Egyptian blogger ‘Sandmonkey‘ is calling it quits due to the Egyptian government’s crackdown on bloggers and dissenting voices. While anonymous, ‘Sandmonkey’ posts:

I no longer believe that my anonymity is kept, especially with State Secuirty agents lurking around my street and asking questions about me since that day. I ignore that, the same way I ignored all the clicking noises that my phones started to exhibit all of a sudden, or the law suit filed by Judge Mourad on my friends, and instead grew bolder and more reckless at a time where everybody else started being more cautious.

Paranoia or just cause? I believe it’s the latter as I have been a reader of his blog for quite some time now and have watched as he has always seemed to take a dig at the Egyptian government when it comes to foreign policy and domestic issues, as well as paid attention as one Egyptian blogger was arrested.

When ‘Sandmonkey’ has to quit blogging in fear of being arrested, it takes all the calls of some U.S. Liberals who claim someone is stifling their dissent, and I still don’t know who that ’someone’ is, into greater context and once again presents them as the jokes they are.

‘Sandmonkey’ will be missed, not just as a strong democratic voice in Egypt, but also as a humorous blogger who always put items into the greater context that is missing in today’s world.

Check out the site now, which will certainly remain up since it’s hosted on Freedom’s Zone to help ensure he had a place to blog.

Also check out Atlas’ interview with ‘Sandmonkey’ who speaks on the Egyptian crackdown and what Pelosi’s trip to Syria and Hoyer’s meeting with the Muslim Brotherhood has done to the region.  A small excerpt:

Atlas: Where you shocked when Hoyer met with the Muslim Brotherhood?

SANDMONKEY: Let me tell you something. I was in Turkey a couple of weeks ago and I met a couple of Syrian activists. They one thing they told me that was really funny about the Pelosi visit. After Pelosi came to Syria two things happened. People on Syrian TV were saying, “We forced the Americans to knock on the Damascus gate!” Sort of like an admission that we messed things up in Iraq so much that America had to come and beg for their help.

But the day after Pelosi’s visits there were immediate arrests of Syrian activists. That was the fruit she yielded. “Oh the Americans came over and they said they have a different foreign policy  and they’re more interested in placating Bashar’s ego.” And he went out and got [arrested] everyone he wanted because he knew he had an ally in Washington that wouldn’t pressure him as much . . .

ATLAS: We have to educate the American people. You think the American people know this?

SANDMONKEY: No, but do they even care at this point? I don’t think they are interested in the discussion any more. There are people that have made up their mind, they think we need to placate the dictators because America is wrong and everyone else is always right. That’s how they operate.

Sad, very sad.

As politicos are pouring over what little has been released from former CIA Director George Tenet’s book, which wasn’t released until today mind you, I don’t really care what Tenet’s version of events are even if certain memories had to be completely made up or exist only in a time warp. What is interesting is his assessment of Al Qaida and Al Qaida plots.

According to Tenet, Al Qaida has a plan to “assassinate Vice President Al Gore with anti-tank missiles during a trip to Saudi Arabia, release cyanide in the New York subway system and procure weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, from Pakistani nuclear scientists.”  It was Tenet’s suggestion though in 2001 “that a small nuclear weapon may have been smuggled into the United States” through the U.S. border with Mexico.

Tenet writes that U.S. intelligence agencies “established that Al Qaeda had clear intent to acquire chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons to cause mass casualties in the United States.”

According to Tenet, intelligence officials learned that Saudi extremist elements were planning to conduct a cyanide gas attack on the New York subway system in fall 2003 using a homemade device. But first, they requested permission from al-Qaida leaders.

“Chillingly, word came back from Ayman al-Zawahiri in early 2003 to cancel the operation and recall the operatives who were already staged in New York ‘because we have something better in mind.’ ”

The terrorist network made two separate efforts to persuade Pakistani scientists to provide it with nuclear weapons from their stockpile of about 50 nuclear weapons, highly enriched uranium and plutonium, and vast weapons infrastructure.

