The United States has detained more than 83,000 foreigners in the four years of the war on terror, enough to nearly fill the NFL’s largest stadium.

Split infinitive aside, what’s with that comparison? Why use a football stadium? Why not say “laid end to end, they would reach from New York to Mecca” or “Ground into a fine paste, they could pave 450 acres of parking lots?”

The number has steadily grown since the first CIA paramilitary officers touched down in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, setting up more than 20 facilities including the “Salt Pit,” an abandoned factory outside Kabul used for CIA detention and interrogation.

What’s the matter, AP? You won’t give us the freakin’ address of the formerly-secret national security facility? And that’s just the beginning of this story, which apparently seeks to prove the monkey/typewriter hypothesis.

Some 82,400 people have been detained by the military alone in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to figures from officials in Baghdad and Washington.

Earlier, the story attributes the increase to CIA involvement. Now the reporterette is saying that the CIA is only responsible for about 600 of the 83,000 detainees. It’s likely that neither one of those explanations is correct, and they’re both symptomatic of lazy reporting and unfamiliarity with arithmetic.

The detentions and interrogations have brought complaints from Congress and human-rights groups about how the detainees – often Arab and male – are treated.

Often male and Arab? Since when do AP writers stand up for the rights of the ruling majority?

Some 82,400 people have been detained by the military alone in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to figures from officials in Baghdad and Washington. Many are freed shortly after initial questioning.To put that in context, the capacity of the Washington Redskins’ FedEx Field, the NFL’s largest, is 91,704. The second largest, Giants Stadium, holds 80,242.

To put that in further context, these guys want to blow up EVERY NFL stadium.

In Iraq, the Defense Department says 5,569 detainees have been held for more than six months, and 3,801 have been held more than a year. Some 229 have been locked up for more than two years.

I have no idea why that passage was buried deeper in the story than the capacity of Giants Stadium.

Pentagon officials say those mistreated are relatively few when the sheer numbers are considered.

Last week, Senate Armed Services Chairman John Warner, R-Va., said that more than 400 criminal investigations have been conducted and 95 military personnel have been charged with misconduct.

400 investigations out of 83,000 prisoners. That’s not “relatively few.” That’s less than one-half of one percent.

Through the CIA, a much smaller prison population is maintained secretly by the agency and friendly governments.

Was. WAS maintained secretly. Thanks, AP!

The agency consistently declines to comment.

That’s because it’s the CIA. Unlike the AP, intelligence agencies are there to protect national secrets, not spray them all over the newspapers.

Among them, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, an alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

That one isn’t even a complete sentence.

One of the radical groups operating on the Temple Mount is Hizab Altahrir (The Islamic Liberation Party), which espouses an ideology similar to Al Qaeda. Hizab Altahrir’s network spans most Western European countries.

A senior party activist in Jerusalem, Sheikh Issam Amira, expressed this philosophy in a recent speech which he made on the Temple Mount:

“Listeners! The Moslems in Denmark make up three percent [of the population], yet constitute a threat to the future of the Danish kingdom. It’s no surprise that in Bitrab (the ancient name of Medina, a city in Arabia to which Mohammed immigrated) they were fewer than three percent of the general population, but succeeded changing the regime in Bitrab.

“It’s no surprise that our brothers in Denmark have succeeded in bringing Islam to every home in that country. Allah will grant us victory in their land to establish the [Islamic] revolution in Denmark.”

Sheikh Riyad Salah, head of the Islamic movement in Israel has also been active teaching the tenets of “Islamic revolution.”

“We are at the gates of the Islamic revolution,” he proclaims in his sermons to Arab citizens of Israel. “The global forces of evil will be eliminated from the world and the Islamic nation will remain in place in order to bring about the world Islamic revolution, with its capital, Jerusalem.”

What’s the timeframe for all this? Pretty soon:

The youth were greeted by party members who shouted, “Next year in Jerusalem, under the rule of the Islamic revolution.”

Please explain to me why these animals deserve a state.

[Hat-tip: Jihad Watch]

“What changed in the US with hurricane Katrina was a feeling that we have entered a period of consequences and that bitter cup will be offered to us again and again until we exert our moral authority and respond appropriately,” he says. “I don’t want to diminish the threat of terrorism at all, it is extremely serious, but on a long-term global basis, global warming is the most serious problem we are facing.”

Al? You there, buddy? Pay very close attention.

Let’s assume, just for a moment, that “global warming” is real, and it is a man-made phenomenon. U.S.-style global warming looks like this:

Yay!

Al-Qaeda-style global warming looks like this:

Boo!

Comprende?

“Please, stop zee violence! We surrendare!”

Thanks, Jacques.

Death threats to the Egyptian-born actor Omar Sharif have appeared in Islamist forums on the Internet, after Sharif’s appearance as a Christian, Saint Peter, in an Italian biblical epic for television. A threatening message from user ‘bachirma1′ on one of the forums used by jihadi groups linked to al-Qaeda, reads:”In my view Omar Sharif is an infidel – enter here”. Inside it continues; “He is a crusader who offends Islam and Muslims and is applauded by the Italian people. I give you some advice, my brothers, you should kill him.”

I recommend that all appropriate Casbah-rocking action commence immediately.

The Sky Report has secretly filmed one of America’s most controversial Christian ministers praising the London bombings.Fred Phelps says that terrorist outrages and natural disasters such as Hurricane Rita are examples of God’s wrath against countries such as America and Britain for tolerating homosexuals and homosexuality.

Fred Phelps, who set up the controversial Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, told our undercover reporter about the attacks, which killed 52 people:

“Oh I am so thankful that happened. My only regret is that they didn’t kill about million of them. England deserves that kind of punishment, as does this country (America)”.

