Yahoo News

CAIRO – Al-Qaida’s American-born spokesman on Sunday called on Muslims serving in the U.S. armed forces to emulate the Army major charged with killing 13 people in Fort Hood.

In a 25-minute video posted on militant Web sites, Adam Gadahn described Maj. Nidal Hasan as a pioneer who should serve as a role model for other Muslims, especially those serving Western militaries.

“Brother Nidal is the ideal role-model for every repentant Muslim in the armies of the unbelievers and apostate regimes,” he said.

Gadahn, also known as Azzam al-Amriki, was dressed in white robes and wearing a white turban as he called for attacks on what he described as “high-value targets.”

“You shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that military bases are the only high-value targets in America and the West. On the contrary, there are countless other strategic places, institutions and installations which, by striking, the Muslim can do major damage,” he said, an assault rifle leaning up against a wall next to him.

Hasan has been charged in the Nov. 5 shooting that killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas. The 39-year-old Army psychiatrist remains paralyzed from the chest down after being shot by two civilian members of Fort Hood’s police force.

“Nidal Hasan is a pioneer, a trailblazer and a role-model who has opened a door, lit a path and shown the way forward for every Muslim who finds himself among the unbelievers,” Gadahn said.

Gadahn grew up on a goat farm in Riverside County, California, and converted to Islam at a mosque in nearby Orange County. He has been wanted by the FBI since 2004 and two years later was charged with treason. There is a $1 million reward for information leading to his arrest or conviction.

He has in the past posted videos and messages calling for the destruction of the West and for strikes against targets in the United States. His location is unknown, but he is believed to be somewhere along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In the latest video, Gadahn said those planning attacks did not need to use only firearms like Hasan, but could use other weapons. “As the blessed operations of September 11th showed, a little imagination and planning and a limited budget can turn almost anything into a deadly, effective and convenient weapon.”

Gadahn said fighters should target mass transportation systems in the West and also wreak havoc “by killing or capturing people in government, industry and the media.”

He recommended finding ways to shake “consumer confidence and stifle spending” and noted that even unsuccessful attacks, such as the failed attempt to bomb a U.S. airliner on Christmas day, can bring major cities to a halt.

“I am calling on every honest and vigilant Muslim in the countries of the Zionist-Crusader alliance in general and America, Britain and Israel in particular to prepare to play his due role in responding to and repelling the aggression of the enemies of Islam,” Gadahn said.

Prospective Brides

News AU

THE owner of a goat allegedly raped is demanding the two accused make traditional wedding arrangements.

State media also said the two young men accused of having sex with a goat in central Mozambique faced criminal charges.

The young men, whose names and ages were not released, were caught in the act by police and arrested outside the rural town of Mbucuta in central Mozambique, the website of the state broadcaster said.

“One of the young men was naked and holding the goat’s head, and the other was having sex with the animal,” witness Mario Creva told Radio Mozambique.

District prosecutor Leonides Mapasse said the two would face trial for simple larceny.

The goat’s owner may also file a civil suit against them, he said.

The owner was demanding the young men pay him damages and initiate a traditional wedding ceremony by paying “lobolo,” a dowry, a family member told Radio Mozambique.

Oren was interrupted 10 times while trying to give his speech before 500 people at the UCI Student Center

Yahoo News

By ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU and RAHIM FAIEZ– Associated Press Writers

MARJAH, Afghanistan – Taliban fighters are increasingly using civilians as human shields in the assault on the southern town of Marjah, an Afghan official said Wednesday as military squads resumed painstaking house-to-house searches in the Taliban stronghold.

About 15,000 NATO and Afghan troops are taking part in the offensive around Marjah, which has an estimated 80,000 inhabitants and was the largest town in southern Helmand province under Taliban control. NATO hopes to rush in aid and public services as soon as the town is secured to try to win the loyalty of the population.

