This documentary from Frontline is about David Headley. The man who plotted the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai. He was a Pakistani American secretly working for an Al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist group called Lashkar-i-Taiba based in Pakistan. Much like the 9/11 attacks, the Mumbai massacre was years in the making.

Watch A Perfect Terrorist on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Watch A Perfect Terrorist on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Watch A Perfect Terrorist on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Watch A Perfect Terrorist on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Watch A Perfect Terrorist on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Watch A Perfect Terrorist on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Wow. This is comforting.

This article titled “Hamburg mosque which links 9/11 to the badlands of Pakistan” was written by Ian Traynor in Hamburg, for The Guardian on Thursday 7th October 2010 18.41 UTC

The most infamous mosque in Europe is a drab, nondescript place. Five minutes from Hamburg’s main railway station, above a Vietnamese takeaway and the Olympic Fitness Club, the grimy quarters of the Taiba prayer hall and library occupy mythical status for the jihadists of Europe.

It was here at the mosque formerly called the al-Quds that Mohammed Atta and several of his accomplices prayed and plotted the global gamechanger that was 9/11. And it was here, until last year, that another group of 11 German Islamist militants congregated before taking circuitous routes to Pakistan’s tribal belt for, it is assumed, terrorist training.

Over the past week Washington and London have been issuing scary warnings of Mumbai-style massacres in Europe about to be perpetrated by homegrown terrorists operating to a script written in the Hindu Kush. The alarms have refocused attention on the mosque in the north German port because the intelligence source for the US warnings is one of the 11 acolytes who left Germany for the lawless Pakistani-Afghan border region of Waziristan last year.

And on Monday, when an unmanned CIA Predator struck a farmstead in the same border area, the news was that eight German militants were killed, reinforcing the alleged link with the Hamburg Islamists.

A senior security service source in the city, though, is playing down the Hamburg connection: “We don’t know if the Taiba people are connected with the [Predator] attack. The IDs of the dead are not known. We would know for sure if any of the victims were Hamburg people, but we have nothing yet.”

In Berlin, they are even more sceptical, voicing barely disguised contempt for what they view as American spin.

“What really astonishes me,” Thomas de Maizière, the German interior minister, told German radio on Wednesday, “is that this attack is supposed to have taken place with unmanned drones in an inaccessible region the day before yesterday and yet the identities are immediately found.”

Whether the American attack foiled or was connected to German Islamists planning for a European bombing spree, it is clear that the Hamburg mosque has served as a recruiting ground for violent Islamism since September 2001. A report by Hamburg’s counter-intelligence service in May described the mosque as “the main focus of attraction for the jihadist scene as in previous years”. Ralf Kunz, spokesman for the Hamburg security services, said: “The Taiba mosque has been drawing people not only from all over Germany, but from all over Europe. It was a place of pilgrimage.”

The two-storey mosque building lies empty and abandoned. At 6am on a Monday two months ago – almost nine years after the Twin Towers attack – the police and special forces moved in, hauled away computers and documents, and closed the place down.

The authorities had repeatedly tried and failed, most recently last spring, to win court approval for the ban. It was the evidence about the 11 who left Hamburg for Pakistan last year, at least two of whom have joined the terrorists of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, that persuaded the magistrates. US intelligence deriving from the same group was also the trigger for the recent US warnings and travel advisories.

Two of the 11 are now in custody. Rami Makanesi, a German national of Syrian origin, is being held by German special branch after being deported from Pakistan this summer. Ahmad Sidiqi, a German national of Afghan origin, is being held by the Americans at Bagram outside Kabul. Both are believed to be talking to their interrogators, although a transatlantic credibility gap has opened up over the value of their testimony.

Both men were regulars at the Hamburg mosque, with Makanesi the younger and more influential in militant circles, according to the Germans.

Sidiqi left Hamburg with his Indonesian wife and younger brother in March last year, pitching up in Peshawar and then Mir Ali, the Taliban and al-Qaida stronghold in Waziristan near the site of the Predator attack.

