Full Spectrum Failure?
May 25, 2005 --
Full Spectrum Failure? Army Video Game Draws Fire
Military wasted millions on training project, critics charge. (ABC News)
Military Was Set To Down Cessna
Federal official says plane came within "15 to 20 seconds" of being shot down before its pilots finally heeded orders to turn away from the city. (Washington Post)
U.S. Says Central American Alert For Al Qaeda Suspects Was A Misunderstanding
An alert by El Salvador and Nicaragua on the possible presence of two al Qaeda terror suspects was a false alarm, U.S. officials said Tuesday. (AP)
Amnesty Accuses U.S. Over 'Torture'
Amnesty International says governments, notably that of the U.S., betrayed human rights commitments in 2004. (BBC)
Car Bomb Explosion Rocks Madrid
A car bomb has exploded in Madrid after a warning was given to a newspaper in the name of the Eta Basque militants. (BBC)
Three Arrested For 'Funding Madrid Train Bombings'
Spanish authorities arrested three Moroccans suspected of helping to fund the Madrid train bombings last year, the interior ministry said. (Expatica)
Syria Reportedly Deports Algerian Fundamentalist Close to Al Qaeda To Algeria
A fundamentalist center in London has reported the Syrian authorities'' forcible deportation of an Algerian fundamentalist from Damascus to his country aboard a private plane. (Asharq al Awsat)
Islamic Fundamentalists Hold secret Meeting In London
Fundamentalists have revealed that they held a secret meeting in Central London last week during which they discussed some essential topics including a reformulation of the concepts "realm of war". (Asharq al Awsat)
Pakistan Arrests Egyptian Al Qaeda Suspect
Pakistani authorities have arrested an Egyptian suspected of having links with Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terror network, a security official said on Tuesday. (AFP)
Al Qaeda No 3 Gives Pak Vital Clues
A senior Al-Qaeda leader recently captured in Pakistan has given investigators vital information about the terrorist network, leading to several additional arrests, said two security officials on Wednesday. (Press Trust of India)
F.B.I. Is Accused of Ignoring Abuse of 2 Americans in Pakistan
American F.B.I. agents repeatedly interrogated two United States citizens who were illegally detained for eight months and did nothing to stop them from being tortured by Pakistani authorities, a human rights group said Tuesday. (NY Times)
Prosecutors Say Liberia's Taylor and Al Qaeda Working to Destabilize W. Africa
A U.N.-backed Sierra Leone war crimes court is asking the Security Council to help bring former Liberian President Charles Taylor to justice. Court officials accuse Mr. Taylor of working with the al Qaeda terrorist network on a plan to destabilize West Africa. (Voice of America)
Militiamen Kill 18, Kidnap 50, U.N. Says
Militiamen in eastern Congo killed at least 18 people and kidnapped at least 50 in a late-night attack on a village, a United Nations spokesman said. (LA Times)
Activist Arrested After Discussing Crackdown
Uzbekistan has arrested a human rights activist who gave reporters firsthand accounts of a bloody government crackdown on protesters, New York-based Human Rights Watch said. (LA Times)
U.S. Intelligence May Aid Terrorism Suspect
Attorneys for a terrorism suspect in Germany voiced skepticism last year when U.S. officials agreed to submit as evidence intelligence reports gleaned from the interrogations of captured al Qaeda leaders. Citing prisoner abuse in U.S. jails in Iraq and elsewhere, the lawyers argued that the reports would be unreliable as evidence in the trial of their client, accused of being a member of the Hamburg cell that led the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. (Washington Post)
Kuwait Opens Trial of 37 Suspected Qaeda Militants
A Kuwait court began the trial on Tuesday of 37 Islamists charged with links to al Qaeda violence and prosecutors demanded the death penalty for more than half of them. (Reuters)
1,000 U.S. Troops Launch Offensive in Iraq
1,000 U.S. troops launch major anti-insurgent offensive in Western Iraq, the second in a month (AP)
Web Message Says Al Zarqawi Left Iraq
A message posted on one of the websites often used by supporters of Abu Musaab al Zarqawi said al Zarqawi has left Iraq to a neighboring country after he was being shot in his left lung and suffered from breathing problems. The message said he was accompanied by two doctors, a Saudi and a Sudanese, and is now in stable condition. The person who posted the message said he got the information through people close to the insurgents in Iraq. Meanwhile, an Egyptian Islamist living in London told al Hayat and Asharq al Awsat newspapers he believed the statement about al Zarqawi being injured was true. Hani Sebai, who runs the Maqreze Center in London, said the statement resembled an obituary and al Zarqawi may have already died. He told Asharq al Awsat however that the insurgents may be trying to mislead the US forces. (ABC News Investigative Unit, Al Hayat, Asharq al Awsat)
CIA Operative Testifies He Saw SEAL Beating Iraqi Prisoner
Testifying behind a curtain to protect his identity, a CIA operative told a court-martial Tuesday that he saw a Navy SEAL "pummeling" a defenseless prisoner in Iraq. (LA Times)
'Nightline' To Air List of War Dead
"Nightline," which stirred up controversy last year with its decision to read the names of the 721 U.S. military personnel who had lost their lives in the Iraq war, is going to do it again. The ABC late-night news program said Tuesday that it would devote its Memorial Day broadcast on Monday to reading the names and showing the photos of more than 900 service members who have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since May 1, 2004 (LA Times)
Mideast More Secure But Iraq Inspires Qaeda — IISS
U.S. policy has helped improve Middle East security over the past year, but Iraq still drives recruits into the arms of al Qaeda, one of the world's top think tanks said on Tuesday in its annual survey of global security. (Reuters)
Terrorists And Organized Crime Join Forces
Terrorist groups and organized crime networks are increasingly working together, strengthening their ability to inflict harm on law-abiding societies with conventional weapons today, and possibly with nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction in the future. (International Herald Tribune)
Iraq Needs a Bigger Sunni Role
Nearly five months after Iraq's first free elections in decades, suicide bombers and rifle-wielding guerrillas continue to inflict appalling carnage. Insurgents killed three U.S. soldiers and two Iraqis in car bombings Tuesday in Baghdad, a day after a wave of attacks and bomb blasts killed more than 50 Iraqis and five U.S. troops. The ever-increasing violence should spur Islamic rivals to search for a compromise to stop the nation from disintegrating. (LA Times)
A Bold Ally
Since 2001, many governments in the Islamic world have quietly staked their future on close relations with the United States, from Morocco to Pakistan. But no Muslim leader has been as willing to openly and boldly embrace an alliance as Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai. (Washington Post)
On the Mistake of Newsweek
The storm that erupted in the wake of Newsweek's publication of a report that claims that the Quran had been desecrated at Guantanamo will not cool off anytime soon, despite the magazine retracting its story and apologizing for the withdrawn article. (Asharq al Awsat)
Newsweek Story: Missing the Woods for the Trees
The reported desecration of the Qur'an by US guards at the infamous Guantanamo prison, as originally reported by Newsweek on May 9, 2005, should have been an opportunity for a thorough examination of US Army practices, and thus human rights abuses, toward Muslim inmates in the numerous detention camps erected throughout the world. (Al Jazeera)
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