In 1998, Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida’s leader, was rebuffed, for unclear reasons. About two years later, he had better luck when al-Qaida reached out to a charity for Afghan refugees run by Pakistani nuclear scientists. Although some of the details of this effort have been previously reported, the extent of the effort went much further than what was publicly known.

In 2000, Tenet writes, the charity’s founder, Sultan Bashir-ud-Din Mahmood, and others at Pakistan’s nuclear weapons agency agreed to help Mahmood in his effort to share weapons of mass destruction with the Taliban leaders of Afghanistan.

In fact, Tenet said, U.S. intelligence learned that bin Laden and Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban’s leader, had met with Mahmood and an aide in August 2001 in Afghanistan.

Tenet describes the initial Pakistani investigation as “ill-fated” and writes that the Pakistanis treated the charity officials with deference in their interrogations.

So he went to Pakistan and met with Musharraf, warning about the outrage that would explode if it emerged that Pakistan was allowing nuclear scientists to help bin Laden acquire nuclear weapons.

Musharraf pooh-poohed the concerns, arguing that bin Laden and his associates were “men living in caves” who could not possibly take possession of such weapons, Tenet writes. Under interrogation, however, Mahmood subsequently confirmed the details of the August 2001 meeting with bin Laden.

At the same time, in the fall of 2001, Tenet writes, U.S. intelligence began picking up rumors from several reliable sources that a small nuclear device had been smuggled into the United States, for probable use in New York City. The Energy Department sent detection equipment to New York, he adds.

Tenet concludes that a nuclear detonation in a U.S. city is al-Qaida’s ultimate goal.

“I’m concerned this is where UBL and his operatives want to go,” he writes. “If they can arrange to set off a mushroom cloud, they make history. … My deepest fear is that this exactly what they intend.” (source)

Al Qaida did have a chemical weapons program in Afghanistan before it was destroyed and the Al Qaida leader in charge of the program killed in Damadola, but the extent of the program is not known.  Most trackers of the group’s attempts to produce chemical weapons are familiar with the video showing dogs in cages dying from some mysterious gas, or at least that is what is assumed.

While it has been reported before, another interesting excerpt posted above is that Ayman al-Zawahri called off the alleged cyanide attack.  Is that further proof OBL is merely the figurehead and not the leader of Al Qaida as I continually claim?

The CIA overall was woefully inadequate with regard to Al Qaida, and hopefully that has changed.  Tenet had a hand in those failures, however it is interesting to note it wasn’t until President Bush took office before the CIA Director was able to personally brief the president.  This provides hope rather than political positioning in that this newly-found dependence upon intelligence will be carried on through future administrations.  Hopefully the U.S. government has learned from their past failures just as the CIA has.

Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, the mastermind behind July 7?

Abd al-Hadi, 45, was regarded as one of al-Qaeda’s most experienced, most intelligent and most ruthless commanders. Senior counter-terrorism sources told The Times that he was the man who, in 2003, identified Britain as the key battleground for exporting al-Qaeda’s holy war to Europe.

Abd al-Hadi recognised the potential for turning young Muslim radicals from Britain who wanted to become mujahidin in Afghanistan or Iraq into terrorists who could carry out attacks in their home country. He realised that their knowledge of Britain, possession of British passports and natural command of English made them ideal recruits. After al-Qaeda restructured its operations in Pakistan’s tribal areas he sought out young Britons for instruction at training camps. In late 2004 Abd al-Hadi met Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, from Leeds, at a militant camp in Pakistan and, in the words of a senior investigator, “retasked them” to become suicide bombers.

They were sent back to Britain where they led the terrorist cell that carried out the 7/7 bombings, killing 52 Tube and bus passengers.

A significant capture might have just grown to be more significant, at least assuming no one else in AQ would have figured out to befriend the growing Islamist movement within England.  It was, after all, partially set up by Mustafa Nasar, which means that’s hardly the case.  Perhaps al-Iraqi was just better at it and realized how important it was, but he certainly wasn’t the first to do so.

