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The Obama administration’s recent move to drop rhetorical references to Islamic radicalism is drawing fire in a new report warning the decision ignores the role religion can play in motivating terrorists.

Several prominent counterterror experts are challenging the administration’s shift in its recently unveiled National Security Strategy, saying the terror threat should be defined in order to fight it.

The question of how to frame the conflict against Al Qaeda and other terrorists poses a knotty problem. The U.S. is trying to mend fences with Muslim communities while toughening its strikes against militant groups.

Osama bin Laden’s hiding place was pinned down for the first time Monday, June 7, by the Kuwaiti Al-Siyassa Monday, June 7, as the mountainous town of Savzevar in the northeastern Iranian province of Khorasan, 220 km west of Mashhad. He is said to have lived there under Tehran’s protection for the last five years, along with Ayman Al-Zawahiri and five other high-ranking al Qaeda leaders.

debkafile’s intelligence sources disclosed Monday night that Turkish prime minister Recep Erdogan and his intelligence chiefs are well aware that Bin Laden and Zawahiri are hiding in Iran. The leak to the Kuwait paper was intended to show the Obama administration that the Turkish leader’s ties with Iran had grown intense enough for him to be fully in the picture of Iran’s secret sanctuary for the authors of the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

Savzevar, a small town of about a quarter of a million inhabitants, is connected by road to Tehran and Mashhad and has a small airport. A center for producing grapes and raisins, its location is remote and difficult to access because it is enclosed by lofty mountains and a salt desert 50,000 square kilometers in area.

DEBKAfile article continues here.

Two New Jersey men intent on killing American troops were arrested Saturday as they boarded flights to link up with a virulent jihadist group in Somalia, authorities said.

The men, both North Jersey residents, were charged with conspiring to commit an act of international terrorism through a group tied to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network, according to officials familiar with the details of the arrests.

Mohamed Mahmood Alessa, 20, of North Bergen, and Carlos Eduardo “Omar” Almonte, 24, of Elmwood Park were apprehended at John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens before they could board separate flights to Egypt, where they were to start journeys to Somalia. The men were arrested by teams of state and federal law-enforcement agents who have been investigating the pair since October 2006, according to the officials, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the operation publicly.

NJ.com article continues here.

Al-Qaida announced Monday that its No. 3 official, Mustafa al-Yazid, had been killed along with members of his family — perhaps one of the most severe blows to the terror movement since the U.S. campaign against al-Qaida began. A U.S. official said al-Yazid was believed to have died in a U.S. missile strike.

A statement posted on an al-Qaida Website said al-Yazid, which it described as the organization’s top commander in Afghanistan, was killed along with his wife, three daughters, a grandchild and other men, women and children but did not say how or where.

The statement did not give an exact date for al-Yazid’s death, but it was dated by the Islamic calendar month of “Jemadi al-Akhar,” which falls in May.

Yahoo! News (AP) article continues here.

According to investigators, Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s number two, was conspiring with an al-Qaeda operative who was arrested in Baghdad two weeks ago.

The operative, named as Abdullah Azzam Saleh Misfar al-Qahtani and said to be a former Saudi army colonel who had travelled to Iraq and become security chief for al-Qaeda’s local branch, has been accused of organising suicide bombings in two cities south of Baghdad.

Major General Qassim Atta, head of security in Baghdad, said he was also believed to have made contact with al-Zawahiri, the man generally regarded as al-Qaeda’s second-highest leader after bin Laden.

Telegraph article continues here.

Vice President Joe Biden called the killing of two top Al Qaeda leaders in Iraq a “potentially devastating” blow to the terrorist network and said the operation signals a significant improvement in Iraq’s security and intelligence gathering.

The U.S. military confirmed Monday that Al Qaeda in Iraq leaders Abu Ayyub al-Masri and Abu Umar al-Baghdadi were killed early Sunday morning in a raid led by U.S. and Iraqi forces, after a week of operations led them to a safehouse where the terror chiefs were hiding.

“This action demonstrates the improved security, strength and capacity of Iraqi security forces,” Biden said during a press conference Monday. “The Iraqis led this operation, and it was based on intelligence the Iraqi security forces themselves developed.”

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A Muslim cleric tied to the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner has become the first U.S. citizen added to a list of suspected terrorists the CIA is authorized to kill, a U.S. official said Tuesday.

Anwar al-Aulaqi, who resides in Yemen, was previously placed on a target list maintained by the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command and has survived at least one strike carried out by Yemeni forces with U.S. assistance against a gathering of suspected al-Qaeda operatives.

Because he is a U.S. citizen, adding Aulaqi to the CIA list required special approval from the White House, officials said. The move means that Aulaqi would be considered a legitimate target not only for a military strike carried out by U.S. and Yemeni forces, but also for lethal CIA operations.

The Washington Post article continues here.

Prior to his release in December, Abdul Hafiz was Prisoner Number 1030 at Guantanamo Bay. Now, less than four months later, he’s back home in Afghanistan and working for the Taliban — just the latest of more than 100 released detainees who have returned to terrorism, according to the Pentagon.

