al-Qaida News Blog @newzblogz.com

Emergency workers in Russia struggled with flooded caverns and flammable gas as they searched Wednesday for two miners missing after a methane blast Monday in a Siberian coal mine that killed at least 108 people. Flags flew at half-staff, church services were held nationwide and TV stations took entertainment programs off the air to mourn the victims of the mining disaster and two other tragedies ?- a nursing home fire that left 63 dead and a weekend plane crash that killed six. President Vladim...

Top leader says Iran willing to defy U.N.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Tehran will pursue unspecified nuclear activities outside international rules if the U.N. Security Council insists it stop uranium enrichment. "Until today, what we have done has been in accordance with international regulations," he said. "But if they take illegal actions, we too can take illegal actions and will do so."

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The Democrats in the House, about as bereft of seriousness as a Laurel and Hardy routine, are pumping legislation to get the United States out of Iraq by the end of August 2008, and what we need here, I think, is something Australian.

I don't mean just anything Australian, but someone with as sharp a tongue as that country's conservative Prime Minister John Howard, who once took a look at a proposal by Sen. Barack Obama to evacuate U.S. troops by March 2008 and then summed up the obvious.

''If I were running al-Qaida in Iraq,'' he said, ''I would put a circle around March 2008 and pray, as many times as possible, for a victory not only for Obama, but also for the Democrats.''

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MOGADISHU, Somalia - Masked gunmen dragged slain soldiers through the streets of Somalia's capital Wednesday, then set the bodies on fire as jeering crowds threw rocks and kicked the dead after a fierce battle in a neighborhood loyal to Islamic insurgents.

At least 16 people were reported killed and dozens were wounded in the hourslong firefight, which was some of the heaviest fighting in Mogadishu since a radical Muslim militia was driven from the city in December after six months in power.

Somalia has been without an effective central government since 1991, when clan-based warlords ousted a longtime dictator and then began fighting among themselves.

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After holding out for months, President Jacques Chirac on Wednesday endorsed fellow conservative Nicolas Sarkozy's bid to succeed him, despite long and sharp personal and political differences between them.

Chirac also said Sarkozy would quit as interior minister on Monday to devote himself fully to the close race in which he is the front-runner.

Chirac kept praise for his former protege and later rival to a terse, two-minute televised declaration that spoke more of reason than of warmth. He cited Sarkozy's "qualities" without elaborating, adding: "Therefore, I naturally will give him my vote and my support."

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It wouldn't end the war as rapidly as they would like. But by forcing the Iraqis to meet political and military benchmarks or face the loss of U.S. support, she reminded them that a chamber of Congress has its first real chance to restrict President Bush's authority to wage unfettered war in Iraq.

"The president has to certify there is real progress," Tauscher told the activists Monday at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think-tank.

"That's going to be hard to do, by the way."

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JAKARTA, Indonesia - Three Islamic militants were found guilty Wednesday of decapitating three Christian schoolgirls in Indonesia and dumping their bloodied heads in nearby villages, judges said. They were sentenced to between 14 and 20 years.

The alleged members of the al Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiyah network left a handwritten note close to the bodies of the teenagers, vowing more killings to avenge the deaths of Muslims in earlier sectarian violence on Sulawesi island.

"Wanted - 100 more heads," said Judge Lilik Mulyadi, reciting the letter's text. "Blood must be paid with blood, lives with lives, heads with heads."

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LONDON - Iraq's defense minister said Wednesday his commanders were surprised when Britain recently announced plans to withdraw some of its troops from Iraq, but that his country's forces will be ready to replace them.

"I am absolutely confident that Iraq's army is quite ready to meet the challenges, even if the withdrawal becomes quite sudden," Defense Minister Abdul-Qader Mohammed Jassim said at a news conference.

On Tuesday, Iraqi forces in southern Iraq replaced British troops at a frequently targeted base in Basra.

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BAGHDAD - About 1,600 U.S. and Iraqi soldiers pushed into a dangerous Sunni Arab area of west Baghdad on Wednesday, searching houses in the expanding security crackdown, while at least 33 apparent victims of sectarian killings were found dumped across the capital.

The U.S. military said the armor-backed force that swept into the Ghazaliyah and Amariyah neighborhoods detained 31 people and found two weapons caches that included containers of nitric acid and chlorine, a toxic material used recently by Sunni insurgents in bomb attacks.