Both men were arrested within weeks of one another in June and July, Sidiqi by the Americans in Kabul, Makanesi by the Pakistanis while disguised in a full-body burqa, apparently trying to make his way from Waziristan to Islamabad.

According to German accounts, both were fed up with the fight, wanted to return to Germany, and were trying to reach the German embassies in the Afghan and Pakistani capitals to renew their ID papers. The Berlin media reported yesterday that the Americans were about to move Sidiqi from Bagram to the US, viewing him as a source of high-grade intelligence.

A German diplomat in Kabul was allowed to see Sidiqi for the first time last weekend, following weeks of pressure on the Americans. The Germans are also hoping to dispatch a team of spies and interrogators to question him.

The evidence supporting the US terrorism alerts is said to have been gleaned from Sidiqi, who has told the Americans that he met a man claiming to be al-Qaida’s new number three, Sheikh Younis al-Mauretani, last spring and that they discussed a fresh wave of attacks in Britain and France, carried out by European passport-holders using sophisticated new encrypted software and laptops. The plot was said to have been blessed by Osama bin Laden.

The problem with all of this, the Germans complain, is that there is no real evidence; the American alerts are so vague as to be meaningless and the detail being leaked in Washington to Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News channel and other US networks is all old.

“There is no new security situation in Hamburg,” said Kunz. De Maizière was withering in Berlin on Wednesday. He described the risk as “hypothetical. There are no direct and specific plans for attacks … We would rather work seriously instead of talking about it.”

Following the US alerts, Britain has been talking up the risks in France, while Paris has been warning of the danger in the UK. Germany has been generally dismissive. If, as Washington contends, Europe is at immediate risk, only Sweden has officially raised the level of terrorism alert.

The real German alarm was last year in the run-up to the general election, when al-Qaida issued bloodcurdling threats about what would happen if Berlin did not pull out of northern Afghanistan. One of the radicals in the video warnings was a German national from the Hamburg group of 11. The rest of the detail about attacks on Berlin landmarks and tourist attractions, broadcast this week by US networks, also stems from the same al-Qaida campaign last year.

Yet Germany, spared the kind of attacks suffered by London and Madrid since 9/11, is nonetheless very worried about the Hamburg group and other German nationals travelling in increasing numbers to Pakistan for training. The security service estimates the number of Muslims in Germany supporting “Islamist aims” at 36,270 last year, the highest figure since the 2001 attacks on America. The assessments also reveal that Hamburg is seen as a magnet in Germany for Islamist “holy warriors”. Of an estimated 200 hard-core “jihadists” in Germany, 45 are in the northern port, according to national counter-intelligence.

“They advocate or support the worldwide armed struggle according to al-Qaida ideology in the form of propaganda, logistical, financial or other forms of help and see this as a legitimate means in the fight against ‘unbelievers’,” said the May counter-intelligence report.

Until recently, Mohammed Atta’s mosque continued to play a central role: “The [Hamburg] group was formed in the Taiba mosque … The unifying factor for the radicalisation of the members was certainly the common attendance of this mosque,” said the report.

Which raises the question of why the mosque was not closed down earlier or why it was closed down at all since, riddled with intelligence bugs, it was arguably the most closely watched building in Germany.

“Banning the mosque was not right,” said Mustafa Yoldas, a Hamburg GP and head of the Schura, an umbrella organisation of more than 30 mosques in the city. “Now these people are all over Hamburg in private flats and you need to watch 20 places instead of one.”

Udo Steinbach, a national expert on Islam and former head of Hamburg’s German Orient Institute, said the threat of Islamist violence in Hamburg was minimal because of the comprehensive surveillance of suspects.

“There was no need for this step. The mosque used to have clear links to Pakistan, but it was no longer a danger.”

Kunz agreed that the August closure of the mosque was not a panacea, but it helped. “These people have not disappeared from the face of the earth,” he said. “They’ve just gone elsewhere.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

This via WND:

Public school students at Friendswood Junior High in the Houston area have been roped into Islamic training by representatives from the Council on American-Islamic Relations during class time…

Parents were never notified and only found out from their kids after the fact. The principal unilaterally decided that children in Friendswood need to learn about Islam from an organization that the FBI named as co-conspirators in a recent terrorism trial.

