 The suspected ring-leader of the failed "Toronto 18" bomb plot, aimed at provoking a Canadian withdrawal from Afghanistan, has been sentence to life in prison. Zakaria Amara, a Jordanian-born Canadian citizen, was sentenced on Monday "for his role in a terrorist plot to bomb Toronto", the public prosecution service of Canada said in a statement. He was also sentenced to nine years "for his participation in a terrorist group," to be served concurrently. The sentence is the stiffest punishment imposed in the conspiracy and under Canada's anti-terrorism laws, which parliament passed in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001. But Amara may be eligible for parole in less than seven years after having already served time in prison awaiting trial. Amara had pleaded guilty to involvement in the Toronto 18 plot to set off bombs outside Toronto's stock exchange, the country's spy agency and a military base. Judge Bruce Durno, who read out the sentence, said that if the plot been successful it would have been the most horrific crime in Canada's history. "What this case revealed was spine-chilling,'' Durno said. "Zakaria Amara did not just commit a criminal offence. He committed a terrorist offence that would have had catastrophic and fatal consequences." After the judge read his sentencing Amara addressed him saying "I just want to reassure you that the promises I made [to rehabilitate], I'll do my best." Michael Lacy, Amara's defence lawyer, said the defence was disappointed with the sentence in view of Amara's "genuine expressions of remorse and in light of his denunciation of the terrorist activity". He said they had not decided whether to appeal. The 2006 arrests of Amara and 17 other people made international headlines and heightened fears in Canada, where many people thought their country was relatively immune from attacks. Prosecutors said Amara planned to rent trucks, pack them with explosives and detonate them via remote control. Police found he used a public library computer to conduct searches on bomb-making and the chemicals needed for explosives. A bomb-making manual, circuit boards, and a device that could trigger an explosion via a cell phone were found in his home. Amara had tried to buy what he believed was three tons of ammonium nitrate from undercover police officers, who had switched it with an inert substance. His personal computer also had recordings of Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader. Also sentenced on Monday was Saad Gaya, one of Amara's suspected co-conspirators, who was given 12 years in prison, minus seven-and-a-half years credit for pre-trial custody. Since the arrest of the Toronto 18, four have now pleaded guilty and one
was convicted. Charges were stayed or dropped against seven people. One man's trial began last week and five others face trial in March. Al Jazeera 
 The Jerusalem Post is reporting here that the Jordanians believe that Iran was responsible for the bombing of an Israeli diplomatic convoy last week. The sources said the GID was investigating the possibility that the explosives used in the attack had been smuggled into the kingdom by Iranian diplomats. The attack itself was apparently carried out by local al-Qaida supporters who received money and explosives from Iran, the sources said. Analysis. The explosives were just as likely “imported” from Syria. King Abdullah II still has fond memories of the attempted El Queda poison gas event on New Year’s Eve a few years ago. If the Jordanian intelligence services lay this at Bashar’s feet, His Majesty will no doubt be suitably angered. I can’t think of a better way to drive Jordan into the undercover coalition to waste Iran. Several months ago there was an advertised meeting of the intelligence chiefs of Egypt, Jordan and Israel. I said at that time that the senior planners would be meeting shortly thereafter. Although no public statements have been forthcoming about such meetings, my gut tells me they are ongoing. The recent Saudi attempts at Palestinian factional peace making having been thwarted by Iran’s influence over Hamas, there is zero chance that their will be any kind of final status talks in the near future. The recent rocket and mortar attacks are perhaps a hint of what is to come. At the same time, as reported here earlier, the Houthi Rebellion is back on again. This the Saudis do not need. George Mitchell is spinning his wheels. To what end are the Iranians throwing their weight around? One reason may be to convince the Arab governments not to provide aid to the Iranian revolutionaries.
The next post will contain the resignation statement of the Iranian Counsel to Norway. The recent resignations and requests for asylum by Iranian diplomats is not going over well in Tehran. It may well have been for the assassination of the Iranian nuclear scientist. Even though the Iranians are blaming the Mossad and CIA, the Israelis and we get blamed for so much it is difficult to tell what we really did and what we are being scapegoated for. And the Iraqi elections are in March. World Threats
 - The Code Pink organization has placed ads on the Muslim Brotherhood’s website, including one that asks readers to “join us in cleansing our country.”
- An Al-Qaeda bodyguard killed by a U.S. drone attack in North Waziristan is the son of a leader in the Muslim Brotherhood’s branch in Jordan.
- The new Secretary-General of the Islamic Society of North America has a history of involvement with other Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated organizations.
- Seven senior members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan have been charged with corruption over their management of Islamic charities.
