech and on Al Arabiya: "In all my travels throughout the Muslim world, what I've come to understand is that regardless of your faith -- and America is a country of Muslims, Jews, Christians, non-believers -- regardless of your faith, people all have certain common hopes and common dreams."

Obama's message of self-criticism and restraint, diplomacy and peace and partnership over unilateralism resonates with the vast majority of Muslims who, like Americans, want peace, not war, security not instability and terrorism, as well as leadership based on partnership not unilateralism. But they also want to see a respect that is reflected in even-handedness and justice.

The president is correct in stating, "We can have legitimate disagreements but still be respectful." However, in a post-Gaza Middle East, the US cannot signal a new approach to Middle East foreign policy that has credibility if, while rightly reinforcing America's commitment to Israel and condemning terrorist attacks, Obama says nothing critical about Israel's war in Gaza and its use of violence and terror. Israel did not simply attack terrorists and destroy their infrastructure, but Gaza's elected government and its society. The unrestrained violence and terror unleashed on the people of Gaza, the destruction of much of Gaza's infrastructure and institutions (homes, neighborhoods, universities, schools, mosques, police stations and hospitals), and the disproportionate loss of civilian life and casualties (1,300 Palestinians, including at least 700 civilians versus 10 Israeli soldiers and three civilians) threatens to radicalize a generation of Palestinians.

Obama characterized his approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and his advice to Mitchell by saying: "So let's listen. He's going to be speaking to all the major parties involved." This "new" policy will require that the US work with all the players, Hamas, the Palestinian National Authority and Israel. Whatever it may think of Hamas, a reality-based, pragmatic American foreign policy must remember and respect the fact that the people of Palestine (in the West Bank as well as Gaza) made their choice in democratic elections in 2006, electing a Hamas-led government. The Muslim world remembers that subsequently the US and Israel chose to boycott and blockade Gaza in an effort to undermine and overthrow the democratically elected government.

Esposito has it backwards. That the Palestinians did elect Hamas, if anything, exonerates all US/Israeli actions: after all, the people, freely and willingly, chose a radical Islamist organization, one that preaches nothing but death and destruction to Israel. And this is supposed to make Israel and the US "respect" Palestinians and better cooperate with them? That's the price of democracy: the leaders reflect the people.

As the Gallup World Poll found, both the mainstream Muslim majority and a minority of potential extremists want better relations with the West -- coexistence, not conflict. Most admire America's basic principles and values of self-determination, freedoms, democracy and human rights. At the same time, Obama and the US face a Muslim world in which many have deep fears and grievances, fear of Western intervention, invasion and domination, and the belief that the West, in particular the US, uses a double standard in its promotion of democracy and human rights.

While many Muslims are critical of the policies and actions of the US, Israel and their own governments, the wars in Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza, authoritarian regimes, lack of freedoms and human rights, the majority also reject extremism and terrorism as a response. To restore America's global image, moral stature and leadership and further weaken the extremists, the Obama administration must listen to -- not necessarily agree with -- and not dictate to but also seek to work at nongovernmental levels with mainstream Muslim organizations and NGOs in addressing these concerns and injustices.

Al Qaeda's paramilitary 'Shadow Army'

(Compiler's note: Yes, a must read article here.)

By Bill Roggio

Al Qaeda has reorganized its notorious paramilitary formations that were devastated during the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002. Al Qaeda has reestablished the predominantly Arab and Asian paramilitary formation that was formerly known as Brigade 055 into a larger, more effective fighting unit known as the Lashkar al Zil, or Shadow Army, a senior US intelligence official told The Long War Journal.

The Shadow Army is active primarily in Pakistan's tribal areas, the Northwest Frontier Province, and in eastern and southern Afghanistan, several US military and intelligence officials told The Long War Journal on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject.

The paramilitary force is well trained and equipped, and has successfully defeated the Pakistani Army in multiple engagements. Inside Pakistan, the Shadow Army has been active in successful Taliban campaigns in North and South Waziristan, Bajaur, Peshawar, Khyber, and Swat.

In Afghanistan, the Shadow Army conducted operations against Coalition and Afghan forces in Kunar, Nuristan, Nangahar, Kabul, Logar, Wardak, Khost, Paktika, Paktia, Zabul, Ghazni, and Kandahar provinces.

"The Shadow Army has been instrumental in the Taliban's consolidation of power in Pakistan's tribal areas an in the Northwest Frontier Province," a senior intelligence official said. "They are also behind the Taliban's successes in eastern and southern Afghanistan. They are helping to pinch Kabul."

Afghan and Pakistan-based Taliban forces have integrated elements of its forces into the Shadow Army, "especially the Tehrik-e-Taliban and Haqqani Network," a senior US military intelligence official said. "It is considered a status symbol" for groups to be a part of the Shadow Army.

The Tehrik-e-Taliban is the Pakistani Taliban movement led by Baitullah Mehsud, the South Waziristan leader who has defeated Pakistani Army forces in conventional battles. The Haqqani Network straddles the Afghan-Pakistani border and have been behind some of the most high-profile attacks in Afghanistan.

The Shadow Army's effectiveness has placed the group in the cross hairs of the covert US air campaign in Pakistan's tribal areas. In October 2008, the US killed Khalid Habib al Shami, the leader of the Shadow Army, in a strike on a compound in North Waziristan.

A look at the Shadow Army

The presence of the Shadow Army has been evident for some time as there are numerous reports of joint operations between the Taliban, al Qaeda, the Haqqani Network, Hizb-i-Islami, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami, and other terror groups. In January 2008, The Long War Journal noted the various terror groups were cycling through the numerous camps in the tribal areas and have organized under military structure.

While the Shadow Army has been active, there has been little visual evidence of its existence until now. The Long War Journal has obtained a photograph of a unit from the Shadow Army operating in Pakistan's Taliban-controlled district of Swat.

The photograph was taken some time in January of this year. It shows what appears to be either a reinforced squad or two squads of foot soldiers. Fourteen fighters are in view, and others appear to be in the far background. All of the fighters are wearing masks, new clothes, sneakers, and web gear. One fighters is wearing a Camelbak. The weapons are uniform; six AK-47s and one RPG are in view.

A look at the clothing of the fighters gives a good indication of the identity of the fighters, an expert on al Qaeda told The Long War Journal. The length of the pants of pictured fighters are described as being at "al Qaeda height" - meaning only al Qaeda and allied "Wahhabi/Salafi-jihadis" wear their pant legs this high.

"The extremists who follow al Qaeda's religious beliefs think that pants must be at least six inches above the ground because there's a hadith [a saying of the Prophet Mohammed] that says clothes that touch the ground are a sign of pride and vanity," the expert said. "This, along with the new dyeing of men's beards red or yellow is a sure sign of al Qaeda-ization."

The type of masks worn and the tennis shoes are also strong indicators that these fighters "are non-Afghan fighters," an expert on the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan said. "Those types of masks I have seen, and they are always on the Pakistani side of the border," the expert said. "The tennis shoes and socks are a big indicator that they are non-Afghan fighters, probably Pakistanis or Arab/Central Asian fighters."

Military Organization of the Shadow Army

The Shadow Army is organized under a military structure, a US military intelligence officer familiar with the situation in northwestern Pakistan informed The Long War Journal. There are units analogous to battalion, brigade, and division formations found in Western armies.

