From the AP:

A former congressman and delegate to the United Nations was indicted Wednesday as part of a terrorist fundraising ring that allegedly sent more than $130,000 to an al-Qaida and Taliban supporter who has threatened U.S. and international troops in Afghanistan.

The former Republican congressman from Michigan, Mark Deli Siljander, was charged with money laundering, conspiracy and obstructing justice for allegedly lying about lobbying senators on behalf of an Islamic charity that authorities said was secretly sending funds to terrorists.

A 42-count indictment, unsealed in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Mo., accuses the Islamic American Relief Agency of paying Siljander $50,000 for the lobbying - money that turned out to be stolen from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Siljander, who served two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, was appointed by President Reagan to serve as a U.S. delegate to the United Nations for one year in 1987.

Is this a case of “function follows form”, or “…the egg and the chicken”? I don’t know. But as much as it may cause your head to hurt, it certainly has an ‘appropriate’ feel to it. And all of it brought to you by FOX!

Kiefer Sutherland will serve 48 days in jail

Actor pleaded no contest to DUI charges; A-24- season will go on as planned

LOS ANGELES - Kiefer Sutherland pleaded no contest Tuesday in his drunken driving case and will begin serving a 48-day jail sentence while his Fox TV drama “24″ begins its winter production break in December.

The show’s star agreed to serve 30 days for driving with a blood-alcohol level above the legal limit of .08 percent, as well as 18 days for violating his probation for a 2004 drunken driving case, according to court records.

The actor was not in the courtroom and his attorney, Blair Berk, entered the plea agreement. A second misdemeanor charge, driving under the influence, was dropped. The charges stemmed from a traffic stop in Los Angeles last month.

Associated Press

MSNBC.com

By JASON STRAZIUSO
The Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan - A Taliban suicide bomber wearing an Afghan army uniform set off a huge explosion Saturday while trying to board a military bus in the capital, killing 30 people, most of them soldiers, officials said. Hours later, the Afghan president offered to meet personally with the Taliban leader for peace talks and give the militants a position in government.

Strengthening a call for negotiations he has made with increasing frequency the last several weeks, President Hamid Karzai said he was willing to meet with Taliban leader Mullah Omar and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former prime minister and factional warlord leader.

“If I find their address, there is no need for them to come to me, I’ll personally go there and get in touch with them,” Karzai said. “Esteemed Mullah, sir, and esteemed Hekmatyar, sir, why are you destroying the country?”

Karzai said he has contacts with Taliban militants through tribal elders but that there are no direct and open government communication channels with the fighters.

read more HERE

cross posted from Crooks and Liars

I spoke with Air America’s Randi Rhodes on Monday about the President being the real terrorist. Randi told me and her audience that she didn’t think the country could get “it’s head around that right now”. I think it’s time for American citizens to get their heads around that now. Have you called your Congressperson and Senators about getting this evil bastard out of office? WHY NOT? - JS

Some of the transcript from Keith Olbermann’s discussion with Rep. Harman:

Olbermann: “Nobody doubts the existence of terrorism or terrorists or the need to act on their existence, but at this point, is our freedom beginning to be or even now already at greater risk from terrorism, or from people who are exploiting the fact of terrorism to gain unprecedented and perhaps irreversible rights to spy and detain and rendition and everything else?”

Harman: “Well, I think this is a-a quite a scary period in our history and there are right answers. We can get surveillance right. I think most of us, maybe all of us in the House and in the Senate support surveilling people who are trying to harm us, but we can do that within the careful framework of FISA. FISA is not broken. What’s broken is the view of executive power that some hold in the administration. They claim it trumps all laws and our constitution.”

read more and see the video at Crooks and Liars

By David Morgan
Reuters

…meanwhile, if I take a copy of the Koran on an airplane, I’d find myself in Syria getting hot pokers up the wazoo!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nearly 10,000 people from countries designated as sponsors of terrorism have entered the United States under an immigration diversity program with relatively few restrictions, a report released on Friday said.

The report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office said the State Department’s inspector general warned in 2003 that the Diversity Visa Program posed a significant risk to national security and recommended it be closed to people from countries on the U.S. list of state terrorism sponsors.

But four years later, the program remains open to people from those nations and little is known about what becomes of them once they enter the United States, the GAO said.

From 2000 to 2006, the program allowed 3,703 people from Sudan, 3,164 from Iran, 2,763 from Cuba and 162 from Syria to enter the United States and apply for permanent legal resident status, the report said. That totals 9,792 new immigrants.

“We found no documented evidence of … immigrants from state sponsors of terrorism committing any terrorist acts,” said the GAO, a nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress.

“However … the Department of Homeland Security, terrorism experts and federal law enforcement officials familiar with immigration fraud believe that some individuals including terrorists and criminals could use fraudulent means to enter or remain in the United States.”

The report quoted a U.S. security officer in Turkey as saying it would be possible for Iranian intelligence officers to pose as applicants and not be detected if their identities were not already known to U.S. intelligence.

read more HERE

What was it Bush said……what was it? We’d go after any terrorists or any country who supports terrorists? Why isn’t he shooting his mouth off to them?

