Al Qaeda

If the term war on terror ever meant anything, it meant war against those directly responsible for the horrors of 9/11. In October 2001, the United States began that war in Afghanistan. We drove the Taliban from power. Militants (including al-Qaeda) fled across the border into mountainous, tribal regions of Pakistan. That's where the enemy remains. We never chased down Osama bin Laden. In the rubble of the World Trade Center, the president vowed that the terrorists would "hear all of us soon," but the job remains unfinished.

Andy Borowitz is a humorist, television personality and film actor In a bold move to undermine the international terror network, President Bush today named former deputy defense secretary and World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz to be the new president of al-Qaeda. Wolfowitz, who has no experience running an international terror organization, struck many Washington insiders as an unlikely choice for the al-Qaeda job. But in a White House ceremony introducing his nominee for the top terror post, Bush indicated that Wolfowitz's role in planning the war in Iraq and bringing scandal to the World Bank showed that he was "just the man" to bring chaos and disorder to al-Qaeda.

German police yesterday arrested two suspected al-Qaeda members, accusing them of planning suicide attacks in Iraq and trying to purchase uranium from a dealer in Luxembourg. German prosecutor Kay Nehm said the two arrests came after months of investigation. He described one of the suspects, Ibrahim Mohamed K., 29, a German citizen with an Iraqi background, as a high-ranking member of al-Qaeda in charge of recruiting suicide bombers and planning attacks from Europe. Mohamed K., whose last name was not released, is suspected of trying to arrange purchase of material for a nuclear bomb.

MOGADISHU, Somalia - The killing of the al-Qaeda plotter who planned the devastating 1998 bombings of two U.S. Embassies in Africa drew expressions of satisfaction and relief Sunday among survivors and officials in countries affected by his extremist acts. Somalia's president showed documents linking the dead man to militants who are trying to topple his nation's fragile, U.N.-backed government. Fazul Abdullah Mohammed eluded capture for 13 years and topped the FBI's most wanted list for planning the Aug. 7, 1998, bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

SANAA, Yemen - An al-Qaeda attack on a Yemeni army post in the south set off clashes that left 64 people dead Monday and prompted local civilians to take up arms alongside the military to beat back the militants, said army officials and residents. The dawn attack was the latest in a series of bloody battles in recent months that mark an escalation in al-Qaeda's efforts to expand its control around a swath of land it seized last year. The group took advantage of the country's political turmoil to overrun cities and towns in southern Yemen.

Despite a worldwide crackdown and the arrests of many of its leaders, al-Qaeda remains a deadly terrorist force and appears to be thriving in Saudi Arabia, where it is the chief suspect in Monday's bombing attacks in Riyadh. While Bush administration officials credit the Saudi government with aggressively pursuing al-Qaeda since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, possibly hundreds of al-Qaeda members have escaped detection and maintain active cells throughout the desert kingdom, U.S. officials and terrorism experts say. The group's Saudi operatives, echoing the message of their fugitive Saudi-born leader, Osama bin Laden, are winning recruits from a growing sector of impoverished young men by decrying the opulence of the ruling monarchy and the government's close ties with the United States.

SAN'A, Yemen - Sneaking across the desert behind army lines, al-Qaeda insurgents launched a surprise attack against military bases in southern Yemen, killing 107 soldiers and capturing heavy weapons they later used to kill more troops, officials said Monday. Military officials said at least 32 of the insurgents were killed in Sunday's fighting in Abyan province and scores wounded on both sides. Medical officials confirmed the numbers of dead. They said the poor services in local hospitals accounted for the deaths of many soldiers who suffered serious wounds who could have survived had they been given better care.

President Bush's national security adviser yesterday accused Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's regime of sheltering members of the al-Qaeda terrorist network in Baghdad and helping Osama bin Laden's operatives in developing chemical weapons. Condoleezza Rice's comments - by far the strongest statements yet from the U.S. government alleging al-Qaeda contacts with the Iraqi government - were aired on PBS's The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer. Her accusations came as the Bush administration continued to make its case to a skeptical world that Hussein should be removed from power, by force if necessary.

SANA'A, Yemen - Nearly 60 suspected al-Qaeda militants tunneled their way out of a Yemeni prison in the lawless south Wednesday, deepening the chaos of a nation where protesters are trying to topple the autocratic regime. The escape from the Mukalla prison in Hadramawt province is the latest sign that Islamic militants are seizing on the mayhem to operate more freely, something the United States fears will become an increasing international threat if the impoverished nation grows even more unstable.

FORT MEADE, Md. - A copy of a magazine published by an arm of al-Qaeda made its way to a terror suspect at the Guantanamo Bay prison, leading to an inspection of cells and a contentious new policy requiring special review teams to examine correspondence between prisoners and attorneys, U.S. prosecutors said Wednesday. Navy Cmdr. Andrea Lockhart told a military judge during a pretrial hearing that a copy of Inspire magazine got into a cell. She provided no details on who received the magazine or how. But she said the breach showed that prior rules at the base governing mail review were not adequate.

