Alleged Al-Qaeda Terrorist Leader Arrested In Phoenix On Murder Charges.

So how  – and why – did he manage to sneak hisslef into the U.S.?

Federal law enforcement officials arrested an alleged Al-Qaeda terrorist leader in Phoenix, Arizona, late this week on murder charges filed by the Iraqi government.

Ali Yousif Ahmed Al-Nouri, a 42-year-old Iraqi national was “wanted to stand trial in Iraq for two charges of premeditated murder committed in 2006 in Al-Fallujah,” the Department of Justice said in a statement.

An Iraqi judge issued an arrest warrant for Ahmed and subsequently requested Ahmed’s extradition from the United States.

“According to the information provided by the Government of Iraq in support of its extradition request, Ahmed served as the leader of a group of Al-Qaeda terrorists in Al-Fallujah, Iraq, which planned operations targeting Iraqi police,” the DOJ added. “Ahmed and other members of the Al-Qaeda group allegedly shot and killed a first lieutenant in the Fallujah Police Directorate and a police officer in the Fallujah Police Directorate, on or about June 1, 2006, and October 3, 2006, respectively.”

The DOJ noted that the decision to extradite him to Iraq will ultimately be made by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Trump makes Palestine an offer too good to refuse.

Click for a larger image.

Today, President Trump followed through with a Middle East proposal that creates a Palestinian state, opens Temple Mount to all three Abrahamic religions, and invests $50 billion to create a million jobs for Palestinians…….

The plan states, “The sovereign capital of the State of Palestine should be in the section of East Jerusalem located in all areas east and north of the existing security barrier, including Kafr Aqab, the eastern part of Shuafat and Abu Dis, and could be named Al Quds or another name as determined by the State of Palestine.”

That’s a huge concession by Israel.

Palestinians angrily reject Trump Mideast peace plan.

They never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said “a thousand no’s” to the Mideast peace plan announced Tuesday by President Donald Trump, which strongly favors Israel.

The Palestinians remain committed to ending the Israeli occupation and establishing a state with its capital in east Jerusalem, Abbas said at a news conference in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where the Western-backed Palestinian Authority is headquartered.

“After the nonsense that we heard today we say a thousand no’s to the Deal of The Century,” he said.

The plan would create a Palestinian state in parts of the West Bank, but would allow Israel to annex its settlements in the occupied territory. The plan would allow the Palestinians to establish a capital on the outskirts of east Jerusalem but would leave most of the city under Israeli control.

“We will not kneel and we will not surrender,” Abbas said, adding that the Palestinians would resist the plan through “peaceful, popular means.”

The Islamic militant group Hamas rejected the “conspiracies” announced by the U.S. and Israel and said “all options are open” in responding to the Trump administration’s plan.

Alleged al-Qaeda Jihadis Caught Trying to Enter U.S. with Fake Colombian Passports

Woohoo Paul. Wazzup down there?

American authorities identified and apprehended three Syrian nationals accused of belonging to al-Qaeda in Dallas, Texas, from Colombia, the Colombian news agency RCN reported on Thursday, publishing images of the three individuals’ fake passports.

According to RCN, American law enforcement identified the three individuals as Al Raefee, Tuameh Tuameh, and Al Harari Al Harari. The three are believed to be in U.S. custody, soon to be charged with membership in a terrorist organization. The men appear to have entered Colombia through Venezuela, where they acquired Colombian residency paperwork, a government identification card, and a Colombian passport through an illegal documentation network.

Journalist Luis Carlos Vélez published images of the counterfeit passports on Twitter, noting that the men appeared to have crossed into Colombia through the La Guajira border crossing with Venezuela. Reports have not yet specified how the Syrians entered Venezuela or how long they had spent in the country after leaving Syria. Vélez reportedly stated that the U.S. embassy identified them as al-Qaeda terrorists when they attempted to procure U.S. visas, which does not align with the RCN report that police arrested them in Dallas. The RCN report does not note if Dallas authorities arrested them at the airport, which would suggest the men did receive U.S. visas and got onboard a flight to the country, or if they arrived by other means.