 How moderate of them. The Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood is demanding that Jordan remove any soldiers it has from Afghanistan and end all cooperation with the CIA and the “Zionist” intelligence services: The opposition statement came after the death in a January 30 suicide bombing in Afghanistan of senior intelligence officer Captain Ali bin Zeid, a member of the royal family, along with seven CIA agents spotlighted Jordan’s role in the international coalition there. The opposition leaders said the “real fascist terrorism is the Zionist terrorism that threatens world peace and Jordan’s future.” “Jordan should not be dragged into wars of others and should not turn into a battlefield,” they added. And to think that we in the U.S. actually give credibility to organizations in our country that affiliate with the Muslim Brotherhood. Unbelievable. World Threats
 AMMAN: A roadside bomb has exploded near an Israeli embassy convoy headed to the Jewish state from the Jordanian capital. "The Israeli embassy convoy left Amman and was headed for the Hussein bridge when the blast occurred. Nobody was hurt," an Israeli diplomat said yesterday, referring to the crossing between Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Israeli media said the bomb detonated near the convoy taking the Israeli ambassador to Jordan, Dani Nevo, to the bridge, also known as the Allenby bridge, 50km west of Amman. But sources in Jordan said former Israeli ambassador Yakov Rosen was in the convoy, not Mr Nevo, while Israel's Foreign Ministry said it was unclear whether Mr Nevo was in the convoy headed to Israel via the West Bank. Israel's Ynetnews said four embassy staff members and two security guards were in the convoy, while the newspaper Haaretz said two remotely detonated bombs exploded, causing one car to flip over. The embassy's consular officer and her husband arrived back in Israel, reports said. "The cars were not damaged by the blast," Nabil Sharif said, adding an investigation was under way into the attack and to determine the type of explosives used. A source close to the investigation said: "The blast left a crater . . . 10cm deep and 80cm wide." Israeli diplomats often travel home on Thursdays, the start of the Muslim weekend in Jordan, and return on Sundays to Jordan, which in 1994 became only the second Arab state to sign a peace treaty with Israel, after Egypt. Israeli diplomats in Jordan usually use rental cars. Several attacks or attempted attacks against Israelis have occurred in Jordan since the signing of the treaty but such incidents have been rare in recent years. In 2003, a Jordanian driver crossed the southern border with Israel and opened fire at a group of foreigners in the transit zone. He was shot by Israeli soldiers. A non-Israeli tourist was killed and five others were wounded. Israeli analysts said security co-ordination between Jordan and Israel was excellent, andAmman had foiled several attempts to attack Israeli targets in the past. "I'm sure this was a surprise for the Jordanians. These people are probably Islamic or al-Qa'ida that pose a danger to the Hashemite kingdom, too," Ephraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies said. Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood said "such incidents should be expected". "As long as Israel is in the region, carrying out its non-stop aggression against the Palestinian people, we should expect these things to happen," said Brotherhood spokesman Jamil Abu Baker. "Israel is the source of violence in the Middle East." The influential Muslim Brotherhood and its political arm, the Islamic Action Front, have repeatedly called for the scrapping of the peace treaty, expulsion of Israel's ambassador and a cut in relations with Israel. The Australian
 Canada is redirecting its Palestinian aid away from a United Nations agency and toward specific projects. The shift in Canadian policy was announced this week by Vic Toews, president of Canada’s Treasury Board, who wrapped up a five-day trip to Jordan, Israel and the West Bank. Canada is not reducing the amount of money it gives to the Palestinian Authority, “but it is now being redirected in accordance with Canadian values,” Toews said. The move “will ensure accountability and foster democracy in the PA.” In the past, Canadian aid earmarked for UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, went into a general operating fund in the PA’s treasury.
The U.N. agency runs 59 Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. In a meeting in Ramallah, Toews refused a request by the PA’s minister of planning and administrative development, Ali al-Jarbawi, for aid to be given “directly” to the PA treasury, the Jerusalem Post reported. Among the projects receiving the redirected aid are those training prosecutors, judges and police, and shoring up the Palestinian judicial sector by building courthouses. “If we train people properly, we will have the emergence of proper institutions necessary for a state,” the Post quoted Toews as saying. “It is obviously more difficult to monitor the use of money sent into general funds than specific projects.” A statement from Toews’ office said Canada is “on track” to deliver on its pledge of $300 million over five years to the PA. Toews said Ottawa needed “to ensure that [the Palestinian Authority] has less wide discretion.” B’nai Brith Canada praised the shift away from funding UNRWA, which reportedly has been infiltrated by Hamas. With thanks to www.vladtepesblog.com
 Jordan has demanded that Israel hand over some of the famous Dead Sea Scrolls. The kingdom claims Israel seized the scrolls illegally from a museum in East Jerusalem during the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel seized the scrolls and other antiquities from the Palestinian Museum, which was managed by Jordan in east Jerusalem when it occupied this part of the city in 1967,” said Rafea Harahsheh of Jordan’s antiquities department. The scrolls were discovered by a Bedouin shepherd in 1947. The famous parchments number 900 documents and biblical texts belonging to the Essenes, a breakaway Jewish sect that lived in the craggy hills above the Dead Sea where the scrolls were discovered. They provide a rare insight into life in the Holy Land and the emergence of early Christian groups in the area. The Jordanians recently asked the Canadian government to seize some of the scrolls while they were on display in Toronto. They have also appealed to the United Nations in support of their case. Israel has refused to discuss handing back the scrolls. Its foreign ministry told the Jerusalem Post, “Jordan’s occupation of the West Bank was never recognized by the international community and the kingdom relinquished all claims on the territories. The scrolls have no relation to Jordan or the Jordanian people.” Jordan says Israel seized 14 scrolls kept in a museum in the eastern sector of Jerusalem when its army occupied that Jordanian-controlled part of the city in the 1967 war. Israel annexed eastern Jerusalem soon after the war and now says the entire city is its unified, eternal capital. Israel’s annexation of Jerusalem has not been internationally recognized. ”We are very keen on getting them (the scrolls) by reminding different countries of the international accords on cultural wealth they signed,” Maha Khatib, Jordan’s tourism minister, told the AP, citing the 1954 Hague Convention governing the protection of cultural property during armed conflict. Earlier this month, Canada refused a Jordanian request to stop the scrolls’ return to Israel, after they were displayed at a Toronto museum. It also refused a similar request made by the Palestinian Authority, according to Canadian diplomats. Khatib said Jordan has given up hope that Israel would directly give back the more than 2,000-year-old scrolls and now hoped Western nations would return them to the Arab kingdom when they host them in exhibitions. The scrolls include the earliest known version of portions of the Hebrew Bible and have shed important light on Judaism and the beginnings of Christianity. Their origin is the subject of an insular, but notoriously heated, academic debate. They will next be exhibited in Milwaukee, Wisc., starting Jan. 22. With thanks to Vlad Tepes
 Jordan has tried to reclaim the Dead Sea Scrolls from Israel, an official said. In a complaint made to the United Nations Jordan said that the ancient texts were seized from the Palestinian Museum when Israel captured east Jerusalem in the Six Day War. “The Government has legal documents that prove Jordan owns the scrolls,” Rafea Harahsheh, of the country’s antiquities department, said. The scrolls had been on display in Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum. Jordan asked Canada to seize the texts under the 1954 Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.
