WASHINGTON — House Minority Leader John Boehner blasted a Democrat-backed plan on Wednesday to ban the use of "global War on Terror" and "long war" in the 2008 defense budget bill.

A memo sent to Democratic staffers on the House Armed Services Committee instructed the aides not to use the specific phrases, the Military Times newspaper reported.

Erin Conaton, the committee's staff director, sent out the 15-page memo titled "Style Guide for Defense Authorization Report."

"When referencing military operations throughout the world, please be as specific as possible. Please avoid using colloquialisms such as, 'the war on terrorism, or the 'Long War' Please do not use the term 'global war on terrorism,' " according to the memo.

Boehner accused Democrats of launching an "absurd effort to deny the fact that America is battling terrorism on a global scale," according to a statement released Wednesday by his office...

British forces shot and killed a leading al-Qaida terrorist more than a year after he embarrassed the U.S. military by making an unprecedented escape from a maximum security military prison in Afghanistan, officials said.

Omar al-Farouq was gunned down Monday after he opened fire on British forces during a raid on his home in Basra, 340 miles (547 kilometers) southeast of Baghdad, British forces spokesman Maj. Charlie Burbridge said.

Burbridge said he could not comment on whether it was the same man who allegedly led al-Qaida's Southeast Asia operations, citing British policy not allowing him to link an individual to a specific organization.

But a Basra police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons, said it was the same man. The officer said al-Farouq entered Iraq three months ago, was known to be an expert in bomb making and went by the name Mahmoud Ahmed while in Basra.

Al-Farouq and three other al-Qaida suspects escaped from Bagram, in central Afghanistan, in July 2005, but the Pentagon waited until November to confirm his escape. The delay upset Indonesia, which had arrested al-Farouq in 2002 and turned him over to the United States...

Fugitive Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, believed to be on the run in rugged terrain in the Afghan-Pakistani border region since the September 11 attacks five years ago, has become seriously ill and may have already died, a Saudi source tells TIME, echoing earlier reports in the French media.

The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, says that Saudi officials have received multiple credible reports over the last several weeks that Bin Laden has been suffering from a water-borne illness. The source believes that there is a "high probability" that Bin Laden has already died from the disease, but stressed that Saudi officials have thus far received no concrete evidence of Bin Laden's death.

"This is not a rumor," says the source. "He is very ill. He got a water-related sickness and it could be terminal. There are a lot of serious facts about things that have actually happened. There is a lot to it. But we don't have any concrete information to say that he is dead."

On Saturday, the French newspaper L'Est Republicain cited a report by the French intelligence service, Direction Generale des Services Exteriors (DGSE), saying that Saudi intelligence officials "seem to have become convinced that Osama bin Laden is dead." The report quoted by the newspaper said the Saudis believe bin Laden "might have succumbed to a very serious case of typhoid fever resulting in partial paralysis of his lower limbs while in Pakistan on August 23, 2006."

The DGSE report quoted by L'Est Republicain said that its information on the Saudi findings came from a "usually reliable source," indicating that it did not necessarily come directly from Saudi intelligence officials. The DGSE report cited by the newspaper said that Bin Laden's geographic isolation made it difficult for him to receive proper medical assistance for his ailment...

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told Fox News Channel analyst Morton Kondracke yesterday she suspects President Bush knows the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and is simply waiting for the most politically expedient moment to announce his capture.

Five years after terrorists ripped through the September sky, carrying out their precisely planned mission, the remnants of disbelief, anger and fear still linger – on television and in life. A new dramatization of Sept. 11, plus a documentary focused on the healing and rebuilding efforts, are among the broadcasts marking the grim anniversary.

Actor Harvey Keitel, star of ABC's "The Path to 9/11," said he believes movies and TV programs detailing what happened that day are important.

"They're putting the story into our faces. It's not too soon or too late; it just is," Keitel said. "We were the front line on that day."

"The Path to 9/11" is a new two-part drama based on the report of the Sept. 11 commission, which was created to discover how such an attack could take place. The mini-series, co-starring Patricia Heaton, Dan Lauria, Amy Madigan and Stephen Root, also revisits the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole. Via flashbacks, the drama depicts bureaucratic bungling leading to missed clues that might have unraveled the 2001 plot. With shifting viewpoints, from those aboard the planes, workers in the World Trade Center, government officials and victims' families, the film conveys the confusion and horror of that day.

Keitel portrays FBI agent John O'Neill, who was an expert on al-Qaida. "He and his team were on it" prior to Sept. 11, Keitel said. "But the environment where they worked . . . they couldn't pursue a bad guy without getting permission. They were in the forefront of this assault on al-Qaida, and they were blocked all along the way."

O'Neill, stymied by bureaucracy, retired from the FBI in August 2001. He began a new job as the World Trade Center's head of security on Sept. 11, 2001.

O'Neill's death in the towers "gave the story a tragic symmetry," said writer Cyrus Nowrasteh. "It's rare that happens in a real-life story, but clearly, he leapt out as an obvious part of it."