The military organization has a clear-cut command structure with established ranks. A senior al Qaeda military leader is placed in command of the Shadow Army, while experienced officers are put in command of the brigades and subordinate battalions and companies.

The re-formed Brigade 055 is but one of an estimated three to four brigades in the Shadow Army. Several other Arab brigades have been formed, some consisting of former members of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guards as well as Iraqis, Saudis, Yemenis, Egyptians, North Africans, and others.

During the rein of the Taliban in Afghanistan prior to the US invasion in 2001, the 055 Brigade served as "the shock troops of the Taliban and functioned as an integral part of the latter's military apparatus," al Qaeda expert Rohan Gunaratna wrote in Inside al Qaeda. At its peak in 2001, the 055 Brigade had an estimated 2,000 soldiers and officers in the ranks. The brigade comprised of Arabs, Central Asians, South Asians, as well as Chechens, Bosnians, and Uighurs from Western China.

The 055 Brigade has "completely reformed and surpassing pre-2001 standards," an official said. The other brigades are also considered well trained.

One official said the mixing of the various Taliban and al Qaeda units has made distinctions between the groups somewhat meaningless.

"The line between the Taliban and al Qaeda is increasingly blurred, especially from a command and control perspective," the official said. "Are Faqir Mohammed, Baitullah Mehsud, Hakeemullah Mehsud, Ilyas Kashmiri, Siraj Haqqani, and all the rest 'al Qaeda?,'" the official asked, listing senior Taliban commanders in Pakistan that operate closely with al Qaeda. "Probably not in the sense that they maintain their own independent organizations, but the alliance is essentially indistinguishable at this point except at a very abstract level."

The Taliban have begun an ideological conversion to Wahhabism, the radical form of Sunni Islam practiced by al Qaeda. "The radicalization of the Taliban and their conversion away from Deobandism to Wahhabism under Sheikh Issa al Masri and other al Qaeda leaders is a clear sign of the al Qaeda's preeminence," the official noted. Sheikh Issa is the spiritual adviser for Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Ayman al Zawahiri's organization that merged into al Qaeda, and the leader of al Jihad fi Waziristan, an al Qaeda branch in North Waziristan.

The establishment of the joint Taliban and al Qaeda military formations under the overall command of the Shadow Army has been facilitated by the proliferation of terror training camps in the tribal areas and the Northwest Frontier Province.

In the summer of 2008, senior US intelligence officials told The Long War Journal that more than 150 camps and more than 400 support locations were in operation in Northwestern Pakistan. Most of the camps are considered "transient" in nature, an official said. Trainers and recruits may gather in villages and meet to conduct training in the vast mountains and valleys in Pakistan's northwest. As of last summer, an estimated 25 to 40 of the camps were considered permanent.

These camps have various functions, and not all of them are used to train the Shadow Army. Some of the camps are used to indoctrinate and train suicide bombers for attacks in Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, and the West. Some of the camps are devoted to training the various Kashmiri terror groups who have flocked to the tribal areas and are also integrating with the terror alliance. One of these camps serves as a training ground for the Black Guard, the elite bodyguard for Osama bin Laden, Ayman al Zawahiri, and other senior al Qaeda leaders.

An effective fighting force

The Shadow Army has distinguished itself during multiple battles over the past several years, particularly in Pakistan's tribal areas and in the Northwest Frontier Province. Taliban forces under the command of Baitullah Mehsud defeated the Pakistani Army in South Waziristan during fighting in 2005-2006, and again fended off the Pakistani Army in 2008 after fighting pitched battles and overrunning a series of forts.

In Swat, the Pakistani military was twice defeated by forces under the command of Mullah Fazlullah during 2007 and 2008. Earlier this year, the military has launched its third attempt to secure Swat.

In Bajaur, the hidden hand of the Shadow Army was seen in multiple reports from the region. Taliban forces dug a series of sophisticated trench and tunnel networks as well as bunkers and pillboxes. The Pakistani military took more than a month to clear a six-mile stretch of road in the Loisam region. Pakistani military officials also said the Taliban "have good weaponry and a better communication system (than ours)."

"Even the sniper rifles they use are better than some of ours," the Pakistani official told Dawn "Their tactics are mind-boggling and they have defenses that would take us days to build. It does not look as though we are fighting a rag-tag militia; they are fighting like an organized force."

Taliban forces have also conducted battalion-sized operations in Hangu. In July 2008, a Taliban unit laid siege to a police station and a fort in Hangu. The fort was abandoned by the Frontier Corps and the Taliban destroyed it.

The Shadow Army has had some recent successes in Afghanistan over the past year. In July 2008, the unit made up of al Qaeda, the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and Hizb-e-Islami joined forces conducted a complex assault on a US outpost in Wanat in Nuristan province. The attack was repelled after the force nearly overran the base. Nine US soldiers were killed in the assault, the largest loss by US forces in a single engagement in Afghanistan to date.

Another engagement in the Surobi region in Kabul province was likely the work of the Shadow Army. A force ambushed a French military convoy in a valley just outside of the capital and pinned down the unit for hours. Ten French soldiers were killed, and the Taliban was able to seize French weapons abandoned on the battlefield.

The effectiveness of the Shadow Army can be seen in a video taken by an Al Jazeera reporter during an operation in Loisam in the Bajaur tribal agency in the fall of 2008 [see video below]. The Taliban forces drive off a battalion-sized assault from regular Pakistani Army troops that is supported by at least a platoon of tanks. The Pakistani tanks are seen racing away from the fighting, and the Pakistani infantry moving in behind them does the same after taking fire. The reporter describes the Pakistani tank commander as "quite shaken." The tank commander calls for airstrikes to take out the Taliban positions, but the infantry and tanks go into full retreat and returns to base after the Taliban counterattacks.

The Pakistani unit involved in the fighting was the 63rd Battalion of the Frontier Force Regiment. This is a regular Army unit, not part of the paramilitary Frontier Corps. The 63rd was deployed to Somalia during the peacekeeping mission in the 1990s. More than 8,000 Pakistan troops were deployed in the Loisam region to clear the Taliban and al Qaeda forces, but only took the village after leveling the town.

The Pakistani retreat sent a chill up the spine of a US Army officer who was shown the video. "Clearly the Pakistani forces lack discipline and morale, but even with these problems the combined armor and infantry attack, backed by air support, should have gone better," the officer said.

"Those troops have obviously met stiff resistance," the Army officer continued. "You just watched a full battalion, supported by tanks, break contact after an attack by a supposedly undisciplined, 'rag-tag' force of Taliban fighters. For the Taliban to drive off that unit, it has to be organized, disciplined, well-armed, and competent."

A Pakistani battalion retreats from a Taliban counterattack. Video from Al Jazeera English.

US to sell plane parts to state sponsor of terror Syria

(Compiler's note: And the purpose of this is to .....?)

by Robert Spencer

"The Obama administration has been more lax in its approach to countries which support terrorism."

Syria has been listed by the State Department as among the State Sponsors of Terrorism since December 29, 1979.

"US Will Sell Syria Plane Parts" from Israel National News, February 8 (thanks to Pamela):

(IsraelNN.com) A Syrian paper reported Sunday that the U.S. Department of Commerce agreed to sell plane parts to Syria. The parts will be used to repair two Boeing 747s which are currently out of use in the country.