A Canadian Foreign Ministry spokesman said that it was not appropriate to intervene.
 IN terms of loss of life, the bombing of the CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan, may be the most costly mistake in the agency's history. So it's important to look carefully for clues about how it happened, and lessons for the future. CIA veterans cite a series of warning signs that the agency wasn't paying enough attention to the counter-intelligence threat posed by al-Qa'ida. These danger signals weren't addressed because the agency underestimated its adversary and overestimated its own skills and those of its allies. The time to fix these problems is now, not with a spasm of second-guessing that will further weaken the CIA but through the agency's adaptation to this war zone. As the Khost attack made painfully clear, the CIA needs better tradecraft for this conflict. By getting a suicide bomber inside a CIA base, the al-Qa'ida network showed that it remains a sophisticated adversary despite intense pressure from CIA Predator attacks. This shouldn't have been a surprise: CIA sources say that during the past year, two al-Qa'ida allies in Afghanistan - the Haqqani and Hekmatyar networks - have run double-agent operations. That tactic succeeded disastrously in Khost on December 30, when the CIA's defences were penetrated by a Jordanian doctor posing as an informant for the Jordanian intelligence service. Why wasn't the Jordanian debriefed outside the base, or thoroughly searched when he arrived, given the danger he might have been turned by al-Qa'ida? Did the CIA trust its Jordanian ally too much? Those basic questions need answers. The Haqqani and Hekmatyar double agents were uncovered last year through polygraphs and other means, but agency insiders argue that these cases should have prompted tougher countermeasures. Both the Haqqani and Hekmatyar groups have their own intelligence units, and their operatives were expertly trained in the 1980s by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate. Muslim extremists are using increasingly sophisticated tools, sometimes the very techniques deployed against them. One example is the software used by Hezbollah to analyse patterns of mobile phone calls and expose an Israeli spy network in Lebanon last year. Iran uses sophisticated pattern analysis to study which of its nuclear scientists might have been recruited by the West. Despite this growing threat, the CIA has devoted only limited resources to defending itself. Within its large Kabul station, the CIA is said to have just two officers working full time on counter-intelligence. There's a similar lack of resources devoted to Pakistani operations against the agency. The 2004 intelligence reorganisation added more layering and bureaucracy but not more muscle. It created a new National Counterintelligence Executive, but this group has focused on traditional targets such as Russia and China rather than new ones. "What good is it?" asks one CIA counter-terrorism veteran. "It's overhead. It contributes little, other than additional tasking and more meetings." The CIA's career track is another troubling part of the problem. The complex penetration and deception operations that could counter al-Qa'ida take time and patience. But agency operations mirror the short, two-year tours of assignment, or the even shorter deployments to war zones. "We live in two-year cycles," says one insider. The rational careerist looks at a penetration or deception plan and concludes: "It's too time-consuming, it won't get me promoted." What's most troubling is that during the past year the CIA has had what this source calls "egregious lapses of counter-intelligence and security at the bases in Afghanistan". Evidence of sloppy procedures is said to have surfaced last late last year at one of the agency's bases in southern Afghanistan. One of its vehicles was stolen but headquarters wasn't notified for several weeks. Someone was caught photographing the entry gate to the base, but he was initially turned over to the Afghan police rather than to agency operatives. An Afghan guard failed a polygraph, raising worries that he might be a double agent. Yet aggressive countermeasures weren't taken. A final obvious problem is training. Case officers need more preparation for high-threat meetings and paramilitary challenges than they're getting. After any calamity, there are always haunting what-ifs. But looking in the rear-view mirror isn't going to make the CIA any stronger or better. The Khost attack shows that al-Qa'ida's network, though badly wounded, remains a wily and resourceful foe. The inescapable conclusion is that the CIA and its allies need to lift their game. David Ignatius is a columnist with The Washington Post. The Australian
 Earlier today, I was lying on my gynecologist’s table in a highly exposed position when suddenly she said: “You’re probably going to think this is very politically incorrect but isn’t it crazy not to profile? I mean, isn’t it clear who’s doing what?” I immediately shot straight up and engaged this worthy liberal in a very politically incorrect conversation. (No, she had absolutely no idea what I’ve been writing about). So: Some things are becoming clear and can no longer be denied. Not even by some liberals. Jihadic terrorists tend to be Muslims. Atheists are not blowing themselves up nor are Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Ba’haii or Zoroastrians. Not all Muslims are terrorists; but these days, all terrorists seem to be Muslims. Terrorists and their handlers are not all motivated by poverty and suffering. Many are often wealthy and educated men. For example, according to the Wall Street Journal, Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi, the Jordanian double agent who recently blew himself up along with seven American CIA operatives in Afghanistan, was a 32 year-old physician. A physician—not a madrassa trained slum dweller. He is now being linked to Al Qaeda in Pakistan. On video, he said: “ We will never forget the blood of our emir, Baitullah Mehsud. We will always demand revenge for him inside America and outside.” (Al-Balawi was shown meeting with the Pakistani Taliban/Al Qaeda and vowing revenge for the death of their leader). Our own homegrown jihadic terrorist, Major Nidal Malik Hassan, (a Palestinian-American), is also a physician, a psychiatrist in fact. He had money, independence, prestige. His massacre at Fort Hood was not motivated by illiteracy, poverty, or war-related trauma. Many Westerners find it difficult to accept that a religious war has been declared against the West; that jihadists are ready to die, wave after wave of them, in order to ensure that our way of life is destroyed.