The parent reported the presentation was 30 to 40 minutes long and handled by two Muslim women from CAIR’s Houston office. CAIR, as WND has reported, is spinoff of the defunct Islamic Association for Palestine, launched by Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook and former university professor Sami al-Arian, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to provide services to Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Kids were forced to learn the “five pillars of Islam”, how to pray 5 times a day, and of course the most important lesson of all, “There is one God, his name is Allah”.

It is beyond belief that Principal Robin Lowe, would allow two thugs from CAIR on school grounds to brainwash kids about Islam.

I find this entire episode particularly offensive since it took place in my town, only a few blocks from my home. I’m told that parents are organizing as we speak to hold protests, and I hope we can all come together to see this broad fired.

-Chris Jones
Managing Editor (and Friendswood resident)
The Hot Joints

It looks like Jimmy Carter’s favorite “partners in peace” are up to their old tricks again! A Palestinian terrorist tried to cross into Israel from Gaza, but was stopped by alert Israeli soldiers.

Israeli soldiers fired on the vehicle as it approached the border crossing at which point the driver detonated the truck. The resulting blast could be heard 18 miles away, but thankfully only the would-be killer died.

Two other men allegedly involved in the attack were intercepted by Israeli helicopters and killed in an air strike as they fled in their getaway vehicle.

Had that truck bomb entered Israel and detonated in a public place, the result would have been devastating. A 4-ton truck bomb would have killed hundreds of people and leveled a city block. These are the killers and assassins that Jimmy Carter hugs and talks of peace with.

-Chris Jones

Liberals love to describe the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay as basically a ‘house of horrors’ where innocent people are tortured and kept in a dungeon for years at a time.

The left would have the world believe that George Bush and his barbarians are keeping poor innocent Muslims locked away without access to lawyers or anything. Protesters dress up like detainees and pretend they’re being waterboarded and other such nonsense.

Then stuff like this happens:

A former Kuwaiti detainee at the US camp at Guantanamo Bay carried out a recent suicide bombing in northern Iraq, the US military has said.

A spokesman for US Central Command told the Associated Press that Abdullah al-Ajmi took part in an attack in Mosul on 29 April that killed several people.

Ajmi and two other Kuwaitis blew up two explosive-packed vehicles next to Iraqi security forces, media reports say.

The US transferred Ajmi to Kuwaiti custody from Guantanamo Bay in 2005.

He was later acquitted by a Kuwaiti court of terrorism charges.

According to Kuwaiti and pan-Arab media reports, Ajmi and his two alleged accomplices, Nasir al-Dawsari and Badr al-Harbi, were able to leave Kuwait a month ago without alerting the attention of the authorities because they had wrongly been issued new passports.

They then travelled to Syria, where Ajmi is reported to have told his family of his intentions, before heading onto Iraq.

The families of Ajmi and Harbi reportedly later received anonymous calls informing them that the men had died in Iraq.

Nothing like a little harsh reality to shatter a false left-wing narrative about America.

Via Hot Air:

Remember that one of the campaign slogans for Obama was “Judgment to Lead”. I often use the picture of Obama with that slogan on the lectern just to emphasize that Obama himself opened the debate over his judgment. Now that people want to start asking about the judgment he claims as his superior quality for the election, he wants to label it a “distraction”, but without it he has nothing else to offer except three undistinguished years as a backbencher in the Senate.

With no track record of legislative accomplishments and no evidence of any real engagement in change, judgment would have eventually become a focal issue for Obama anyway, even if he hadn’t brought it up himself. That means his judgment in launching his political career at the home of an unrepentant terrorist like William Ayers becomes relevant and germane, especially since the political connections between the two continued after Ayers announced that he wished he’d gone further in his political violence. Even in 2007, Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn talk about overthrowing the “corporate government” of the United States, to replace it with something more akin to Red China.