Former U.S. President Bush had forbid U.S. commerce with Syria expect for food and medicines. The Obama administration has been more lax in its approach to countries which support terrorism.

Obama plans complete overhaul of National Security Council

(Compiler's note: A must read and still developing .... We are bound to see more on this topic.)

from GulfNews

Washington: US President Barack Obama plans to order a sweeping overhaul of the National Security Council (NSC), expanding its membership and increasing its authority to set strategy across a wide spectrum of international and domestic issues.

The result will be a "dramatically different" NSC from that of the Bush administration or any of its predecessors since the forum was established after Second World War to advice the president on diplomatic and military matters, according to national security adviser James Jones, who described the changes in an interview.

"The world that we live in has changed so dramatically in this decade that organisations that were created to meet a certain set of criteria no longer are terribly useful," he said.

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Jones, a retired Marine general, made it clear that he will run the process and be the primary conduit of national security advice to Obama, eliminating the "back channels" that at times in the Bush Administration allowed Cabinet secretaries and the vice president's office to unilaterally influence and make policy out of view of the others.

"We're not always going to agree on everything," Jones said, and "so it's my job to make sure that minority opinion is represented" to the president. "But if at the end of the day he turns to me and says, 'Well, what do you think, Jones?', I'm going to tell him what I think."

The new structure, to be outlined in a presidential directive and a detailed implementation document by Jones, will expand the NSC's reach far beyond the range of traditional foreign policy issues and turn it into a much more elastic body, with Cabinet and departmental seats at the table- historically occupied only by the secretaries of defence and state - determined on an issue-by-issue basis. Jones said the directive will probably be completed this week.

"The whole concept of what constitutes the membership of the national security community - which, historically has been, let's face it, the Defence Department, the NSC itself and a little bit of the State Department, to the exclusion perhaps of the Energy Department, Commerce Department and Treasury, all the law enforcement agencies, the Drug Enforcement Administration, all of those things - especially in the moment we're currently in, has got to embrace a broader membership," he said.

New NSC directorates will deal with such department-spanning 21st-century issues as cybersecurity, energy, climate change, nation-building and infrastructure.

Many of the functions of the Homeland Security Council, established as a separate White House entity by President Bush after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, may be subsumed into the expanded NSC, although it is still undetermined whether elements of the HSC will remain as a separate body within the White House.

Over the next 50 days, John Brennan, a CIA veteran who serves as presidential adviser for counterterrorism and homeland security and is Jones's deputy, will review options for the homeland council, including its responsibility for preparing for and responding to natural and terrorism-related domestic disasters.

In a separate interview, Brennan described his task as a "systems engineering challenge" to avoid overlap with the new NSC while ensuring that "homeland security matters, broadly defined, are going to get the attention they need from the White House."

Organisational maps within the government will be redrawn to ensure that all departments and agencies take the same regional approach to the world, Jones said.

Communist: Obama working to nationalize U.S. economy

By Aaron Klein

President Obama is "considering" a radical agenda to nationalize the U.S. financial system, the Federal Reserve Bank, and private industries such as energy and other sectors whose future is "problematic" in private hands, claims the leader of the Communist Party USA.

In a major speech focused on Obama titled "Off and running: Opportunity of a lifetime," CPUSA leader Sam Webb also alleges Obama's administration is considering turning education, childcare, and health care into "no profit zones;" rerouting investment capital from military infrastructure to "green economy" projects and public infrastructure; and waging a "full scale" assault on global warming.

"We now have not simply a friend, but a people's advocate in the White House," declared Webb at a recent speech in Ohio for People's Weekly World Communist newspaper.

"An era of progressive change is within reach, no longer an idle dream. Just look at the new lay of the land: a friend of labor and its allies sits in the White House," Webb proclaimed.

He stated Obama and the "broad coalition that supports him will almost inevitably have to consider – and they already are – the following measures:

• Public ownership of the financial system and the elimination of the shadow banking system and exotic derivatives.

• Public control of the Federal Reserve Bank.

• Counter-crisis spending of a bigger size and scope to invigorate and sustain a full recovery and meet human needs – something that the New Deal never accomplished.

• Strengthening of union rights in order to rebalance the power between labor and capital in the economic and political arenas.

• Trade agreements that have at their core the protection and advancement of international working class interests.

• Equality in conditions of life for racially minorities and women.

• Democratic public takeover of the energy complex as well as a readiness to consider the takeover of other basic industries whose future is problematic in private hands.

• Turning education, child care, and health care into "no profit" zones.

• Rerouting investment capital from unproductive investment (military, finance and so forth) to productive investment in a green economy and public infrastructure.

• Changing direction of our nation's foreign policy toward cooperation, disarmament, and diplomacy. We can't have threats, guns and military occupations on the one hand and butter, democracy, goodwill, and peace on the other.

• Full scale assault on global warming.

• Serious and sustained commitment to assisting the developing countries that are locked in poverty and misery."

Webb lauded Obama's $800-plus billion so-called stimulus package as "a good bill that will ease the pain of this crisis, create jobs, and begin to reflate the economy."

He explained labor unions, which he said were instrumental in Obama's election, must work to keep the White House in check by "exercis[ing] an enormous influence on the political process. Never before has a coalition with such breadth walked on the political stage of our country," he said.

Indeed, in an article just after last November's election titled, "Special Interest or Class Consciousness? How Labor Put Obama in the White House," Political Affairs reported on polling data released that revealed the extent of union support for Obama.

The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, or AFL-CIO, sponsored a poll showing union members supported Obama by a 68-30 margin and strongly influenced their family members.

According to the survey, Obama won among white men who are union members by 18 points. Union gun-owners backed Obama by 12 points, while union veterans voted for Obama by a 25-point margin. In the general population, Obama lost these groups by significant margins.

Cracking the case: ‘DOMEX’ system is tool used to analyze crime

(Compiler's note: A must read as the gov't readies for possible budget cuts from the new administration.)

BY MIKE FAHER

When Baltimore authorities seized computers connected to a multimillion-dollar Internet pharmacy operation in late 2006, they turned to Johnstown for help.

Specialists at the National Drug Intelligence Center analyzed large amounts of electronic information, providing crucial evidence that led to two convictions in Maryland’s largest-ever pharmaceutical-trafficking case.

“I just cannot say enough about what they did with these computers,” said Andrea Smith, an assistant U.S. attorney in Baltimore.

That same process has been repeated more than 700 times since 1993: NDIC analysts dissect computers, cell phones and other electronic devices – along with mountains of documents – to support federal criminal cases.

They’ve developed their own software to speed up the process and have quietly assisted in major probes, including the large-scale investigation of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

At an agency that often is accused of being wasteful and duplicative, NDIC’s Document and Media Exploitation Branch – called DOMEX – is a little-known function that has had a significant impact across the nation and around the world, NDIC officials said.

“Nobody else does what we do,” said Harry Kuerner, DOMEX branch chief.

NDIC officials acknowledge that what they call “document exploitation” is nothing new: Analyzing information and evidence is a vital part of any criminal case.

But the difference in their work, they say, is speed and clarity.

A law-enforcement agency may have limited resources and time to examine large amounts of evidence, particularly data buried deep in a computer system.