Their ideal is Islamic supremacy (only Muslims will rule because they are “superior”) and they want to return to a seventh century way of life, albeit one with cellphones, the internet, and nuclear weaponry. Moderate, peaceful Muslims certainly exist—but how many are willing to stand up to the jihadists? For example, according to the AP, only 50 Muslims showed up for a “Muslims Against Terrorism” rally outside the federal courthouse in Detroit where the Christmas Day crotch-bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was being arraigned. Although the local Detroit press estimated that there were 150 protestors there—this is still a very small showing given that Detroit and its suburbs are also known as “Dearbornistan” and boast the largest Muslim community in the United States. How many European-Muslim leaders protested the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the murder of Theo Von Gogh, the character assassination of Geert Wilders and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, ore the recently attempted murder of Kurt Westergaard, the Danish cartoonist? How many Muslim religious leaders in Egypt protested the Orthodox Christmas Day shooting of Coptic Christians as they left church? Or protested the abductions, forced conversions, and the hastily arranged marriages of Coptic Christian female children to Muslim adult males? How many Muslim religious leaders have issued fatwas against the Islamic regime of Iran for its heart stopping persecution of Iranian dissidents? Too few, if any. The danger of not standing up early enough is that we condemn ourselves to a higher body count. If we refuse to (behavior) profile now—we must accept that more airports and airplanes will be blown up, more cities held hostage, Mumbai-style.
And, those of us who travel frequently will all have to spend a good part of the rest of our lives standing on line at the airport. And, eventually, at the boat dock, or at the train or bus station. Phyllis Chesler
 by Khaled Abu Toameh Jordanian citizens learned about the real circumstances in which the intelligence officer was killed from foreign media outlets, first and foremost Al-Jazeera.
It was the first time they were told that the Jordanian General Intelligence Department was working closely with the CIA against Al-Qaeda and other Islamic fundamentalist groups. The revelations have since embarrassed the Jordanian authorities, whose spokesmen and media continue their attempts to conceal or downplay the role their security forces are playing in the fight against Muslim terrorists in different parts of the world. In announcing the death of General Intelligence officer Captain Sharif Ali bin Zeid, the Jordanian government said that he was on a "humanitarian mission" in Afghanistan. The officer was killed together with seven CIA employees when a Jordanian citizen blew himself up in the eastern Afghan province ofKhost. The suicide bomber, identified as Hammam Khalil al-Balawi, had duped the Jordanian authorities into thinking that he had important information that could lead them and the CIA to Al-Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Why are most of the Arab dictators afraid or reluctant to publicly admit that their countries are at war with Al-Qaeda and other Islamic fundamentalist groups? Failure to acknowledge that they are part of this war underscores the state of fear and denial that the Arab dictatorships continue to live in with regards to the threat from Islamic radicals. These rulers and their governments, the majority of whom are unelected, are actually afraid of the Arab and Islamic masses. They are afraid of exposing their connection to the US because, for decades, these dictatorships have been telling the masses that Israel and the US are their real enemies, and not Al-Qaeda and the terrorists who have hijacked Islam. Additionally, these dictatorships are afraid of being accused by Arabs and Muslims of participating in a "war of Crusaders and infidels" against Islam. This is because the majority of the Arab and Islamic regimes have been telling their constituents that this is actually a war waged by the West against Islam. There is also no reason why the US should be helping these regimes in concealing the truth. The battle against Al-Qaeda and Islamic terror groups cannot be won as long as Washington's allies in the Arab and Islamic world continue to hide the truth from their people. It is time for these dictatorships to stop their double talk and to openly admit that moderate Muslims are at war with a tiny minority of thugs and murderers who have hijacked their religion. The Jordanians are not alone in trying to hide the fact that their security services are actively involved in the war against Islamic fundamentalism. The Palestinian Authority, whose security forces are waging a war on Hamas supporters and extremists in the West Bank, has also been doing its utmost to hide its security coordination with Israel. In fact, the Palestinian Authority continues to insist that it never helped Israel during the last war in the Gaza Strip although Israeli security officials have confirmed that such assistance had been provided. Moreover, the Palestinian Authority maintains that the massive crackdown that its forces have been waging against Hamas in the West Bank over the past few years is solely directed against "criminals" and "outlaws." Similarly, the Saudis, Egyptians, Moroccans and Yemenis have also been very reluctant to expose their close ties with the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies involved in the battle against Islamic fundamentalism. Forces belonging to these countries have been involved in the fight against radical Islam on various fronts such as the border between Afghanistan andPakistan and the one between Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Hudson New York
Jim Hoft The Taliban released a video today of the Jordanian doctor and Al-Qaeda blogger before he killed 7 CIA officers in a suicide bombing. In the video Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi says the attack will be the first of revenge operations against the Americans and their drone teams outside the Pakistani border. The CIA bomber also says in the video that he can not be bought off by the West before his suicide attack:
The Taliban said that the attack was a revenge operation for drone attacks in the Pakistani border regions ordered by President Obama.