The church, which has 150 followers, recently started picketing funerals including those of American soldiers killed in Iraq, waving banners such as “Thank God 9/11″, “God Hates Fags” and “Aids Cures Fags”.

Maybe I’ll print up a sign of my own. How about “God Hates Dumbasses?”

Iraq’s National Security Adviser, Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, said the bombings were designed to show that insurgents were still active after what he called a string of successes by Iraqi security forces during a constitutional referendum and last week’s start of Saddam’s trial for crimes against humanity. 

“The plan was to try to penetrate the defenses of the Palestine hotel by blowing up cars and firing rocket-propelled grenades and light arms to occupy the hotel and kidnap the journalists,” he said.

You’d think al-Qaeda would treat its supporters better than that.

At least two enormous bombs, including a cement-mixing truck packed with explosives, blew up near an Iraqi police checkpoint outside the Palestine Hotel — home to many foreign journalists in Iraq. Iraqi police said 11 people were killed and 13 wounded. 

A second bomb exploded inside a car not far from the checkpoint on the northeast side of Firdous Square and more than 100 yards east of the hotel grounds. Both were believed to be suicide attacks.

It did not appear that anybody was killed inside the hotel. Three of the wounded were in the hotel but were not hurt seriously. Three others were at a U.S. military checkpoint at the northwest corner of the hotel compound.

Maybe this will piss off enough reporters that they’ll issue some honest reports about global jihad. And maybe I’ll be nominated to the Supreme Court.

Patty Hearst has a message for folks who are worried about terrorist attacks: Stop wringing your hands, people! 

“I was kidnapped by terrorists. It’s not like I’m numb to this and think it can’t happen. But get real!” Hearst admonished. “There’s so much weeping and wailing and memorializing, my feeling is it’d be a lot healthier if people didn’t externalize so much and kind of bucked up a little bit.”

“What good is our government if they can’t keep our level of fear at a point where we can think about what’s really going on?” she told Lowdown. “We are a nation with the most frightened people on the planet. People who come over here just laugh at us.”

Forgive me if I can’t stomach being lectured about fear by a convicted bank robber and former member of a murderous terrorist organization.

UPDATE: Never mind, all clear.

It goes without saying that Arab Americans and those concerned with Middle East peace will shed no tears over DeLay’s fall from grace. The Congressman has long been a fierce opponent of all things Palestinian and Arab. In the 1990s he opposed President Clinton’s proposal to provide aid request to the West Bank and Gaza. 

So far, so good. Back to Zogby, who just happens to be a member of the DNC Executive Committee:

When President Bush proposed $20 million to support Palestinians elections, DeLay reprogrammed the money to pay an Israeli utility bill. He even forced humiliating conditions on President Bush’s recent aid designed to strengthen Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. 

Those humiliating conditions included completely unreasonable elements like “quit buying brand-new Audis while your people starve” and “stop blowing up buses.” Let’s hear again from Zogby:

De Lay, who once called himself “an Israeli of the heart,” also rejected President Bush’s support of a Palestinian state, calling it a “sovereign state of terrorists,” and he even denied that there is any such thing as “occupied territory.” 

How dare Tom DeLay suggest that the Palestinians are not peace-loving people?

The New York City Police Department is investigating what it deems a credible tip that 19 operatives have been deployed to New York to place bombs in the subway, and security in the subways will be increased, sources told ABC News.While the police department is taking the threat seriously, it is also urging the public not to be alarmed because – while the source is credible – the information has not been verified.

According to sources in intelligence, emergency services and police headquarters, when three Iraqi insurgents were arrested several days ago during a raid by a joint FBI-CIA team, one of those caught disclosed the threat. Because it slipped out during the arrest, the plot was deemed credible.

This comes just a week after New York transit officials turned down a federal offer of funding for more police dogs:

The Department of Homeland Security is spending $2.7 million to provide 30 bomb-sniffing dogs, along with training for their police handlers, to 10 transit agencies, including the subway systems in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington.But New York’s subway system, by far the largest and busiest in the country, is not one of them. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority turned down an invitation to apply for the money, officials said yesterday, because the grant would have come with restrictions that they called cumbersome and because the dogs could have been withdrawn and used elsewhere during a national emergency.

Houston, naturally, doesn’t need dogs, because we have an elite Israeli-trained Metro counterterrorism commando squad.

“We know that he has had what I would call emotional difficulties in the past. There is certainly no evidence at this point which points to any other kind of motivation other than his personal problems,” said University President David Boren over the weekend.

But it looks like there may be an Islamic terror connection after all, according to WorldNetDaily:

Doug Hagmann, a seasoned investigator, told WND he was informed by multiple reliable law-enforcement sources familiar with the investigation into the incident that authorities recovered a “significant amount” of “jihad” materials, as well as Hinrichs’ computer.Hagmann also said those same sources indicated police and federal agents “had pulled additional explosives from [Hinrichs'] house,” including triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, “homemade explosive [that is] very potent but relatively easily manufactured.”

TATP was also used in the July mass transit bombings in London, CNN reported, and was used by attempted bomber Richard Reid, who packed his shoes with the compound in an unsuccessful attempt to destroy a U.S.-bound American Airlines flight in December 2001.

Maybe Osama is a K-State fan. Meanwhile, the kid’s family is in denial:

His sister, Berkeley Hinrichs, says her brother said he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life.She also says it’s possible her brother was doing an experiment and didn’t mean to kill himself.

All in all, this is a sad, frightening story that should’ve been covered better by the national media.

[Hat-tip: Don the Ãœbertipster]