With the assault in its fifth day, insurgents are firing at Afghan troops from inside or next to compounds where women and children appear to have been ordered to stand on a roof or in a window, said Gen. Mohiudin Ghori, the brigade commander for Afghan troops in Marjah.

“Especially in the south of Marjah, the enemy is fighting from compounds where soldiers can very clearly see women or children on the roof or in a second-floor or third-floor window,” Ghori said. “They are trying to get us to fire on them and kill the civilians.”

The Marjah offensive is the biggest joint operation since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan and is a major test of a retooled NATO strategy to focus on protecting civilians, rather than killing insurgents.

Ghori said troops have made choices either not to fire at the insurgents with civilians nearby or had to target and advance much more slowly in order to distinguish between militants and civilians as they go.

Even with such caution on both the NATO and Afghan side, civilians have been killed. NATO has confirmed 15 civilian deaths in the operation. Afghan rights groups say at least 19 have been killed.

In northern Marjah Wednesday, U.S. Marines fanned out through poppy fields, dirt roads and side alleys to take control of a broader stretch of area from insurgents as machine gun fire rattled in the distance.

The Marines found several compounds that had primitive drawings on their walls depicting insurgents blowing up tanks or helicopters, a sign that Afghan troops say revealed strong Taliban support in the neighborhood.

A day earlier, Marines and Afghan forces moving by land from the north had succeeded in linking up with U.S. units that have faced nearly constant Taliban attack in the four days since they were dropped by helicopter into this insurgent stronghold in southern Afghanistan.

The linkup between the two Marine rifle companies and their Afghan army partners will enable the U.S. to expand its control in Marjah, about 380 miles (610 kilometers) southwest of Kabul.

A top Taliban commander, Mullah Abdul Razaq Akhund, dismissed the offensive as NATO propaganda and said on the group’s Web site that Marjah was militarily insignificant.

Four NATO service members have been killed in the Marjah operation. An American and a Briton were killed on Saturday, while two others whose nationalities were not identified were killed Tuesday. One Afghan soldier also died Tuesday, Afghan officials said.

The Marines and Afghan troops “saw sustained but less frequent insurgent activity” in Marjah on Wednesday, limited mostly to small-scale attacks, NATO said in a statement.

Marine officials have said that Taliban resistance has started to seem more disorganized than in the first few days of the assault, when small teams of insurgents swarmed around Marine and Afghan army positions firing rifles, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

Troops are encountering less fire from mortars and RPGs than at the start of the assault, suggesting that the insurgents may have depleted some of their reserves or that the heavier weapons have been hit, Ghori said.

Nevertheless, Taliban have not given up. Insurgent snipers hiding in haystacks in poppy fields have exchanged fire with Marines and Afghan troops in recent days as they swept south.

Insurgents tried but failed to shoot down an Osprey aircraft with rocket-propelled grenades as Cobra attack helicopters fired missiles at Taliban positions, including a machine gun bunker.

NATO said it has reinstated use of a high-tech rocket system that it suspended after two rockets hit a house on the outskirts of Marjah on Sunday, killing 12 people, including at least five children.

The military coalition originally said the missiles went hundreds of yards (meters) off target but said Tuesday that it determined that the rockets hit the intended target.

Afghan officials said three Taliban fighters were in the house at the time.

Violence and NATO strikes have continued elsewhere in the country.

In neighboring Kandahar province, four Afghan policemen were killed and four others were wounded when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb on Tuesday, the Afghan Interior Ministry said.

And in the east, NATO said it killed more than a dozen insurgents in an airstrike near the Pakistani border.

WaPo Rag

Omar Khadr, the youngest detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was 15 when he allegedly threw a grenade that killed a U.S. Special Forces medic in Afghanistan. Now, more than seven years later, Khadr is drawing the Obama administration into a fierce debate over the propriety of putting a child soldier on trial.

By Dan Frosch
The New York Times

 Breitbart Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula number two Sufyan al-Azdi al-Shahri called for attacks against US interests "everywhere," in an audio message released Monday.