Filming the story behind the attacks "evoked in all of us . . . a sense of responsibility to the heroes of that day, to be as truthful as is humanly possible to honor them," Keitel said. "There isn't anyone from the top on down to the caterer and prop master who didn't have it in their bones to get it right."

Keitel, who lives in New York's TriBeCa neighborhood, visited Ground Zero a few days after the attacks.

"The sight, the stench, the feeling – if I describe it as Hell, it would sound corny," he said. "But that is as close to Hell as I can think."...

GAZA (Reuters) - A spokesman for gunmen in the Gaza Strip said they had fired a rocket tipped with a chemical warhead at Israel early on Thursday.

The Israeli army had no immediate comment on the claim by the spokesman from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement.

The group had recently claimed to possess about 20 biological warheads for the makeshift rockets commonly fired from Gaza at Israeli towns. This was the first time the group had claimed firing such a rocket.

"The al-Aqsa Brigades have fired one rocket with a chemical warhead" at southern Israel, Abu Qusai, a spokesman for the group, said in Gaza.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said the army had not detected that any such rocket was fired, nor was there any report of such a weapon hitting Israel.

IAF planes will distribute flyers on Wednesday night in the Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun areas in the northern Gaza Strip.

The aim is to warn the residents of the areas that they are endangering their lives by being in the vicinity of Kassam launch sites.

The distribution of the pamphlets is part of the IDF's stepped up action against the firing of the Kassam rockets at southern Israel.

GAZA (Reuters) - An Israeli aircraft fired a missile at a bridge in the central Gaza Strip on Tuesday as troops prepared for a threatened offensive into the territory, Palestinian witnesses said.

Israel has been planning a major push into the territory following the capture of an Israeli soldier by militants from Gaza on Sunday.

JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ruled out negotiations to free a captured Israeli soldier Monday as his nation's tanks and troops gathered along the Gaza Strip border in anticipation of an operation against Palestinian militants.

"This is not a matter of negotiations, this is not a matter of bargaining," Olmert told a group of Jewish leaders in Jerusalem. Cpl. Gilad Shalit, a dual French-Israeli citizen, was seized by Palestinian gunmen in a cross-border raid on Sunday.

Olmert said the attack and the capture of the soldier were evidence of extremist Muslim desires to destroy the state of Israel.

He said Israel withdrew "completely" from Gaza last year, and "anyone who fires from the other side of the border, anyone who caries out any attack against Israeli citizens, does so from a fanatical desire to destroy the Jewish state."

Earlier, Olmert called the troop deployment the beginning of a "broad and ongoing" operation against Palestinian militants...

Newly declassified documents captured by U.S. forces indicate that Saddam Hussein's inner circle not only actively reached out to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan and terror-based jihadists in the region, but also hosted discussions with a known Al Qaeda operative about creating jihad training "centers," possibly in Baghdad.

Ray Robison, a former member of the CIA-directed Iraq Survey Group (ISG), supervised a group of linguists to analyze, archive and exploit the hundreds of captured documents and materials of Saddam's regime.

This is the final installment in a three-part series concerning a notebook kept by an Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) agent called Khaled Abd El Majid, and covers events taking place in 1999. The translation is provided by Robison's associate, known here as “Sammi.”

The first two translations from this notebook detailed an agreement between members of the Saddam regime and the Taliban to establish diplomatic and intelligence based cooperation. This final translation further advances the link between the Saddam regime and world-wide Islamic Jihad terrorism.

The relationship between the Taliban and Saddam appears to have been mediated by a Pakistani named Maulana Fazlur Rahman. Another document captured in Afghanistan and written by an Al Qaeda operative confirms the relationship between the Maulana and Saddam. The translation provided here includes an early 1999 meeting between the director of the IIS and the Maulana...

The Aksa Martyrs' Brigades group announced on Sunday that it its members have succeeded in manufacturing chemical and biological weapons to be used against Israel.

In a leaflet distributed in the Gaza Strip, the group, which belongs to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party, said the weapons were the result of an effort that has lasted for three years.

The statment was a response to an Israeli Security Cabinet decision to give the IDF the green light to prepare all the forces necessary for a military operation against Gaza terror cells.

[...]

According to the statement, the first of its kind, the group managed to manufacture and develop at least 20 different types of biological and chemical weapons.

The group said its members would not hesitate to add the new weapons to long-range rockets that are being fired at Israeli communities almost every day. It also threatened to use the weapons against IDF soldiers if Israel carried out its threats to invade the Gaza Strip.

"We want to tell [Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert and [Defense Minister Amir] Peretz that your threats don't frighten us," the leaflet said. "We will surprise you with our new weapons the moment the first soldier sets his foot in the Gaza Strip."

...The question will be where they acquired these weapons. They do not have the research facilities to have developed WMD on their own. If they actually do possess them, it seems a probablility that someone supplied Fatah with WMD.

Who has WMD? What country stocked them, until three years ago? And where does Hamas and Islamic Jihad, at least, have themselves established? Syria -- who has long rumored to have received the Iraqi stockpiles in 2002 and 2003, just ahead of the American invasion.

The Palestinians have just tipped us off to where the WMD went, and now we know where at least some it may have ended up. The Israelis may not be alone in marching through Gaza and the West Bank.