Officials: Bin Laden eyed small cities as targets

Although hunted and in hiding, Osama bin Laden remained the driving force behind each recent al-Qaida terror plot, U.S. officials say, citing his private journal and other documents recovered in last week's raid.

Awaiting Navy SEALs killed him a week ago, bin Laden dispensed chilling advice to the leaders of al-Qaida groups from Yemen to London: Hit Los Angeles, not just New York, he wrote. Target trains as well as planes. If possible, strike on major dates, such as the Fourth of July and the impending 10th anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Over all, he urged, kill added Americans in a single attack, to drive them from the Arab world.

Bin Laden's written words illustrate that counterterrorist officials worldwide underestimated how key he remained to running the organization, shattering the conservative thinking that he had been summary from side to side separation to being an inspiring figurehead, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

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Killing Americans: On uncharted ground in attack

President Barack Obama steered the nation's war machine into unexplored territory Friday when a U.S. drone attack a convoy in Yemen and killed two American citizens who had develop into central figures in al-Qaida.

It was believed to be the first instance in which a U.S. citizen was tracked and execute based on secret intelligence and the president's say-so. And it raised main questions about the limitations of presidential power.

Anwar al-Awlaki, the target of the U.S. drone attack, was one of the best-known al-Qaida figures after Osama bin Laden, American intelligence officials had linked him to two nearly catastrophic attacks on U.S.-bound planes, an airliner on Christmas 2009 and cargo planes previous year the second American killed in the drone attack, Samir Kahn, was the editor of Inspire, a slick online publication aimed at al-Qaida sympathizers in the West.

Yemen: Al-Qaida's al-Awlaki killed in airstrike

The Yemeni government has released an executive statement saying the U.S.-born al-Qaida cleric Anwar al-Awlaki has been killed.

The government says al-Awlaki was embattled and killed 5 miles (8 kilometers) from the town of Khashef in the Province of al-Jawf the town is located 87 miles (140 kilometers) east of the capital Sanaa the statement says the act was launched on Friday around 9:55 a.m. It gave no other details.

If the death is confirmed, al-Awlaki would be the nearly everyone prominent al-Qaida figure to be killed since Osama bin Laden's death in a U.S. raid in Pakistan in May.

Obama's task: Maintaining support for Afghan war

President Obama will face a stiff supporting challenge Wednesday in presenting his plan for a gradual end to the U.S. military contribution in Afghanistan. His prime-time address must remind a skeptical electorate and a anxious Congress that the country’s longest war remains worth fighting — and funding — for several more years.

Obama’s generals have requested more time to combine the gain they say have been made since the president dispatch 33,000 additional U.S. troops to the country last year. The escalation, which angered his party’s antiwar base, follows a months-long strategy review to decide how to salvage a flagging war effort.

Since then, public opinion has turned more and more against the war, except for a now-diminishing boost in hold after the killing of Osama bin Laden in May.As he begins the promised withdrawal, Obama’s face will be to provide his generals with the resources to wage the war’s final phase while persuade Congress that, at a time of fiscal strain, maintain most of a $10 billion-a-month war effort is worthwhile.

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Pakistan's president denies harboring bin Laden

Pakistan's president starved of proposals his country's security forces may have wrapped in cotton wool Osama bin Laden previous to he was killed by American forces, and said their collaboration with the United States helped locate the world's most wanted man.

Asif Ali Zardari said, though, that Monday's operation in opposition to bin Laden was not conducted with Pakistani forces — confirms accounts by U.S. officials that Islamabad was not involved in the raid and did not even know in relation to it until it was over.

His comments in a Washington Post view piece Monday were Pakistan's first official retort to the doubts by U.S. lawmakers and other critics, which could further sour relations stuck between Islamabad and Washington at a crucial point in the war in Afghanistan.

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Bin Laden's demise: US rejoices after a decade

After almost a decade of anger and fear, America rejoice Monday at the termination of Osama bin Laden, the terror brain at the rear the horrific 9/11 attacks. Navy SEALs who killed the world's most-wanted terrorist held a trove of al-Qaida documents to pore over, and President Barack Obama laid plans to visit New York's ground zero.

