ROCHESTER, New York (AP) — An upstate New York man accused of plotting to kill members of the U.S. military and others faces new charges that he tried to aid the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq.

Mufid Elfgeeh, 30, of Rochester, was indicted by a federal grand jury on three counts of attempting to provide material support and resources to the group that has been designated by the U.S. as a foreign terrorist organization, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

According to court documents, Elfgeeh tried to assist three individuals in traveling to Syria to join and fight with the extremist group in 2013 and early 2014. Prosecutors said two of the individuals were cooperating with the FBI.

"Disrupting and holding accountable those who seek to provide material support to foreign terrorist organizations is and shall remain a critical national security priority," said Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Carlin.

Elfgeeh was arrested earlier this year by members of the FBI's Rochester Joint Terrorism Task Force after federal authorities said he bought two handguns and two silencers as part of a plot to kill members of the U.S. armed forces returning from war, as well as Shiite Muslims in the Rochester area.

The investigation included linking Elfgeeh's home computer to tweets from alias Twitter accounts expressing support for al-Qaida, violent holy war and Sunni insurgent groups in Syria, according to court papers.

The FBI said it had been investigating Elfgeeh, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Yemen, since early last year.

Information on Elfgeeh's lawyer was not immediately available.

U.S. man accused of trying to aid IS

Mufid Elfgeeh is facing charges that he attempted to aid the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.
Investigation ongoing since 2013

BEIRUT (AP) — The militant Islamic State group released a video warning the United States that its fighters are waiting for it in Iraq if President Barack Obama sends troops there, as his top general said may happen if the current strategy of airstrikes fails.

The slick 52-second video entitled "Flames of War" shows militants blowing up tanks and images of wounded U.S. soldiers. It then shows a clip of Obama saying that combat troops will not be returning to Iraq, ending with a text overlay that reads "fighting has just begun."

The video's timing, released late Tuesday, suggested it was a response to Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee that if the current Iraq strategy doesn't prevail, he may recommend the use of ground troops.

Fighting ISIS (video)

"To be clear, if we reach the point where I believe our advisers should accompany Iraqi troops on attacks against specific ISIL targets, I will recommend that to the president," Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declared in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee. He referred to the militants by an alternative name.

The video was released by the Islamic State group's Al Hayat media center and was portrayed as a trailer for a longer video to follow. The group operates a sophisticated propaganda machine with slick production techniques, using social media to broadcast a stream of battles, bombings and beheadings to a global audience.

The strategy is aimed at terrorizing opponents at home and winning recruits abroad. The group recently released three videos showing the beheading of two American journalists and a British aid worker.

Latest IS video issues clear warning to U.S.

A new clip released by the Islamic State shows militants blowing up tanks and wounding American troops.
'Fighting has just begun'

Watch video

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — President Barack Obama reaffirmed Wednesday that he does not intend to send U.S. troops into combat against the Islamic State group, despite doubts about the ability of Iraqi forces, Kurdish fighters and Syrian rebels to carry out the ground fight on their own.

"The American forces do not and will not have a combat mission," Obama told troops at MacDill Air Force Base.

It was a firm response to suggestions raised Tuesday by his top military commander that under certain circumstances, American ground forces may be needed.

Obama said U.S. troops "will support Iraqi forces on the ground as they fight for their own country against these terrorists."

But, he added, "As your commander in chief, I will not commit you and the rest of our armed forces to fighting another ground war in Iraq."

Obama offered a vision of a potent force that can have a major role in conflicts, a more forceful view than he has embraced before. But he still stressed that for the effort to succeed against the Islamic State group, the U.S. will need to lead the international coalition and local forces must handle a significant role.

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U.S. President Barack Obama speaks after a military briefing at U.S. Central Command at MacDill Air …

"Frankly, there just aren't a lot of other folks who can perform in the same way. In fact, there are none. There are some things only we can do. There are some capabilities only we have," he said.

"Our armed forces are unparalleled and unique. So when we've got a big problem somewhere around the world, it falls on our shoulders. Sometimes that's tough. But that's what sets us apart. That's why we're American."

Obama spoke after consulting with officers at U.S. Central Command, which oversees American military efforts in the Middle East.

Obama's speech to troops at MacDill Air Force Base was one more chance to try to make the case for the airstrike campaign against the militant group.

"We're going to degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL through a sustained counterterrorism strategy," he said, using an acronym for the Islamic State organization. "We mean what we say. Our reach is long. If you threaten America you will find no safe haven we will find you eventually."

