al-Libi missed, but America may not have
There are more indications that the US taking a more direct hand in fighting the al-Qaeda/Taliban in Pakistan. The AP reports that "Abu Laith al-Libi, a top al-Qaida commander in Afghanistan who was blamed for bombing a base while Vice President Cheney was visiting last year, has been killed". The news comes from a 'martyrdom' announcement on a militant website.
"Earlier, there had been reports of an attack on militants in a Pakistani village. Pakistani intelligence officials and local residents said a missile hit a compound about 2.5 miles outside Mir Ali in North Waziristan late Monday or early Tuesday, destroying the facility."
A knowledgeable Western official said that ''it appears at this point that al-Libi has met his demise,'' but declined to talk about the circumstances. ''It was a major success in taking one of the top terrorists in the world off the street,'' the official said. He added that the death occurred ''within the last few days.''
An earlier Belmont Club post quotes the Asia Times as saying that the US has built a base right on the Pakistani border and that the al-Qaeda are considering displacing further away from the frontier to regain their safety.
posted by wretchardthecat at 1/31/2008 12:42:00 PM
11 Comments:
the US has built a base right on the Pakistani border
Memo to al Qaeda: Make sure your life insurance premiums are all paid up.
I just picked this one up too, different source, but it looks kosher..
On the Wing
(Shameless advertising, I know..!!)
Operation Breakfast II?
When Nixon secretly bombed and raided Cambodia, I think it actually remained a secret for a while, longer than a week for sure.
Here we get reports of supposed Predator attacks over the border in Pakistan and they are accepted as routine. And this is only a week or two after we have read that our top officials went to Pakistan to beg for permission to go in country, only to be turned down by Musharraf. There is a critical conflict between these two story lines, and it is just accepted as if it's nothing.
Boy, if that's this case, this certainly isn't Vietnam. Nixon's bombing would have been an article in his impeachment.
Tony: Great point!
And just think,, now the Left is screaming about us NOT bombing and raiding inside another sovereign country where we have not been invited.
Boy, times have changed....
Someone ought to ask Obama if, given his position on “invading Pakistan” he would have had the same position in 1965 in regards to Cambodia and Laos. Oh, boy, I am going to be HOPING that McCain or Romney or someone asks him THAT one!
Hey RWE, thank you, sir.
It is WEIRD, isn't it? Just like the our DemoLib brothers and sisters were not anti-war during the 90's, they are actually PRO-WAR for Afghanistan.
Just like our air invasion of Serbia, somehow this raining down hell from above the Khyber Pass doesn't count as war.
Clinton lit off almost our entire stocks of precious Cruise missiles on hapless, pointless crusades like Operation Desert Fox, the well-intended but worthless Afghan missile attacks after the Embassy Bombings, and the unprovoked and pointless exhibition of our crown stealth jewels to bedevil Serbia and choke the Danube.
But all that happened in the '90's, a period of Peace and Prosperity, when war had ended. No anti-war movement was called for.
I don't know if they are actually PRO-War vis a vis Afghanistan.
Lip service, really. Because they know the chance of it becoming an actual war is close to nil.
If President Clinton actually were to start seriously thinking about it, those same pro-war crowd woul have turned on their Sanit Bill, too.
Memo to Al Libi,
Payback's a bitch, dirtbag!
The Predator has the ability to "reach out and touch someone" in a way not previously seen. The new Warrior has an even longer reach, limited only by Hellfire parameters.
Notice that this high value target was simply terminated. No attempt to capture or kidnap for interrogation. But then, I guess that is becoming more and more the trend since Gitmo is under threat of closure and no one can use coercive interrogation.
It was certainly clean and less risky from an operational viewpoint.
Always: yes, their 'pro-war" stance on Afghanistan is but a fig leaf for their real attitudes and intentions.
Afghanistan is "their" kind of war - enabling them to use U.S. military power both in an aimless manner as well as in order to reinforce their "it's just a law enforcement problem" approach to terrorism.
In the Kosovo war we bombed civillian targets in order to stop massive ethnic cleansing that appears to not have been happening in the first place.
I call our involvement in Kosovo "the Seinfeld War" - it was made for TV and was "the war about nothing."
I think the most interesting (and untold) element to this story is the intelligence work that went into finding this guy.
Presumably someone that senior doesn't travel around with large blinking neon signs. How was he found?
Air war
Ain't war
If you're
Anti-war
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