From Middle East Online.

Rice's record as National Security Advisor is devastatingly attacked by CIA Director George Tenet and Counter-Terrorism chief Richard Clarke. They reveal how she ignored scores of warnings in the spring and summer of 2001 that an Al Qaeda attack was imminent.

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Richard Clarke, chief counter-terrorism adviser between 1992-2003 concurred: "Rice decided what torture to use on what person."

"American Faust" reveals that the techniques that Rice approved went far beyond the mock executions and water-boarding already made public. Our film has first-hand accounts of torture techniques that make stress positions look like a slap on the wrist.

BBC report.

More than 100 people have died and 350 been wounded in a series of shootings and suicide bombings in Iraq - the worst day of violence there this year.

The central city of Hilla saw the deadliest attack, when staff at a textiles factory were hit by three bomb attacks, killing at least 45 people.

AlertNet story.

The United States is convinced that a Pakistani Taliban group closely allied with al Qaeda was behind the attempted bombing in New York's Times Square, administration officials said on Sunday.

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Appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," Holder said it was unclear whether Shahzad will be tried in a civilian court or whether a trial will be necessary, raising the possibility that Shahzad might plead guilty.

"We have developed information that I think we can use in a civilian court," Holder said. "It's not even sure at this point whether or not there even has to be a trial."

BBC report.

A Pakistan-born US citizen has been charged with terrorism over the failed car-bomb attack in New York's Times Square on Saturday.

Faisal Shahzad, 30, was also charged with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, according to documents filed at Manhattan federal court.

Telegraph report.

An apparent car bomb has been discovered in New York's Times Square after failing to explode on Saturday night during Broadway's peak period.

ABC report.

The court heard that in the 15-month period leading up to the bombings, MI5 and police knew of meetings between two of the bombers and a terrorist suspect.

Mr Coltart said police knew the suspect was planning to bomb a public place but chose not to put the men under surveillance.

"In the 15-month period or so leading up to the bombings... M15 and police were, between them, in possession of a significant amount of information about the bombers," Mr Coltart told the court.

Guardian report.

MI5 warned todaythat disclosing information on why it had failed to investigate the ringleader of the terror attacks of July 2005 could give al-Qaida plotters an "invaluable weapon".

Bereaved families want to ask security officials, during the coming inquests into the deaths of those killed in the London bombings of 7 July five years ago, why Mohammad Sidique Khan was not followed up after being seen meeting known terror suspects.

MI5 told a hearing at the royal courts of justice, set up to decide the scope of the inquests, that disclosing such information would aid those planning another atrocity.

Guardian report.

The Taliban leader in Pakistan, Hakimullah Mehsud, survived an American drone strike in January and is alive and well, a senior official with Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency told the Guardian today.

Mehsud was reported to have died in a CIA drone strike in South Waziristan in January but, although Pakistan's interior minister claimed he had been killed, the death was never confirmed by either US or Pakistani intelligence.

BBC report.

It would "impossible" to reveal secret MI5 files about the 7/7 London terror attacks, a court has been told.

The claim has been made at a hearing to decide the format of inquests into the deaths of those killed in 2005.

BBC report.

Mr O'Connor strongly criticised MI5's involvement in the 7/7 case, saying the agency demonstrated flaws in its assessment policy, record-keeping and co-operation with other agencies.

He said of the second ISC report: "We submit that by contrast with its simple conclusion exonerating MI5, the material detailed in it exposes a profound criticism of MI5 and raises many more questions than answers.

"Those criticisms may well arguably become very considerably more powerful upon a proper analysis of the primary material."

Guardian report. The article by Nigel Inkster and Alexander Nicoll is here.

A former senior MI6 officer has criticised the torture and abuse of terror suspects and says the US response to the threat posed by al-Qaida has been exaggerated and counterproductive.

Stinging criticism of the US is made in the Guardian by Nigel Inkster, assistant chief of MI6 until 2006.

Reuters report.

The inquests into the deaths of 56 people who died in the 2005 London bombings should be a public inquiry into whether police and security services could have done more to prevent the attacks, a court heard on Monday.

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"In the 15-month period leading up to the bombings, M15 and police were, between them, in possession of a significant amount of information about the bombers," Coltart told the coroner.

BBC report.

Lotfi Raissi, an Algerian-born British resident, was arrested in the UK shortly after the attacks amid claims that he was a key member of the plot.

He was held in custody for nearly five months before being released when a judge found there was no evidence to link him to any form of terrorism.

Glenn Greenwald comments on Salon.

It requires an extreme level of irrationality to read what happened to Hatfill and simultaneously to have faith that the "real anthrax attacker" has now been identified as a result of the FBI's wholly untested and uninvestigated case against Bruce Ivins. The parallels are so overwhelming as to be self-evident.

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[...] the Obama administration is actively and aggressively blocking any efforts to investigate the FBI's case against Ivins through an Obama veto threat, based on the Orwellian, backward claim that such an investigation "would undermine public confidence" in the FBI's case "and unfairly cast doubt on its conclusions."

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As several people noted in comments, Obama's rationale for threatening to veto an anthrax investigation (investigations would undermine the State's credibility and thus dilute its authority) is very similar to the Catholic Church's explanation for why it concealed reports of so many abusive priests (disclosure would undermine the Church's credibility and thus dilute its authority).

New York Times report.

Asked by reporters after his testimony whether he believed that there was any chance that Dr. Ivins, who committed suicide in 2008, had carried out the attacks, the microbiologist, Henry S. Heine, replied, "Absolutely not." At the Army's biodefense laboratory in Maryland, where Dr. Ivins and Dr. Heine worked, he said, "among the senior scientists, no one believes it."

Lawrence Sellin on UPI's Outside View.

Was Bruce Ivins the sole perpetrator of the anthrax mailings as the FBI claims or did his suicide result from the pressure of the investigation and the possible revelation of damaging personal information as occurred in the Hatfill case? Did Ivins, like Hatfill before him, simply fit the profile?

In the opinion of many, the Amerithrax investigation still appears far from conclusive.