Al Qaeda

ISTANBUL, July 29—Two nights after devastating terrorist bombs exploded on its popular pedestrian shopping block, the neighborhood of Gungoren swarmed with people: old and young men repaired the shattered windows of a clothing shop under the blank, watchful eyes of naked mannequins; women in head scarves shared ice cream next to women in sundresses; shop owners smoked beside their boxes of shoes for sale; a handful of policemen clutched riot shields opposite tiny pink girls jumping around in empty fountains.

Huge red Turkish flags hung from balconies where families drank tea; one woman had stretched a flag across the frame from which the glass of her window had been blown out by the bombs.  read more »

Two fresh takes on YouTube in today's New York Times.

On the op-ed page, Daniel Kimmage files a piece from Baku, Azerbaijan, titled "Fight Terror With YouTube" about how Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda aren't keeping up in the Web 2.0 world.

As Mr Kimmage writes:

Statements by Mr. bin Laden and his chief deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, that are posted to YouTube do draw comments aplenty. But the reactions, which range from praise to blanket condemnation, are a far cry from the invariably positive feedback Al Qaeda gets on moderated jihadist forums. And even Al Qaeda’s biggest YouTube hits attract at most a small fraction of the millions of views that clips of Arab pop stars rack up routinely.  read more »

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John McCain is in London to meet with Gordon Brown on Iraq (and hold a fund-raiser).  read more »

This volume, a collection of essays and broadcasts by Ayman Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden, does the Al Qaeda leaders no favors.  read more »

“When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it w  read more »

John McCain's speech today at the Virginia Military Institute left no doubt about his belief that American needs to persist and prevail in Iraq, and that the Democratic candidates' "reckless" withdrawal plans would make for an unacceptable and catastrophic defeat. "Our defeat in Iraq would constitute a defeat in the war against terror and extremism and would make the world a much more dangerous place," said McCain.

But McCain's speech was a slap on the wrist to the Democrats compared with the lashing his chief Iraq advisor, Randy Scheunemann, offered last week.

Describing many of the Democratic candidates' post-combat troop withdrawal strategy -- leaving behind a reduced military presence or horizon force to fight al Qaeda, prevent genocide in Iraq and avoid the conflagration of a wider regional war - Scheunemann said, "It's ludicrous. Because the idea that we will be able to better prevent sectarian violence and fight al Qaeda better from Kuwait than how we are doing it now is laughable."

-- Jason Horowitz

In metro reporting, it's important to get someone's occupation and location of residence right. Today, The Times Alan Feuer goes to great lengths not to let the reader down. The piece begins:

A Bronx martial arts instructor from the Bronx pleaded guilty today to a charge of "conspiring to provide material support or resources" to Al Qaeda, said Michael J. Garcia, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Get it? He's from the Bronx and knows martial arts!

In making his plea before United States Magistrate Gabriel W. Gorenstein, the martial arts instructor, Tarik Shah, admitted that he had agreed to train Qaeda terrorists in martial arts and hand-to-hand combat with weapons.

Again. He's a martial arts instructor and agreed to teach martial arts. Down three paragraphs.

The case began in May 2005, with the arrest of Mr. Shah, a New York jazz musician and martial arts expert, who was accused of swearing an oath of allegiance to Al Qaeda. Mr. Shah, who grew up in the Bronx....

UPDATE: The link above now directs to the newer version, which ran on B1 today. (The earlier, Bronx-centric one is missing).

CIA Warning of 9/11 Attacks    read more »

Hillary Clinton has gone to significant lengths to cultivate relationships with U.S. military leaders. Hillary said she'd sign on with the Democratic plan to withdraw all combat trrops from Iraq by the end of the summer of 2008, but also said that she would keep some troops there "to deal with al Qaeda."

Barack Obama's still-vague health care plan would theoretically achieve universal coverage faster than Hillary's plan.

Eliot Spitzer is moving away from talking about a government shutdown.

And he softened his stance on what he'll negotiate to get a budget passed.

"The police may have overreached and misused surveillance authority," the Times editorial board wrote.

"No wonder the convention went off without a hitch," wrote the Post editorial board.

A Queens drug dealer said he was shot by Sean Bell.

And the state employee who chauffeured Alan Hevesi's wife is out of a job.

