"Most people inside our intelligence agencies aren't getting that message. Listen to what al-Abssi is saying: ‘the West is waging war against Islam' and they [the Islamists] are claiming that they have the right to kill Americans inside the U.S., not just strike our military assets in Iraq and elsewhere." --U.S. intelligence source speaking on condition of anonymity to the Northeast Intelligence Network.

a former associate of the deceased al Qaeda butcher Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Shakir al-Abssi, a/k/a Shaker al-Abssi, is the leader of Fatah al Islam, a new Islamic terrorist organization. Al-Abssi is based in Lebanon and was sentenced (along with al-Zarqawi) to death in absentia for the 2002 assassination of U.S. diplomat Laurence Foley in Jordan. Shakir al-Abssi has a long history of violence and spent three years in a Syrian prison. He was also once a pilot for Yasser Arafat.

has effectively established a military training camp that "might be crude by some standards but effective, attracting young Islamic militants from diverse places, and what it lacks in sophistication, makes up for in motivation." As pointed out in the media, al Abssi established a training facility in Lebanon, outside of the scope of the Lebanese government, and is set on rising to the level of another Abu Musab al-Zarqawi but with "America on his mind." According to this intelligence source, "the fight is no longer the Palestinians versus the Israelis, but all of Islam versus the West, especially the U.S."

To emphasize that broadened objective of al-Abssi in particular, this intelligence source pointed to his comments that "America must be punished for their presence and involvement in the Islamic world," adding that the end game is the establishment of the creation of a global Islamic nation reaches far beyond fighting US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.