From the Daily News:

President Obama still insists he will close Guantanamo Bay’s terror prison because it’s a “tremendous recruiting tool for Al Qaeda” — but it’s not much of a tool anymore, a Daily News analysis has found.

Terrorism experts agree with Obama that the blight of past abuses of Gitmo detainees once helped Islamists draw followers to join their radical anti-Western jihad by mentioning the U.S. prison camp in Cuba in its propaganda videos — which are the most visible tool Al Qaeda and its allies use for recruitment.

But Al Qaeda has rarely complained about Guantanamo Bay since Obama pledged to shut it down on his first day in office a year ago, a meticulous scrubbing of jihadi propaganda has revealed.

“As soon as Obama said that, they didn’t miss a beat — they changed up their messaging and said it’s not just about Gitmo, it’s about Bagram, too,” said IntelCenter director Ben Venzke, referring to the U.S. jail in Afghanistan.

Republicans have bashed Obama’s plan to empty Gitmo and transfer its detainees to an empty maximum-security prison in Thomson, Ill.

But, Venzke predicted, “As soon as Illinois gets set up, guess what? (The propaganda) isn’t going to be any different.”

Obama said again this month that, “We will close Guantanamo prison, which has damaged our national security interests and become a tremendous recruiting tool for Al Qaeda.”

“It’s not quite as front and center as it was during the Bush administration,” said Flashpoint Intelligence terror expert Evan Kohlmann. “But Gitmo is still a centerpiece in Al Qaeda’s argument that nothing has changed in the U.S. since Obama’s election.”

You’d have to look hard to find Gitmo mentioned in recent public statements made by Osama Bin Laden and his ilk.

Al Qaeda griped about Gitmo 32 times in its propaganda messages over the past seven years, and its affiliate groups cited it 26 times, U.S. officials told The News. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemen-based franchise, cited Gitmo — where several of its leaders and operatives were once held — as a reason for merging with Saudi Al Qaeda a year ago. But “core” Al Qaeda — Bin Laden’s crew — only brought up the camp four times last year, lumping it in with other prisons where they claim Muslims are held unjustly.

One was a chest-thumping 9/11 anniversary video last year, which starred a who’s who of Al Qaeda.

“Americans have to understand that the important thing isn’t whether our brothers are being held in Cuba, or in Afghanistan, in Diego Garcia, or in Belmarsh, in Michigan, or Montana or in Fort Leavenworth,” ranted American Al Qaeda mouthpiece Adam Gadahn. “They are being held without right by unbelievers in God’s divine law.”

“There doesn’t appear to be a noticeable shift away from Guantanamo in Al Qaeda propaganda,” a U.S. counterterror official told The News. “Al Qaeda has, since the election of President Obama, argued that the continued use of Guantanamo to detain prisoners is evidence the new administration is untrustworthy.”

Blowing his own self-imposed deadline to close the camp by now didn’t help Obama politically, but the official said Gitmo has been deemphasized by the enemy. Al Qaeda now simply argues that Obama “has failed in his pledge to close the facility and calling those promises ‘void slogans,’” the counterterror official said.

<—- Botox gone bad.

From the Times of India:

Terrorists are exploiting a surging black market for the popular anti-wrinkle drug botox to develop bioterrorism weapons, experts say.

Al-Qaida is known to be seeking the deadly botulinum toxin that comprises the active ingredient in botox, and officials say they believe terrorists in Chechnya and elsewhere have established illegal factories to churn out the raw toxin, the Washington Post reported.

Kenneth Coleman, a biodefense expert, said his probe hints that a biologist of modest means and education can easily tap the counterfeit botox market to manufacture 1g of pure toxin, which would be sufficient to kill thousands of people.

The black market for botox has spawned illicit networks of suppliers who mostly work online and don’t demand prescriptions. “There are no major obstacles,” said Coleman, who authored a study for the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. “It’s not hard to get the bacterial strains. But you don’t even have to make it. You can buy it from makers to cause widespread harm.”

Just so you know.

From Fox News:

All charges have been withdrawn in the military commissions against the five suspects in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks being held at Guantanamo Bay.

The charges were dropped “without prejudice,” according to the Defense Department — a procedural move that allows federal officials to transfer the men to trial in a civilian court and also leaves the door open, if necessary, to bring charges again in military commissions.

“This action comes in light of the announcement by the attorney general of the United States that the Department of Justice intends to pursue a prosecution … in federal court in the Southern District of New York,” says a release from the Defense Department.

Currently no suspects stand charged in the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11. U.S. officials sent notification to Congress and families of 9/11 victims Friday afternoon. The order dropping charges was made Thursday.