But when a federal agency asks NDIC for help, a DOMEX team – usually made up of 18 to 23 people – forms and quickly establishes “priority intelligence requirements” – the slivers of information to look for when sifting through an evidentiary hay stack.

Examples include assets and associates of a suspect, financial transactions, phone numbers and “references to a specific crime in notes, e-mails or other communications,” officials said.

DOMEX staff can deploy anywhere, and most foreign-language missions are conducted at a satellite facility called the Utah National Guard/Joint Language Training Center near Salt Lake City.

But in most cases, evidence is shipped directly to Johnstown. A DOMEX team – assisted by specialists working in the NDIC’s Digital Evidence Laboratory – then sifts through that information, coming up with a concise report in an average of two weeks’ time.

That report ensures that evidence is linked to a specific document that was in a suspect’s possession.

Baltimore’s Internet-pharmacy case, for example, involved “overwhelming” amounts of information, Smith said.

But NDIC analysts showed that, of 36 doctors writing prescriptions for the painkiller hydrocodone through a targeted pharmacy called NewCare, 11 of those physicians accounted for more than 98 percent of those prescriptions.

The analysis also found that hydrocodone accounted for about 88 percent of the prescriptions filled by NewCare – for a total of 9.9 million doses.

“It was so compelling,” Smith said.

“You can’t argue against numbers like that.”

She added that the data was “mined from the defendants’ own computers, so they couldn’t say they didn’t know.”

Specialized software

Early on, officials say, NDIC analysts used “whatever tool they could” to compile evidence in Microsoft Word documents for presentation to investigators.

But times have changed: Highly specialized software developed in Johnstown now helps NDIC staff sort and prioritize evidence.

One program is called RAID, short for Real-time Analytical Intelligence Database. It is an organizational tool that allows management of “large quantities of data,” with links between related pieces of information – a suspect’s associates, for example, along with his addresses and travel destinations.

RAID’s reach has extended far beyond Johnstown.

NDIC makes the software available free to law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Last year, the center provided RAID installation and training in the West African countries of Ghana and Togo; conducted a seminar employing RAID in Uganda, East Africa; and finished development of a new, Spanish-language version of the program.

Another important tool – also developed at NDIC – is dubbed “HashKeeper.”

It allows analysts to put aside all commercial software files on a computer and focus solely on files that a user has created or altered. In other words, HashKeeper ignores a Microsoft Word program and zeroes in on Word documents a suspect created.

“This can reduce the amount of time required to analyze computers by up to 60 percent,” an NDIC official said in a recent briefing.

Like RAID, HashKeeper also has found a wider audience: In June 2007, officials announced that the Department of Defense was using the program in Iraq.

Analyzing evidence

But even with help from high-tech tools, NDIC administrators say, it’s the people – or in this case, the analysts – who make the difference.

Those analysts, with various areas of expertise, have to know what they’re looking for, how to find it and how to interpret what they find.

The work is complicated and can be intense, with information the DOMEX team uncovers sometimes used by investigators to seize more evidence or make an arrest.

“We’re getting something out to the field that they can use now – not six months or a year from now,” said Steve Gironda, NDIC’s Digital Evidence Laboratory supervisor.

While most missions are drug-related, DOMEX staff members are trained to handle all kinds of cases: They have helped with investigations involving terrorism, child abduction, weapons trafficking and organized crime.

“It pretty much works on anything,” Kuerner said. “White-collar crime, public corruption – anything that we’ve been asked to do, we’ve been able to do.”

Often, no matter what the alleged crime, NDIC experts are looking at the same types of devices. Paper evidence remains important, but more and more information is in electronic form:

• Cell phones, with their increasing complexity and capacity, can be virtual gold mines for analysts who are looking for phone numbers, addresses, pictures, etc.

“There’s no much information on a cell phone right now that never leaves it,” Gironda said, while adding that examining phones can be a complicated endeavor.

Three identically branded cell phones, for example, may be connected to three different service providers.

“All three of them, you have to attack a different way because they have different operating systems,” Gironda said.

• Computer-based instant messaging “gets the bad guys into more trouble than you might think,” Gironda said.

• Even video-game systems can play an important role, since many have hard drives and Internet connectivity.

Such systems “are used for nefarious activities because criminals believe those items will be overlooked by law enforcement because they are gaming machines,” NDIC spokesman Charles Miller said.

Getting results

With the average mission involving six computers and two phones, DOMEX staff members are not prone to overlooking anything.

“If we know what to look for – and our people are very good at this – we can provide a very good report,” said Bill Scott, a DOMEX team leader.

Last month, officials announced sentencings in the long-running Baltimore hydrocodone case: Two pharmacists will serve five years in prison, and each was ordered to pay nearly $11.9 million.

Forfeited to the government were houses, a business, seven cars and money in 33 bank accounts. The probe involved several federal agencies and numerous law-enforcement entities.

But Smith credits Paul Short, a DOMEX supervisor, with testifying in court on three occasions and helping to slam the door shut on the defendants.

“No one can hold a candle to (NDIC),” she said. “This was just amazing.”

Though they labor in relative anonymity in a former Johnstown department store, Short and his NDIC colleagues understand the potential impact of their work.

“This isn’t the guy selling crack on the street corner,” Short said. “These are guys who are dealing with tons and tons of drugs.”

NDIC probes range from drugs to terrorism

BY MIKE FAHER

In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a team of analysts based in Johnstown played a critical role.

Their work grabbed no headlines, and they had no visible presence at the three attack sites.

But document-exploitation experts at the National Drug Intelligence Center assisted the FBI by analyzing more than 75,000 subpoenaed documents related to potential terrorist financing.

“The work NDIC produces continues to initiate actionable leads and identify avenues of investigation,” an FBI official wrote in a November 2001 letter.

“NDIC has integrated seamlessly with the FBI investigation and has enhanced the way the FBI will investigate future financial cases.”

Since NDIC’s inception in the early 1990s, analysts have assisted hundreds of cases by poring over documents and probing electronic devices, searching for key bits of evidence.

In just the past few years, members of what is now called the NDIC’s Document and Media Exploitation Branch have participated in multiple complex missions for a variety of federal agencies.

Examples include:

• In fiscal year 2007, document-exploitation staff assisted in a probe of a Colombian drug kingpin; examined links between Philippines drug traffickers and terrorist organizations; and participated in Operation Raw Deal – a case officials called “the largest steroid-enforcement action in U.S. history.”

• October 2007: An Army officer accused of crimes in Iraq, Lt. Col. William Steele, is sentenced to prison time. NDIC analysts supported the case by examining phone records and “nearly 12,000 classified documents that existed alone or as attachments to e-mail files,” officials said.

• November 2007: Analysts identify assets valued at more than $5 million in connection with a “multinational investigation of a major international money-laundering organization” in the U.S., Mexico, China and Switzerland.

• December 2007: The Johnstown center supports a probe of a terrorist organization. Analysts “identified 70 individuals with direct connections to the conspirators and provided 92 linked media files – including photo identification – documenting the links,” officials said.

• July and August 2008: In support of a Department of Justice probe, NDIC finds more than 800 suspected child pornography photographs “and provided investigators with important information on conspirators’ financial assets and leads regarding additional potential targets,” center administrators said.

• August and September 2008: Analysts identify assets controlled by a South American drug-trafficking organization, including more than 300 properties and 100 bank accounts.

