Update 5: CNN says they failed to join some Islamic schools:

“They went to the madrassa [a Muslim school] of Jaish-e-Mohammad where they informed them about their desire for jihad. However, the management of the madrassa refused to keep them, and advised them to go to Jamat-ud-Dawa Lahore. Interestingly, the Jamat also refused to keep them as they could not provide a surety. Thus, they came along with their friend Umar Farooq to Sargodha,” the report said.

Source

Update 4: New York Times confirms arrests?

SARGODHA, Pakistan — Five young Muslim American men arrested here Wednesday were on their way to the heart of the Taliban sanctuary in Pakistan’s tribal areas with the intention of training to fight against American troops in Afghanistan, Pakistani police authorities said Thursday.

The men, a tight circle of friends in their late teens and their 20s from the Washington suburbs, had been in contact through YouTube with a Pakistani militant with links to Al Qaeda before arriving in Pakistan on Nov. 30, said the Pakistani officials, who had firsthand knowledge of the case.

….

The police identified the others arrested in Sargodha as Ramy Zamzam, 22, a dental student of Egyptian background at Howard University, who was described as a sort of “ringleader”; Waqar Khan, of Pakistani background, who was reported to have family connections in Karachi; Ahmad A. Mini, 20, born in Eritirea; and Aman Hassan Yemer, 18, a native Ethiopian.

Source

Update 3: The owners of the Facebook group dedicated to the brothers closed it down saying: “We have decided with careful consideration to close the group out of respect for the family members of our brothers.”

Update 2: Message from CAIR below.

Update 1: Apparently, the New York Times (via AP) is reporting that a farewell video was made by the brothers.
____

There was a lot of news and rumors spreading on Facebook of 5 brothers in the Washington DC area gone missing the past few days. Looks like they were in Pakistan and may have been arrested.

According to the Pakistani News:

SARGODHA: An Anti Organized-crime Cell raided a house situated in Aziz Bhatti Town of Sargodha and arrested five foreign nationals.

DPO Sargodha Dr. Usman Anwar told Geo News that the police raided the house of Khalid Farooqi, an activist of banned outfit Jaish-e-Muhammad, and arrested five foreign nationals from there.

The arrested foreigners include 2 Yemenis, 1 Egyptian, 1 Swedish and 1 US-born Pakistani.

The DPO told that these people had been living in Sargodha since Nov 30 and it was quite a possibility that they were engaged in acts of terrorism.

Initial investigations have identified them as Ahmed Abdullah, Waqar Hassan Khan, Eman Hassan, Yasir and Rami Zamzam.

Security agencies have initiated further investigations in this regard.

According to the AP:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistani police say they have detained five U.S. citizens in a raid on a house in the east of the country.
Police officer Tahir Gujjar declined to say why the men were arrested Wednesday in the town of Sargodha.
He says three of the men are Americans of Pakistani descent, one is of Egyptian descent and the other is of Yemeni heritage.
He says they are being interrogated by senior police officers.
A U.S. Embassy spokesman said officials there were aware of the reported arrests, but had no more information.

Of course it’s on FOX news.

More sources:
Another local DC news article.

I actually knew one of the brothers and the others I’ve seen around. Shocking and strange, but then again the Pakistani government is just obeying the command of their owners in America.

Message from CAIR:

CAIR: Muslim Community Assists FBI in Finding 5 Missing Youth

(WASHINGTON, D.C., 12/9/09) — The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) will hold a news conference later today in Washington, D.C., at which it will outline how the Muslim community assisted the FBI in resolving the case of five Muslim young men from Virginia who left the country recently under mysterious circumstances.

WHAT: CAIR News Conference on Case of 5 Missing Youth
WHEN: Wednesday, December 9, 4 p.m. (Eastern)
WHERE: CAIR’s Capitol Hill Headquarters, 453 New Jersey Avenue, S.E., Washington, D.C.
CONTACT: CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, 202-744-7726, E-Mail: ihooper@cair.com

“The Muslim community has taken the lead in bringing this case to the attention of law enforcement authorities and will offer ongoing cooperation with the FBI as the investigation moves forward,” said CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad.

The parents of the missing young people and local Muslim leaders recently informed CAIR of the disappearances. CAIR immediately informed the FBI and, along with the families and Muslim community leaders, has been working to assist the agency as the investigation moved forward. The families were also assisted in obtaining legal representation to make sure their constitutional rights were protected.

