“Al-Qaeda” on The Daily Caller

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration is weighing policy changes that would lift a tattered veil of secrecy from its controversial campaign of drone strikes, a recognition that the expanding program has become a regular part of U.S. global counterterrorism operations. (more)

The Secretary General of the United Nations said he believes al-Qaida is responsible for a series of bombings in Syria last week and may be trying to establish a foothold in the troubled Middle Eastern nation. (more)

Yesterday’s revelation of a new al Qaeda terrorist plot is a reminder that the group’s Yemen-based franchise, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), is strong and ready to kill Americans. (more)

President Barack Obama has promised not to attack Pakistan-based al-Qaida leaders or fighters from bases inside Afghanistan. (more)

Iran has improved its ties with al-Qaida as part of a campaign to target Western interests around the world that could lead to a spectacular attack in Europe, The Daily Telegraph has learned. (more)

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters)- Israel killed the leader of an al Qaeda-inspired faction in the Gaza Strip on Friday, accusing him of involvement in firing rockets and a planned attack on the Jewish state from the neighboring Egyptian Sinai. (more)

Its dramatic collapse several hours after the Twin Towers fell triggered a decade of conspiracy theories. (more)

If there were questions about al-Qaida’s role in post-Gadhafi Libya, VICE reporter Sherif Elhelwa provides some answers in a new story with eyewitness descriptions. (more)

Al Qaida is bashing the Obama administration for killing cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and propagandist Samir Khan in a drone strike last month. Both were American citizens. (more)

Al Qaeda’s propaganda division reportedly wants Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to shut his big yapper. (more)

One would have thought that reiterating the consensus view of every expert would have been enough to override Jamie Weinstein’s neoconservative ideological intransigence. But in a rebuttal to my column correcting him on al Qaeda’s motivations for 9/11, he declines the opportunity to succumb to the evidence. (more)

I would say that it must have been amateur hour at Antiwar.com after reading the response from the site’s assistant editor, John Glaser, to my column deconstructing Ron Paul’s foreign policy views, but I suspect that every hour is amateur hour there. (more)

In an op-ed published by The Daily Caller on Wednesday, Jamie Weinstein argued against Ron Paul’s analysis that al Qaeda attacked us on 9/11 in response to aggressive U.S. foreign policy. Embarrassingly, his rejection lies in stark contrast to the conclusions reached by the CIA, the State Department, virtually all of the academic literature written on the subject and al Qaeda members’ own explanations of their motivations. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A top al-Qaida operative was killed earlier this week in Pakistan’s tribal areas, U.S. and Pakistani officials said Thursday. The death landed another blow against the besieged terrorist network. (more)

Zuhdi Jasser is an Arizona medical doctor, a U.S. Navy veteran, and founder of the American Islamic Foundation for Democracy, and a co-founder of the American Islamic Leadership Coalition, which opposes the political goals of the Islamists in the Muslim Brotherhood’s U.S. network of political groups. He’s testified before Congress on the goals and influence of the brotherhood groups, who use a mix of politics and violence to slowly build Islamist neighborhoods, towns and governments in the Arab world, in Europe and the United States. (more)

U.S. officials have reported that a drone strike in Pakistan killed al Qaeda senior leader Atiyah Abd al Rahman. The successful targeting of senior terrorist leaders has become a signature tool in the long war. Yet, as we have seen repeatedly since 2001, the decapitation of leadership in and of itself has not resulted in the dismantling and defeat of terrorist networks. Al Qaeda’s deadly presence in Iraq did not end when American forces targeted and killed al Qaeda in Iraq’s leader, Abu Musab al Zarqawi. A successful campaign targeting al Qaeda leaders in Yemen after 9/11 did not extinguish al Qaeda’s ability to regenerate in that state. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. and Pakistani officials said al-Qaida’s second-in-command, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, has been killed in Pakistan, delivering another big blow to a terrorist group that the U.S. believes to be on the verge of defeat. (more)

WASHINGTON – Even terrorists are making Weiner jokes. (more)

Osama bin Laden was working to assemble a team of militants to attack the U.S. on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, according to communications Navy SEALs seized from his Pakistani hideout when they killed the al Qaeda leader this spring. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — After Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden, the White House released a photo of President Barack Obama and his Cabinet inside the Situation Room, watching the daring raid unfold. (more)