BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan – Afghan National Police and Coalition forces detained three well-known improvised explosive device (IED) facilitators while conducting a combat operation to interdict a Taliban IED cell located 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) northwest of the city of Khowst, in Saberi district, Khowst province April 30.
The Combined ANP and Coalition force air-assaulted into the village of Zambar and quickly detained Haji Nazir, Nazir Khan and another individual, known only as Latif, at three separate compounds. The detained individuals are believed to be mid-level Taliban leaders who were involved in Taliban fighter recruiting, financing, and the masterminds behind the IED cell in the Sabari district.
No shots were fired during the successful mission and there were no injuries to any Afghan civilians reported.
“The information gained from these three individuals will assist us And just how is this information to be gained? Asking nicely? Saying 'please'?
in detaining other key Taliban leaders,” said Maj. Christopher Belcher, a Combined Joint Task Force-82 spokesperson. “We will continue to pursue and interdict Taliban leaders who threaten the people of Afghanistan.”
“Taliban leaders have two choices,” Belcher said. “Stop fighting and reconcile with the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, or face elimination by Afghan National Security and Coalition forces.” I choose the second answer.
Companion piece:
BAGRAM AIR BASE, AFGHANISTAN – Afghan and Coalition forces detained one adult male after a raid on a house in the Tani district of the Khowst Province early this morning.
A search of the building turned up AK-47s and military-style load-bearing vests.
Credible evidence led the forces to the detainee, a suspected operative in the Haqqani network, who is also suspected of facilitating suicide bombers in the Khowst Province.
“Facilitators like this are simply cowards, exploiting impressionable people for their own purposes,” said Maj. Christopher Belcher, a Combined Joint Task Force-82 spokesman.
No shots were fired, and no one was injured during the operation. No innocent civilians hurt, no baby ducks killed, not even any Talibunnies harmed. So sad.
#2
USN...becasue of the cousin of Mahood's sister who is married to Ahab's wife who is the father of Mohammed who is the 3rd cousin of the Aunt who is the sister of the father of one of the bombers. It's a family thing.
#9
Whew! I was worried there for a minute. You know the black shoes have to have it spelled out in 40 point font single syllable words as you pointed out. Easily confused bunch.
#11
Osama wants to show 'em the way to paradise, but never seems to go along for the ride.
This is why it's so important that we start up a "private transportation" network for all these cowardly reluctant stay-at-home top tier Islamic clerics. They really need to get offed out and about more often.
#12
So where do I fit in, anymouse? I've got an adorable pair of brown pumps with zippers on the toes, and the cutest little black pumps with velvet bows. If it helps any, I have 6.25 diopter myopia that makes it dreadfully hard to see if I misplace my glasses before putting in the contact lenses (one of Mr. Wife's morning jobs is finding my glasses if they somehow aren't on the nightstand as intended), but then I wouldn't be able to read what's on the screen no matter how big the font. ;-)
#14
TW; there is a bit of class distinction in the Navy; Aviation types ('airedales' is an endaring term hung on us by those less fortunate) wear brown shoes; I believe it came from the original flight boots back 'in the day.' Surface and sub-surface sailors wear black, hence the term.
As to your 'adorable brown pumps,' I will leave those for the Air Force, but thanks anyway.
By AMIR SHAH, Associated Press Writer Sounds like an unbiased source.
KABUL, Afghanistan - Regional officials said Wednesday that 51 villagers, some of them women and children, were killed in recent fighting in western Afghanistan. That would be the Iranian side of things.
The U.S.-led coalition said it had no reports of civilian deaths.
The governor of southern Kandahar province also reported some civilians may have been killed during a clash there Tuesday night that left 13 dead, including two women.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai repeated his demands that more be done to prevent civilian casualties during military operations, saying he has been meeting regularly with officials of coalition and NATO forces trying to solve the problem. When the terrorists look like civilians and fight from among civilians the ONLY way to prevent civilian casualties is to not fight back (and even that won't always work.) If that is the desired approach, then it's time to go home and let Hamid work it out on his own.