At today’s news conference, CAIR officials and other Muslim leaders will outline the sequence of events in the case, urge anyone aware of the missing group’s activities to come forward and warn against the dangers of adopting or promoting extremist religious views.

CAIR is America’s largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.

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Few would deny that Muslims too are victims of Islamist terror. But a new study by the Combating Terrorism Center in the US has shown that an overwhelming majority of al-Qaida victims are, in fact, co-religionists.

In the battle against unbelievers, can one also kill Muslims? Even the terror network al-Qaida is troubled by this question.

A leading al-Qaida ideologue for the terror network, Abu Yahya al-Libi, has developed his own theologically-based theory of collateral damage that allows militants to kill Muslims when it is unavoidable.

Even the Iraqi affiliates of Osama bin Laden’s terror group, who are known to be particularly bloodthirsty, claim that they too consider this question. For instance, in a message claiming responsibility for an August attack in Baghdad, the group wished those Sunnis injured in the “operation” a speedy recovery and expressed their hope that those killed would be accepted by God as “martyrs.”

But even as such apologetic communiqués from al-Qaida show the terror network stylizing itself as a defender of the true faith wrestling with religious concepts, they also make it look as though any dead Muslims are regretful but isolated cases. The facts, though, tell a different story.

Between 2004 and 2008, for example, al-Qaida claimed responsibility for 313 attacks, resulting in the deaths of 3,010 people. And even though these attacks include terrorist incidents in the West — in Madrid in 2004 and in London in 2005 — only 12 percent of those killed (371 deaths) were Westerners.

New Report Shows Many More Muslims Killed Than Non-Muslims

It is, of course, no surprise that al-Qaida kills more Muslims than non-Muslims — particularly for people in the Islamic world. But a new report by the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at the United States’ Military Academy at West Point in New York — which has gathered together these and other relevant figures in one report (“Deadly Vanguards: A Study Of al-Qaida’s Violence Against Muslims “), spells out the discrepancy in black and white.

The authors of the study admit that their report likely omits a number of Muslim victims. But that was the price of their rigorous methodology, used in an effort to avoid accusations of partisanship.

The researchers only counted the attacks for which al-Qaida claimed responsibility, thus preventing accusations that they were seeking to make al-Qaida look even worse than it is. Still, it is well known that al-Qaida does not claim responsibility for every attack perpetrated, meaning that many victims are likely left out of the report. Furthermore, the researchers only included attacks reported on by the Arab media and relied on the numbers they reported — out of a conviction that the Arab media is more highly regarded in the Muslim world than the Western media. That, though, is not always the case.

Blurred Figures And Inexact Categories Are Problematic

The greatest potential for inaccuracy in the report, however, is the placing of victims into only one of two categories: Western or non-Western. The assumption being that Western would also mean non-Muslim and vice versa. The problems with such a system of categorization are myriad. Not all those living in the Muslim world are Muslim: In Iraq, al-Qaida has launched attacks against Kurds, Yazidi and Christians. Secondly, a lot of the Muslim victims are actually — and deliberately — Shiites. A Sunni group, al-Qaida considers the Shiites to be unbelievers.

Unfortunately news reports don’t tend to differentiate between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, explains Scott Helfstein, one of the writers of the report. This is also the reason for the non-Western and Western categories. “It is easy for journalists to count nationality but they rarely, if ever, identify religion,” Helfstein writes in reply to e-mailed questions from SPIEGEL ONLINE. The report’s writers were well aware of the problem. “But we were not able to find a way around it,” Helfstein notes.

Indeed, the report’s authors confront the shortcomings of their methodology head on. In one passage, they remove attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan from their calculations altogether, resulting in the share of Westerners killed in al-Qaida attacks rising to a much more significant 39 percent. If one removes the Madrid and London attacks from the statistics, though, the share of murdered Westerners drops back down to 13 percent.

Perhaps more significantly, if one only examines attacks in 2007 and disregards those having been perpetrated in Iraq and Afghanistan, the share of non-Westerners killed by al-Qaida rises to 99 percent. In 2008, it was 96 percent.

Non-Westerners 38 Times More Likely To Be Killed

Put another way, between 2006 and 2008, non-Westerners were 38 times more likely to be killed by an al-Qaida attack than Westerners.