His meeting Gen. Lloyd Austin, the Central Command head, and other officers took place as Congress prepared to vote on Obama's request for authority to equip and train Syrian opposition fighters.

Lawmakers in both parties have raised worries that the U.S. might be unable to find enough Syrian rebels who could be trusted to confront the Islamic State group or that their numbers would be sufficient.

Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a small group of reporters traveling with him to Paris that about half of Iraq's army is incapable of being an effective partner with the U.S. to push the Islamic State group back in western and northern Iraq. He said the other half needs to be partially rebuilt with U.S. training and additional equipment.

Dempsey told senators on Tuesday that if it became necessary for U.S. military advisers to accompany Iraqi troops into combat, he might "go back to the president and make a recommendation that may include the use of ground forces."

___

AP National Security Writer Robert Burns in Paris and contributed to this report.

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Obama: I won't commit you to another ground war

Speaking to troops in Florida after meeting with military leaders, the president reiterates his IS plan.
Details

Florida TV News 10 Investigates Allegations by Former US Senator and Florida Governor, Bob Graham, of FBI 9/11 Coverup

Thanks to Knut, who writes: “This has hardly been covered at all by either alternative or mainstream media as a google search revealed…The fact of the commission Chair saying that the FBI is lying has bombshell written all over it to me.”

By Mike Deeson, WTSP, September 11, 2014 – http://tinyurl.com/nobcudp

Tampa, Florida — Thirteen years after the 9/11 attacks, we are now learning of allegations of a major FBI cover-up that connects Sarasota and the 9/11 hijackers to the Saudi Arabian government. As 10 Investigates discovered, there is a growing chorus calling for the reopening of the 9/11 investigation and it is being led by one of Florida’s most influential leaders: former Senator Bob Graham.

While still at Sarasota’s Emma E. Booker Elementary on the day of the 2001 terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush said, “Terrorism against our nation will not stand.”

[The video is a streaming video, which cannot be posted so, to see it, go here: http://tinyurl.com/nobcudp.]

However, the president’s visit wasn’t the only thing to tie this Bay area county to the September 11th attacks. Within days, we learned three of the hijackers had been living in the area while taking flying lessons at Huffman Aviation and Florida Flight Training in Sarasota County… but there is even more than that.

“There was a network supporting the hijackers,” says former U.S. Senator and Florida governor Bob Graham.

STORY: Terrorism ‘dry-run’ memo concerns experts

According to Graham, the FBI has been covering up that fact for years, and continues to try and hide it even now. Graham says he is convinced there was a direct line between some of the terrorists who carried out the September 11th attacks and the government of Saudi Arabia.

Graham says the U.S. government doesn’t want the American public to find out the Saudis financed the attack, because we provide billions in military aid to Saudi Arabia.

STORY: NTSB neglecting duty on small plane crashes

STORY: PART 2: NTSB neglecting duty in small plane crashes

“That would certainly change our attitude toward arming Saudi Arabia,” Graham says.

According to Graham, the FBI was aware of the strong connection between hijackers and a Saudi Arabian family who were living in an upscale Sarasota gated community. Twelve days before 9/11, the family abandoned the house — leaving behind valuable items including food, clothing, furnishings and three vehicles.

“There are some things I can’t talk about,” Graham told us, “And there are others like what I know is involved in the investigation in Sarasota, which is diametrically opposed to what the FBI said publicly.”

As proof, Graham points to 12 pages of newly declassified documents tying the Sarasota family to the 9/11 hijackers.

STORY:Air marshals not surprised by terrorist shoe bomb threat

The FBI claims it turned over all of its 9/11 files to the Congressional Committee. But Graham — who also headed the Congressional Committee Investigation into 9/11 –says he asked other commission members who confirmed they did not receive any documents from the FBI concerning the Sarasota investigation.

There are actually thousands of documents that are not being released.

“After having said there were ‘no’ documents about the investigation in Sarasota, ‘no’ has now become 80,000 pages.” Graham adds,”I think that should be stunning to the American people, that an agency of our government would deceive its own people so dramatically.”Graham, who is concerned about the ties between ISIS and support groups, points to the new documents that show the Tampa division of the FBI identified an “international businessman” who was a relative of the family and an “antagonist of the United States” and traveled to Sarasota after 9/11 with the intentions, it says, “to begin offensive operations against the United States.”