-- Azi Paybarah

Americans frustrated with the Democratic Congressional leaders for dithering over Iraq should never  read more »

In the 15 years during which I more or less regularly conducted a column for this newspaper, I can&r  read more »

My Stump Speech (And How It Went Over)   Hello! Great to be here in New York City!    read more »

My Stump Speech (And How It Went Over)   Hello! Great to be here in New York City!    read more »

My Stump Speech (And How It Went Over)   Hello! Great to be here in New York City!    read more »

The most amusing part of the confrontation between former President Bill Clinton and Fox News Sunday  read more »

The most amusing part of the confrontation between former President Bill Clinton and Fox News Sunday  read more »

Last night James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, interviewed author Lawrence Wright on C-Span about his Al-Qaeda book, The Looming Tower, and alas made a hash of it.

The best thing about After Words, the book interview show, is that it pairs an author with someone who knows the subject and often comes at it from a different point of view. The best example of this was David Frum's superb interview of Victor Navasky a year ago, for Navasky's book, A Matter of Opinion. Frum was both respectful and sharp, and the polished Navasky humored him for a while before he grew impatient with Frum's description of the errors of the left, and defenestrated him. I forget the specific exchange, though I do recall that Frum tried to grill Navasky over the alleged anti-Semitism of Nation magazine writers. (Frum and I share a hobbyhorse; he just rides it backwards).

Anyway, last night, the interview went along on data points surrounding Al Qaeda before Wright climbed up to the high board: the despair in the Muslim world. "Islamic societies are in a crisis... All the statistics are so dismal... the absence of knowledge, the widespread illiteracy, all these things create depair..."

This is Bernard Lewis regurgitated by a new generation, and some of it is true. I have commented often on the lack of reading I observed in Syria. The problem is that it is purely materialistic. The statistics are economic ones, and they often seek to valorize Israel, because it is so modern. Those of us on the left who are concerned with Muslim hearts and minds are not talking strictly about their pocketbooks. Other things beside western progress puncture the spirit of Arabs. Like, injustice.

Zogby knows this, and could have educated a great number of us by expressing this point of view. The closest he got was "Doesn't the loss of control and policies we've perpetrated contribute as well?" He meant, I will bet, the Occupied Territories, and the charnel house that David Frum and John Podhoretz have made of Iraq. But he didn't say so out loud. And Wright then pushed the question aside with another serving of pablum. Zogby had something of a fawning smile throughout. This was a true misfortune, a lost opportunity to extend the dialogue between worldviews...

The unsigned editorial in last Friday’s New York Times made all the appropriate noises:  read more »

The unsigned editorial in last Friday’s New York Times made all the appropriate noises:  read more »

As Connecticut Democrats went to their polling places to choose a Senate nominee, waves of rhetorica  read more »

Death in war is rarely even dramatic in its circumstances.  read more »

On CNN just now, Fawaz Gerges, author of Journey of the Jihadist: Inside Muslim Militancy, said that 90-95 percent of the insurgents in Iraq do not answer to Al Qaeda, but are homegrown.

Via AP:

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) - A federal jury spared al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui from execution Wednesday and decided he will be sentenced to life in prison for his role in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Agitated over their declining credibility, President George W.  read more »

Agitated over their declining credibility, President George W.  read more »

On her Web site, Judith Miller has now posted the text of the goodbye letter she's scheduled to publish in tomorrow's New York Times.

In it, Miller describes herself "sad to leave my professional home." She also says that she desired to set the record straight on weapons-of-mass-destruction coverage before the Times ever published its 2004 editors' note on the subject:

At a commencement speech I delivered at Barnard College in 2003, a year before that note was published, I asked whether the administration's prewar W.M.D. intelligence was merely wrong, or was it exaggerated or even falsified. I believed then, and still do, that the answer to bad information is more reporting. I regret that I was not permitted to pursue answers to the questions I raised at Barnard. Their lack of answers continues to erode confidence in both the press and the government.

She also writes: "The right of reply and the obligation to correct inaccuracies are...the mark of a free and responsible press."  read more »

And she concludes by stating her resolve to "call attention to the internal and external threats to our country's freedoms--Al Qaeda and other forms of religious extremism, conventional and W.M.D. terrorism, and growing government secrecy in the name of national security--subjects that have long defined my work. "

Who's winning the battle of the front pages?

