American forces have captured three members of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network in northern Iraq, a U.S. military commander told The Associated Press on Sunday. If confirmed, it would be the first disclosed detention of al-Qaida militants in Iraq. About 10 members of Ansar al-Islam also have been arrested by U.S. troops in the past seven months, said Col. Joe Anderson, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division. Asked if troops had captured members of al-Qaida, Anderson - whose brigade controls Mosul - replied: ``Three, two weeks ago.’’
In Mosul, eh? Didn’t we just have a spate of attacks around there?
Anderson said he believed the captured al-Qaida men were Iraqi nationals, who had been transferred to Baghdad for further interrogation. ``We take them, we process them through a detention facility .... and if all the facts wind up they go to Baghdad and once they go south that’s the last I ever want to hear from them,’’ he told AP in an interview. In recent months, U.S. forces in central Iraq have detained a handful of people suspected of ties to al-Qaida, but American intelligence officials described them as mostly cannon fodder low-level operatives with unclear purposes in the country. On Saturday, the top U.S. commander in Iraq said that although the United States suspects members of the network have taken part in attacks on coalition and civilian targets in Iraq, there is no conclusive evidence of its involvement. ``We still haven’t conclusively established an al-Qaida operative in this country,’’ Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez told reporters in Baghdad.
Looks like we have now.
| Sanchez is probably talking about the controllers. Any "al-Qaeda" guys they catch will be at least middle management. I suspect that by now all of the cannon fodder and runners belong to local groups and that al-Qaeda itself is very tiny. And located in Iran. |
Anderson said an array of anti-U.S. groups operate in northern Iraq. ``There are cells of different types here that we keep reading through and capturing,’’ he said. ``You know, we’ve got the former regime loyalists, the Baath Party type groups, the Fedayeen groups, we have the AI (Ansar al-Islam), we have the AQ (al-Qaida) we have the Wahhabis. Now the questions is how big and how many there are.’’
And how quickly we can deplete them.
Most of the "wahhabis" are the starry-eyed turbans who've run off to fight the infidels from wherever, I'd guess, pledging themselves to Binny. They're in it for the glory and the 72 virgins.
I suspect the 72 virgins they get are on the same order as the glory they receive. They depart the gene pool and ascend into paradise, only to discover that they have to walk down to the street corner to collect their virgins. The "maidens" are hefty women, many of them bleached blondes, with heavy makeup disguising the crows' feet around their doe eyes. They have lipstick on their teeth and some have tatoos reading "Herb - 1944." There are holes in their fishnet stockings and their dainty slippers are run down at the heels. They have lipstick on their teeth, and names like Flo or Sadie or Mabel. And their virginity is... ummm... doubtful. |
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