A statement reportedly from the new leader of al-Qaida in Iraq saluted Republican defeats in Tuesday's U.S. elections.

The audio message, said to be from Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, hailed Democrat victories as a move in the right direction as the United States "voted for a level of reason," the BBC said.

Outgoing U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stepped down to flee the Iraqi battlefield, the message said, and urged U.S. President Bush to "stay on the battleground."

Muhajir, also known as Ayyub al-Masri, has been identified by U.S. forces as the successor to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, killed in a raid last June.

Al Qaida’s leader in Iraq today vowed his fighters will never rest until they have blown up the White House and reached Jerusalem.

In an audio tape made available on militant websites, Abu Hamza al-Muhajir claimed to be winning the war in Iraq and said the US President was “stupid”.

He praised the Republican defeat in the US midterm elections as “reasonable”, and claimed the al Qaida army has 12,000 fighters in Iraq, ready to die for their cause.

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“We haven’t had enough of your blood yet,” he told the US.

He called on Mr Bush to remain “steadfast in the battlefield” so al Qaida would have more opportunities to fight his soldiers.

“We call on the lame duck (Bush) not to hurry up in escaping the same way the defence minister did,” he said, referring to the removal of Donald Rumsfeld as US Defence Secretary following the Democrats’ victory in Midterm elections.

“They are getting ready to leave, because they are no longer capable of staying,” the al Qaida leader said.

“Remain steadfast in the battlefield you coward,” he called on the US President.

“We will not rest from our Jihad until we are under the olive trees of Rumieh and we have blown up the filthiest house – which is called the White House,” al-Muhajir said.

A statement purportedly from the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq hails the defeat of Republicans in the US mid-term polls.

The audio message, whose authenticity has not been verified, was published on Islamist websites and was said to be the voice of Abu Hamza al-Muhajir.

The Democrats' victory in Tuesday's Congressional elections was a move in the right direction, the speaker said.

Outgoing US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had stepped down to flee the Iraqi battlefield, he added.

There are up to 30 alleged "mass casualty" terror plots in operation in Britain, as well as hundreds of young British Muslims on a path to radicalisation, the head of MI5 has said.

In an unprecedented public announcement yesterday, the MI5 director general, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, revealed that the caseload of the Security Services had risen by 80 per cent since January, and that the counter-terrorism agency was fighting to keep the rapidly growing threat under control

Describing the scale of the home-grown terrorist problem, she said MI5 and the police were tackling 200 groups or networks totalling more than 1,600 identified individuals in the UK who were "actively engaged in plotting or facilitating terrorist acts".

Islamic militants linked to al -Qa'ida were recruiting teenagers to carry out attacks using chemicals, bacteriological agents, radioactive materials and even nuclear technology.

Dame Manningham-Buller said she was not seeking to be alarmist, and did not wish to stir up fear.

Prime Minister Tony Blair said today that the threat from home-grown Islamic terrorism would last “a generation,” reinforcing a highly unusual warning by the head of the MI5 domestic intelligence agency that some 1,600 suspects in 200 terrorist conspiracies were under surveillance.

Mrs. Manningham-Buller echoed arguments made by Mr. Blair, who has resisted critics’ accusations that his support of the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan had made Britain a target for terrorist attack. “Let there be no doubt about this,” she said, “the international terrorist threat to this country is not new. It began before Iraq, before Afghanistan and before 9/11.”

Historically, the head of MI5 does not make such public pronouncements. Mrs. Manningham-Buller acknowledged in a speech to academics Thursday night: “I rarely speak in public. I prefer to avoid the limelight and get on with my job.”

But it was a sign of changed times — and, perhaps of MI5’s campaign to secure more government funding and expand its ranks of agents and recruits — that the text of her speech was posted today on the MI5 Web site...

Britain's lead security service is battling to contain a rapidly growing terrorist threat, represented by at least 30 serious plots that "often have links back to Al-Qaida in Pakistan", MI5's chief has revealed in a rare public speech.

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In the first clear public indication that Pakistan has firmly and damagingly been identified as the locus of international Islamist terrorism, the MI5 chief laid out the dangerous support provided to "largely British foot soldiers (of Al-Qaida) here" by Pakistan-based radical ideologues.

In a startlingly specific speech, she said, "We are aware of numerous plots to kill people and to damage our economy. What do I mean by numerous? Five? Ten? No, nearer 30 that we currently know of. These plots often have linked back to Al-Qaida in Pakistan and through those links Al-Qaida gives guidance and training to its largely British foot soldiers here on an extensive and growing scale."

“Describing the scale of the home-grown terrorist problem, she said MI5 and the police were tackling 200 groups or networks totalling more than 1,600 identified individuals in the UK who were ‘actively engaged in plotting or facilitating terrorist acts,’” never mind that such terrorist acts rarely come to fruition, usually instead sputtering out into absurd allegations of liquid bombs and other fantastical plots nipped in the bud, or so we are expected to believe, that is after we suspend credibility, again for the umpteenth time.

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A bit of Google sleuthing produces embarrassing results on the depth and breadth of British involvement in terrorism. For instance, as it now appears, the so-called Dirty War in Northern Ireland was an MI5 affair, with the Brits going so far as to provide “infra-red equipment which was used to provide the IRA with state-of-the-art bomb detonation technology,” according to the Sunday Herald. According to “a former soldier who joined the Provisional IRA at army intelligence’s request,” reported the Guardian in 2002, both MI5 and the FBI were in on the act. As well, it turns out some of the most violent and feared members of the IRA were in fact members of Britain’s special forces, including John Joe Magee, billed as the IRA’s “torturer-in-chief,” again according to Neil Mackay, Home Affairs Editor of the Sunday Herald.

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British intelligence put Abu Qatada—the “alleged spiritual leader of the al-Qaida terrorist network,” “Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man in Europe,” and “believed by several European countries to be a pivotal figure in international terrorism”—up in a safe house, an assertion apparently corroborated by French intelligence, according to the Guardian. Instead of delivering Qatada to justice, “British security services offered him a chance to escape to Afghanistan,” the Guardian reported elsewhere. In fact, if we are to believe a report published by the Times Online, Qatada “has been revealed as a double agent working for MI5.”

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Haroon Rashid Aswat, [...] “the mastermind of all the bombings in London,” according to intelligence expert John Loftus [...] had connections to British intelligence and while “the entire British police are out chasing him … one wing of the British government, MI-6 or the British Secret Service, has been hiding him.”

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According to two French intelligence experts, [...] “British intelligence paid large sums of money to an al-Qaeda cell in Libya in a doomed attempt to assassinate Colonel Gadaffi in 1996 and thwarted early attempts to bring Osama bin Laden to justice,” the London Observer reported in November, 2002.

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Because “of the sheer scale of what MI5 faces, the issue” of preventing terrorism “is a daunting one,” Manningham-Buller told the department of contemporary British History at Queen Mary College in London. Or rather, considering the above, because of the sheer scale of what MI5, MI6, the CIA, FBI, Mossad have created through collaboration, the issue of preventing “30 alleged ‘mass casualty’ terror plots” will be daunting unless the British people consent to live in a police state.

NATO intelligence is essentially the British and the US acting together [...] De Gaulle kicked NATO out of France in 1966, and the French have been relatively free [...] of the kind of terrorism that you have in Germany and Italy…and Greece where the NATO infrastructure was very strong. So what he was suggesting was that if you kick out NATO, you won’t have a terrorist problem. Meaning, terrorism comes from NATO intelligence...

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