"American and Crusader interests are everywhere and their agents are moving everywhere," Shahri said. "Attack them and eliminate as many enemies as you can."

By ALAN CULLISON and MATTHEW ROSENBERG–WSJ 

KABUL–President Hamid Karzai is proposing a draft to beef up the ranks of Afghanistan’s army and police so his country can assume control of the fight against the Taliban within five years.

The plan comes amid Western dissatisfaction with both the quality and size of Afghan forces, any many U.S. and European officials think it could take as a long as decade before they’re ready to stand on their own.

Those concerns were illustrated Sunday when Afghan and North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces arrested the deputy police chief of a central Afghan province over allegations that he was helping insurgents place roadside bombs aimed at coalition troops.

The police official had been under investigation "for some time" for helping to store, distribute and install explosives around Mahmud-Raqi, the capital of Kapisa province, north of Kabul, said Ali Bettencourt, a spokeswoman for U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan.

NATO officials also said the police official was involved in bribery and corruption involving road projects in the province.

Afghan officials said they, too, had suspicions about Col. Attaullah Wahab, and suggested others in the government of Kapisa province — which has seen a surge in Taliban activity in recent months — may be corrupt and possibly in league with insurgents.

"Maybe he was a good colleague for the governor and his staff but in our coalition and in intelligence network’s eyes he was a suspect and that is why he was arrested," said Gen. Abdul Alim Kohistani, a top police official in central Afghanistan.

In Munich Sunday, where defense officials from all over the world were meeting, President Karzai brought up the idea of draft so that within five years Afghan forces would be sufficient to guarantee the country’s security is "no longer a burden on the shoulders of the international community."

Still, he said foreign troops would be needed to help battle hard-core Islamist militants because "war on terrorism … is an issue separate from this security arrangement in Afghanistan."

Mr. Karzai said his government aims to have 300,000 soldiers and police by 2012, a goal roughly in line with Western targets – and that the volunteer system may not attract enough people. Plus, conscription could help integrate Afghanistan’s disparate ethnic groups, he said.

"For the past many years I’ve been visited by Afghan community leaders who are advising me to go back to some form of conscription for the Afghan army so the young boys of the Afghanistan countryside can … come to training centers, get acquainted with the rest of the country, get familiarized with other young men around the country and learn something and go back home," he said.

It wasn’t the first time a draft has been suggested in Afghanistan; lawmakers have in the past raised the prospect. But those earlier calls received only a lukewarm reception from Mr. Karzai’s government.

The top U.S. general in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, meanwhile told reporters that the success of a coming offensive in the Taliban-infested south hinges on whether troops and civilian aid workers can quickly get schools, hospitals and public services running.

The planned offensive in Marjah, a town in Helmand provinces, has been widely advertised by NATO forces. Gen. McChrystal said that was intentional and seen as a way to let the people of the area know that NATO and Afghan forces would soon be there to re-establish the government’s control.

"We’re trying to create a situation where we communicate to them that when the government re-establishes security, they’ll have choices,” Gen. McChrystal said.

BBC 

Two US soldiers who died in eastern Afghanistan on Friday were shot dead by an Afghan interpreter, it has emerged.

A Nato official said the translator gunned down the US soldiers before other soldiers shot him dead at an outpost in Wardak province.

A US military official told Reuters news agency the attacker seemed to be a "disgruntled employee", not a militant.

Also in Wardak province, four Afghan soldiers died in an apparently bungled coalition air strike.

Afghanistan’s defence ministry demanded punishment for those behind the air strike; Nato said the deaths were "regrettable" and announced an investigation.

The shootings involving the translator and the air strike were not thought to be related.

An Afghan provincial official told Reuters the interpreter had argued with the soldiers over pay and treatment, before opening fire.

—————————————————————–

“A US military official told Reuters news agency the attacker seemed to be a "disgruntled employee", not a militant.”

Let me get this straight: A Muslim murders two U.S. Soldiers and he’s not a terrorist, but merely a "disgruntled employee". Kinda like Hasan at Ft. Hood. Yeah. That’s it.