…But weren’t we told they hated us because of Gitmo? The BBC reported on the video: The Jordanian “double agent” who killed himself and seven American Central Intelligence Agency officials in Afghanistan’s Khost province last month must have been very sure of the success of his mission. “This… attack will be the first of revenge operations against the Americans and their drone teams outside the Pakistani border, after they killed the Amir [chief] of Tehrik Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Baitullah Mehsud, may God’s beneficence be upon him,” he apparently said in a video broadcast released on Saturday. The video shows the purported Jordanian suicide bomber sitting next to Baitullah Mehsud’s successor and the new Pakistani Taliban, or TTP, chief, Hakimullah Mehsud, and reading from written text. “We [the Jordanian himself and the Taliban, whom he describes as Mujahideen or the holy warriors] arranged together this attack to let the Americans understand that our belief in Allah… cannot be exchanged for all the wealth in the world,” he says. It would appear that he had already set the trap for the CIA agents at the time he made the video. …The father of the accused Jordanian has said that the man who appears on the video is definitely his son. The Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for the Khost attack, alongside similar claims by the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda. All of them said that the attack was planned to avenge the 6 August 2009 killing of Baitullah Mehsud in a drone strike. With thanks to Gateway Pundit
 During the Cold War, Westerners consoled themselves in the belief that most people behind the Iron Curtain did not believe in Communism; they were simply entrapped by a morally bankrupt system driven by a moribund ideology. It was not so much the allure of capitalism that ultimately won over the people of Eastern Europe; it was the failure of Communism. What will it take to "turn" vast numbers of Muslims now enthralled with extremist Islam, and convince those uncommitted, not to follow the path of the Islamists?
Much depends on the outcome of the ongoing battle within Islamic civilization between those promoting jihad against the West and those who say Islam does not need to tear down the West in order to thrive. Yesterday, this newspaper carried a Washington Post dispatch, "Jordan emerges as key CIA counterterrorism ally." The story by that paper's national security reporter revealed that a Jordanian agent working in tandem with American intelligence had been killed by the Islamist suicide bomber who struck a CIA base near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border last week. It now transpires that the suicide bomber was a 36-year-old Jordanian physician named Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi. He had been "turned" - or so it was thought - during a stint in a Jordanian prison for jihadi activities. According to Al Jazeera, the medical-man-turned-suicide-bomber was in Afghanistan to trap another physician, Ayman al-Zawahiri, one of al-Qaida's two top leaders. Balawi had provided so much reliable information that he was trusted to enter the CIA post without being thoroughly searched. The dead agent, Sharif Ali bin Zeid, was Balawi's handler. King Abdullah II participated in Zeid's funeral, raising the ire of Islamists within his kingdom. This murky story of spycraft and betrayal serves as a metaphor for how the still-nameless war between freedom, moderation and enlightenment against the benighted forces of coercion, fanaticism and medievalism needs to be waged - by pushing Muslims to choose: the way of Balawi or the way of Zeid. The most practical way to overcome the Islamists is for them to be defeated from within. After all, non-Islamists have a profound stake in the outcome. YESTERDAY, President Barack Obama met with his top domestic and foreign national security advisers in the White House situation room. The agenda was two-fold: to unravel what went wrong, both on the systemic and personnel level, that allowed Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board Northwest Flight 253; and to take stock of the damage caused by what Balawi did at Forward Operating Base Chapman. Along with Zeid, seven brave CIA agents, with a combined 100 years' of expertise, were lost. This betrayal, like previous acts of perfidy in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere, underscored how dependent the West is on human intelligence provided by those who swim in a sea of anti-Western fanaticism. Other lessons emerge. The Islamists must not be underestimated. They are getting good at counter-intelligence and disinformation. Israelis have seen this with Hizbullah. Now Peter Baker of The New York Times has revealed that US intelligence was nearly fooled into thinking that Islamists from Somalia had infiltrated into the US in order to detonate bombs during Obama's inaugural address. Fortunately, John Brennan, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, deduced that a "poison pen" operation was afoot. One terror group was trying to get the US to take out its rivals. Pretty sophisticated stuff and illustrative of what the West is up against. Another lesson is not to belittle suicide bombers as "sad guys with no self esteem," or risk being surprised by those like Balawi, who are harder to pigeonhole. The doctor had once told an Islamist magazine: "I have had a predisposition for... jihad and martyrdom since I was little. If love of jihad enters a man's heart, it will not leave him, even if he wants to do so." CLEARLY, some Islamists are irredeemable. But others are not. If the West recognizes the scale of the challenge and confronts it effectively, and if there are enough courageous men the caliber of Sharif Ali bin Zeid working to preserve Islam from within, we can be reasonably hopeful that the jihadis will one day find themselves relegated to the dustbin of history. If... JPost