Bin Laden, killed in a passionate firefight in a daring raid at his prepared hideout in Pakistan, was hunted down based on in sequence first gleaned years ago from prisoner at secret CIA prison sites in Eastern Europe, officials disclose.

His body was speedily taken away for burial at sea, except not before a DNA match was done to prove his identity. A U.S. official said there also was photos presentation bin Laden with the fatal wound above his left eye, a firing that tore away part of his skull. The photos were not without delay released.

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After Uncertainty, a Moment of Triumph in the Situation Room: 'We've IDed Geronimo'

The people who collected Sunday in the state of affairs Room are acquainted with all about high-pressure situations. Except this was something else. For 40 minutes, the President and his senior aides could do not anything but watch the video screens and listen to the operation and resulting firefight on the other side of the world. At Barack Obama's orders, special operations teams were invading the airspace of an overseas country, targeting a compound with unfamiliar occupants, and hoping to get out untouched.

The objective was America's No. 1 enemy, Osama bin Laden. Other than no one knew for sure if he was even there.The President sat stone-faced from side to side much of the events. Quite a few of his aides, however, were pacing. For long periods of time, nobody said a thing, as all and sundry waited for the next update.

In the modern age, Presidents can knowledge their own military actions like a video game, except for that they have no manage over the events. They cannot, and would not, intervene to contact the commanders running the process. So when word came that a helicopter had been ashore, a sign that the plan was already off course, the tension greater than before.

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US kills Osama bin Laden decade after 9/11 attacks

Osama bin Laden, the face of global terrorism and draftsman of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, was killed in a firefight with elite American forces Monday, then speedily buried at sea in an eye-catching finale to a secretive decade on the run.

Long alleged to be hiding in caves, bin Laden was tracked down in a pricey, custom-built hideout not far from a Pakistani military greenhouse.

"Fairness has been done," President Barack Obama said in a theatrical statement at the White House while a crowd cheered outside and hundreds more congregated at ground zero in Manhattan to celebrate the news.

The military operation took mere minutes.

U.S. helicopters commuter boat elite counter-terrorism troops into the complex identified by the CIA as bin Laden's hideout — and back out over again in less than 40 minutes. Bin Laden was shot in the head, officials said, after he and his bodyguards resisted the attack.

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NATO official: Bin Laden living comfortably in Pakistan

Osama bin Laden is living comfortably in northwest Pakistan, secluded by local tribes people and some members of the country's cleverness service, a NATO official has told CNN. The news undercuts the U.S. government's description of the al-Qaida leader as on the run, one terror professional tells The Upshot.

U.S. brainpower officials have long alleged that bin Laden is living in the remote tribal region of northwest Pakistan. But at times, the government has also claim that the al-Qaida leader has had to move often from one safehouse to another, impair his ability to plot attacks.

The NATO official's commentary undermine that claim, Michael Scheuer, a former particular adviser to the chief of the CIA's bin Laden unit, told The consequence.

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Indonesian ex-policeman claims Al-Qaeda link

JAKARTA (AFP) – An Indonesian police officer who quit the force to become a terrorist said Thursday he was affiliated to Al-Qaeda and had trained about 170 militants to wage jihad, or "holy war".

Mohammed Sofyan Tsauri, 34, made the confession to reporters as he appeared at a Jakarta court for the start of his trial on terrorism-related charges.

"I am affiliated with Al-Qaeda and in contact with Abu Sayyaf," he said, referring to Osama bin Laden's network and a Philippines-based Islamist militant outfit.

"I became a terrorist after I quit the police (in 2008)... What I have done isn't an act of terror, it's an obligatory religious activity ordered by God."

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American arrested searching for Osama bin Laden

Islamabad, Pakistan -- A 52-year-old American citizen who said that he was searching for Osama bin Laden and was detained in Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan this week, Pakistani police said Tuesday.

The Californian named Gary Brooks Faulkner was carrying a pistol,in a sword, night-vision equipment and Christian religious books, said Mumtaz Ahmed, a police chief in the area.

Faulkner was detained as he was walking from Pakistan toward the border into Nuristan province in Afghanistan, Ahmed said. He told police that he had been looking for bin Laden since 9/11 and had traveled to that area several times before, Ahmed said.

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