French fighter planes grounded by computer virus

by Kim Willsher

The aircraft were unable to download their flight plans after databases were infected by a Microsoft virus they had already been warned about several months beforehand.

At one point French naval staff were also instructed not to even open their computers.

Microsoft had warned that the "Conficker" virus, transmitted through Windows, was attacking computer systems in October last year, but according to reports the French military ignored the warning and failed to install the necessary security measures.

The French newspaper Ouest France said the virus had hit the internal computer network at the French Navy.

Jérome Erulin, French navy spokesman told the paper: "It affected exchanges of information but no information was lost. It was a security problem we had already simulated. We cut the communication links that could have transmitted the virus and 99 per cent of the network is safe."

However, the French navy admitted that during the time it took to eradicate the virus, it had to return to more traditional forms of communication: telephone, fax and post.

Naval officials said the "infection"' was probably due more to negligence than a deliberate attempt to compromise French national security. It said it suspected someone at the navy had used an infected USB key.

The Sicmar Network, on which the most sensitive documents and communications are transmitted was not touched, it said. "The computer virus problem had no effect on the availability of our forces." The virus attacked the non-secured internal French navy network called Intramar and was detected on 21 January. The whole network was affected and military staff were instructed not to start their computers.

According to Liberation newspaper, two days later the chiefs of staff decided to isolate Intramar from the military's other computer systems, but certain computers at the Villacoublay air base and in the 8th Transmissions Regiment were infected. Liberation reported that on the 15 and 16 January the Navy's Rafale aircraft were "nailed to the ground" because they were unable to "download their flight plans". The aircraft were eventually activated by "another system".

Liberation also reported that Microsoft had identified the Conficker virus in the autumn of 2008 and had advised users from October last year to update their security patches. IntelligenceOnline reports that "at the heart of the (French) military, the modifications were, for the most part, not done." It was only on the 16 January "three months later" that the navy chiefs of staffs began to act.

"At that point, the chiefs of staff and the defence ministry had no idea how many computers or military information systems were vulnerable to having been contaminated by the virus," said Liberation.

The French press also reported that the only consolation for the French Navy was that it was not the only ones to have fallen victim to the virus. It said that a report in the military review Defense Tech revealed that in the first days of January 2009 the British Defence Ministry had been attacked by a hybrid of the virus that had substantially and seriously infected the computer systems of more than 24 RAF bases and 75 per cent of the Royal Navy fleet including the aircraft carrier Ark Royal.

CIA Warns Obama British Terrorists Biggest Threat To US

(Compiler's note: A must read!)

By Tim Shipman

The CIA has told President Barack Obama that British terrorists are the biggest threat to the US

American spy chiefs have told the President that the CIA has launched a vast spying operation in the UK to prevent a repeat of the 9/11 attacks being launched from Britain.

They believe that a British-born Pakistani extremist entering the US under the visa waiver programme is the most likely source of another terrorist spectacular on American soil.

Intelligence briefings for Mr Obama have detailed a dramatic escalation in American espionage in Britain, where the CIA has recruited record numbers of informants in the Pakistani community to monitor the 2,000 terrorist suspects identified by MI5, the British security service.

A British intelligence source revealed that a staggering four out of 10 CIA operations designed to thwart direct attacks on the US are now conducted against targets in Britain.

And a former CIA officer who has advised Mr Obama told The Sunday Telegraph that the CIA has stepped up its efforts in the last month after the Mumbai massacre laid bare the threat from Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant group behind the attacks, which has an extensive web of supporters in the UK.

The CIA has already spent 18 months developing a network of agents in Britain to combat al-Qaeda, unprecedented in size within the borders of such a close ally, according to intelligence sources in both London and Washington.

Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer who has advised Mr Obama, told The Sunday Telegraph: "The British Pakistani community is recognised as probably al-Qaeda's best mechanism for launching an attack against North America.

"The American security establishment believes that danger continues and there's very intimate cooperation between our security services to monitor that." Mr Riedel, who served three presidents as a Middle East expert on the White House National Security Council, added: "President Obama's national security team are well aware that this is a serious threat."

The British official said: "The Americans run their own assets in the Pakistani community; they get their own intelligence. There's close cooperation with MI5 but they don't tell us the names of all their sources.

"Around 40 per cent of CIA activity on homeland threats is now in the UK. This is quite unprecedented."

Explaining the increase in CIA activity over the past month, Mr Riedel added: "In the aftermath of the Mumbai attack the US and the UK intelligence services now have to regard Lashkar-e-Taiba as just as serious a threat to both of our countries as al-Qaeda. They have a much more extensive base among Pakistani Diaspora communities in the UK than al–Qaeda."

Information gleaned by CIA spies in Britain has already helped thwart several terrorist attacks in the UK and was instrumental in locating Rashid Rauf, a British-born al-Qaeda operative implicated in a plot to explode airliners over the Atlantic, who was tracked down and killed in a US missile strike in November.

But some US intelligence officers are irritated that valuable manpower and resources have been diverted to the UK. One former intelligence officer who does contract work for the CIA dismissed Britain as a "swamp" of jihadis.

Jonathan Evans, the director general of MI5, admitted in January that the Security Service alone does not have the resources to maintain surveillance on all its targets. "We don't have anything approaching comprehensive coverage," he said.

The dramatic escalation in CIA activity in the UK followed the exposure in August 2006 of Operation Overt, the alleged airline bomb plot.

The British intelligence official revealed that CIA chiefs sent more resources to the UK because they were not prepared to see American citizens die as a result of MI5's inability to keep tabs on all suspects, even though the Security Service successfully uncovered the plot.

MI5 manpower will have doubled to 4,100 by 2011 but many in the US intelligence community do not think that is enough.

For their part, some British officials are queasy that information obtained by the CIA from British Pakistanis was used to help target Mr Rauf, a British citizen, whom they would have preferred to capture and bring to trial.

Sensitivities over the intelligence arrangement formed a key part of briefings given to Mr Obama, since they are central to what is often called "the most special part of the special relationship" and could complicate his dealings with Gordon Brown.

Tensions in transatlantic intelligence relations which were laid bare last week during the High Court battle over Binyam Mohamed, the British resident held in Guanatanamo Bay. British judges wanted to publish details of the torture administered to Mr Mohamed, an Ethiopian national, in US custody. But key paragraphs were blacked out after American officials threatened it could damage intelligence sharing between the two countries.

Intelligence experts said that a trusting intelligence relationship, in which one country does not publish intelligence data obtained by the other, is vital to both countries' national security.

Patrick Mercer, chairman of the House of Commons counter-terrorism sub-committee, said: "The special relationship is a huge benefit to us. It clearly works to our advantage and helps keep the people of the UK and the US safe.

"There is no doubt that a great deal of valuable intelligence vital to British national security is procured by American agents from British sources."

Mr Riedel added: "The partnership between the two intelligence communities is dynamic; it is one of great intimacy. We overuse the term special relationship, but this is an extraordinarily special relationship.

"Since September 11 the philosophy on both sides has been to err on the side of telling each other more rather than less. It is in everyone's interests that that continues."

Homegrown Jihad: The Terrorist Camps Around the U.S.

from The National Terror Alert Center


On February 11, 2009, at 7:30 pm. The Christian Action Network will premiere a new documentary, Homegrown Jihad, at the Landmark Theater in Washington, DC. There is no charge to attend the viewing.