Despite six years of promises, U.S. officials say Saudi Arabia continues to look the other way at wealthy individuals identified as sending millions of dollars to al Qaeda.

“If I could somehow snap my fingers and cut off the funding from one country, it would be Saudi Arabia,” Stuart Levey, the under secretary of the Treasury in charge of tracking terror financing, told ABC News.

Despite some efforts as a U.S. ally in the war on terror, Levey says Saudi Arabia has dropped the ball. Not one person identified by the United States and the United Nations as a terror financier has been prosecuted by the Saudis, Levey says.

“When the evidence is clear that these individuals have funded terrorist organizations, and knowingly done so, then that should be prosecuted and treated as real terrorism because it is,” Levey says.

More at the Blotter

This is a moment to seize. The Kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us re-order this world around us.

-Tony Blair, October 2nd, 2001.

9/11 remains a day of reflection and remembrance. Here’s overwritten-but’sincere pieces on 9/11 from 2001 and 2002, as well as blog posts from 2005 and 2006.

As I’ve written before, I always knew that eventually 9/11 would be politicized and misappropriated, but I hoped it would take a while and the damage might be minimized. However, this year, even with less blatant demagoguery about 9/11 (so far; Bush will speak later this week), the manipulation feels more present and grating to me. “Rising above it” may be the right response for some people, and they are certainly entitled to it. But this year, for me, that feels irresponsible. It’s impossible for me to not to think of Petraeus and Crocker and their misleading (at the very least, mistaken) testimony to Congress. It’s impossible for me not to think about the shell game going on yet again, the amazing missed opportunities, and the deep moral crime of sacrificing something sacred and profound for personal gain and group greed. In the process of what the Bush administration has wrought, so many have been punished for absolutely no good purpose. I can still feel sad and disappointed, but so far, anger and disgust are frankly winning out.
(more…)

By KATRIN BENNHOLD and MARK LANDLER
The New York Times

KARLSRUHE , Germany , Sept. 6 - German investigators were searching today for 10 suspects in connection with a foiled terrorist attack on German and American targets by Islamic militants, officials said.

Joerg Ziercke, the head of Germany’s Federal Crime Office, left, and German federal prosecutor Monika Harms at press conference in Karlsruhe Wednesday with hydrogen peroxide seized from the suspects.

The suspects are believed to have provided support to the three main suspects in the plot, according to August Hanning, the deputy interior minister and a former head of Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the B.N.D. Their arrests were announced Wednesday, a day after they were captured in a raid in western Germany.

While some of the suspect still at large are believed to still be in Germany, Mr. Hanning said the arrests Tuesday had ended the security threat.

“There is no danger coming from this concrete cell,” he told German television station ARD on Thursday. But he also warned that Germany remained a target for Islamic terrorists and in that sense the risk remained high.

Security services were “concerned” about what he described as “the order to undertake attacks in Germany,” Mr. Hanning said.

Tuesday’s raid brought to an end months of undercover surveillance operation during which German agents had monitored the suspects closely. Authorities seized large quantities of hydrogen peroxide, which can be mixed with other chemicals to make explosives, and military-grade detonators. The three men arrested were two German citizens who had converted to Islam and a Turkish resident of Germany. The police and security officials said they attacks they were planning could have been deadlier than those that killed dozens in London and Madrid.

read more HERE

Stay tuned…… I’m sure there will be many more to come. Blowback…..it’s a bitch.

Three men have been arrested in Germany on suspicion of planning a “massive” terrorist attack on US facilities in the country, officials have said.
Federal prosecutor Monika Harms said the three had trained at camps in Pakistan and procured some 700kg (1,500lbs) of chemicals for explosives.

She said the accused had sought to target facilities visited by Americans, such as nightclubs, pubs or airports.

Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung said the men had posed “an imminent threat”.

Media reports said they were planning attacks against a US military base in Ramstein and Frankfurt airport.

More at the BBC

By ERIC TUCKER,
Associated Press Writer

NEWPORT, R.I. - Large grocery and discount stores across the country have been targeted by a caller who threatens to blow up shoppers and workers with a bomb if employees fail to wire money to an account overseas, authorities said.

Frightened workers have wired thousands of dollars - and in one case took off their clothes - to placate a caller who said he was watching them but may have been thousands of miles away. The FBI and police said Wednesday they are investigating similar bomb threats at more than 15 stores in at least 11 states - all in the past week.

“At this point, there’s enough similarities that we think it’s potentially one person or one group,” FBI spokesman Rich Kolko said from Washington.

No one has been arrested, no bombs have been found, and no one has been hurt, though the calls have triggered store evacuations and prompted lengthy sweeps by police and bomb squads.

Law enforcement officials say the caller claims to have a bomb and orders the store to send money to an account through an in’store money transfer service such as Western Union. He often claims to be able to see inside the store, but officials believe he was making it up.

In Newport, employees at a Wal-Mart got three calls Tuesday morning and wired three payments totaling $10,000 to an account out of the country, Sgt. James Quinn said. A spokeswoman for Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said the company was assisting in the investigation, but offered no further comment.

read more HERE