Two fascinating stories pertaining to Iran seeking out Iraqi Kurds to attack Coalition forces and the Iraqi government, one by Eli Lake in the New York Sun and the other by Richard Minister at Pajamas Media. This is especially interesting due to a fairly large chunk of the intelligence and political crowd believing the Shia government of Iran could not support a Sunni group, which has always been bogus as Hamas is the perfect example of a known Sunni group Iran supports, but it’s also interesting since Iran has been at war with Kurdish separatists for many years too.

Both columns shed light on why the United States would raid the supposed Iranian consulate in Irbil, capturing members of the elite QUDS force which answers only to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran. Iran cried and still cries foul at the raid, but both columns show there is reason to conclude Iran is more than just assisting insurgency inside Iraq, but they are directing at least some of it too outside of Muqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi Army.

First from the Sun:

Mr. Mustapha, whose story appeared in The New York Sun on Thursday, said the commander of the Quds Force, General Suleimani, “spoke on behalf of Ali Khamenei,” Iran’s supreme leader, at a summit in the Iranian city of Kermanshah. Mr. Mustapha continued, “He said, ‘Ali Khamenei told us that any group of Islamists, Tawhid and Jihad, Ansar al Sunna, any group can go across the border to Iraq.” (Tawhid and Jihad is the original organization founded by the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.)

The account of Mustapha would seem to suggest not only was Iran trying to get Iraqi Kurds on Iran’s side to attack the Coalition, but they have also been allowing Al Qaida in Iraq safe passage through Iran and into Iraq. This would, by default, suggest Iran has also allowed the larger Al Qaida to pass through Iran.

So who is Mustapha? Miniter interviews him and the story Mustapha tells is quite telling.

As Mustafa waited for his first mission, he began to learn more about Iran’s sponsorship of terrorist attacks inside Iraq. “I was told that Ansar al Islam members met with [Iranian] Brigadier [General] Qasim Sulemani,” a high ranking member of Iran’s Quds Force, on April 4, 2005, Mustafa said. “The meeting was in Kermanshah, at the head office” of Iran’s intelligence service there. He said that the Itilaat service also briefed him on upcoming missions of the al Qaeda-linked terror group. Iran often has advance knowledge of these attacks and helps fund and plan them, he said.

He was paid $400 a month, but he was eager for the bonuses that came with missions inside Iraq. Those could pay as much as $1500. By contrast, his police salary in Iraq was $220 per month in 2005.

At last, after four months, the mission came. He was given a small digital camera and sent to the Iraqi city of Kirkuk to photograph U.S. bases. From the window of taxi, he shot movies and stills of American checkpoints and base perimeter security operations. Over the course of a long day he shot some 55 minutes of movies of guards, bomb-sniffing dogs, and base buildings vulnerable to attack.

When he returned with the “flash movies,” Iranian intelligence officers were very happy.

Next, they sent him to photograph Iranian opposition figures in Iraq, especially those connected to the Democratic Kormala party. Col. Yacubi also wanted Mustafa to discover their home addresses. These men, Mustafa was told, would be targeted for assassination.

Mustapha was recruited by Iranian agents to work for the Iranian government, which should come to no surprise as Iran would rightly want information on Coalition bases within Iraq.  What is though quite telling is that the person sent to him was a survivor of ‘Operation Viking Hammer,’ one of the Iraq war’s first strikes by the United States set to dismantle a known Army of Ansar al-Sunnah (Ansar al-Islam branch) base.  Zarqawi was the leader of the Army of Ansar a-Sunnah prior to branching off to Tawhid wal Jihad to recruit non-Iraqis to join the jihad.

In simple terms, Iran sent an emissary connected to Al Qaida in Iraq to recruit Mustapha to work for Iranian intelligence, believing Mustapha too was a former member of Ansar al-Islam.  This means Iran is aiding both the Shia and Sunni factions within Iraq to create instability, another item which has largely been known since the last thing Iran wants to see is in Iraq is a government friendly to the so-called West develop a Democracy.