“Since al-Qaida has limited capability to strike against its Western enemies, the group maintains its relevance by attacking countries with Muslim majorities,” the study concludes.

The conclusions reached by Helfstein and his co-authors are hardly world changing. They are valuable nonetheless, in that they provide a numerical foundation to the relationship between Muslim and non-Muslim al-Qaida victims.

Still, critics will no doubt point out that the study comes from the CTC, an organization that is part of an American military school. In recent years, the CTC has released a number of excellent studies on terrorism. But because it is actually supplying arguments, backed by scientific research, for the fight against terrorism to decision makers, politicians and military personnel in the US, it cannot be considered strictly neutral. That also applies to this case, especially since a number of American officials have recently begun stressing the point that al-Qaida is particularly violent toward Muslims and can now rely on solid data to back up their argument.

This perceived lack of neutrality doesn’t change the fact that the fundamental findings of the report are correct and meaningful. The authors conclude that if they compare statistics for the years from 1995 to 2003 (excluding the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the US as a solitary event), they find that al-Qaida is becoming more violent and “increasingly indiscriminate” in its attacks.

Just how big a problem this discrepancy between Muslim and non-Muslim victims will become for al-Qaida remains to be seen. Even prior to the report’s release, however, it had become a subject of intense debate within the Jihadist seen — with more and more ideologues coming to the conclusion that al-Qaida’s fight on behalf of the downtrodden Muslims isn’t worth it.

Source

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Health insurance giant Aetna is planning to force up to 650,000 clients to drop their coverage next year as it seeks to raise additional revenue to meet profit expectations.

In a third-quarter earnings conference call in late October, officials at Aetna announced that in an effort to improve on a less-than-anticipated profit margin in 2009, they would be raising prices on their consumers in 2010. The insurance giant predicted that the company would subsequently lose between 300,000 and 350,000 members next year from its national account as well as another 300,000 from smaller group accounts

Looks like there is another terrorist entity right here in America.

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Dear President Obama,

Do you really want to be the new “war president”? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do — destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they’ve always heard is true — that all politicians are alike. I simply can’t believe you’re about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn’t so.

It is not your job to do what the generals tell you to do. We are a civilian-run government. WE tell the Joint Chiefs what to do, not the other way around. That’s the way General Washington insisted it must be. That’s what President Truman told General MacArthur when MacArthur wanted to invade China. “You’re fired!,” said Truman, and that was that. And you should have fired Gen. McChrystal when he went to the press to preempt you, telling the press what YOU had to do. Let me be blunt: We love our kids in the armed services, but we f*#&in’ hate these generals, from Westmoreland in Vietnam to, yes, even Colin Powell for lying to the UN with his made-up drawings of WMD (he has since sought redemption).

So now you feel backed into a corner. 30 years ago this past Thursday (Thanksgiving) the Soviet generals had a cool idea — “Let’s invade Afghanistan!” Well, that turned out to be the final nail in the USSR coffin.

There’s a reason they don’t call Afghanistan the “Garden State” (though they probably should, seeing how the corrupt President Karzai, whom we back, has his brother in the heroin trade raising poppies). Afghanistan’s nickname is the “Graveyard of Empires.” If you don’t believe it, give the British a call. I’d have you call Genghis Khan but I lost his number. I do have Gorbachev’s number though. It’s + 41 22 789 1662. I’m sure he could give you an earful about the historic blunder you’re about to commit.

With our economic collapse still in full swing and our precious young men and women being sacrificed on the altar of arrogance and greed, the breakdown of this great civilization we call America will head, full throttle, into oblivion if you become the “war president.” Empires never think the end is near, until the end is here. Empires think that more evil will force the heathens to toe the line — and yet it never works. The heathens usually tear them to shreds.

Choose carefully, President Obama. You of all people know that it doesn’t have to be this way. You still have a few hours to listen to your heart, and your own clear thinking. You know that nothing good can come from sending more troops halfway around the world to a place neither you nor they understand, to achieve an objective that neither you nor they understand, in a country that does not want us there. You can feel it in your bones.

I know you know that there are LESS than a hundred al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan! A hundred thousand troops trying to crush a hundred guys living in caves? Are you serious? Have you drunk Bush’s Kool-Aid? I refuse to believe it.

Your potential decision to expand the war (while saying that you’re doing it so you can “end the war”) will do more to set your legacy in stone than any of the great things you’ve said and done in your first year. One more throwing a bone from you to the Republicans and the coalition of the hopeful and the hopeless may be gone — and this nation will be back in the hands of the haters quicker than you can shout “tea bag!”