From the Daily News:

The White House ordered the Justice Department to consider other places to try the 9/11 terror suspects after a wave of opposition to holding the trial in lower Manhattan.

The White House took the action hours after Mayor Bloomberg called Attorney General Eric Holder to say he would “prefer that they did it elsewhere.”

“It would be an inconvenience at the least, and probably that’s too mild a word for people that live in the neighborhood and businesses in the neighborhood,” Bloomberg told reporters. “There are places that would be less expensive for the taxpayers and less disruptive for New York City.”

State leaders have railed against a plan to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in Manhattan federal court since Holder proposed it last month.

The order to consider new venues does not change the White House’s position that Mohammed should be tried in civilian court.

“President Obama is still committed to trying Mohammed and four other terrorist detainees in federal court,” spokesman Bill Burton said Thursday. (Editor’s Note: This is the same Bill Burton who called KSM a ‘murderous thug’ – no mention of his being an Islamic terrorist, of course.)

“He agrees with the attorney general’s opinion that … he and others can be litigated successfully and securely in the United States of America, just like others have,” Burton said. Burton referred questions about the location debate to the Justice Department.

Officials there have apparently been caught off guard by the fiery opposition in New York, an insider told the Daily News. “They’re in a tizzy at Justice over Bloomberg,” a federal law enforcement official said. “It’s like a half-baked souffle – the plan is collapsing.”

Meanwhile, a source told The News that Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly was the driving force behind the push by Manhattan business leaders to change the mayor’s mind on the trial. Kelly made an “extremely powerful” speech to a roomful of 150 prominent business leaders about how disruptive and costly the trial would be for lower Manhattan at an annual police charity event on Jan. 13, the source said.

“What turned this around was when Ray made a presentation to the Police Foundation,” the source said. “Everyone went from thinking, ‘Justice will be served’ to thinking ‘We are screwed.’”

Indeed.

Foxnews
Five months ago, British shoe bomber Richard Reid, who is serving a life sentence for his failed attempt in 2001 to blow up a trans-Atlantic airliner, was moved out of the isolation wing at the Supermax prison in Colorado — prompting some conservative lawmakers to suggest that the Obama administration is making it possible for the self-proclaimed Al Qaeda terrorist to radicalize his fellow prisoners.

Critics said the move was part of what they say is a troubling pattern in the administration to treat terrorists with kid gloves.

“This decision is another product of the Obama administration’s alarming effort to treat terrorist killers like everyday common criminals,” said Stephen Miller, a spokesman for Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee and a strong critic of the president’s national security policies.

“It raises troubling questions about how terrorists like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be treated once they too enter our civilian justice system,” he said. “As Sen. Sessions has said, the Obama administration is returning America to the law enforcement approach that failed us on 9/11.”

Jan. 28 (Bloomberg) — NASA would receive a $6 billion boost in funding over five years to spur companies to develop rockets capable of taking astronauts to the International Space Station, an administration official said.

In total, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration would receive $100 billion over five years under President Barack Obama’s fiscal year 2011 budget, the official said.

“My initial impression is that this is a real significant indication of support for NASA in a time of tight budgets,” said former astronaut Sally Ride in an interview.

The study, obtained by Fox News, found that Pashtun men commonly have sex with other men, admire other men physically, have sexual relationships with boys and shun women both socially and sexually — yet they completely reject the label of “homosexual.” The research was conducted as part of a longstanding effort to better understand Afghan culture and improve Western interaction with the local people. …

In one instance, a group of local male interpreters had contracted gonorrhea anally but refused to believe they could have contracted it sexually — “because they were not homosexuals.”

They’re only following what the founder of islam did in his spare time…

Then he [Mohammed] said, ‘Where is the little one? Call the little one to me.’ Hasan came running and jumped into his lap. Then he put his hand in his beard. Then the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, opened his mouth and put his tongue in his mouth. Then he said, O Allah, I love him, so love him and the one who loves him!’”

Maybe Newbie, from the Jawa Report, can bait Hakimullah to finally release that video with the NYT if he’s still alive.
One India

Peshawar, Jan.28 (ANI): The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Hakimullah Mehsud has succumbed to injuries that he had purportedly sustained in US drone strike earlier this month, unconfirmed reports said.

According to sources, Hakimullah’s condition had deteriorated over the few days, and doctors who were treating him at his second father-in-law’s house in Mamozai village of Orakzai Agency failed to revive the terrorist commander.

We should fire some Hellfire missiles in that direction just to be sure.

When asked about the report, ISPR spokesperson Major General Athar Abbas said the reports regarding Hakimullah’s death were yet to be confirmed

“We are also hearing the reports, which have not been confirmed so far,” The News quoted Abbas, as saying.