According to the press release, “The American public was never supposed to know. The 2006 Justice Department document that exposes 35 terrorist training compounds in the U.S. was marked “Dissemination Restricted to Law Enforcement.” All the copies of Sheik Muburak Gilani’s terrorist training video, “Soldiers of Allah,” had been confiscated and sealed, all of them, that is, except one that Christian Action Network now reveals in the documentary Homegrown Jihad: The Terrorist Camps Around the U.S.”

The Spymaster of New York

(Compiler's note: A must read)

By Christopher Dickey

David Cohen and the NYPD are pioneering a new way of fighting terrorism.

In sweltering Mumbai last November, two days after the terrorist rampage that killed or wounded more than 500 people, some odd figures joined the alphabet soup of agencies investigating the atrocity—three New York City police detectives. In 2005 other American cops looked at bomb detonators with Scotland Yard after the London tube bombings. Still others turned up in Madrid after its own train attacks in 2004, and several times in Jerusalem after suicide bombings there.

The cops showed up because David Cohen, the spymaster of the NYPD, sent them. A former director of clandestine operations for the Central Intelligence Agency, Cohen wants his own people seeing up close and right away the warning signs—he calls them signatures—that might have revealed a terrorist operation taking shape. And if the FBI, the CIA or any other federal agency objects to the NYPD making the world its beat, Cohen doesn't really care. "Listen to this," he told me one morning at his office at police headquarters in downtown Manhattan. "We got a report from the FBI on the Madrid bombing which was terrific, it was great … It was ... 18 months later!" He drank from a mug with the eagle-and compass seal of the CIA on it. "They tried the best they could."

Ever since Police Commissioner Ray Kelly took over the NYPD in 2002 and set out to reinvent the department's role fighting terrorists, there have been fights with the Feds, too. Cohen has been right in the middle of them. The most recent, last year, involved his demand that the FBI move faster on requests for federal wiretaps on people with suspected links to terrorists. In a testy exchange of letters between Kelly and the then Attorney General Michael Mukasey, the Feds said they didn't want to submit requests to the courts that might get shot down. The cops wanted them approved yesterday. "In situations short of unambiguous emergency, the system too often moves too slowly and with too little urgency," Kelly wrote.

As the cops see it, "there's a plot taking shape against New York City every day of every week since 9/11," says Cohen. "What that plot consists of, who's doing it and where it's percolating from can change, but there's someone out there every day of the week thinking about that." Kelly, who did a turn as commissioner in 1993, when the World Trade Center was first attacked, returned to the job after 9/11 determined to make sure the city would not be blindsided again. Never a believer in the "clash of civilizations," he called the Bush administration's Global War on Terror "the GWOT," and made the word sound almost obscene. Kelly wanted to keep the combat intensely focused and pragmatic. The idea would be to prevent terrorists from acting, not to prosecute them after the fact. And the key to that would be real-time, actionable intelligence. Which is why he called on Cohen.

The choice wasn't as obvious as a CV might make it seem. There's probably never been a spymaster at the Central Intelligence Agency so hated by so many of his own spies as Cohen was in the mid-1990s when he ran the Directorate of Operations. "His first name wasn't David," recalls a top operative who served with him. "It was 'F–––ing Cohen'." Working obsessively, smoking pack after pack of cigarettes each day, Cohen was one of those gray men in the world of intelligence who can disappear into the background of a room, like John le Carré's George Smiley. He never quite fit in with the self-styled swashbucklers of the DO.

His whole career, in fact, Cohen had been an outsider on the inside. He was a street-smart kid from Boston, educated at Northeastern University, who joined the agency in 1967 when it was still dominated by the Ivy League. As an analyst, he focused on global issues like commodity markets and the oil trade, while most others specialized in countries or regions. In the late 1980s he oversaw the CIA's highly limited and controversial intelligence gathering inside the United States, which included recruiting "agents of access" in immigrant communities who could help recruit other agents abroad. After he was appointed deputy director for operations in 1995, he led the agency's spies around the world yet had never served in the field himself.

Throughout the storms that battered the CIA in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Cohen seemed to fall upward. The agency suffered through Iran-contra, failed to foresee the collapse of the Soviet empire or Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, and discovered moles burrowed deep inside its clandestine services. All around Cohen, things seemed to be crumbling. "When I became the DDO, there were seven people in clandestine service training. Seven!" he remembers. He kept on as best he could, creating what became known as the bin Laden unit in the mid-1990s, long before most of the world had heard of the terrorist mastermind. But by the time Cohen decided to take a job in the private sector in 2000, he was more reviled than revered, blamed for many woes that were not of his making.

Then 9/11 happened, and Kelly asked him to head the NYPD's Intelligence Division, making its primary mission to stop terrorist attacks on New York. Cohen asked for two days to decide, but called back in about an hour. "It's like starting the CIA over in the post-9/11 world," he said later. "What would you do if you could begin it all over again? Hah. This is what you would do."

In those first months of 2002, the conventional wisdom was that Al Qaeda was planning a second wave of attacks on the United States—as Vice President Dick Cheney said, new horrors were "not a matter of if, but when." Cohen had to scramble to get his organization up and running. "It was like putting tires on a speeding car," he said. He turned to the CIA for help, getting Lawrence Sanchez, a senior operative who had also been head of intelligence at the Department of Energy, seconded to the NYPD. Sanchez was able to keep Cohen abreast of anything and everything the CIA learned abroad, including whatever information about New York might be spilled by prisoners interrogated at the agency's "black sites."

But when it came to dealing with his old agency, Cohen believed, as he told colleagues, "there's no such thing as information sharing, there is only information trading." So the question was how his shop could start generating the kind of intel product that he could barter. He suggested to Kelly that New York cops be assigned overseas in cities where the local police were already deeply immersed in the fight against terrorists. But the real key to the success of the intelligence division lay closer to home.

Some 40 percent of New Yorkers are born outside the United States. That could be a dangerous problem, and in the popular imagination it probably is, but Kelly and Cohen saw the city's demographics as one of their greatest assets. In the aftermath of 9/11, the FBI and CIA (the "three-letter guys," in police parlance) had terrible problems finding agents and operatives who were fluent in foreign languages. Cold War–style background checks often eliminated recruits who had been born overseas. And native-born Americans were uninterested in foreign languages. In 2002, the total number of undergraduate degrees granted in Arabic in all U.S. colleges and universities—yes, all of them—was six.

In the NYPD, on the other hand, among the more than 35,000 serving officers in 2002, language testing quickly identified hundreds fluent in Arabic or Dari, Persian, Pashto, Fukienese—45 languages in all. Today, in any graduating class of the police academy there may be 50 nationalities or more.

In 2003, two alleged Iranian agents caught photographing the No. 7 subway line beneath the East River were surprised to find themselves confronted by a cop who spoke fluent Persian. They quickly left the country. In 2003, a young undercover officer born in Bangladesh penetrated a small group of angry young immigrants, two of whom had started plotting to blow up targets in Staten Island and the subway station at Herald Square.

When it comes to disrupting potential terrorist plots, cops can use simple techniques out of bounds to the CIA or even the FBI. Cohen's detectives, for instance, might follow a suspect onto a subway and have a uniformed cop collar him for an infraction as minor as sitting on two seats at a time. Once he's taken down to the station, he may be faced with the threat that his friends will find out he was there and think he's talked. "Mostly, we don't hear from those guys again," says one of Cohen's senior operatives.