Hafiz, suspected in the March 2003 kidnapping and murder of an International Red Cross worker, was the “Taliban head of all Madrassas … responsible for recruiting and sending young men to fight for the Taliban,” according to U.S. government memos. He was said to have maintained contacts for Mullah Mohammad Omar, the leader of the Taliban of Afghanistan, and to have admitted to participating in jihad against the Soviets.

But despite the list of charges against him, the U.S. government transferred Hafiz to his home country in December. And now, a senior U.S. official tells Fox News, he is back on the battlefield. According to a published report, Hafiz has been appointed by Mullah Omar to oversee ransom demands for kidnapping victims and to coordinate with nongovernment-aid organizations operating in the Taliban’s areas of influence.

Fox News article continues here.

Under elaborate secrecy, President Barack Obama slipped into Afghanistan on Sunday near the front lines of the increasingly bloody 8-year-old war he is expanding and affirmed America’s commitment to destroying al-Qaida and its extremist allies in the land where the 9-11 plot was hatched.

Obama’s six-hour visit was conducted entirely under the shroud of nightfall, after Air Force One’s unannounced flight from the U.S. Obama defended his decision to escalate the fight, telling troops whose numbers he is tripling that their victory is imperative to America’s safety.

His bid to shore up faith in the struggle was aimed both at the troops who cheered him and Americans back home. And, he demanded accountability from Afghan authorities to make good on repeated promises to improve living conditions, rein in corruption and enforce the rule of law to prevent people from joining the insurgency.

Yahoo! News (AP) article continues here.

An American charged in Yemen with being a member of Al Qaeda had worked at nuclear power plants in the U.S., a spokesman for a group of plants in New Jersey said Thursday. But a state official said the man did not breach security there.

Sharif Mobley, a 26-year-old natural-born U.S. citizen, was arrested in Yemen earlier this month and is accused of killing a guard in an attempt to break out of a hospital.

The FBI, the State Department and other authorities said they were trying to gather information about Mobley. But the allegations appeared to illustrate a phenomenon U.S. intelligence officials have warned about: American Muslims becoming radicalized and joining terrorist movements overseas.

Fox News article continues here.

Pakistani forces have taken control of a warren of caves that served until recently as the nerve centre of the Taleban and al-Qaeda and sheltered Ayman al-Zawahiri, the second-in-command to Osama bin Laden.

“It was the main hub of militancy where al-Qaeda operatives had moved freely,” Major-General Tariq Khan, the Pakistan regional commander, said as he gave journalists a tour of Damadola yesterday.

The village, nestling among snow-capped peaks in the Bajaur region along the Afghan border, has been fought over for 16 months. It is the first time that the Pakistani Army has set foot in the village, which had long been dominated by the insurgents operating on the both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Times Online article continues here.

In an oped in USA Today, John Brennan — Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism — responds to critics of the Obama administration’s counterterrorism policies by saying “Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda.”

Brennan writes that, “Terrorists are not 100-feet tall. Nor do they deserve the abject fear they seek to instill.”

In the oped, titled “‘We need no lectures’: Administration disrupts terrorists’ plots, takes fight to them abroad,” Brennan writes that politics “should never get in the way of national security. But too many in Washington are now misrepresenting the facts to score political points, instead of coming together to keep us safe.”

The administration op-ed is in response to a USA Today editorial entitled “National security team fails to inspire confidence; Officials’ handling of Christmas Day attack looks like amateur hour.”

Brennan provides a detailed defense of the administration’s handling of failed Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab whom, he says, was “thoroughly interrogated and provided important information.”

He suggests that many critics are hypocritical and clueless.

ABC News article continues here.

Two men were stopped boarding US-bound planes at Heathrow days before Britain’s terror threat was raised to “severe”.

News of the incidents came hours after Home Secretary Alan Johnson lifted the threat level amid fears that al-Qaeda is planning an attack.

The new level, which means an attack is reckoned “highly likely”, is second only to “critical”.

Security sources say an Egyptian was stopped last Saturday as he tried to board an American Airlines flight to Miami. A man from Saudi Arabia was banned from boarding a United Airlines flight to Chicago the next day and sent back to Saudi.

The incidents and the raised threat level follow the failed Christmas Day bombing on a plane over Detroit.

Anti-terror officials said the past week had seen an “unusually high” number of people on their no-fly list trying to board US-bound planes.

Mirror.co.uk article continues here.

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In the gloomiest internal assessment of Yemen’s security yet, he said jihadis from across the Arab world are hiding in the lawless hills of Shabwa province where the so-called Christmas Day “underwear bomber” is thought to have been trained, its governor, Ali Hasan al-Ahmadi, said.

“There are dozens of Saudi and Egyptian al-Qaeda militants who came to the province,” said Shabwa’s governor, Ali Hasan al-Ahmadi.

He told the al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper the militants had joined homegrown Yemeni radicals both from Shabwa and other regions of the country.

The province, in the south-east of the country, was one of the targets of a series of air raids against al-Qaeda targets conducted by the Yemeni authorities with American military support shortly before Christmas.

Telegraph article continues here.