 WASHINGTON: Before detonating a suicide bomb in Afghanistan last week, a Jordanian militant was considered by American spy agencies as the most promising informant in years about the whereabouts of al-Qa'ida's top leaders. US intelligence officials told The New York Times they had been so hopeful about what the Jordanian might deliver during a meeting with CIA officials at a remote base in Khost that top officials at the agency and the White House had been informed the gathering would take place. Instead, the Jordanian double-agent blew himself up, killing seven CIA operatives. The Jordanian militant for months had been feeding a stream of information about lower-ranking al-Qa'ida operatives to his Jordanian supervisor, Captain Sharif Ali bin Zeid, to establish his credibility and apparently to help broker a meeting with CIA operatives in Afghanistan. The Americans believed he might provide them with leads to Ayman al-Zawahri, the terrorist group's second-ranking operative. Jordanian officials said the GID detained and interrogated Balawi about a year ago because of concerns he was tied to al-Qa'ida. The GID subsequently released Balawi after concluding he'd become a loyal covert asset of the agency, the officials said. Balawi, who was living in Pakistan, began contacting the GID by email and passing on "credible" information about al-Qa'ida leaders and plots against Jordan, the US and other Western allies, the officials said. The GID turned the information over to the CIA and other Western governments, which maintain close ties to the Jordanian intelligence agency, they said. US intelligence officials are working to verify their belief the double-agent was working with al-Qa'ida. The meeting at the CIA base, one official said, was about "important people" in al-Qa'ida. "It was the most promising lead" the agency had, the official said. "If you've got promising leads brought to you by your friends, coupled with information that checked out . . . It was the agency's duty to meet with this person". The agency has not yet had a chance to do a full review of what happened, but questions it seeks to answer include why the bomber was allowed on to the compound without being checked and why so many officers were near the bomber at the time of the explosion. Jordanian officials said they expected a team of CIA investigators to visit Amman in coming days to seek information about Balawi and the circumstances surrounding the attack. A staunch Western ally in the Middle East, Jordan has long had one of the most effective intelligence operations in the Arab world. But the suicide bombing severely embarrassed Amman, and raises questions over Jordan's vaunted role in helping Western intelligence agencies identify and track down Islamist terrorists. Jordan's GID was set up in 1964 and has built up a reputation for ruthless efficiency at home and abroad. Keeping a very tight grip on internal security and briefing the government on opposition movements within the kingdom, it has forestalled or intercepted several plots to destabilise the country during the 10-year reign of King Abdullah II and his father. Its role overseas is of growing importance and is the key to Western attempts to penetrate Arab jihadist networks. The Australian
 WASHINGTON: The suicide bomber who killed eight people inside a CIA base in Afghanistan was a Jordan-born terrorist double-agent who had been invited to the base because he claimed to have information targeting Osama bin Laden's second-in-command. The bomber had been recruited by the Jordanian intelligence service and taken to Afghanistan to infiltrate al-Qa'ida by posing as a foreign jihadi, US officials said. The attacker, a physician-turned-mole, had been recruited to infiltrate al-Qa'ida's senior circles and had gained the trust of his CIA and Jordanian handlers with a stream of useful intelligence leads, two former senior officials briefed on the agency's internal investigation told The Washington Post. His track record as an informant apparently allowed him to enter a key CIA post without a thorough search, the sources said. An Afghan security official identified the bomber as Hammam Khalil Abu Mallal al-Balawi, also known as Abu Dujana al-Khurasani. The Pakistani Taliban also claimed Balawi was the bomber, Arabic-language websites reported. The bomber appears to have been invited to an operational planning meeting on al-Qa'ida, a former senior US intelligence official said. "It looks like an al-Qa'ida double-agent," the former official said. "It's very sophisticated for a terrorist group that's supposedly on the run." The blast on December 30 killed four CIA officers, including the Khost base chief; three CIA contractors; and Mr bin Zeid, officials said. Six CIA employees were wounded in the attack. The Al Jazeera television network reported the bomber had initially been recruited to provide intelligence on the whereabouts of bin Laden's top deputy, Ayman al Zawahiri. The CIA's deputy chief of station from Kabul travelled to the meeting at the CIA Khost base, Forward Operating Base Chapman, according to former intelligence officials, pointing to the meeting's importance. The officer was wounded in the attack, according to informed sources. Both the Pakistani Taliban and the Afghan Taliban have claimed responsibility for the attack. The Afghan Taliban fights alongside an array of militants, including the Haqqani network, an Islamic extremist group that operates in Afghanistan and Pakistan and maintains close ties to al-Qa'ida. The US and Jordanian intelligence services have worked closely together for years, said a former senior intelligence official. "There's a confidence level with them," the former official said. Officials said Balawi had been jointly managed by US and Jordanian agencies and had provided "actionable intelligence" over several weeks of undercover work along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. "This is someone they obviously trusted very, very much," a former official said. Balawi was an active recruiter and an "elite writer" on al-Qa'ida's password-protected al-Hisba website, where he went by the name Abu Dujana al-Khurasani, according to the journal of the US Military Academy at West Point's Combating Terrorism Centre. In a posting on the site in May 2007, Balawi sought to persuade people from a variety of backgrounds, including African-Americans, Native Americans, Vietnamese and poor immigrants, to join the fight against their "oppressor", the US, the West Point analysts found. Balawi had studied medicine in Turkey with government funding, according to a translation of the Jordanian website Jerasa News by the Middle East Media Research Institute. He left Jordan about a year ago after being detained for a few months by Jordanian intelligence officers.