Are we safe yet? Cohen doesn't think so. Homegrown "groups of guys" angered and inspired by what they see on the Web may be spotted and disrupted, but the threat remains that some will be missed. Others, like the London bombers in 2005, can visit terrorist-training camps to learn truly deadly skills. And all the while, Osama bin Laden remains at large, still looking for "the big bang," for another 9/11, says Cohen. "That ... wants to do it before he dies!" Not if the NYPD can help it.

Taliban stronghold destroyed by British and Afghan forces after 10 day battle

A major Taliban stronghold has been destroyed by British and Afghan forces following 10 days of bitter fighting in southern Afghanistan.

Obama Signs Legislation Putting 25,000 US Companies At Risk

by Gateway Pundit

More hope, change and madness...

The socialist in the White House passed legislation this week that put 25,000 US construction companies at risk.

Obama signed legislation that discriminates against 84 percent of U.S. construction workers who choose not to join a labor union. The companies they work for will not be allowed to bid on government jobs.

These companies were already having a very difficult time surviving the current economic recession; Obama made it worse. The socialist just made it impossible for these companies to gain government contracts.
Doug Ross reported:

The Association of Building Contractors, which represents 25,000 businesses around the country, condemned an executive order signed by Obama that restricts bidding on federally funded construction projects to union-controlled businesses:

Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) today denounced an Executive Order signed by President Obama that repeals Executive Order 13202, that prohibited federal agencies and recipients of federal funding from requiring contractors to sign union-only project labor agreements (PLAs) as a condition of performing work on federal and federally funded construction projects.

"Today's decision to repeal Executive Order 13202 opens the door to waste and discrimination in federal and federally funded construction contracts," said ABC President and CEO Kirk Pickerel. "This action removes the safeguards that prohibited discrimination based upon union affiliation in the awarding of federal contracts.

"Construction contracts subject to union-only PLAs are designed to be awarded exclusively to unionized contractors and their all-union workforces," said Pickerel. "Absent the economic benefits of competitive bidding, union-only PLAs are known to increase construction costs between 10 percent and 20 percent and discriminate against minorities, women and qualified construction workers who have traditionally been excluded from union membership.

"Union-only PLAs drive up costs for American taxpayers while unfairly discriminating against 84 percent of U.S. construction workers who choose not to join a labor union," added Pickerel. "All taxpayers should have the opportunity to compete fairly on any project funded by the federal government."

It is not clear yet how this will affect white male construction workers targeted by the Obama Adminstration.

Mexico voodoo promo gets new partner, Blockbuster

(Compiler's note: Really....?)

By PETER ORSI

MEXICO CITY (AP) - After Radioshack dropped out, a Mexican newspaper has found a new U.S. corporate sponsor to help put a voodoo hex on the U.S. national soccer team - and end Mexico's decade-long losing streak.

Blockbuster stores in Mexico City began trading Record newspaper coupons for voodoo-doll likenesses of U.S. soccer players Friday. The back of the dolls' jersey reads, "Gringos."

They should be used to wish for a Mexico goal during the World Cup qualifier Wednesday in Colombus, Ohio, according to the instructions.

Mexico has not beaten the Americans on U.S. soil in 10 years.

"Hold a needle firmly between your thumb and index finger and prick slowly the part of the doll where you want to affect the opponent," the instructions say.

Electronics retailer RadioShack, of Fort Worth, Texas, dropped out as a distribution partner last week after learning details of the campaign.

But Record merely had to go to Dallas to find another co-sponsor, DVD and video game rental chain Blockbuster Inc. (BBI) A phone message left with the company's public relations office was not returned Friday.

But Record spokesman Daniel Paz said the promotion is lighthearted.

"In soccer, training and practice are what determine the results. The best team will win," he said. "But without any doubt, this little doll can help the good vibes of the Mexican fans to change the history of Mexico and turn things around."

Mexico fan Mauricio Munoz, picking up one of the Blockbuster dolls, said he doesn't believe black magic will have any effect on his team or the winless streak.

"But in any case," he said, "it's a good way to have fun."

Saudi suspects seeking to revive al-Qaida

By DONNA ABU-NASR

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - One of the men on the Saudi Arabia's new most-wanted list is married to Osama bin Laden's daughter while another was involved in a plot to kill the U.S. ambassador in Yemen. A third smuggled militants into Iraq from Syria.

Documents profiling the 85 wanted men - 83 Saudis and two Yemenis - reveal that many of them either took part in planning attacks targeting oil, security and other installations in the kingdom or provided al-Qaida members with weapons, safe haven, false documents and money.

The documents illuminate the extent of Saudi participation in the shadowy extremist networks struggling to rebuild in the Arabian peninsula after a series of harsh crackdowns in past years. All the men on the list are hiding abroad, many in neighboring Yemen.

The men were all ages and came from throughout the kingdom, according to documents provided to The Associated Press on Saturday by a Saudi official who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The youngest, 16-year-old Abdul-Ilah al-Shihri, was only 12 when the Sept. 11 attacks took place. He was smuggled into Yemen to join al-Qaida there by his uncle, according to the documents.

The official said the men are active members of al-Qaida or local offshoots and planned to re-establish the terror network in Saudi Arabia following the kingdom's aggressive campaign, which had netted hundreds of members and sympathizers.

Al-Qaida has not carried out a major attack since February 2006, when suicide bombers tried but failed to attack an oil facility at the Abqaiq oil complex, the world's largest oil processing facility, in eastern Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia issued the list on Monday and sought Interpol's help in arresting the men. They include 11 who have been released from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay and have attended the kingdom's touted extremist rehabilitation program. Among them were two Saudis who have emerged as the new leaders of Yemen's branch of al-Qaida.

Documents were available for six of those men, all of whom left Saudi Arabia in 2000 before eventually making their way to Afghanistan where they were captured and then taken Guantanamo. After being released to the Saudis and going through rehabilitation, the men slipped across the border into Yemen.

Another man on the list, Mohammed Aboul-Kheir, 34, is married to the daughter of al-Qaida leader bin Laden and worked as his bodyguard. He had links to Ramzi Binalshibh, one of five co-defendants facing murder and war crimes charges for alleged roles in the Sept. 11 attacks.

The documents put his whereabouts in either Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iran.

Another wanted Saudi, Saleh al-Qaraawi, has been dubbed by the local media as one of the most dangerous men on the list. The documents say that al-Qaraawi, 27, provided money and recruits for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of al-Qaida in Iraq who was killed in June 2006.

"He received intensive training in Iran in the use of electronics in explosions," said the documents.

"He also attempted to establish a new terror cell in the kingdom," the documents added.

They said al-Qaraawi left for the United Arab Emirates in 2007 on a forged passport.

Qassem al-Reemi, 30, meanwhile, one of the few Yemenis on the list, has "links to a plot targeting the U.S. ambassador in San'a," the capital of Yemen.

"He rented the house in which the plot for that operation was hatched," according to the documents. "He also monitored the U.S. Embassy."

No such attack has taken place, but in September gunmen did assault the embassy gates, leaving 19 people dead, including six militants. Al-Qaida claimed responsibility.