No casualties were reported on the first day of the operation with about 1,100 U.S. and 500 Iraqi troops.

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Re: Larry Smilgius? ?Don?t be soft-hearted? letter.

It is appropriate that the Riviera Golf Estate association?s ?ruling authority? should enforce the rules established for the ?health, safety and benefit of the majority.?

But, how does Paul Smith?s hobby of making dominoes infringe on anyone?s health, safety or benefit?

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The issue: Are the liberty and freedom of the people of the United States threatened by al-Qaida or others?

If the answer is "yes," should the people, through their elected national government, tax themselves to support the military force to defend themselves?

If the answer is "no," should military spending be reduced?

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NAIROBI, Kenya -- In some of the bloodiest fighting in months, at least 20 people were killed Wednesday in Somalia's capital. The dead included seven government soldiers, some of whose bodies were dragged through the streets and set on fire, witnesses said.

The gruesome scene was reminiscent of the 1993 crash of a U.S. Black Hawk helicopter in Mogadishu during an ill-fated mission that killed 18 American servicemen.

The latest clashes began after government soldiers, aided by Ethiopian troops, launched an early morning raid on the outskirts of town. They encountered stiff resistance from gunmen believed to be remnants of the Islamic Courts Union.

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President Bush appealed for patience as the Iraq war entered its fifth year. In a televised address from the White House, the president warned of the consequences if America were to "pack up and go home.''

The president appeared to be pleading, not leading. Where are the

convictions of conscience, the soaring rhetoric, the broad vision and

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BAGHDAD (AP) Some 1,600 U.S. and Iraqi soldiers pushed into a dangerous Sunni Arab area of west Baghdad on Wednesday, searching houses in the expanding security crackdown, while at least 33 apparent victims of sectarian killings were found dumped across the capital.

The U.S. military said the armor-backed force that swept into the Ghazaliyah and Amariyah neighborhoods detained 31 people and found two weapons caches that included containers of nitric acid and chlorine, a toxic material used recently by Sunni insurgents in bomb attacks.

No casualties were reported during the first day of the operation, which included about 1,100 American soldiers and 500 Iraqi troops.

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Four years ago, on March 20, 2003, Operation Iraqi Freedom kicked off with a multi-pronged, multi-national strike on, and invasion of, Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Strike aircraft combined with cruise missiles for a "shock and awe" light show, while conventional forces made a lightning-fast run to Baghdad, seeking to reach the Iraqi capital and oust Saddam.

Only days after the initial border crossing by coalition forces, Saddam and his sons had fled and Baghdad had fallen. On May 1, 2003, President Bush boarded the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln and made his famous (or notorious) speech announcing the end of "major combat operations" in Iraq.

Fast-forward four years. While the initial invasion of Iraq can't be considered anything other than a resounding success, the time since has been anything but. Sectarian violence, insurgent attacks and an influx of al Qaida-linked terrorists have kept stability at bay.

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BAGHDAD - U.S.-Iraqi troops backed by American warplanes battled al-Qaida-linked insurgents for more than five hours in clashes near Fallujah that left eight killed and five Iraqi policemen wounded, the military said.

The fighting started Tuesday morning when Iraqi police in Amiriyah, some 25 miles west of Baghdad, came under mortar fire and Marine artillery units responded to the attack, forcing the insurgents to flee the scene, Marine spokesman 2nd Lt. Roger Hollenbeck said.

Local police then killed two al-Qaida fighters and wounded five in a gunbattle, Hollenbeck said in an e-mailed statement, adding that five policemen also were wounded.

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BAGHDAD (AP) ? U.S. troops killed five insurgents and destroyed a bomb-making factory Wednesday north of Baghdad, and dozens more were detained after fierce clashes in a Sunni-dominated province west of the capital.

Scattered violence killed at least nine people, while a claim by the U.S. military that insurgents used children in a weekend suicide attack raised concerns about new tactics being adopted by insurgents as a security crackdown aimed at stopping sectarian violence enters its sixth week.

Iraq's Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, meanwhile, renewed calls for talks to be opened with insurgents in an attempt to bring peace, but he excluded al-Qaida in Iraq.

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BAGHDAD -- Eight insurgents were killed in clashes between U.S. and Iraqi forces and fighters loyal to al-Qaida.

The U.S. military said American warplanes took part in the five-hour long battle on Tuesday in Anbar province. Five Iraqi police officers were hurt.

The fighting began when Iraqi police came under fire and were assisted by Marine artillery units.

