Six men from the former Yugoslavia and the Middle East have been arrested for an alleged planned attack on military members at Fort Dix.

Authorities say there is no evidence connecting them to al-Qaida.

``If these people did something, then they deserve to be punished to the fullest extent of the law,'' said Sohail Mohammed, a lawyer who represented scores of detainees after the 2001 attacks. ``But when the government says `Islamic militants,' it sends a message to the public that Islam and militancy are synonymous.''

``Don't equate actions with religion,'' he said.

A point well taken.

Update: The suspects: Four of the suspects were born in the former Yugoslavia, one in Jordan and one in Turkey, said Michael Drewniak, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office in Newark, New Jersey.

In the wake of the London Bombings, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is leaning on Britain to restrict access to the U.S. for its citizens of Pakistani descent.

American officials, citing the number of terror plots in Britain involving Britons with ties to Pakistan, expressed concern over the visa loophole. In recent months, the homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, has opened talks with the government here on how to curb the access of British citizens of Pakistani origin to the United States.

The proposals Chertoff is said to be considering:

Among the options that have been put on the table, according to British officials, was the most onerous option to Britain, that of canceling the entire visa waiver program that allows all Britons entry to the United States without a visa. Another option, politically fraught as it is, would be to single out Britons of Pakistani origin, requiring them to make visa applications for the United States.

Just what we need, more ethnic profiling. We should be working to eliminate racial and ethnic profiling, not coming up with new ways to embrace it.

According to a new disclosure report (mandated by the Patriot Act), there were a record number of secret FISA warrants in 2005.

A secret court approved all but one of the government's requests last year to search or eavesdrop on suspected terrorists and spies, according to Justice Department data released Tuesday.

In all, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court signed off on 2,176 warrants targeting people in the United States believed to be linked to international terror organizations or spies. The record number is more than twice as many as were issued in 2000, the last full year before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

And here's the rub:

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Al Masri, the bloodthirsty terrorist who attacked us on 9/11, who supposedly is the key to the whole Iraq Debacle, now that the previous two keys, Saddam Hussein and Zarqawi are dead (not to mention 8 million #3s), is DEAD! again. Check that. Nope, it is misinformation we are now told. So how is that different than what the Media has been reporting for the last 6 years?

Meanwhile, we can report that Osama bin Laden is alive and well, living in Pakistan/Afghanistan/Waziristan/Off The Bush Radarstan.

The news is all agog over the arrest of a top al-Quaida guy in Iraq who allegedly was a mastermind of the July 7 London bombings.

Why is this news now? He was captured by the CIA last year.

Abd al-Hadi was taken into CIA custody last year, it emerged from US intelligence sources yesterday, in a move which suggests that he was interrogated for months in a “ghost prison” before being transferred to the internment camp in Cuba.

He wasn't even transferred today -- but earlier this week.

Is the Administration just in need of a positive news story for the weekend? It sure seems so.

Via Booman, Dana Milbank documents that the Republicans seem to be unaware of where the leadership of Al Qaida is. When debating the Iraq Supplemental, the GOP seemed confused as to where Al Qaida actually is:

"When a newly revitalized al-Qaeda carries out a 9/11-scale attack, you will own that one," Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) told his good friends across the aisle.

Sen. Norman Coleman (R-Minn.) advised his Democratic colleagues that they were "handing al-Qaeda a victory that they will be able to use to strengthen their forces and then hurt and kill more Americans."

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), adopted the Republican language that Democrats were proposing a "deadline for defeat." He warned that "if we follow the plan in this legislation," Americans would lose their "security from terrorism here at home.

Gentlemen and ladies of the Republican Party and their fellow travelers, may I point out to you that the leadership of Al Qaida is to be found in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan?

Al-Jazeera broadcast part of an interview today (remainder to be broadcast tomorrow) with a Taliban leader who says Osama bin Laden is alive and was behind the attack on Bagram Air Force Base when Cheney visited in February. 14 (or 23) people died in the attack. Cheney was reportedly Osama's target.

Dadullah said Bin Laden planned and supervised the "suicide" operation which targeted Dick Cheney, the US vice-president, in Bargam air force base during his visit to Afghanistan in February. Dadullah said: "Thank God, he is alive, we get updated information about it. Thank God, he plans the operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

"You may remember the martyr operation inside the Bagram base which targeted a senior US official ... that operation was a result of his wise planning. "He planned that operation in details and guided us through it. The operation was a success."

The White House responds that it has not seen any intelligence to back up the claim.

Why did it take five weeks for Pat Tillman's family to learn that his death was caused by friendly fire? This is why:

Within hours of Pat Tillman's death, the Army went into information-lockdown mode, cutting off phone and Internet connections at a base in Afghanistan, posting guards on a wounded platoon mate, and ordering a sergeant to burn Tillman's uniform.

Wounded by the same friendly fire, Spc. Jade Lane was puzzled to find guards stationed at his hospital bed in Afghanistan.

Later, he said, he learned the reason for their presence: The news media were sniffing around, and Lane's superiors "did not want anyone talking to us," he said.

From another soldier, who learned about Tillman's death when it was reported to the Forward Operating Base where he was assigned:

"The phones and Internet had been cut off, to prevent anyone from talking about the incident," he told investigators.

Seven days after Pat Tillman was killed by friendly fire, Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal sent a memo to Gen. John Abizaid warning against "any unknowing statements by our country's leaders which might cause public embarrassment if the circumstances of Cpl. Tillman's death become public." In other words, "don't pretend that Tillman was killed by the enemy, because the truth will come back to bite you in the rear."

Advising the government to be truthful proved to be a wasted effort. The memo was written on April 29, 2004.

The family was not told until May 29, 2004, what really happened. In the intervening weeks, the military continued to say Tillman died under enemy fire, and even awarded him the Silver Star, which is given for heroic battlefield action.

Pat Tillman's mother has this to say:

It's time to revisit Operation TIDE, the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment. The Washington Post reports it's quadrupled in size and the FBI is now monitoring 1,000 people a day.

Here's how it's done:

Each day, thousands of pieces of intelligence information from around the world -- field reports, captured documents, news from foreign allies and sometimes idle gossip -- arrive in a computer-filled office in McLean, where analysts feed them into the nation's central list of terrorists and terrorism suspects.

....President Bush ordered the intelligence community in 2003 to centralize data on terrorism suspects, and U.S. agencies at home and abroad now send everything they collect to TIDE. It arrives electronically as names to be added or as additional information about people already in the system.

Here's the danger for us ordinary folks:

The Washington Post today publishes the first-hand account of a recipient of an FBI national security letter. His name isn't included because he's gagged from discussing it, so the Post verified it with his lawyer and publicly available documents (which I assume are the pleadings in his lawsuit brought by the ACLU which is ongoing.)

The author, who ran "a small internet access and consulting business," never gave up the documents on his client demanded in the letter and eventually the FBI said it no longer needed them. But he's still challenging the gag order that prevents him from discussing the matter.

He describes what his life was like living under a gag order.

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Remember that obscure provision of the new Patriot Act that gives the Attorney General the right to name new U.S. Attorneys without Senate Confirmation?

Democrats want to repeal the law.

The Senate moved Monday to revoke authority it granted the Bush administration last year to name federal prosecutors, with Democrats accusing the administration of abusing the appointment power at the center of an escalating clash over the ouster of eight United States attorneys.

The move to overturn an obscure provision of the USA Patriot Act that allowed the attorney general to appoint federal prosecutors for an indefinite period without Senate confirmation came amid growing speculation that the controversy over the prosecutors would cost Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales his job.

The difference between former and current law:

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