Is there more than a casual connection between al Qaeda and the Chechen separatist rebels who took 1,000 hostages at a school in Beslan, Russia this week, killing 338 of them, including 156 children? Russian officials think so and point out that 10 of the 32 attackers were Arab. All but two were killed.

Chechens have been affiliated with the al Qaeda terror network, and an Arab connection suggests a further link between the Chechen rebel movement and international terrorism. Chechen rebels have been fighting Russian troops for a decade, seeking independence. Itar-Tass quoted an unidentified intelligence official as saying the school assault was financed by Abu Omar As-Seyf, an Arab who allegedly represents al Qaeda in Chechnya, and directed by Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev, The Associated Press reported.

Valery Andreyev, local head of the FSB security service, was quoted by Moscow radio station Ekho Moskvy as saying the militants may have received help from local police, possibly because they were coerced, Reuters reported.

A State Department official today said the U.S. is close to capturing Osama bin Laden.

The United States and its allies have moved closer to capturing Osama bin Laden in the last two months, a top U.S. counterterrorism official said in a television interview broadcast Saturday. "If he has a watch, he should be looking at it because the clock is ticking. He will be caught," Joseph Cofer Black, the U.S. State Department coordinator for counterterrorism, told private Geo television network.

As many, including us, have said a few times, it will be no surprise when Bush pulls Osama out of a hat before the election. And foreign newspapers have claimed a few times we've already captured him. See here and here.

Take another look at Osama bin Lotto. And at this Doublethink discussion .

Update: And Iddybud.

Specialist Ryan G. Anderson was sentenced yesterday to life in prison for trying to make a deal to pass military secrets to agents posing as al Qaeda.

Lawyers for Specialist Anderson argued that he suffered from mental disorders, including bipolar disorder and Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism marked by eccentric behavior, as well as from a tendency to create alternate personas in order to make himself feel important, said Jeff Young, spokesman for the Fort Lewis Army base south of here.

How did he get into the National Guard in the first place? Is there no screening process?

Russian Computer Expert Predicts Internet Terrorist Attack

Terrorists will paralyze the Internet on August 26, a Russian expert in antivirus programs said on Tuesday.

Speaking at a conference hosted by Russian Information Agency Novosti, Aleksandr Gostev from Kaspersky Labs said information on this terrorist attack was published on special websites. He did not elaborate.

First of all, the United States and Western Europe will suffer from the attack, Gostev was quoted by the agency as saying. The head of the labs, Yevgeny Kaspersky, reminded the audience that similar attacks had earlier paralyzed the Internet in South Korea. He added that it would be “impossible” to stop terrorist organizations if they “get down to business”.

[via Norwegianity who got it from Drudge.]

If you were thinking about transporting contraband into the U.S. through Canada, you better think again. The borders are about to become increasingly populated with government agents:

....federal officials on Friday opened the first of five planned bases for regular flights to look for drug runners and others crossing illegally by air or land. The base of operations, called the Bellingham Air Marine Branch, is to have a staff of nearly 70, two helicopters, an airplane and a high-speed boat by year's end. Similar bases have policed the Mexican border for three decades, but the facility here is the first on the Canadian border.

Five new bases, which will dot the border from Washington to upstate New York, are a response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as well as smuggling of illegal immigrants and drugs, including British Columbia's potent strains of marijuana.

A response to terrorism? Bush and Ashcroft will do anything to avoid going after the real terrorists. That's why they are going to convince you that terrorists and drugs go hand in hand like milk and cookies. They want to fill you with dread of "narco-terrorists" who smuggle "narco-dollars" out of the country with which they will build biological and radioactive missiles and bombs and then launch unspeakable attacks on our cities and power plants and schools.

They are planning on creating new criminal laws punishing drug offenses as terrorist crimes. They think if they make you very afraid you will forget they haven't found Osama or cracked al-Qaeda.

A few days ago, Biltbud at Salon Talk wrote about a series of correlations between past terror alerts and political events unfavorable to the Bush administration. Julius Blog takes it one step further:

I also added additional news items and other instances that I found out, detailing the terror alerts over the last few years, and located the original sources for many of these news articles. Soon, Biltud and I started to research together all these occurrences, and more interesting "coincidences" started to appear. We finally built this timeline of terror alerts and how they relate to the news headlines of the days immediately prior to that very alert. I think it's very easy to see a pattern recurring.

Very interesting. Coincidence? How many times can we buy into that? [link via Cursor.]

U.S. officials are further refining the expected terror attack:

U.S. intelligence officials say a high-profile political assassination, triggered by the public release of a new message from Osama bin Laden, will lead off the next major al Qaeda terrorist attack...."The goal of the next attack is twofold: to damage the U.S. economy and to undermine the U.S. election," the official said. "The view of al Qaeda is 'anybody but Bush.' "

The officials also said the terrorist group has begun using female members for preattack surveillance and possibly as suicide bombers, thinking that women will have an easier time getting past security checkpoints at airports, borders and ports. The al Qaeda attack plans call for bombings using trucks and cars, and hijacked aircraft, including commercial airliners and helicopters. "There is a particular concern that chemical trucks will be used," one official said.