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Do calls for retreat back home harm the troops here in Iraq?

Of course they do. The enemy, particularly al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI), sees these calls as proof its strategy is working and increases its attacks. Iraqis who would otherwise help us hear these calls and choose to stay in the background, fearing that they will be targets if we withdraw prematurely. And yes, we believe it affects our morale. The perception of a lack of support for our mission by members of our own government has created a sense of frustration for many members of the military.

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UNITED NATIONS — Suicide bombers are crossing the border from Pakistan into Afghanistan with increasing frequency, launching attacks directed against foreign military convoys with funding from abroad, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a report to the Security Council on Tuesday.

Despite high losses during the past year, the Taliban insurgency appears to be "emboldened by their strategic successes, rather than disheartened by tactical failures" in Afghanistan, Ban said in the report.

The September 2006 peace agreement between Pakistan and pro-Taliban fighters in that country's North Waziristan region did not prevent the border area from being used as a staging ground for attacks on Afghanistan, Ban said. Instead, the agreement led to a 50 percent increase in security incidents involving insurgents in Afghanistan's Khost province and a 70 percent increase in Paktika province — both on the border — between September and November, he said.

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The soldiers who play the enemy at the Army?s two big combat training centers have a reputation for inflicting heavy losses on their home turf.

At Fort Irwin, Calif., and Fort Polk, La., they stand in as Iraqi insurgents and al-Qaida and Taliban fighters, and they dish out lumps to units coming through for exercises.

The opposing force ? ?opfor,? in Army-speak ? is pretty tough on the road, too. Soldiers at Fort Lewis learned that this month while preparing for an early deployment to Iraq on a shortened training schedule.

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* First-time writer: Respect the president, even if you disagree

* War supporters need to pony up

* Former mayor Gibbs seeks 1st Ward seat

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On the fourth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war Monday, President Bush assured the country the war is still winnable. And here I thought he had declared victory on the deck of an aircraft carrier roughly three years ago. Talk about shock and awe!

Bush sure doesn't make it easy to follow him. His rationales for starting the war, and for continuing it, have swung wildly. First there were Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (still missing in action), then bringing democracy to the Arab Middle East (fat chance), later to strike at those who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (actually Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with that) and more recently to killing the terrorists (who weren't there originally but followed us into Iraq).

Bush's latest wrinkle on Iraq is the "surge," an infusion of more troops originally 21,000 but already nearly 30,000 to bring order by disciplining Shiite militias terrorizing Sunnis in Baghdad and Sunni terrorists doing as much to Shiites from Anbar province to the west of the capital. Democrats have jumped on the surge like dogs on a pork chop.

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Back in 2003, when U.S. forces first took custody of the notorious al-Qaida mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, there was much speculation about what his capture might signify. Some thought he might possess information about other planned operations, some predicted his loss would fatally damage al-Qaida, some guessed his arrest would lead to additional arrests. Others, among them Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, used his capture to float interesting theories about torture: when and how it mi...

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As the left-wing liberals fight in Congress whether to cut off the funding for the war in Iraq, I ask myself, "What part of 'they want to kill us' do they not understand?"

To leave al-Qaida and Iran to overrun Iraq would be a grave mistake for our country. Not only would there be mass slaughter, but it would give the Islamic radicals a huge financial boast, i.e., the oil revenues, to launch more attacks against us and all western countries.

The act of capitulation is not for us ever again. It happened in Vietnam; we cannot allow it to happen again. The definition of capitulation is this: "The act of surrendering to an enemy, upon certain stipulations, terms and conditions." Have we become the paper tiger that Osama bin Laden has stated? What happened to our backbone? We are so busy being so politically and socially correct that it will sneak back to strike us in the back. They are waiting for us to leave so they can further their agenda.

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President Bush has called Iraq a crucial battleground in a decades-long struggle against Islamic terrorism.

“It’s important for our fellow citizens to understand that failure in Iraq would be a disaster for our future,” he told soldiers at Fort Benning, Ga., last week. “It’s a different kind of war in which failure in one part of the world could lead to disaster here at home. … That is why we must, and we will, succeed in Iraq.”

Historians and Middle East experts, however, say that America’s last “long war,” the four-decade Cold War against Soviet communism, offers some cautions as the nation debates its next moves in Iraq.