"The intention is very good in these operations to fight terrorism. Sometimes mistakes have been made as well, but five years on, it is very difficult for us to continue to accept civilian casualties," Karzai told reporters.
"We can no longer accept civilian casualties the way they occur," he added. "It is not understandable anymore." I understand it just fine. See above.
The U.S.-led coalition said two military operations conducted between Friday and Sunday by U.S. and Afghan forces in western Herat province's Zerkoh Valley killed 136 suspected Taliban — the deadliest fighting in Afghanistan since January.
The bloodshed set off anti-U.S. protests by villagers, That tells me the villagers were willing accomplices.
and Mohammad Homayoun Azizi, chief of the Herat provincial council, said two council members who visited the area reported to him that 51 civilians were killed.
The officials were part of a high-level delegation including lawmakers, police and intelligence officials who investigated the claim.
Azizi said the 51 bodies were buried in three different locations and included women and children. The dead included 12 relatives of a man named Jamal Mirzai, he said. And who is this Jamal guy? A baddie? Or 'just' sheltering some?
"People say the coalition troops should cooperate with the government, including Afghan forces. They should also be careful in civilian areas," Azizi said.
Sgt. Dean Welch, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, said Wednesday that its units were still operating in Herat's Zerkoh Valley, but had no reports of civilian casualties yet.
In Kandahar, Gov. Asadullah Khalid said authorities were trying to determine if any civilians were killed during the overnight clash between insurgents and Afghan and foreign forces.
He said that when the Afghan-international team surrounded three vehicles carrying men, women and children, Taliban gunmen inside opened fire and the ensuing firefight killed 13 people and wounded 12. No casualties were reported in the Afghan-coalition force. These may have been civilian women and children, but they were NOT innocent. If somebody dies in a bank robbery the driver of the getaway car is guilty of murder too.
"We don't know how many civilians or insurgents have been killed or wounded. We are investigating," Khalid said.
An earlier statement from the U.S.-led coalition said five male insurgents were killed in the incident in Maruf district and three escaped. It did not give any details of civilian casualties.
Reports of civilian deaths have deepened Afghans' distrust of the international forces Even if the reported civilian deaths did not occur, but were orchestrated propaganda.
and of the U.S.-backed government as they try to combat a resurgent Taliban militia — itself accused of indiscriminate attacks that often claim civilian lives.
University students burned a U.S. flag during a demonstration Wednesday in eastern Nangarhar province to protest the deaths of five people, including a woman and teenage girl, during a coalition-led raid over the weekend.
It was the fourth straight day of anti-America protests in the country.
A recent Human Rights Watch report said NATO and U.S. operations, including the use of airstrikes and heavy weapons, killed at least 230 civilians last year. However, most of the 900 civilian fatalities during 2006 were from insurgent attacks, it said. And this from Human Rights Watch!
#1
For starters, Hamid, to better understand the "civilian" causalties, look under the burka. If "she" has a beard, mustache and testicles "she" ain't a civilian. One way to lower civilian causalties is for the Taliban to refrain from attacking coalition troops while using women and children as cover. But that ain't gonna happen 'cause it's a cultural thingy among the brave lions of Islam.
#2
The US and coalition forces never kill anyone. Our soldiers only direct bits of metal toward assumed enemy combatant's vital parts at high speed.
Allan kills them or allows them to survive. It's not up to us. These dead obviously fell out of favor with Allan. Bury them without honor.
#6
If these gutless, yellow dogs insist on hiding among women and children, they should expect all living koranimals in the area to be exterminated. Our troops have no time for sorting under fire. We should make it clear taht everything out front in the battlespace is subject to death and destruction. The choice is made by the gutless Muslims not us. End of discussion.
US-led coalition forces and Afghan police have shot dead five militants in a clash in southern Helmand province, a coalition statement says. Three vehicles came speeding towards the checkpoint in Zara Kalay village and failed to stop, the statement said. Eight militants came out of the cars and started firing - troops returned fire, killing five, it said.