Time to nuke the goat fuckers.

By John Vandiver, Stars and Stripes

NAWA, Afghanistan — Meeting with village elders in central Helmand province, Marine Capt. Steve Karabin had much business to discuss. There was a long list of redevelopment projects to be planned, and U.S. dollars to be doled out for Afghan wish lists that included new bridges and canal clearings.

But first, Sarwar Khan, the local elder, was curious about another matter: the coalition offensive everyone in Helmand province knows is coming.

“What is happening in Marjeh?” asked Khan, referring to a nearby Taliban stronghold that the Marines will soon attempt to take apart in a long-planned operation.

“I don’t know,” Karabin tells him. “But I know the Marines are going to be cleaning it up. Do you know something that’s going on?”

“Marjeh is like a reservoir for IEDS (improvised explosive devices),” Khan said.

In Helmand province, the city of Marjeh and the looming Marine invasion there is on everyone’s lips. With more troops on the way, Marines hope to finally make inroads in a part of the province that has been off-limits because of insufficient troop numbers. The city is a safe haven where the Taliban can plan attacks in surrounding areas. Marjeh also is flush with poppy fields and opium, which helps finance the insurgency.

Although the first shot has yet to be fired in this much-advertised operation, there are indications that Taliban members are slipping into neighboring districts, seeking to reverse the security gains Marines have achieved in recent months.

In some cases, the Taliban are kidnapping locals and taking them to Marjeh — possibly to punish them for cooperating with the coalition and local authorities — and in other cases they are taking refuge in local neighborhoods, according to some Afghan security officials.

“I think what we’re starting to see is just kind of a growing sense of desperation by the insurgents — to try by whatever means they can to get the momentum back on their side,” said Lt. Col. James “Matt” Baker, commander of the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment out of Hawaii.

Baker has lost two of his Marines to violence this month in Nawa district, an area about seven miles northwest of Marjeh.  A British journalist also was killed earlier this month and several other Marines were seriously injured when their Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle traveling in the northern part of the district hit a roadside bomb.

As some Marines gird for battle in Marjeh, other Marines working in surrounding districts like Nawa, which has experienced some of the largest security gains in Helmand since Marines first arrived here last spring, hope the improvements they have witnessed won’t be reversed. 

“They (the insurgents) are quiet now, trying to figure what we do. This is the time when we can’t become complacent,” said Staff Sgt. Josh Isberner of the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment’s Company C. “This is the calm before the storm.”

Meanwhile, police and village leaders have said some Taliban members from Marjeh are taking up residence in their villages, but their intentions are unclear.

“Here there is a lot of Taliban, but they’re staying in their houses,” said Afghan National Police Lt. Aman Ullah, who works with the Marines in the southern part of Nawa, a district of about 100,000 residents.

Others say there could be a rise in roadside bombs incidents, but they don’t expect the insurgents to directly challenge U.S. forces. Most of the local population is opposed to the Taliban, said Mohammad Began, a local elder.

“Maybe they come here and place mines in the ground, but they cannot stay here for fighting,” Began said.

On Wednesday, the district governor of Nawa, Abdul Manaf, said the Taliban continues efforts to intimidate the population. A message posted at a local mosque a night earlier threatened that revenge if residents work with the Americans, the local government or Afghan security forces.

“They are working very hard to turn the people against us. But I don’t think it will work,” Manaf said. “The people have promised us they will not let that happen. The security here, the projects, the jobs makes it harder for the Taliban to influence people. The only thing they can do is come in the night and put mines someplace.”

But for the Americans, the potential for more bombs is the gravest of threats.

Karabin, the company commander for 1-3 in southern Nawa, says he’s getting his Marines ready for any potential ripple from Marjeh.

“We’re preparing for any possible increase in enemy activity, but with our focus on population, the people are telling us if the bad guys are out there. And I think that will happen if the enemy does try to use this area,” Karabin said.