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AL QUDAS, Iraq ? After driving through some of the most treacherous roads in Iraq, soldiers from a Fort-Lewis-based unit set up the clinic Wednesday in empty classrooms of the school building in Al Qudas.

Three weeks ago, the village north of Baghdad was a growing Sunni support zone for al-Qaida in Iraq. Thanks to small detachment of soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 37th Field Artillery Regiment, the village has become a place for residents to seek medical help from the Americans.

The Fort Lewis unit is part of the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division ? the Army?s first Stryker brigade. It arrived in Iraq in July for its second deployment of the war.

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The National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., and the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, La., were built in the early 1980s to prepare soldiers to fight Cold War-era adversaries.

But the Army has spent millions in the past half-decade to make the training centers relevant to what troops are encountering in Iraq and Afghanistan. They now feature villages and urban settings, Arabic-speaking role players and opposing forces that fight like al-Qaida, Iraqi insurgents and the Taliban. Hundreds of observer-controllers ? mostly senior sergeants and captains with combat experience ? coach the training troops.

FORT IRWIN

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Sure, Scooter Libby might go to jail. His career is in tatters, his life a shambles. Even Denis Collins, the omnipresent juror-journalist, says he and his peers feel sympathy for Libby, the fall guy in this whole spectacle. But really, who is the real victim?

Joe and Valerie, of course.

?The golden couple targeted by White House machine,? as described by one British paper, have had to put up with so much. There?s no need to dwell on the hardships faced by former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV: that arduous junket to Niger helped along by his wife, Valerie Plame; the endless cups of sweet mint tea he had to drink; the awkwardness that his findings, as briefed to the CIA, supported President Bush?s famous ?16 words? although Wilson said the exact opposite on The New York Times op-ed page and in 12 trillion television studios.

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WASHINGTON - Terror detainees once held in the CIA's secret prisons were kept and questioned under highly abusive conditions, the International Committee of the Red Cross says in a confidential report based on interviews with high-value terror suspects.

The Red Cross said the techniques reported by the 14 prisoners, including sleep deprivation and the use of forced standing and other so-called stress positions, were particularly harsh when used together. The prisoners were transferred from CIA custody to a military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in September.

The CIA's detention methods were designed to soften detainees and make them more likely to talk during interrogation. Human rights organizations say the CIA's extreme conditions of detention and the coercive questioning techniques constitute torture.

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WASHINGTON ? The Iraq war lumbered into its fifth year Monday with President Bush pleading for patience to let his revised battle plan work and Congress' new Democratic leaders retorting that no patience remains.

"The new strategy will need more time to take effect," Bush said in remarks televised from the White House to mark the four years since he ordered the invasion. He challenged Congress to send him a war funding bill "without strings and without delay."

He got a swift response from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

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A Yemeni captive being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has confessed to recruiting the suicide bombers and buying the speedboat that blasted a hole in the side of the USS Cole in Aden, Yemen, in 2000, killing 17 U.S. sailors, according to a hearing transcript that the Pentagon released on Monday.

The transcript also quotes Waleed Mohammed bin Attash as admitting that he helped plan the Aug. 7, 1998, bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, which killed more than 200 people, most of them Africans.

Together, the two episodes were among the worst anti-American attacks blamed on al-Qaida before Sept. 11, 2001.

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Text of President Bush's statement Monday on Iraq, as transcribed by CQ Transcriptions.

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WASHINGTON - A veteran al-Qaida operative has acknowledged being the mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, as well as a key conduit between Osama bin Laden and a terrorist cell in East Africa, according to a transcript of a military tribunal hearing released Monday by the Pentagon.

Waleed Mohammed bin Attash long has been suspected of playing a key role in the bombing of the Cole as it refueled in Yemen. The attack killed 17 U.S. sailors and nearly sank the $1 billion destroyer.

His brief disclosures during a March 12 hearing at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, added insight into his role in the group's overall operations.

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Text of President Bush's statement Monday on Iraq, as transcribed by CQ Transcriptions.

Good morning.

Four years ago today coalition forces launched Operation Iraqi Freedom to remove Saddam Hussein from power. They did so to eliminate the threat his regime posed to the Middle East and to the world.

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WASHINGTON - The Iraq war lumbered into its fifth year Monday with President Bush pleading for patience to let his revised battle plan work and Congress' new Democratic leaders retorting that no patience remains.

''The new strategy will need more time to take effect,'' Bush said in remarks televised from the White House to mark the four years since he ordered the invasion. He challenged Congress to send him a war funding bill ''without strings and without delay.''