Officials say we will hear from bin Laden soon:

Regarding the new bin Laden message, the officials said there are intelligence reports, some of them sketchy, that a new tape from the al Qaeda leader will surface soon.

[thread got hijacked, comments closed]

This is not a good omen. While the Administration claims this is being done for the purpose of preventing terrorist attacks, remember, that once the Government gets new power, it rarely gives it back.

Citing concerns about terrorists crossing the nation's borders, the Department of Homeland Security said on Tuesday that it planned to give border patrol agents sweeping new powers to deport illegal aliens from the frontiers with Mexico and Canada without providing them the opportunity to make their case before an immigration judge.

The move, which will take effect this month, represents a broad expansion of the authority of the thousands of law enforcement agents who patrol the nation's borders. Until now, border patrol agents typically delivered undocumented immigrants to the custody of the immigration courts, where judges determined whether they should be deported or remain in the United States.

The ACLU has every right to be concerned as the Govenment seeks to expand the no-fly list:

The Sept. 11 Commission wants the government to expand the no-fly list airlines now check to keep suspected terrorists off planes, consolidating as many as 12 secret lists maintained by different intelligence agencies. That worries the American Civil Liberties Union, which has already sued the government, saying the airlines' effort to keep terror suspects and other dangerous people off planes ensnares innocent passengers and subjects them to unnecessary searches and delays. Also, the government provides no way for those wrongly named to get themselves removed.

"Right now, if you're on the list, you're in a no-fly jail. There is now no way out of this," said Barry Steinhardt, the director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Project.

Michael Scheuer, C.I.A. agent and author of Imperial Hubris, has been gagged by the CIA and prevented from speaking out to criticize Bush's intelligence policies and failures.

It is inappropriate for CIA personnel to comment on current events unless specifically sanctioned to do so," a CIA official, who spoke on condition they not be named, told United Press International. The official said that since Wednesday, Scheuer -- whose best-selling "Imperial Hubris: Why The West Is Losing The War On Terror" was published last month -- had been required to give five business days notice to the public affairs office of the CIA of any interviews he intended to conduct, and submit "a detailed outline of what he plans to say for approval."

He has been effectively gagged," said Scheuer's editor, Christina Davidson, of Brassey's Inc., who published "Imperial Hubris," and Scheuer's first book, "Through Our Enemies Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America." "This is clearly an effort to stop him from saying what a lot of people in the CIA think about the president's proposals for reform (of the intelligence community)."

TChris wrote about the book here. You can order it here:

Imperial Hubris:
Why the West is Losing the War on Terror

Avedon Carol at Sideshow weighs in on the new terror alerts. She disagrees with Kevin Drum but agrees, in part, with Lambert. She says,

Don't you guys get it yet? Why do you think that the most secretive government in our lifetime is constantly announcing to the media the one thing that everyone has always agreed government should be secretive about? The color codes, the showy Homeland Security apparatus, the whole bunch of it is just a charade - they are doing it instead of doing their jobs. It's all political. Good security is not showy; it happens where nobody sees, and nobody knows until the threat is over.

Update: Left Coaster says Bush and Ashcroft knew of current terror threat information three years ago.

Except it now turns out that John Ashcroft’s Justice Department had in its possession as far back as March 2003 video evidence of Al Qaeda casing out landmarks here in the US.

The Washington Post has a long article on truck bombs, and how the U.S. is ill-equipped to catch them.

by TChris

A joint report by the American Bar Association and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund concludes that changes in immigration laws "have eroded the due process protection afforded to immigrants."

“This report is a clear call to action,” said ABA President Dennis W. Archer. “The laws as they stand are harming thousands of U.S. families and their immigrant loved ones. We must fulfill our nation's promise as a truly inclusive society by addressing these issues and making changes that provide our nations’ immigrants the fairness and due process protections that are integral to our system of justice.”

The report found that low-level immigration officials make important decisions without the constraint of procedural safeguards or judicial review; that lawful permanent residents are being deported for activities that occurred long ago, before they were deportable offenses; and that people with compelling reasons to stay in the country who would not have been deported in the past (including abused women and abandoned children, people who fled genocide or torture, and the developmentally disabled) are now being deported.

Current policies disrupt the lives of immigrants and citizens alike while costing taxpayers a billion dollars a year. According to Esther Lardent, chair of the ABA Commission on Immigration, which authored the study:

“This report shows that part of our American identity is at risk. It’s time for us to come together and restore our reputation as a beacon of freedom and guardian of due process under the law.”