The Daily News takes the high road with a handsomely composed tribute to Rosa Parks, including the editorially savvy choice of her mug shot as illustration: This is exactly what Jim Crow was about--the criminalization of simple acts of living.  read more »

The Post, meanwhile, ignores the civil-rights pioneer in favor of screaming demi-gibberish conflating the War on Drugs with the War on Terror with the made-up scare story from a while back about al Qaeda seeking to poison America's illegal drug supply. The blurred-out faces of the feds testify that this is a matter of critical National Security.

Winner: New York Post Overall standings: Daily News 2, New York Post 1

I have no moral standing. That was my problem at the America Supports You Freedom Walk on Sept. 11.  read more »

To the Editor:    read more »

The other night, I watched an episode of Over There, a new television drama about the war in Iraq.  read more »

When the going gets tough, the tough get...flaks. In response to the lead story that Ben and I wrote for last week's Observer ("Local Insurgents: 'Islamic Thinkers' Menace Gay N.Y."), the Islamic Thinkers Society, a group of gay-bashing Muslim fundamentalists in Jackson Heights, have decided to project a kindler, gentler self-image with the power of PR. Here's a recent excerpt from the group's password-protected online forum:

"Insh'Allah a new team will be formed within the Islamic Thinkers Society that will refute false allegations, propaganda, false beliefs and ideas that are being spread by the kuffar [Ed.: 'unbelievers'] and the people of misguidance [Ed.: 'reporters']...This is just an idea that a few brothers from ITS and other non-violent organizations came up with..."

Not a bad plan, though it may take a few dozen frenzied flaks to explain the group's avowedly non-violent Bin Laden boosterism, their affection for animated images of stuff blowing up, and slogans like "Your Terrorists Are Our Heroes." But wait! Somebody already has. At the end of his proposal, the group's intrepid PR planner shared a favorite favorite quotation. I doubt that it will make the group's official media kit:

"I would love to be killed in Allah's cause and then be brought back to life, and then be killed and then again be brought back to life, and then be killed."

Kumbaya, baby! Kumbaya. But...

Inspiring words aside, you can't really blame the brothers of ITS for trying to burnish their brand. They've fallen victim to a recent spate of really bad press. On the same day our article ran (oh! the pain of a weekly deadline), The New York Times published a story tying the ITS to Al-Muhajiroun, a notorious group of British extremists. A week later, the Fox News Channel aired another report, which unearthed a bunch of unsubstantiated Internet rumours to connect the group with Al Qaeda.  read more »

And the branding campaign has already started with a scintillating screed: Observing the Observer.

America's Secret War: Inside the Hidden Worldwide Struggle Between America and Its Enemies, by Georg  read more »

Tomorrow the big day comes: John F. Kerry and George W.  read more »

In a week in which it was burnt by at least one high-profile source, CBS News is being accused by an  read more »

"Dead or alive."Those were the three words that came to mind on the evening of Sept.  read more »

Exactly one week after the President accepts his party's nomination in New York on Sept.  read more »

Somebody owes Howard Dean an apology.Over the past few days, the former Vermont governor and  read more »

For the first time since the Civil War, government officials in Washington are talking about the pos  read more »

With the prescience that often accompanies a queasy conscience, Vice President Dick Cheney opposed a  read more »

A producer called me a while back asking if I wanted to be interviewed for The Hunting of the Presid  read more »

Confronting an international crisis of confidence over American policy in Iraq, White House strategi  read more »

Memo from: Karl Rove To: POTUS  read more »

Argument, as Monty Python once put it, is an intellectual process, while contradiction is just the a  read more »

The 9/11 hearings and the testimony of Richard Clarke remind me that Republicans have been here befo  read more »

Within days after the terrorist attacks of Sept.  read more »

If the carnage in Spain and its political consequences represent a defeat for liberal civilization a  read more »

A bipartisan group of prominent New York lawyers, former federal judges and former government offici  read more »

Now that America knows who was responsible for those 16 misleading words about African uranium-namel  read more »

Americans are supposedly afraid to travel while we're at war. Not our family.  read more »

Rarely has an American President delivered a more critical but less compelling address than George W  read more »