Iran rocket attack on Iraqi military base injured 11 US service members, official reveals

Inter-cranial brain injury, ‘TBI’, due to explosive shock wave concussion has been a major trademark of the war. Maybe it’s been that way since – maybe – WW1, but our medical technology has finally caught up with being better able to diagnose, and we hope, treat it.

Eleven U.S. service members were flown out of Al Assad Air Base in Iraq and treated for concussion symptoms after Iran‘s rocket attack targeting two Iraqi military bases earlier this month, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command revealed Thursday night.

President Trump and U.S. officials had said earlier that no Americans were killed or injured in the Jan. 8 attack.

Several U.S. troops “were treated for concussion symptoms from the blast and are still being assessed. As a standard procedure, all personnel in the vicinity of a blast are screened for traumatic brain injury, and if deemed appropriate are transported to a higher level of care,” Capt. Bill Urban, the Central Command spokesman, said Thursday.

He said that although no U.S. service members were killed in the attack on Al Assad Air Base, “in the days following the attack, out of an abundance of caution, some service members were transported… to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, others were sent to Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, for follow-on screening. When deemed fit for duty, the service members are expected to return to Iraq following screening. The health and welfare of our personnel is a top priority and we will not discuss any individual’s medical status. At this time, eight individuals have been transported to Landstuhl, and three have been transported to Camp Arifjan.”

Finally. The Feds — Including ICE — Appear to be Investigating Ilhan Omar

On Oct. 30, I reported that the Department of Justice had assigned an FBI Special Agent in Charge, or SAC, to review Rep. Ilhan Omar’s apparent, astonishing spree of felonies from 2009 to 2017.

Minnesota state Rep. Steve Drazkowski (R) had previously filed a complaint on the matter with the Minnesota District of the Department of Justice. That office — headed by U.S. Attorney Erica MacDonald, a 2018 Donald Trump appointee — directed the FBI to review the complaint. An FBI SAC formally met with Rep. Drazkowski, and others, in mid-October to receive a prepared file of evidence and related information.

Indeed, this has since occurred.

At least the following two federal agencies were contacted by the FBI with information regarding Rep. Omar. The FBI then placed the October meeting attendees in touch with selected investigators within these two agencies:

1. Department of Education Inspector General

This is related to evidence suggesting that Rep. Omar’s 2009 marriage to a UK citizen may have been an attempt to facilitate federal student loan fraud, or other fraud involving higher education.

2. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

● This is related to evidence suggesting a breathtaking number of possible immigration-related felonies. As I stated in an introductory passage within my July 18 article:

The [following] answers to those questions about [Rep. Omar’s 2009 marriage] appear to give probable cause to investigate Omar for eight instances of perjury, immigration fraud, marriage fraud, up to eight years of state and federal tax fraud, two years of federal student loan fraud, and even bigamy.

Somebody needs to look into his relations with the Iranians since 2016.

Pensacola military base shooting confirmed as jihadi terrorism, AG Barr says

U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr announced the results of an investigation into the motives of the Saudi flight student who carried out a deadly Dec. 6 shooting attack at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida. The conclusion: the shooting was an act of terrorism.

Barr said the gunman, identified as 2nd Lt. Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, was “motivated by jihadist ideology.” In a Department of Justice transcript of his statements, Barr cited various anti-American and anti-Israeli social media comments as well as a comment on Sept. 11 of last year in which Alshamrani said “the countdown has begun.”

“This was an act of terrorism,” Barr said. “The evidence shows that the shooter was motivated by jihadist ideology.”

Iran’s Theocracy Will Collapse Because of People Like Kimia Alizadeh
The nation’s only female Olympic medalist says she has permanently left the Islamic Republic due to the oppression of women.

The killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani by the United States military will understandably dominate headlines for weeks if not months to come.