Choose carefully, Mr. President. Your corporate backers are going to abandon you as soon as it is clear you are a one-term president and that the nation will be safely back in the hands of the usual idiots who do their bidding. That could be Wednesday morning.

We the people still love you. We the people still have a sliver of hope. But we the people can’t take it anymore. We can’t take your caving in, over and over, when we elected you by a big, wide margin of millions to get in there and get the job done. What part of “landslide victory” don’t you understand?

Don’t be deceived into thinking that sending a few more troops into Afghanistan will make a difference, or earn you the respect of the haters. They will not stop until this country is torn asunder and every last dollar is extracted from the poor and soon-to-be poor. You could send a million troops over there and the crazy Right still wouldn’t be happy. You would still be the victim of their incessant venom on hate radio and television because no matter what you do, you can’t change the one thing about yourself that sends them over the edge.

The haters were not the ones who elected you, and they can’t be won over by abandoning the rest of us.

President Obama, it’s time to come home. Ask your neighbors in Chicago and the parents of the young men and women doing the fighting and dying if they want more billions and more troops sent to Afghanistan. Do you think they will say, “No, we don’t need health care, we don’t need jobs, we don’t need homes. You go on ahead, Mr. President, and send our wealth and our sons and daughters overseas, ’cause we don’t need them, either.”

What would Martin Luther King, Jr. do? What would your grandmother do? Not send more poor people to kill other poor people who pose no threat to them, that’s what they’d do. Not spend billions and trillions to wage war while American children are sleeping on the streets and standing in bread lines.

All of us that voted and prayed for you and cried the night of your victory have endured an Orwellian hell of eight years of crimes committed in our name: torture, rendition, suspension of the bill of rights, invading nations who had not attacked us, blowing up neighborhoods that Saddam “might” be in (but never was), slaughtering wedding parties in Afghanistan. We watched as hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were slaughtered and tens of thousands of our brave young men and women were killed, maimed, or endured mental anguish — the full terror of which we scarcely know.

When we elected you we didn’t expect miracles. We didn’t even expect much change. But we expected some. We thought you would stop the madness. Stop the killing. Stop the insane idea that men with guns can reorganize a nation that doesn’t even function as a nation and never, ever has.

Stop, stop, stop! For the sake of the lives of young Americans and Afghan civilians, stop. For the sake of your presidency, hope, and the future of our nation, stop. For God’s sake, stop.

Tonight we still have hope.

Tomorrow, we shall see. The ball is in your court. You DON’T have to do this. You can be a profile in courage. You can be your mother’s son.

We’re counting on you.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

Source

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Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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To require the Secretary of Defense to submit a report to Congress outlining the United States exit strategy for United States military forces in Afghanistan participating in Operation Enduring Freedom.

Sources 1 | 2 (Full bill here)

This is a really interesting piece of proposed legislation. It basically forces the government to come up with a plan on leaving Afghanistan by December 31, 2009. At least it’s a baby step towards something positive. The sad part is most bills do not pass the committee review step (which is where HR 2404 is currently at). On top of that hundreds of bills are written up and proposed but only a few are actually passed. It’s like buckets and buckets of water being filled into an 8 ton tank and only a few drops are released.

The pitfalls of a Democratic system.

InshaAllah it passes.

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They’ll probably say this is jizya.

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At least eight Afghans working with US forces have been killed in a Nato air strike in north-western Afghanistan, the defence ministry in Kabul says.

Nato confirms an air strike was ordered and is investigating whether it was the cause of the deaths on Friday.

It was launched as US and Afghan forces reportedly came under insurgent attack during search operations in Badghis province for two missing US soldiers.

Five Americans and 18 Afghans were also wounded on Friday.

Nato said the casualties occurred “during a joint operation that involved multiple engagements over several hours”.

‘Important mission’

The Afghan defence ministry said a base housing coalition troops and Afghan security forces was mistakenly hit by the air strike.

Four Afghan soldiers, three police and another person believed to have been an interpreter were killed.

A spokesperson for the Nato force, US Navy Capt Jane Campbell, said: “We are saddened by the loss of life and injuries sustained during this very important mission.”

Source

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You know what I find really hilarious from this story is when they tried to join a group in Pakistan, they were rejected for not being Pakistani. Sounds like a lot of BS to me.