He got a swift response from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

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March 19, 2007 - Waleed Mohammed Bin Attash, long suspected of plotting the bombing of the USS Cole, confessed to planning the attack during a hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to a Pentagon transcript released Monday.

He also said he helped plan the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 that killed 213, the transcript said. Seventeen sailors were killed and 37 injured when suicide bombers steered an explosives-laden boat into the battleship on Oct. 12, 2000.

"I participated in the buying or purchasing of the explosives," bin Attash said when asked what his role was in the attacks on the Cole and the embassies. "I put together the plan for the operation a year and a half prior to the operation, buying the boat and recruiting the members that did the operation."

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A top operative of al-Qaida has acknowledged his role in the bombings of two U.S. Embassies in Africa in 1998 and in the attack on the destroyer Cole off Yemen in 2000, according to a hearing transcript released Monday by the Pentagon.

The operative, Walid bin Attash, who is also known as Khallad, made his statement, according to the transcript, to a combatant status review tribunal March 12 at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The tribunal will determine whether bin Attash has been properly designated an enemy combatant, which would make him subject to indefinite military detention. He may also be charged with war crimes before a separate tribunal known as a military commission.

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Text of President Bush's statement today on Iraq, as transcribed by CQ Transcriptions.

Good morning.

Four years ago today coalition forces launched Operation Iraqi Freedom to remove Saddam Hussein from power. They did so to eliminate the threat his regime posed to the Middle East and to the world.

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WASHINGTON - President Bush, marking the fourth anniversary of the Iraq war, pleaded for patience, saying "there will be good days and bad days ahead."

As the war entered its fifth year, House Democrats were preparing to bring to the floor a $124 billion war spending bill for Iraq and Afghanistan that would require the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by the fall of 2008.

In a televised statement from the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Bush, who has threatened to veto the legislation, urged lawmakers to avoid trying to force an end to the war.

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Comments about Iraq (etc.) from across the ideological spectrum. . .

Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, the terrorist leader of al-Qaida in Iraq: "The American people.voted for something reasonable in the last elections."

Republican Sen. John McCain: "We are paying a very heavy price for the mismanagement - that's the kindest word I can give you - of Donald Rumsfeld, of this war. . . . I think that Rumsfeld will go down in history as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history."

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WASHINGTON ? A Yemeni portrayed as an al-Qaida operative and a member of a terrorist family confessed to plotting the bombings of the USS Cole and two U.S. embassies in Africa, killing hundreds, according to a Pentagon transcript of a Guantanamo Bay hearing.

The transcript released Monday was the fourth from the hearings the military is holding in private for 14 "high-value" terror suspects who were kept in secret CIA prisons before they were sent to the U.S. facility in Cuba last fall.

Last week, Waleed bin Attash said he helped plan the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 200, according to the transcript. He also said he helped organize the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in which suicide bombers steered an explosives-laden boat into the guided-missile destroyer, killing 17 sailors.

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BAGHDAD - Three suicide bombers driving trucks rigged with tanks of toxic chlorine gas struck targets in heavily Sunni Anbar province, including the office of a Sunni tribal leader opposed to al-Qaida. The attacks killed at least two people and sickened 350 Iraqi civilians and six U.S. troops, the U.S. military said Saturday.

There is a mounting power struggle between insurgents and the growing number of Sunnis who oppose them in Anbar, the center of the Sunni insurgency, which stretches from Baghdad to the borders with Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. The Anbar assaults came three days after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, traveled there to reach out to Sunni clan chiefs in a bid to undermine tribal support for the insurgency.

The violence started late Friday afternoon when a driver detonated explosives in a pickup carrying chlorine at a checkpoint northeast of the provincial capital of Ramadi, wounding one U.S. service member and one Iraqi civilian, the military said in a statement.

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The chattering class nostrum that free Iraq and its coalition allies have "lost the Iraq war" is so blatantly wrong it would be a source of laughter were human life and hope-inspiring liberty not at such terrible risk.

In terms of historical changes favoring 21st-century freedom and peace, what free Iraq and its allies have accomplished in four short years is nothing short of astonishing.

Consider what Iraq was — not simply in A.D. March 2003, but in 2003 B.C.

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BAGHDAD ? Sunni insurgents, resilient despite the five-week security crackdown in the capital, killed at least six more U.S. troops during the weekend. A Sunni car bomber hit a largely Shiite district in the capital Sunday, killing at least eight people.