The Australian
 Jordan has asked Canada to seize the 2,000-year-old Dead Sea scrolls, on display until Sunday at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, invoking international law in a bid to keep the artifacts out of the hands of Israel until their disputed ownership is settled. Even if Canada ignores the request, it will make other countries think twice before accepting the controversial exhibit. Summoning the Canadian chargé d'affaires in Amman two weeks ago, Jordan cited the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, to which both Jordan and Canada are signatories, in asking Canada to take custody of the scrolls. Jordan claims Israel acted illegally in 1967 when it took the scrolls from a museum in east Jerusalem, which Israel seized from Jordan during the Six-Day War and subsequently occupied. The Hague Convention, which is concerned with safeguarding cultural property during wartime, requires each signatory “to take into its custody cultural property imported into its territory either directly or indirectly from any occupied territory. This shall either be effected automatically upon the importation of the property or, failing this, at the request of the authorities of that territory.” This means Canada must act, says Jordan. “The Government of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan would be grateful if the Government of Canada would confirm … whether it is prepared to assume its international legal responsibility, and the means by which it intends to do so,” it wrote. While confirming that Canada has received a message from Jordan, a spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade said yesterday that “differences regarding ownership of the Dead Sea scrolls should be addressed by Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. It would not be appropriate for Canada to intervene as a third party.” The ROM's exhibition of the scrolls, mounted “in partnership with the Israel Antiquities Authority,” opened on June 27. While Jordan has acted only recently in asking Canada to take custody of the scrolls, the Palestinian Authority has made its position known since April, when Salam Fayyad, Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, wrote to Prime Minister Stephen Harper concerning what it argues is the illegal use of the scrolls. More at the Globe and Mail H/T: Smooth Stone
 The recent statements by the European Union's new foreign relations chief Catherine Ashton criticizing Israel have once again brought international attention to Jerusalem and the settlements. However, little appears to be truly understood about Israel's rights to what are generally called the "occupied territories" but what really are "disputed territories." That's because the land now known as the West Bank cannot be considered "occupied" in the legal sense of the word as it had not attained recognized sovereignty before Israel's conquest. Contrary to some beliefs there has never been a Palestinian state, and no other nation has ever established Jerusalem as its capital despite it being under Islamic control for hundreds of years. The name "West Bank" was first used in 1950 by the Jordanians when they annexed the land to differentiate it from the rest of the country, which is on the east bank of the river Jordan.
The boundaries of this territory were set only one year before during the armistice agreement between Israel and Jordan that ended the war that began in 1948 when five Arab armies invaded the nascent Jewish State. It was at Jordan's insistence that the 1949 armistice line became not a recognized international border but only a line separating armies. The Armistice Agreement specifically stated: "No provision of this Agreement shall in any way prejudice the rights, claims, and positions of either Party hereto in the peaceful settlement of the Palestine questions, the provisions of this Agreement being dictated exclusively by military considerations." (Italics added.)
This boundary became the famous "Green Line," so named because the military officials during the armistice talks used a green pen to draw the line on the map. After the Six Day War, when once again Arab armies sought to destroy Israel and the Jewish state subsequently captured the West Bank and other territory, the United Nations sought to create an enduring solution to the conflict.
U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 is probably one of the most misunderstood documents in the international arena. While many, especially the Palestinians, push the idea that the document demands that Israel return everything captured over the Green Line, nothing could be further from the truth. The resolution calls for "peace within secure and recognized boundaries," but nowhere does it mention where those boundaries should be. It is best to understand the intentions of the drafters of the resolution before considering other interpretations. Eugene V. Rostow, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs in 1967 and a drafter of the resolution, stated in 1990: "Security Council Resolution 242 and (subsequent U.N. Security Council Resolution) 338... rest on two principles, Israel may administer the territory until its Arab neighbors make peace; and when peace is made, Israel should withdraw to "secure and recognized borders," which need not be the same as the Armistice Demarcation Lines of 194." Lord Caradon, the British U.N. Ambassador at the time and the resolution's main drafter who introduced it to the Council, said in 1974 unequivocally that, "It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967, because those positions were undesirable and artificial." The U.S. ambassador to the U.N. at the time, former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, made the issue even clearer when he stated in 1973 that, "the resolution speaks of withdrawal from occupied territories without defining the extent of withdrawal." This would encompass "less than a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from occupied territory, inasmuch as Israel's prior frontiers had proven to be notably insecure." Even the Soviet delegate to the U.N., Vasily Kuznetsov, who fought against the final text, conceded that the resolution gave Israel the right to "withdraw its forces only to those lines it considers appropriate." After the war in 1967, when Jews started returning to their historic heartland in the West Bank, or Judea and Samaria, as the territory had been known around the world for 2,000 years until the Jordanians renamed it, the issue of settlements arose.
However, Rostow found no legal impediment to Jewish settlement in these territories. He maintained that the original British Mandate of Palestine still applies to the West Bank. He said "the Jewish right of settlement in Palestine west of the Jordan River, that is, in Israel, the West Bank, Jerusalem, was made unassailable.
That right has never been terminated and cannot be terminated except by a recognized peace between Israel and its neighbors." There is no internationally binding document pertaining to this territory that has nullified this right of Jewish settlement since. And yet, there is this perception that Israel is occupying stolen land and that the Palestinians are the only party with national, legal and historic rights to it.