This is an amazing quote from his lawyer:

“If this is the FBI’s idea of a terrorist, they are using a net that is designed to catch minnows instead of sharks.” — J.W. Carney, Mehanna’s lawyer, after his 2008 arrest (Boston Globe, Nov. 12, 2008)

I agree 100%.

Let’s not forget innocent until proven guilty.

This should be warning to all Muslims. If some shady Muslim guy is telling you he has connections to go perform Jihad overseas, you know what to say. “Nah bro, I’m good.”

In the early-morning hours of Oct. 21, federal authorities arrested 27-year-old Massachusetts resident Tarek Mehanna on charges that he conspired to provide material support to terrorists and planned to carry out a “violent jihad” by killing U.S. politicians, attacking American troops in Iraq and targeting customers at U.S. shopping malls. U.S. attorneys claim that Mehanna worked with two other men on various plans designed to “kill, kidnap, maim or injure” U.S. citizens and soldiers from 2001 to 2008. He will be held in federal custody pending a detention hearing on Oct. 30. If he is found guilty, Mehanna faces up to 15 years in prison.

Fast Facts:
• A U.S. citizen, Mehanna is the fifth person living in the U.S. to be arrested on terrorism charges in the past five months.

• Was arrested at his parents’ house in Sudbury, Mass., an affluent Boston suburb.

• Graduated from the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy in May 2008. His father is a professor of medicinal chemistry at the school.

• Had been planning to move to Saudi Arabia to become a pharmacist.

• Was questioned by the FBI on Dec. 16, 2006, about Daniel J. Maldonado, a Methuen, Mass., resident who was suspected of training at a terrorist camp of al-Qaeda’s and plotting to overthrow the Somali government. Maldonado later admitted to training with al-Qaeda and is now serving a 10-year prison sentence.

• Arrested in November 2008 for statements he made during the 2006 questioning. Mehanna had claimed that Maldonado was living in Egypt and working for a website, but FBI agents recorded a phone conversation between the two men in which Maldonado urged Mehanna to join him in “training for jihad” in Somalia. Was indicted for allegedly lying to authorities in January 2009.

• According to U.S. attorneys, Mehanna’s current plot had two co-conspirators — a man named Ahmad Abousamra and a third person, who is cooperating with authorities and has so far been unnamed. The three men met before the Sept. 11 attacks and attempted to join terrorist groups in Pakistan, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

• A 2004 trip to Yeman proved fruitless when the men were unable to locate anyone affiliated with terrorist camps. They returned to the U.S. and allegedly plotted attacks on shopping malls. They abandoned their plans after failing to obtain automatic weapons.

• Used the code terms “peanut butter and jelly” when discussing fighting in Somalia and “culinary school” for terrorist camps.

• Appeared in federal court just hours after his arrest wearing a black sweatshirt and sweatpants. Witnesses say he refused to stand up at his bail hearing, kicking his chair over and making rude comments.

Quotes By:
“When the FBI asked me where Dan was … I told them I was still in Egypt … and he had called me the day before from Somalia.” — From an unsealed FBI affidavit (Boston Globe, Nov. 12, 2008)

“I don’t ever remember if he said the word Somalia on the phone, but that’s a problem because, like, lying to them in and of itself is a crime.” — Regarding his 2008 arrest (Boston Globe, Nov. 12, 2008)

“I can only think of the countless imprisoned Muslims in the jails of tyrants around the globe and hope that if it is not Allah’s Decree to free them in the near future, that they taste the sweetness that Allah has placed them in prison to taste.” — Letter allegedly written from prison and published on MuslimMatters.org after his 2008 arrest (Associated Press, Oct. 21, 2009)

Quotes About:
“If this is the FBI’s idea of a terrorist, they are using a net that is designed to catch minnows instead of sharks.” — J.W. Carney, Mehanna’s lawyer, after his 2008 arrest (Boston Globe, Nov. 12, 2008)

“The killing of civilians was considered O.K. because civilians are taxpayers and are non-believers.” — U.S. Attorney Michael Loucks, on Mehanna’s beliefs (Bloomberg, Oct. 21, 2009)

“No, definitely not.” — Ahmed Mehanna, father of the accused, when asked if he believed the charges filed against his son had any merit (Associated Press, Oct. 21, 2009)

May Allah make it easy for him and his family.

Source

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