Read Miniter’s full column as there’s much, much more including how the operations Mustapha was sent on started to close in on sabotaging the Iraqi government and the Coalition forces, and he carried out some of those missions as opposed to just running surveillance.

You’ve got to admire Prince Harry in his fight to be deployed to Iraq in the face of insurgent groups wanting his head and the British government questioning whether or not he should go.

“If they said, ‘No you can’t go front line then I wouldn’t have dragged my sorry arse through Sandhurst,’” he said. “The last thing I want to do is have my soldiers sent away to Iraq or anywhere like, and for me to be held back home twiddling my thumbs thinking, ‘What about David? What about Derek?’ You know?”

The British government feels a dry run was just carried out in southern Iraq that was used to practice how an insurgent group will capture Harry, having warned “we will return him home in a coffin” in a sympathetic web site.  According to ABC News, there are detailed plans for taking him hostage, but we’ve been through all of this before.

Harry wants to go to Iraq.  He must have missed the Secretary of the World Harry Reid’s announcement the war in Iraq was lost.  The prince does not want to be left behind while his brothers in arms travel to Iraq.

Now whether or not his presence in Iraq would enganger fellow British soldiers, that’s another argument entirely and it’s one that has been made several times.  There’s little question insurgent and terrorist groups inside Iraq would like to get their hands on Prince Harry, therefore they would certainly attempt to attack the unit he’s in in order to get that done, but would that change anything?

Saudi Arabia has announced they have foiled a terrorist plot and arrested 172 suspected terrorists in connection.  The plot involved hijacking airplanes and flying those planes into the nations many oil reserves in an effort to cripple the global economy and certainly the state of Saudi Arabia.

The ministry issued a statement saying the detainees were planning to carry out suicide atttacks [sic] against “public figures, oil facilities, refineries … and military zones” — some of which were outside the kingdom.

“They had reached an advance stage of readiness and what remained only was to set the zero hour for their attacks,” Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Mansour al-Turki told The Associated Press in a phone call. “They had the personnel, the money, the arms. Almost all the elements for terror attacks were complete except for setting the zero hour for the attacks.”

The militants also planned to storm Saudi prisons to free the inmates, the statement said. (source)

Thirty-two million dollars was also confiscated in the raid.  Not every suspected terrorist was as a Saudi, though the majority were.

Let those numbers sink in for a little while.  One hundred seventy-two terrorists and $32 million involved in a plot that would have completely devastated one entire nation and most likely many others.  On top of all of that, the group was engaged in and apparently had succeeded sending operatives to receive flight training.

Reuters reports there were seven cells involved, therefore meaning there was not one group.  The BBC also reports there were cells involved but does not give a number for them, and NBC does the same.  The Associated Press, not so much.

An interesting Al Qaida commander named Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, is being shipped to Guantanamo Bay Detention Center following his capture in late 2006 on his way back to his home nation of Iraq.  Al-Hadi is “one of al-Qaeda’s highest-ranking and senior operatives at the time of his detention,” according to Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman.

Al-Hadi is accused of planning operations within Afghanistan from the comforts of Pakistan, but he is also believed to be personally tasked with overseeing Al Qaida in Iraq from Osama bin Laden.  A former officer in the Iraq military, he has ties to the Taliban that date back to the 1990s and acted as a liason between Al Qaida and the Taliban.  Nothing to see there.

U.S. intelligence sources told NBC News that al-Hadi was taken into custody in late 2006 and has provided the CIA with hundreds of leads into al-Qaida operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Whitman said that “Abd al-Hadi was trying to return to his native country, Iraq, to manage al-Qaida’s affairs and possibly focus on operations outside Iraq against Western targets.” He added that the terror suspect also met with al-Qaida members in Iran. He said he did not know what time period al-Hadi was in Iran. (source)

A good catch on quite an interesting character.  It seems odd that the current leader of Al Qaida in Iraq was supposedly chosen by the Al Qaida leadership when Al-Hadi was around.  Here was a former military commander for the Iraqi military who was experienced in planning, he has the contacts within Iraq and certainly with Baathists since the only way to advance through the Iraqi military during the reign of Saddam Hussein was to schmooze, and he’s passed up.