But the actual demise of the authoritarian regime that’s been in power since 1979 will come more from acts like the one taken by Kimia Alizadeh, Iran’s only female Olympic medalist. Late last week, the bronze medalist in Taekwondo in the 2016 Summer Games announced via Instagram that she has fled her home country due to the systematic oppression of women. Via CNN:

“Let me start with a greeting, a farewell or condolences,” the 21-year-old wrote in an Instagram post explaining why she was defecting. “I am one of the millions of oppressed women in Iran who they have been playing with for years.”…

“They took me wherever they wanted. I wore whatever they said. Every sentence they ordered me to say, I repeated. Whenever they saw fit, they exploited me,” she wrote, adding that credit for her success always went to those in charge.

“I wasn’t important to them. None of us mattered to them, we were tools,” Alizadeh added, explaining that while the regime celebrated her medals, it criticized the sport she had chosen: “The virtue of a woman is not to stretch her legs!”

On the heels of Alizadeh’s self-imposed exile comes reports that two anchors for Iranian state broadcaster IRIB have quit over qualms about censorship and official lies. From The Guardian:

Zahra Khatami quit her role at IRIB, saying: “Thank you for accepting me as anchor until today. I will never get back to TV. Forgive me.”

Her fellow anchor Saba Rad said: “Thank you for your support in all years of my career. I announce that after 21 years working in radio and tv, I cannot continue my work in the media. I cannot.”

The journalists’ statements are part of a crisis of confidence following the initial attempts by state officials to deny that Ukrainian jetliner 752 had been shot down by mistake by members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) air defence force.

A third broadcaster, Gelare Jabbari, said she quit “some time ago” and asked Iranians to “forgive me for the 13 years I told you lies.”

This is all happening against the backdrop of massive protests in Iran following the accidental shooting down of a Ukrainian airliner that carried 176 people. Demonstrators protested rising gas prices late last year and in the years prior, there have been other protests and general strikes for a host of reasons, including increased dissatisfaction with theocratic rule. According to a Carnegie Endowment report, 150,000 educated Iranians emigrate each year, “costing the country over $150 billion per year” as relatively young and motivated residents leave for greener pastures elsewhere.

By all accounts, sanctions imposed by the United States in 2018 have hit Iran’s economy extremely hard and are playing a role in sparking protests. It’s never fully clear how those sorts of intervention, much less more militaristic actions such as the killing of Soleimani, play out—sometimes overt pressure applied by an outside power emboldens dissent and sometimes it decreases it. But when a country starts to get hollowed out from within, as seems to be the case with Alizadeh’s exile and other recent and ongoing domestic developments, autocrats should start sweating.

U.S. sending home 21 Saudi cadets, NAS Pensacola shooting an ‘act of terrorism.’

We don’t have to treat the Saudis with kid gloves anymore now that our technology is able to better process our own massive petroleum reserves

WASHINGTON – Attorney General William Barr said Monday that the Saudi Arabian shooter at Naval Air Station Pensacola was “motivated by Jihadist ideology.”

Barr says 21 Saudi military students are being removed from the US training program and returning home.

Barr and FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich announced the findings of the criminal investigation in a press conference at the Department of Justice.

Many of the 21 cadets being sent home had contact with child pornography and possessed jihadist or anti-American material, Barr said. None is accused of having advanced knowledge of the shooting, which Barr said was motivated by “jihadist ideology” and has been classified as an act of terrorism.

 High-level pro-Iran militia commander is assassinated in Iraq by unknown gunmen.

A prominent pro-Iran militia commander has been killed by unidentified gunmen in Iraq.

High-level Popular Mobilization Forces leader Taleb Abbas Ali al-Saedi was shot dead late on Saturday in Karbala, a city about 62 miles southwest of Baghdad.

Local media reported that al-Saedi was ‘assassinated’ by unknown gunmen, but no further details about the shooters were immediately available.

Al-Saedi was the commander of the Karbala Brigades, a unit within the Iran-backed Shiite PMF umbrella group.

U.S. Central Command, which oversees American military activity in the Middle East, did not immediately respond to an inquiry from DailyMail.com about the shooting.

Protesters in Tehran clash with riot police as they demand the Ayatollah RESIGNS and call for regime change after Iran finally admits to shooting down jet and killing 176 people.

