On the eve of the ninth anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attack on U.S. soil that killed nearly 3000 people, the Washington-based Bipartisan Policy Center’s National Security Preparedness Group has released a grim report, “Assessing the Terrorist Threat,” written by Peter Bergen, the author Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden and Bruce Hoffman, author of Inside Terrorism.
The 44-page report found that the U.S. was slow to take the threat posed by homegrown radicals seriously and as a result the government has failed …

Today, on this day when the memorial service was held at Fort Hood for the 13 victims who were murdered by suspected terrorist, Major Malik Nidal Hasan, we learn this:
The FBI issued a press release today, November 9, in which they said Major Malik Nidal Hasan was noticed by them as early as December 2008. His activities at the time attracted the interest of “one of their Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs).” Hasan was communicating with the subject of an unrelated investigation by the JTTF team.
They stated that a review …

Dawn provides this interesting read on the state of affairs in Pakistan and US aid.
Comments in the press and endless TV debates on terrorism and the American offer of aid to combat it have come to sound more like expressions of ego than of realism. These statements appear an exercise in politicking and posturing and do not look the hard economic realities in the eye.
Moreover, the views of political parties are coloured by their own interests. Most unrealistic and perturbing, however, is the stand of the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI). The …

Peter Bergen reports a sobering read at the New Republic about the state of affairs in Afghanistan. Winning in Afghanistan is critical to defeating Al Qaeda.
And yet, as President Obama weighs whether or not to send more troops to Afghanistan, the connection between the region and Al Qaeda has suddenly become a matter of hot dispute in Washington. We are told that September 11 was as much a product of plotting in Hamburg as in Afghanistan; that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are quite distinct groups, and that we can …

A major offensive against the Taliban has begun. War in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The stakes are high in this nuclear armed country. “This time the military has said there will be no deals” with the Taliban. Take a look.
Military spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas and Information Minister Qamaruz Zaman Kaira said at a joint news conference that the army had encircled the area from three directions.
Abbas said the operation involving some 30,000 ground troops would last between six and eight weeks.
After months of aerial bombing …