SANAA, Yemen - Fresh clashes between al-Qaeda fighters and government forces in Yemen left 17 dead on Sunday, military officials said, as the army pushed on with an offensive to regain a key town in the county's south that fell to the militants more than a year ago. Officials said eight al-Qaeda fighters, four soldiers and five civilian volunteers fighting alongside the military were killed since the early hours of Sunday. The army started a two-pronged attack on the town of Jaar on Friday.

SAN'A, Yemen - Government troops backed by warplanes and heavy artillery pounded al-Qaeda positions in southern Yemen on Sunday, killing at least 30 militants, officials said. The army launched its assault on the al-Hurur region of Abyan province at dawn Sunday, pushing out al-Qaeda-linked fighters who have controlled the area since taking it over last year. Abdullah Ahmed, who lives in the area, said the militants fled by foot after government soldiers destroyed nearly a dozen tanks and vehicles mounted with rocket launchers seized by the militants last year and kept in al-Hurur.

India orders Pa. teen to be freed JODHPUR, India - An Indian appeals court on Friday overturned the conviction of a U.S. teenager who had been accused of killing his mother while on vacation in western India. The Rajasthan High Court ordered Joncarlo Patton's immediate release from a juvenile detention facility, according to Press Trust of India news agency. It was not immediately clear on what grounds the court overturned his conviction. Patton was sentenced last year to three years in an Indian juvenile detention facility after he was found guilty of slitting his mother's throat at a desert resort in the western state of Rajasthan in August 2010.

SANA'A, Yemen - Two air strikes Thursday in south Yemen killed seven al-Qaeda militants, including two top operatives, officials said. Yemeni soldiers, meanwhile, shelled a gathering of al-Qaeda fighters elsewhere in the south, killing 10 militants. The attacks could be another setback for al-Qaeda, coming just days after details emerged about a Saudi mole within the network who reportedly provided information allowing the CIA to target a key leader of Yemen's terror branch. Thursday's air strikes hit in the town of Jaar and northeast of Zinjibar, the provincial capital of Abyan, Yemeni security officials said.

SAN'A, Yemen - After years of stalling and halfhearted efforts under its now-ousted president, Yemen is finally showing resolve in the fight against al-Qaeda's branch in the country, which has been behind a string of attempted attacks on the United States, including a new foiled plot to bomb an airliner. Still, the difficulties remain formidable. The army is largely demoralized and undisciplined as it fights al-Qaeda extremists who seized several towns in the south during the chaos of last year's uprising against President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A 70-year-old U.S. aid worker kidnapped nine months ago in Pakistan said in a video released by al-Qaeda that he will be killed unless President Obama agrees to the group's demands. The White House called for his immediate release. The video, posted on militant websites Sunday, followed one issued in December in which al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri said Warren Weinstein would be released if the United States stopped air strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen.

WASHINGTON - The CIA thwarted an ambitious plot by al-Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen to destroy a U.S.-bound airliner using a bomb with a sophisticated new design around the one-year anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden, U.S. officials said Monday. The plot involved an upgrade of the underwear bomb that failed to detonate aboard a jetliner over Detroit on Christmas 2009. This new bomb was also designed to be used in a passenger's underwear, but this time al-Qaeda developed a more refined detonation system, U.S. officials said.

WASHINGTON - Osama bin Laden's personal notes and letters, which were seized a year ago in the U.S. raid on his compound in Pakistan, show a leader removed from day-to-day operations of the terrorist organization he founded and increasingly frustrated with the new generation of managers rising in the ranks. A declassified selection of the vast trove of material - large enough, officials say, to fill a college library - will be published online Thursday by the Combating Terrorism Center, a think tank at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

WASHINGTON - A year after the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda is hobbled and hunted, too busy surviving for the moment to carry out another Sept. 11-style attack on U.S. soil. But the terrorist network dreams still of payback, and U.S. counterterrorist officials warn that, in time, its offshoots may deliver. A decade of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have cost the United States about $1.28 trillion and 6,300 U.S. troops' lives has forced al-Qaeda's affiliates to regroup, from Yemen to Iraq.

SANA'A, Yemen - The United States and Yemen pledged Tuesday to step up high-level cooperation in the fight against al-Qaeda as government forces punched their way into the heart of a city long held by militants in the Arab nation's lawless south. The terror network has taken advantage of the country's political turmoil of the last year to capture several southern areas, and the Americans are eager to coordinate efforts with the Yemenis to push them back. An al-Qaeda settled and safe in the remote interior of southern Yemen would allow its militants to plan and execute more attacks on Western interests, taking advantage of proximity to strategic shipping lanes in the Red and Arabian Seas through which much of the West's energy needs to pass.