What is Obama’s judgment on Ayers and Dohrn? They’re “respectable figures of the mainstream in Chicago.”

For that matter, what is Obama’s judgment on middle America? In what he thought was a friendly crowd among the hard-Left elite in San Francisco, Obama judged small-town voters as bitter xenophobes that “cling” to guns and religion only because — and this is particularly revealing — “government failed them”. His solution was to provide an even bigger dose of government intervention in order to get them to see the Utopia that would follow. That was the point of that speech on Billionaires Row, which later got termed “Crackerquiddick”.

For someone to see Ayers, Dohrn, and Jeremiah Wright as mainstream, they have to be very far out of what the rest of the country sees as normal political thought. Distraction? Obama’s judgment is a revelation.

Here are some clips featuring Bill Ayres and Bernadine Dohrn formerly of the Weather Underground. They are vehemently opposed to capitalism and are quite proud of the bombs they set and the lives they destroyed. The bombs they constructed and detonated were packed with nails and are similar to those used to kill Israelis today.

The fact that Barack Obama could even occupy the same room with these despicable people says a lot about his judgment and character.

Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Malki said today that Jimmy Carter’s much publicized meeting with Hamas achieved nothing.

“President Carter came to the region thinking he could achieve something. Unfortunately president Carter left without anything concrete,” he told a conference in the Spanish capital.

“The only thing he achieved was permission on the part of Khaled Meshaal of Hamas to deliver a letter from a detained Israeli soldier to his family. Nothing else,” he said.

“Hamas offered nothing to president Carter. They reiterated the same positions. There was no change on the part of Hamas,” Malki added.

Actually Al-Malki is wrong to say that Carter’s trip achieved nothing. One achievement was giving legitimacy on the world stage to one of the most notorious terrorist organizations on earth.

Carter gave legitimacy to a group which thinks sending young men into Israel wearing vests packed with explosives and nails in to blow themselves up is the fastest way to heaven. A group that raises their children to believe that killing Jews is their duty as Palestinians and God will reward them for it.

Hamas is a group of cold-blooded killers pure and simple. For Jimmy Carter to have met with the group’s leadership in Syria (right in the belly of the beast) was a disgrace.

He continues to be shockingly naive in his belief that “talking” with dictators and terrorists is the solution for everything, and as usual he was proven wrong.

From the AP:

Pakistan freed a pro-Taliban cleric and quickly signed an accord with his hard-line group Monday, the first major step by the new government to talk peace with Islamic militants and break with President Pervez Musharraf’s policy of using force.

The day’s developments began with the release of Sufi Muhammad, who is believed in his 70s, after more than five years in custody following his dispatch of thousands of followers to fight in Afghanistan.

A few hours later, the government of North West Frontier Province said Muhammad’s group signed a pact renouncing violence in return for being allowed to peacefully campaign for Islamic law. Security forces have the right to “act against” any extremists who attack the government.

Yeah, right.

Britain deserves a round of applause for putting a few laws on the books that put reasonable limitations on free speech. It is under these new laws that a well known local Islamic thug named Abu Izzadeen was found guilty of ‘Inciting Terrorism.”

Izzadeen was found guilty of incitement to terrorism abroad along with three of his associates, Abdul Rehman Saleem, also known as Abu Yahya, the convert Simon Keeler, also known as Suliman Keeler, and Ibrahim Abdullah Hassan.

Brooks, Keeler and two other men, Shah Jalal Hussain and Abdul Muhid were found guilty of collecting money for terrorists in Iraq.

Hussain skipped bail while the jury were deliberating and is now on the run.

In a series of fiery speeches delivered from his London mosque, Izzadeen called on his followers to train to be terrorists and telling them to kill non-believers to get to heaven.

He reportedly referred to the 9/11 bombers as “the magnificent 19″ and asked his followers, “are you ready for another 7/7?” which is a reference to the London train bombings which killed many people.

Izzadeen also burst in on former Home Secretary John Reid as he was giving a speech about radicalism and the necessity to separate extremists from law abiding Muslims. (How Ironic)

See Izzadeen in action above!