The American military said four U.S. soldiers died and one was wounded when the unit was struck by a roadside bomb in western Baghdad. During the ongoing security sweep in the capital and surrounding regions, the battalion had found eight weapons caches and two roadside bombs and helped rescue a kidnap victim, the military said.

A fifth soldier was killed in an explosion in Diyala, an increasingly volatile province just northeast of the capital. A Marine died in fighting the same day in Anbar province, the vast, largely desert region that sprawls west of Baghdad to the Saudi Arabian, Jordanian and Syrian borders. The regions are controlled by the Sunni insurgency.

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Khalid Sheikh Mo-hammed ? ?KSM? to himself and his captors ? is either the world?s busiest terrorist or biggest windbag. He might be much of both.

If it?s true that al-Qaida operatives are taught how to game the American legal system, Mohammed must have been daydreaming about blowing something up the day the instructor taught about the right against self-incrimination.

Mohammed confessed to an astonishing range of murderous mayhem ? everything, one wag said, from kidnapping the Lindbergh baby to killing Anna Nicole Smith.

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BAGHDAD A U-S military official is blaming al-Qaida in Iraq for Friday's chlorine-bomb attacks in Anbar province.Three suicide bombers blew up trucks rigged with tanks of toxic chlorine gas. The attacks killed at least two people and sickened hundreds of Iraqi civilians and six U-S troops.But a U-S military spokesman a says tight Iraqi security prevented more casualties. Admiral Mark Fox says at least one of the bombers detonated his explosives after he was unable to get past an Iraqi police che...

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BAGDAD --Un video colocado en una página de la internet mostró el domingo un presunto insurgente que se arrastra bajo un vehículo militar estadounidense en Irak, al que coloca una bomba. Segundos después, el video capta una explosión que destroza el vehículo.

La película contiene el emblema del Estado Islámico de Irak, un grupo guerrillero ligado a al-Qaida que no reconoce al gobierno iraquí y desea establecer la sharia, o ley islámica como único precepto legal.

El video fue colocado en la página islámica de la internet que con frecuencia difunde proclamas insurgentes. Fue difundido además por IntelCenter, un contratista del gobierno estadounidense que vigila los mensajes de al-Qaida.

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BAGHDAD - Sunni insurgents, resilient despite the five-week security crackdown in the capital, killed at least six more U.S. troops over the weekend. A Sunni car bomber hit a largely Shiite district in the capital Sunday, killing at least eight people.

The American military said four U.S. soldiers died and one was wounded when the unit was struck by a roadside bomb in western Baghdad. During the ongoing security sweep in the capital and surrounding regions, the soldiers' battalion had found eight weapons caches and two roadside bombs and helped rescue a kidnap victim, the military said.

A fifth soldier was killed in an explosion in Diyala, an increasingly volatile province just northeast of the capital. A Marine died in fighting the same day in Anbar province, the vast, largely desert region that sprawls west of Baghdad to the Saudi Arabian, Jordanian and Syrian borders. The regions are controlled by the Sunni insurgency.

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BAGHDAD -- U.S. commanders in Iraq report seven more Americans have died in Iraq this weekend, four of them killed Saturday by a roadside bomb.

A statement Sunday said the bomb targeted their patrol in western Baghdad. Another soldier was wounded by gunfire that followed the explosion. The military said their battalion has been conducting patrols as part of the security buildup that began last month.

An explosion in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad killed another soldier Saturday and injured five. A U.S. Marine also was killed Saturday in fighting in Anbar, according to a separate statement.

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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan The lawyer for a man convicted in Pakistan of killing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl says he's filing an appeal.He says it will be based on the recent confession of al-Qaida number-three man Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (HAH'-leed shayk moh-HAH'-med). In transcripts from a U-S military hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Mohammed says he beheaded Pearl. He also claimed to have been the mastermind behind Nine-Eleven and other plots.A British-born militant was sentenced to death fo...

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BAGHDAD A video has appeared on the Internet showing an alleged insurgent crawling under a U-S military vehicle in Iraq and purportedly planting explosives.The footage is stamped with the emblem of an al-Qaida-linked militant group. It's posted on an Islamic Web site that frequently airs insurgent messages, but the video's authenticity has not been independently verified.The footage shows a man in beige pants and a dark sweat shirt, crawling through mud puddles underneath a Bradley fighting vehi...

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