Friends and allies report from Jihad Unspun, a Canada-based Internet news site designed to bring forth information and opinions of radical Islamic groups cheering them on without the pom poms but with the explosive keyboard.

It is apparent to every watchful eye that recent events over the past few days have exposed a huge crack in America’s administration. With weak declarations from their leaders about events on the ground in Iraq just two months after the so-called “Baghdad security plan” commenced and a growing dispute about funds spent on the Iraq and Afghan wars, the American command has now said “The current security plan is the last chance for the American army and the Maliki government”.

As usual, this was followed by a swift visit by the new (American) Defense Minister “Gates” who said, “The American support to the Maliki government is not unlimited”, insinuating that the American administration is impatient with the Maliki government that is incapable of handling the strikes of the Mujahideen. This comes on the heels of an important statement by House Majority Leader Harry Reid who previously said, “The Iraqi war is hopeless and the situation in Iraq is same as it was in Vietnam.”

No, I have no clue why Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has his last name in quotes, but I assure you that is actually his name.

But it is nice to know that our enemies are watching, as if anyone thought otherwise. With that knowledge, it continues to baffle me why certain politicians decide it’s best to give them fodder to use against us, though this is hardly the first time.

According to MEMRI, Iran has threatened to use its ‘long-ranged’ missiles to attack United States targets and Israel in case the U.S. attacked Iran.

In an April 25 speech, Iranian Deputy Interior Minister Mohammed Baqer Dho Al-Qadr threatened that if the U.S. attacked Iran, “nowhere will be safe for America, because of [Iran’s] long-range missiles. Iran is capable of firing dozens of missiles every day at American targets, and with the long-range missiles we can also threaten Israel, as a supporter of America.”

First off, of course Iran will strike out if attacked.  One wouldn’t expect anything else.  But it is interesting to note that Iran seeks to dissuade an American strike by saying it would attack Israel.  Of course Iran would attack Israel because they would need to try to galvanize the Iranian people and the support of other nations in the region.  It just so happens many of those American targets within the region are in nations Iran would seek the support of.

The longest range of the Iranian missile class comes in the form of the Shahab-3, which has a range of 800 miles.  Shahab-4 and Shahab-6, someone forgot the fifth class, has been in development, but at this point there is no reason to believe either exists.

The Taliban mouthpiece Mullah Dadullah claims Osama bin Laden is alive and well and planning attacks in both Afghanistan and Iraq.  Dadullah uses the attack on Bagham air base as proof of OBL’s footprints.

“Do you remember the martyrdom operation inside the Bagram base which targeted a senior American official … this operation was the result of blessed plans put by him,” Dadullah said. Jazeera said the U.S. official Dadullah was referring to was Cheney.

“He (bin Laden) guided us through it,” he said, adding that no Afghan would have been able to penetrate the base if it was not for the world’s most wanted militant.

That’s bogus.  As I wrote at the time of the attack, Cheney’s stay at Bagram was a detour due to bad weather and the suicide bomber started hours away.  Cheney was in Pakistan the day before and was known to be heading to Kabul before bad weather reared its ugly head.  Besides, the attack on the base was an utter failure by all accounts spun by the Taliban to claim it was successful at, well, something.

I have firmly believed OBL is alive and well, relatively speaking at least, but this makes me wonder if he is indeed dead.  It’s unlikely Dadullah would have contact with OBL, rather if anyone within the Taliban has contact with the terror chieftan it’s Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban.  Dadullah might have heard through the grapevine, however even the rumor of OBL being alive is more valuable to the Taliban than the mere guess he’s dead.

Oh, and besides, Osama bin Laden isn’t exactly a planner, much less a military strategist.  He’s always had others do it for him.  During the Afghan-Soviet war days, OBL was an armchair general, occassionaly grabbing a radio to try to call the shots, but those raids failed time and time again.