According to Graham, “I am concerned if there was a network assisting the 19 hijackers in place in 2000 and 2001… there is no reason to believe that it was eliminated.”

Graham is also irked that there was another post-9/11 incident near Sarasota that caused concern, but the FBI didn’t reveal that and we’re only learning about it now, since these new documents have been released.

The Tampa Division of the FBI was aware of a man visiting Florida from Tunisia who went to a dumpster in Bradenton to dispose of several items including:

• A manual on terrorism and Jihad.
• Flight training information from the flight school the 9/11 hijackers trained at.
• A map of an unnamed airport.
• Printed maps of Publix shopping centers in Tampa Bay

But the FBI never informed Congress, despite tell them it released “all the documentation pertaining to the 9/11 investigation.”

Graham says he has checked with other members of his committee and the staff, and they all agree the committee was not given anything about the Sarasota connection.

And Graham says the FBI — which is fighting the release of thousands of pages of its investigation — is continuing to cover up the Saudi Arabian connection between Sarasota and the 9/11 attack.

“After having said there were ‘no’ documents about the investigation in Sarasota, ‘no’ has now become 80,000 pages,” Graham says.

After the information about the 80,000 pages came to light, Graham went to the FBI and asked how the agency could lie to Congress. He says the number two man at the agency told him to come back in a week and the FBI would provide all the documents it had previously said didn’t exist.

But when Graham came back a week later, he says he was told by the same man that the agency wasn’t going to let him see anything or talk to anyone in the FBI.

That leads Graham to ask, “Why has the federal government, including some of its most prestigious agencies, gone to such lengths to cover up what they know?”

Graham believes the reason for the cover-up can be found in 28 pages of the Congressional Investigation into 9/11 — which Graham helped write — that remain classified to this day. According to Graham, the 28 pages show an even stronger connection to Saudi Arabia’s involvement that the U.S. government wants to hide from the public.

“This is the most confounding, troubling, disturbing thing,” Graham says. “This is one of the few things I have trouble going to sleep at night.”

Graham and a growing group in Congress are concerned that the United States is vulnerable to another terrorist attack, and he says the American public needs to know the truth.

“I am not the Lone Ranger on this. In fact, the people who know the most about it are the ones who have the most trouble sleeping.”

Graham says the more you know, the worse it gets and that if the Broward Bulldog — a non-profit news service — hadn’t won a Freedom of Information lawsuit, the latest documents would still be withheld from the American public.

Graham is also joining the families of the victims and a growing chorus in Congress pushing to declassify the 28 pages he helped write, release the 80,000 pages and reopen the 9/11 Investigations.

Sign the petition to “The World’s Leaders: Tell Us the Truth in 2014″ today at:https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/the-world-s-leaders-tell-us-the-truth-in-2014. –and keep sharing it everywhere! Facebook, Google+, Twitter, email, blogs etc.

AP Interview: Iraq premier nixes US ground troops

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq's new prime minister ruled out stationing U.S. ground troops in his country, chiding the international community Wednesday for inaction in Syria and lamenting the "puzzling" exclusion of neighboring Iran from the coalition being assembled to fight the Islamic State group.

Haider al-Abadi has been embraced by the West as a more inclusive leader who might heal the internal rifts that have dismembered Iraq. But his forthrightness in an interview with The Associated Press — his first with international media — suggested a man capable of parting ways on vision and holding his ground.

Al-Abadi praised the U.S. aerial campaign targeting the militants who have overrun much of northern and western Iraq and carved out a proto-state spanning the Syria-Iraq border, saying it has helped efforts to roll back the Sunni extremists.

But he stressed that he sees no need for the U.S. or other nations to send troops into Iraq to help fight the Islamic State.

"Not only is it not necessary," he said, "We don't want them. We won't allow them. Full stop."

Instead, al-Abadi urged the international community to expand its campaign against the extremists in neighboring Syria, noting that militants coming under pressure in Iraq are retreating back into Syria.

The comments provided a sharp rebuttal to remarks a day earlier by the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, who told the Senate Armed Services Committee that American ground troops may be needed to battle Islamic State forces in the Middle East if President Barack Obama's current strategy fails.

On Wednesday, the Republican-controlled House voted to give the U.S. military authority to train and arm moderate Syrian rebels, with final approval expected in the Senate as early as Thursday.

However, Obama emphasized anew that American forces "do not and will not have a combat mission" in the struggle against the militants. "As your commander in chief, I will not commit you and the rest of our armed forces to fighting another ground war in Iraq," Obama told troops at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida.