Iranians have gathered in the streets of Tehran to demand the resignation of Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei after the regime admitted it had mistakenly shot down a civilian passenger plane.

Angry crowds gathered on Saturday night in at least four locations in Tehran, chanting ‘death to liars’ and calling for the country’s supreme leader to step down over the tragic military blunder, video from the scene shows.

What began as mournful vigils for Iranian lives lost on the flight soon turned to outrage and protest against the regime, and riot police quickly cracked down, firing tear gas into the crowd.

‘Death to the Islamic Republic’ protesters chanted, as the regime’s security forces allegedly used ambulances to sneak heavily armed paramilitary police into the middle of crowds to disperse the demonstration.

Ukrainian Airlines Flight 752 was carrying 176 people, at least 130 of them Iranian citizens, when it was shot down by hapless Iranian Revolutionary Guard air defense forces shortly after taking off from Tehran on January 8.

 

Caroline Glick: Trump and the Mythmakers

For the past 40-odd years, two narratives have guided American Middle East policy. Both were invented by the Carter administration. One relates to Iran. One relates to Israel.

Both narratives reject reality as the basis for foreign policy decision-making in favor of delusion. Over the past two months, President Donald Trump has rejected and disavowed them both. His opponents are apoplectic.

As far as Iran is concerned,…. when Iranian “students” seized the US Embassy in Tehran in November 1979 and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days, they placed the Carter administration in a dilemma: If President Jimmy Carter acknowledged that the “students” weren’t students, but soldiers of Iran’s dictator Ayatollah Khomeini, the US would be compelled to fight back. And Carter and his advisers didn’t want to do that.

So rather than admit the truth, Carter accepted the absurd fiction spun by the regime that Khomeini was an innocent bystander who, try as he might, couldn’t get a bunch of “students” in central Tehran to free the hostages.

At the base of their decision to prefer fantasy to reality in regards to Iran was the hope that Khomeini and his “students” would be satisfied with a pound or two of American flesh and wouldn’t cause Washington too many other problems.

So too, as Smith noted, the Carter administration was propelled by guilt. The worldviews of many members of the administration had been shaped on radical university campuses in the 1960s. They agreed with the Iranian revolutionaries who cursed Americans as imperialists. They perceived Khomeini and his followers as “authentic” Third World actors who were giving the Americans their comeuppance.

Khomeini and his “Death to America” shouting followers got the message. They understood that Washington had given them a green light to attack Americans in moderate and, as Smith put it, “plausibly deniable” doses. it. For the next 40 years, Iran maintained its aggression against America. And from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama, every president since Carter accepted and kept faith with Carter’s decision not to hold the Iranian regime responsible for the acts of aggression and war it carried out against America through proxies…….

This then brings us to President Trump. Trump’s decision to kill Qassem Soleimani – who as commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Quds Force was the head of all of Iran’s regional and global terror apparatuses – destroyed the Carter administration’s Iran narrative.

Soleimani was killed in Baghdad along with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the commander of one of the Soleimani-controlled Shiite militias in Iraq. Iraqi protesters, who have been demonstrating against Iran’s control over their government since last October claim that Soleimani was the one who ordered al-Muhandis to kill the demonstrators. More than 500 demonstrators have been killed by those forces in Iraq over the past three months.

By killing the two together, the Americans exposed the big lie at the root of 40 years of American deliberate blindness to the reality of Iranian culpability and responsibility for the acts of terror and aggression its surrogates have carried out against America and its allies.

By killing Soleimani, Trump made clear that the blank check for aggression the previous six presidents gave Tehran is now canceled. From now on, the regime will be held responsible for its actions. From now on US policy towards Iran will be based on reality and not on escapism.

BREAKING: Iran Admits to Shooting Down Ukrainian Plane, But Still Blames US

“A sad day. Preliminary conclusions of internal investigation by Armed Forces:

Human error at time of crisis caused by US adventurism led to disaster

Our profound regrets, apologies and condolences to our people, to the families of all victims, and to other affected nations.
?”

The U.S of course had nothing to do with it, so Iran’s apology is less than sincere.

