Intel and OPs update

+ Lockheed Martin Ships 500th Patriot To The US Army
Dallas TX (SPX) Aug 17, 2007 - Lockheed Martin recently recognized delivery of the 500th PAC-3 Missile to the U.S. Army during a celebration at the PAC-3 Missile production facility in Camden, AR. PAC-3 Missiles have been delivered and deployed around the world with U.S. forces and U.S. allies. The PAC-3 Missile is currently the world's only fielded pure kinetic energy air defense missile. ... more


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+ Russian bombers getting closer to US: American commander
Washington (AFP) Aug 14, 2007 - Long-range Russian bombers are flying more often and closer to US territory, a top US commander said Tuesday, as Moscow made its latest show of military might with exercises over the North Pole. General Gene Renuart, Commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and US Northern Command, the agencies charged with protecting US and Canadian airspace, said that US forces would c ... more

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MILF Seeks Leverage as Fighting Against Abu Sayyaf and MNLF Escalates

On August 3, U.S. federal agents arrested Rahmat Abdhir, a 43-year old dual Malaysian national working as a computer engineer in California. In the 16-count indictment, he was charged with providing material support to a designated terrorist, Zulkiflir Abdhir (aka Zulkifli bin Hir or Marwan)—a senior leader of Jemaah Islamiya (JI), currently based in the southern Philippines—and Rahmat's younger brother (Terrorism Focus, April 3). Rahmat was in frequent e-mail contact with Zulkifli, and sent him more than $10,000, and also packages of materials, including ammunition clips, two way radios, rifle scopes, uniforms and other equipment. Perhaps the most interesting part of the indictment was e-mail correspondence between Zulkifli and Rahmat's brother that sheds some important light on the very complicated dynamics of the ongoing relationship between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), hardline elements within the MILF and JI. The spate of fighting between the MILF and government forces in June-August puts the relationship into further context.

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Abu Yahya al-Libi: Al-Qaeda's Theological Enforcer - Part 2
By Michael Scheuer

Today, the most lethal strategic danger to al-Qaeda's viability and goals is the same as when Osama bin Laden declared war on the United States in 1996: the threat of a premature, worldwide intra-civilizational conflict between Sunni Muslims and Shiites. Bin Laden has always kept al-Qaeda's three main strategic priorities clear and consistent: first, to use incremental increases in force to drive the United States as far as possible out of the Muslim world; second, to destroy the apostate Muslim regimes and Israel; and finally, once the first two steps have been accomplished, to violently settle the Sunnis' historical scores with the heretical Shiites. Having set this agenda in the mid-1990s, bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri have repeatedly reinforced the absolute need to avoid widespread Shiite-Sunni conflict. Bin Laden made this point on the eve of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in February 2003 (Waaqiah.com, February 14, 2003); al-Zawahiri reemphasized it to brutally anti-Shiite Abu Musab al-Zarqawi—then al-Qaeda's chief in Iraq—in July 2005
As noted in Part 1 of this article,