Not only is this morally and factually incorrect, but the more this narrative is being accepted, the less likely the Palestinians feel the need to come to the negotiating table. Statements like those of Lady Ashton's are not only incorrect; they push a negotiated solution further away. —Mr. Ayalon is the deputy foreign minister of Israel
 Click here for my second FrontPage Magazine article this week, this one discussing the dynamics of the war in Yemen. The Yemeni government (along with the Saudis, Egyptians, Jordanians and Moroccans) are trying to fight back the Iranian-supported Houthi rebels, some of whom are being trained by the Revolutionary Guards in Eritrea. This is a full-blown proxy war. Now, at the same time, the already-stretched-thin Yemeni government is expected to fight Al-Qaeda, which it has tried to strike deals and truces with just like Pakistan has tried to do.
The Yemeni security forces has high-level sympathizers of Salafi extremism, and so the comparison is pretty solid.
If the U.S. wants Yemen to stop tolerating Al-Qaeda and other radical Sunni elements as a way of fighting the Shiite Houthis, then the U.S. will need to threaten the Yemenis as well as offer to be a far better partner than those militants ever could be. World Threats
 Does Islamist party Hizb-ut-Tahrir pose a threat to Western society? The answer may well be yes -- but that doesn't mean it should be banned. In recent weeks, Britain's Labour government and the Conservative opposition have been embroiled in a feud about, of all things, Islam -- or, more precisely, an Islamist organization called Hizb-ut-Tahrir (Arabic for "The Party of Liberation").
Tory leader David Cameron has been assailing Gordon Brown's government for allegedly funneling taxpayer money to two Hizb-supported schools where students are being exposed to Islamist ideology.
The education minister insists that the schools in question have nothing to do with the group. The issue is particularly tricky because many Britons, within government and out, have repeatedly called for Hizb-ut-Tahrir to be banned altogether. Their ranks included, at one point a few years ago, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair. It hasn't happened yet, though, for reasons that will be touched upon below. One thing is for sure: We can all expect to hear more about Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HT) in the years to come. Founded 56 years ago in Jordanian-controlled Jerusalem, the party is estimated by some experts to have 1 million members around the world. A lot of them are now in jail. HT is banned outright in a number of countries, ranging from harsh dictatorships like Uzbekistan and Syria through countries like Pakistan, Syria, Jordan, Turkey, and Bangladesh, to Western European democracies including Germany and Denmark. Yet the group persists, and in some respects -- judging by the vast amount of literature it continues to produce, on paper, and myriad websites -- it seems to be thriving. The party recently made headlines in the United States when it was revealed that one of President Barack Obama's religious advisors, Muslim polling expert Dalia Mogahed, had participated in a Hizb-ut-Tahrir-sponsored TV broadcast. (She subsequently said that she'd been unaware of the show's affiliation.) The party has undoubtedly been helped, over the years, by the clarity of its ultimate aim: the creation of a modern-day caliphate, an Islamic state that would bring together all the countries of the Islamic world.
Unlike al Qaeda, though, which professes comparable goals, Hizb-ut-Tahrir emphasizes political action rather than force, arguing that Muslims have to be "enlightened" through education, propaganda, and political agitation until they fully understand the need to seize the reins of power in their own countries and unite the ummah, the global community of believers.
According to one of the group's myriad pamphlets: "[I]f the Islamic Ummah were to rise as an Islamic Ummah, she would be more than capable of rescuing the world from the evil forces that control it, suppress it, and make it experience all kinds of misery, humiliation, and slavery." It's this openly revolutionary aim that has gotten the party into trouble in many of the more authoritarian countries where it has run afoul of officialdom. Yet even though it claims to profess non violent means, the party has still managed to get into trouble in more liberal societies for the extreme intolerance of some of its views.
The party became verboten in Germany, for example, after it shared a platform with neo-Nazis. HT officials insist that they are anti-Zionist rather than anti-Semitic -- though several studies of the group's literature have shown that the distinction doesn't always hold up.
The group was proscribed in Denmark after, among other things, distributing pamphlets urging Muslims to "kill [Jews] wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out." When I first came across the group's pamphlets in Central Asia in 2001, for example, I was struck by their references to the dictator of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, whom they ritually denounced as "the Jew Karimov." (He has no Jewish background whatsoever, as it happens.) One of the party's pamphlets stresses that Muslims who elect to leave the faith automatically face the death penalty -- a stricture that would be hard to reconcile with democratic freedoms if they dared to put it into practice. Another source of concern is the group's role as a "conveyor belt," radicalizing members who then go on to participate in overtly violent actions. Its prominent members in Britain have included Omar Bakri Muhammad, founder of the group Al Muhajiroun, which gained notoriety for praising the 9/11 hijackers and harbored adherents who would later be implemented in terrorist attacks.
When British intelligence officials searched the home of Omar Sharif, the Briton who attempted to blow himself up in a Tel Aviv bar in 2003, they found a cache of Hizb-ut-Tahrir literature.
British journalist Shiv Malik claims that at least two major al Qaeda figures, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, originally had ties with the group. More at Foreign Policy
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Copyright Muslims Against Sharia 2008. All rights reserved.
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The suspected ring-leader of the failed "Toronto 18" bomb plot, aimed at provoking a Canadian withdrawal from Afghanistan, has been sentence to life in prison. 
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