I had posted elsewhere that an Air Defense battery saw the plane on their radar. The commander freaked out, believing it was one of the B52s (so publicly deployed to Diego Garcia) and decided to shoot first and ask questions later. Which brings a quotation to mind:
Stupid is as Stupid does.

Iran supreme leader says missile attack was a ‘slap on the face’ for US but it was ‘not enough’

Well, it was ‘not enough’ because it turns out the Iranians can’t hit the broad side of a barn with their missiles (when they can actually get them to fly properly). The line that they were purposefully trying to miss so as to not kill or injure any U.S. soldiers was hogwash.

Iranian ballistics missile attacks on two Iraqi military bases housing American troops early Wednesday was a “slap on the face” to the U.S., Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech hours after the strikes.

But “such military actions are not enough,” Khamenei said on Twitter, suggesting further acts of revenge for the U.S. killing of top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.

Missile attacks target US forces in Iraq

Talk about sucking all the oxygen out of the news cycle. If the President orders the strikes as promised, this is going to be 99% of what we’ll hear for the next whatever.

Iran fired “more than a dozen ballistic missiles” into Iraq, targeting U.S. military and coalition forces early Wednesday, Pentagon officials said, in a major retaliation by the rogue regime after the U.S. airstrike that killed Iranian Quds Force Gen. Qassem Soleimani last week.

The missiles launched by Iran targeted military bases in Al-Assad and Erbil, the Pentagon added.

Initial assessments showed “no U.S. casualties,” a U.S. military official in Baghdad told Fox News, adding that the U.S. was continuing to look into possible damage.

President Trump did not immediately respond, and the White House eventually said he would not make an address to the nation or other on-camera statement Tuesday.


Update:

Ten missiles hit Al-Assad Air Base, one missile hit a military base in Erbil and four missiles failed to hit their targets, according to a U.S. military spokesman for Central Command, responsible for American forces in the Middle East.
The attacks unfolded in two waves, each about an hour apart.

Slugs for Euro Thugs

French Police Shoot ‘Allahu Akbar’ Knifeman

French police shot a knifeman in the leg on Sunday, one of three police shootings in response to allegedly “Allahu Akbar” shouting knifemen in Europe in three days.

Officers were called to the scene after a man was seen walking out of a shop carrying a knife in the north-eastern French town of Metz on Sunday afternoon. The responding officers were threatened by the suspect when they arrived and attempted to attack with a knife, which the French prosecutor is investigating as attempted murder.


Germany: ‘Allahu Akbar’: Police Shoot Dead Turkish Citizen Who Attacked Officers With Knife

German police shot dead a Turkish citizen Sunday evening after he allegedly attempted to attack officers with a knife and other weapons in the western city of Gelsenkirchen.

Police officers came under attack Sunday night in Gelsenkirchen, North Rhine-Westphalia, when a man attacked officers standing with their patrol car with what local reports described only as an “object”. When the officers noticed the man was also carrying a knife, they ordered him to drop his weapons but he continued to attempt to attack the police.

U.S. service member, 2 contractors killed in attack on base in Kenya

This bunch is Sunni moslem, as opposed to the Iranians being Shite moslem, so it’s hard to say if this was a coordinated attack, or was something already planned. That being said, there’s the old thing about them considering the U.S. a common enemy. Of course, the solution for one sect is the same for all of them.

Al-Shabab, a Somali terror group linked to al-Qaeda, attacked a military base Sunday morning in Kenya, killing one U.S. service member and two Defense Department contractors, and wounding two others, U.S. African Command said.

Al-Shabab is a Sunni Muslim group and is not linked to Shiite Iran. Last Friday, a U.S. drone strike killed Iran’s top military commander, and Iran has vowed to retaliate.

Six civilian aircraft were damaged at Manda Bay Airfield, which is on an island in the coastal region of Lamu near the border with Somalia, AFRICOM said.

Initially, the U.S.-led coalition said there were no casualties in the attack but several hours later AFRICOM released an updated statement.

https://twitter.com/USAfricaCommand/status/1213780265560092679