Last week, Obama outlined a plan that includes a broader military campaign in Iraq, increased support and training for Syrian rebel groups, and expanded airstrikes against the militants in Syria.

View gallery

An Islamic State militant (L) stands next to residents as they hold pieces of wreckage from a Syrian …

Top general says boots on the ground may be needed to fight ISIS (video)

The Iraqi premier said that the Iraqi military will choose and approve targets, and that the U.S. will not take action without consulting with Baghdad first. Failure to do so, he warned, risks causing widespread civilian casualties as has happened in Pakistan and Yemen, where the U.S. has conducted drone strikes for years.

"The only contribution the American forces or the international coalition are going to help us with is from the sky," al-Abadi said. "We are not giving any blank check to the international coalition to hit any target in Iraq."

The Islamic State group was established in Iraq but spread in early 2013 to Syria, where it grew exponentially in the chaos of that country's civil war. Following its success in Syria, the extremist group's fighters — including many Iraqi nationals — rampaged across northern and western Iraq in June, seizing a huge swath of land and sending tremors across the Middle East.

The group now controls territory stretching from northern Syria to the outskirts of Baghdad, where it has established an Islamic state, or caliphate, ruled by its harsh interpretation of Islamic law.

The U.S. has rejected cooperating with Syrian President Bashar Assad in the Obama administration's expanded campaign against the Islamic State. The White House has long called Assad's rule illegitimate and demanded he step aside.

Al-Abadi, however, said that Iraq doesn't have the luxury of refusing cooperation with Damascus, and instead pushed for some sort of coordination.

"We cannot afford to fight our neighbor, even if we disagree on many things," al-Abadi said of the Assad regime. "We don't want to enter into problems with them. For us, sovereignty of Syria is very important."

"The fight will go on unless ISIL is hit in Syria," he added, using an acronym for the group. "This is the responsibility of the international community — on top of them the United States government — to do something about ISIL in Syria."

The two countries, both of which are allies of Iran, appear to already be coordinating on some level, and Iraq's national security adviser met Tuesday with Assad in the Syrian capital, where the two agreed to strengthen cooperation in fighting "terrorism," according to Syria's state news agency.

The CIA estimates the Islamic State group now has some 20,000 to 31,000 fighters in Iraq and Syria, while a senior Iraqi intelligence official put the number even higher, saying more than 27,600 militants are believed to be operating in Iraq alone, about 2,600 of them foreigners. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.

Since the American aerial campaign began, Iraqi and Kurdish security forces, backed by U.S. airstrikes, have retaken the strategic Mosul Dam, along with several small towns. French reconnaissance planes left from al-Dhafra air base in the United Arab Emirates on Monday as part of France's commitment to provide aerial support to the Iraqi government.

Iranian-backed militias have provided much of the muscle for Iraq's government as the national military has struggled. The Shiite militias played a key role recently on the ground in the Iraqi town of Amirli, where they were crucial in ending a siege by Islamic State fighters.

The U.S. hopes to pull together a broad coalition to help defeat the extremist group, but has ruled out cooperating with Iran or Syria, which both view the Islamic State group as a threat. Both countries were excluded from a conference this week in Paris that brought the U.S., France and other allies together to discuss how to address the militant threat, prompting al-Abadi to question their vision.

"I actually find it puzzling that we hold a conference in Paris to help Iraq and to fight terrorism and ... the biggest neighbor of Iraq — Iran — is excluded," he said. "That puts me as prime minister in a very difficult position."

Al-Abadi added that Iraq is caught in the middle of "a disagreement between the international allies — this international coalition — and Iran. ... For me, that is catastrophic."

Beyond the current militant crisis, Al-Abadi, who was officially named prime minister on Sept. 8, also faces the daunting task of uniting ethnic and religious groups in the government amid warnings that Iraq is on the verge of a three-way split, with Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish regions seemingly pursuing divergent paths.

In a sign of the difficulties he faces, on Tuesday, lawmakers shot down al-Abadi's nominees for the critical posts of defense and interior minister.

Alluding to the importance of that mission, al-Abadi said Wednesday: "Inclusiveness has an outlook, an appearance, and substance. This is the only way we will succeed."

Iraqi prime minister: No foreign troops

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi pushes for more action against Islamic State extremists in neighboring Syria.
Warns of 'endless' campaign