The Saudi campaign against al-Qaida began in earnest in 2003, when militants first struck inside the kingdom, which is bin Laden's birthplace and home to 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers. The network's attacks have targeted expatriate residential compounds, oil installations and government buildings.

Zero hour approaches

by Hal Lindsey

We've been counting down to the year that Iran will finally become a nuclear power ever since Iranian dissidents exposed the Iranian nuclear program in 2002. European intelligence estimated it would take Iran until 2012 to achieve this. Israeli intelligence figured late 2007.

Last year's National Intelligence Estimate completely undercut the Bush administration's Iran foreign policy when it estimated Iran was still "many years" from being able to build a bomb.

The NIE predicted: "… with moderate confidence that the earliest possible date Iran would be technically capable of producing enough HEU [highly enriched uranium] for a weapon is late 2009, but that is very unlikely."

Unlikely though it may have been, the International Atomic Energy Agency found that Iran had enriched enough uranium to make its first atomic bomb on Nov. 21, 2008. By now, as it brings new centrifuges online, Tehran may well have enough for a second.

The head of Russia's state nuclear corporation, Sergei Kiriyenko, was quoted from the Kremlin on Wednesday confirming the launch of the Bushehr reactor later this year. Iran's nuclear ambitions are no longer even remotely unclear.

Yet, knowing this, Moscow fully intends to supply Iran with all the nuclear material it needs. ....

Must See Video for Any One Supporting Keynesian Bailout

from The Jawa Report

If you haven't seen the PBS series Commanding Heights about the rise and fall of Keynesian economics and how it was discredited by Hayek's vision of free people and free markets it's really a must see. I watched Part 1 again today, and I left feeling inspired and depressed.

Inspired by the triumph of the market, depressed that so many are willing to forgo it. Prescient, I think, given that so many today are clamoring for the government to do something.

The courage to do nothing is what we need from our politicians today. Unfortunately, democracies are such that people expect politicians to do something, even if the solution to the imagined problem just makes it worse.

I've embedded the entire video below. It's long, but worth watching. Especially analogous to today's crisis are two segments. First, the discussion by George Schulz and Milton Friedman on Nixon's abandonment of the market during the economic crisis of the early 1970s. Something, the people clamored, must be done! And so it was, and the crisis was deepened.

The second set of segments deal with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan's handling of economic crisis in the US and UK. Thousands of economists, schooled by the Keynsians, begged Thatcher to stop her spending cuts during a recession, only a few dozen urged her on. They warned that if she did, than the deep recession would become a depression. Sound familiar?

And it came to pass, as Thatcher says, thousands of economists were wrong.

Reagan's response is also enlightening given that Reagan, too, was begged not to cut domestic spending due to the fact that people would lose jobs. It is in this context that Reagan says, "If not now, when? If not us, who?" And so it was that the recession did go on for three years, but it ended, and from the ashes of the regulatory state came nearly three decades of nearly unfettered growth.

Videos below.

PART 1

PART 2

PART 3

The Overlooked War Along the Mexican Border

In northern Mexico a largely overlooked but nonetheless brutal war is raging between the narco-cartels and government authorities—and its violence threatens to spread to the United States. In his weekly chat with Federal News Radio, Homeland Security Today Editor David Silverberg discusses the implications for the US and homeland security. must read

Click here to listen to the audio.

Veteran Terrorist Hunters Say US Vulnerable to Attack

by Anthony L. Kimery

'The intelligence from my perspective is pretty clear in so far as what Al Qaeda’s intentions are' must read When former Vice President Dick Cheney earlier this week said there’s a “high probability” that terrorists will attempt a catastrophic nuclear or biological attack and implied that Obama administration policies have weakened the Intelligence Community to the extent that it might now be impossible to detect such an attack, it made a lot of observers wince on the left and right. Veteran US counterterror officials HSToday.us spoke to said while intelligence capabilities under the Obama administration aren’t currently likely to be as deficient or as policy-unwise as Cheney implied, there certainly are crisis-level vulnerabilities on the home-front that Al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations bent on seriously doing damage to the United States could strike at which could deliver a devastating blow during the next 12 to 24 months while the government attempts to rescue the nation from its weakened economy. The US’s seriously destabilized economy—which is at least as bad as it’s been in 30 years—has opened a fissure in the nation’s vulnerability to a catastrophic terrorist attack that potentially could in fact economically cripple the nation, the counterterrorists believe. Given that Al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist groups desire to strike at America’s economic stability, a catastrophic attack or attacks across the nation anytime soon would certainly contribute in a big way to the nation’s existing downward spiral, the officials said. “And Al Qaeda has to be looking at this as an opportunity … looking at every which way they can possibly pull off a spectacular attack,” one of the officials said. Continuing, the official said, “imagine 9/11s in every major city. We’re still facing a very real threat—it has not diminished, and I’m quite sure President Obama and his senior national security advisors understand this since they’ve been privileged to see the actual intelligence that lays it all out; at least I hope they do. If they don’t, then someone needs to get them up to speed. But I’m sure they do.” The counterterror experts pointed to the recent undeniable exposure of the gross deficiencies in the federal government being able to swiftly detect and immediately halt distribution of food borne pathogens as an “example of one of the many vulnerabilities” in homeland security through which terrorists could launch a biological attack. Speaking at a recent Washington Institute Special Policy Forum, Ken Wainstein, former assistant to President Bush for homeland security and counterterrorism, stressed that the gravest terrorism threat from “terrorist organizations [is their acquiring] weapons of mass destruction and [using] them against us, our homeland, or our allies.” “Biological weapons are the most likely” terrorist WMD threat right now,” agreed Charles "Sam" Faddis, a 20-year veteran CIA officer who was a National Counterterrorism Center department chief overseeing “worldwide operations against the terrorist WMD target” when he retired from the clandestine services last May. Faddis earlier told HSToday.us that, yes, terrorists are probably more likely to try to use biological weapons in the near future, noting that such an attack would “be devastating and it would totally cause catastrophic casualties.” “And there are other vulnerabilities” that could be exploited to carry out a catastrophic attack, one of the counterterror officials said. Rejecting notions by some former IC counterterrorists that Al Qaeda for whatever reason is unwilling to try to attack the US directly again, the officials HSToday.us talked to said they do not necessarily “buy into that line of thinking.” “The intelligence from my perspective is pretty clear in so far as what Al Qaeda’s intentions are—make no mistake about that,” one said, pointing to Cheney’s remarks in his interview this week about planned attacks that were stopped but the details about which remain classified. Cheney said he’s confident that the classified files on these thwarted attacks will some day be made public and will prove that significant planned attacks were halted. “The fact is there have been attacks in the works we’ve learned about that we’ve managed to stop,” the official told HSToday.us, adding, “and Al Qaeda and its affiliates continue to work on plans to attack us.” While the counterterrorists split with Cheney on the efficacy of so-called “enhanced interrogations,” they agreed with him on the use of wide-ranging communications intercepts when there’s “clear-cut” intelligence that specific communications are related to terrorism. But the bottomline of what the officials said is that the crisis America finds itself in is and of itself a serious vulnerability that makes a concerted effort to pull off a catastrophic attack so attractive to terrorists. “Which means we still need to devote resources—sooner than later—to start plugging all the holes in security we know about,” one of the officials said.