The US-led coalition statement said the three remaining militants in the Helmand clash managed to escape. Neither coalition forces nor Afghan police had suffered any casualties, it said. It added that there were no Afghan civilians in the vehicles used by the militants.
Posted by: Steve ||
05/02/2007 09:05 ||
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SANGIN VALLEY: NATO-led troops killed 75 suspected insurgents on the first day of an offensive against Taliban militants in a valley in southern Afghanistan, a British military officer said on Tuesday. The militants died on Monday, when British, Danish and Afghan troops fought their way up the Sangin Valley in Helmand province, said Maj Dominic Biddick, who commanded a company of British troops in the operation.
Biddick said the troops detained several more suspected militants and discovered an arms cache during “a full day of fighting”. One British soldier was wounded, he said, without providing any details of his condition. “The operation went better than most people had anticipated,” Biddick said. “At one point, there were six companies in clashes at the same time.” His tally of 75 insurgents killed could not be independently verified.
“We’ve killed up to 56 Taliban, including lots of Pakistanis.”
But an Afghan commander said up to 56 militants were killed, including some Pakistani nationals. “We’ve killed up to 56 Taliban, including lots of Pakistanis,” said General Moheydin Ghori from the Afghan army. Local and international forces are trying to “create security conditions in the Sangin valley so that meaningful reconstruction and development can occur”, said an ISAF spokesman.
On Monday, the US military reported that 136 suspected militants were killed in three days of fighting in western Herat province. But police said on Tuesday at least 30 civilians, including women and children, were among the dead after clashes in Herat. The fighting erupted in Herat province’s Shindand district on Friday and on Sunday. “There were at least 30 civilians including women and children among those killed in Shindand’s fighting,” Herat police chief Mohammad Shafiq Fazli said. Shindand governor Khodadad Erfani also said there were civilians among the dead, “but we don’t have the number”.
Separately, US-led coalition warplanes killed four militants who had attacked a government building in eastern Afghanistan, the coalition said on Tuesday. In another incident, Afghan security forces supported by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force detained 11 suspected militants, some of them linked to Al Qaeda, a governor said. The casualties occurred after nearly a dozen militants attacked the administration office of eastern Khost province’s Spera district late Monday with rockets and gunfire, it said. “In response to a request from the (police), coalition forces responded with close air support, killing four insurgents,” the statement said, adding seven more rebels were wounded.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/02/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
“We’ve killed up to 56 Taliban, including lots of Pakistanis.”
I find that quote interesting. Does it mean they counted all the bodies? I think so, othwise it would be, "We've killed about 50". The quote is both exact and vague at the same time. And I love the way he uses the word "lots" -- in a I'm-too-tired-to-bother-keeping-a-tally sort of way.
Posted by: Captain Lewis ||
05/02/2007 11:39 Comments ||
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Nine Muslims accused of stockpiling chemicals and explosive detonators have been ordered to stand trial on charges of planning terror attacks in Sydney, Australian court officials said on Tuesday.
Magistrate Michael Price on Monday ruled that the men must stand trial after they were arrested last year in Australia’s largest-ever counter-terrorism operation, a court official told AFP. “The nine men are committed to stand trial in the Supreme Court and will appear in that court on June 1,” an official said.
The nine appeared in March in a magistrates court in Penrith, west of Sydney, under a heavy blanket of security to allow Price to establish if they had a case to answer. They were charged with planning terrorist strikes in AustraliaÂ’s most populous city, Sydney, reportedly including the bombing of its Lucas Heights nuclear reactor.
The men were arrested in Sydney in November 2005 as part of a crackdown by security services in which a total of 18 Muslims were detained here and in Melbourne. The nine suspects had allegedly been urged by an Islamic cleric, their leader, to inflict “maximum damage” in Australia for the sake of jihad. At the time of their arrest, police alleged group members had attended jihad training camps, stockpiled chemicals and detonators to make explosives and planned a “large-scale terrorist attack”.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/02/2007 00:00 ||
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BUCHAREST, Romania - Parliament on Wednesday approved an agreement allowing the U.S. to use four Romanian military bases and station up to 3,000 troops in the former communist country.
Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu praised the agreement, saying for decades many Romanians had "only one hope: that the American troops would come and free us from communism." Today, however, "Romania is no longer a victim looking for a savior, but a partner of the United States in the fight against terrorism," he said.
Lawmakers voted 257-1, with 29 nationalists abstaining, to approve the 10-year agreement, which was signed in December 2005 by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Lucian Bolcas, a senior leader of the nationalist Great Romania Party, called it "very serious" for Romania to become a buffer state between two major nuclear powers — the U.S. and Russia.
Russia has criticized the deployment of U.S. troops in its former sphere of influence in eastern Europe. Moscow is also angered by a U.S. plan to place ballistic missile defenses in the Czech Republic and Poland, saying it threatens the balance of power in the region.
The United States is expected to take over the Mihail Kogalniceanu air base in Romania later this year, although no exact date has been announced. U.S. troops are also allowed to use three training bases in southeast and central Romania.
#2
Romania has come a long way since the Wall came down. They are to be congratulated on their maturity as a nation. I second DarthVader's plan to see well-deserved prosperity follow on this decision.
Intelligence agencies have shelved investigations into 10 suicide bombing after failing to identify the suicide bombers, Daily Times has learnt. At least 161 people have been killed in 27 suicide bombings in different parts of the country since 2002.
The sources said that 10 cases were lying closed, as investigators could not make any headway. They said the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) also could not provide any detail of the fingerprints and facial descriptions of the suicide bombers to the intelligence agencies, as none of the 10 bombers had had national identity cards, which carry the fingerprints and other details of the holders.
Investigators believe that identification of the bombers is the only way to reach the masterminds of such incidents. The 10 cases in which the identity of the suicide bombers could not be identified are: Zanibia Mosque, Sialkot, suicide bombing on October 1, 2004; Bari Imam Shrine suicide bombing on May 27, 2005; suicide attack on a military convoy in Tank on February 13, 2007; attack on a police picket in Dera Ismail Khan on January 29, 2007; attack in Peshawar on January 27, 2007; attack on Marriott Hotel, Islamabad, on January 26, 2007; attack on military personnel in Kharian Cantonment on March 29, 2007; attack on military scouts in Dargai on November 8, 2006; Hangu suicide attack on February 9, 2006; and suicide bombing in front of police headquarters in Quetta on November 14, 2006.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/02/2007 00:00 ||
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Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao said on Tuesday that investigators had identified which of the two heads recovered at the scene of SaturdayÂ’s suicide attack at Charsadda belonged to the bomber. He told reporters that the inquiry revealed that there had been only one suicide bomber, aged 16 to 17 years, who had blown himself up and killed 29 people. The minister said the government would continue its fight against terrorism and extremism. The federal government says security was the responsibility of the NWFP government but Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani says his government was not informed about the public meeting. The federal and NWFP governments are jointly investigating the terrorist attack.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/02/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
The minister said the government would continue its fight against terrorism and extremism.
So, are you going to shut down the madrassahs and hang the imams preaching extremism and terrorism? Didn't think so...
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
05/02/2007 13:02 Comments ||
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#2
Dang. I keep thinking of that KFC commercial of the 90s that talked about "pieces and parts" of chickens.
#3
FWIW, in a suicide bombing, the head is usualy blasted clear intact.
Back in 2005 after a string of SVBIED attacks, we recovered 7 (mostly) intact heads. I suggested to the regimental SGM and XO that we put the heads up on pikes in front of the FOB main gate where the local Hajjis would enter for work. I got into a lot of trouble for my idea...
Posted by: Helmuth, Speaking for N guard ||
05/02/2007 16:15 Comments ||
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#4
Helmeth...we has gots more sufisticated since Vi-et-nam.
The arrivals belong to the US 4th Brigade, 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team. The remainder should be in place by June, raising the total of US troops in Iraq to 160,000... Three directions for these troops. Either capitalizing on the Baghdad security successes, or heading for engagement in Baqouba, or as relief for some other group.
#2
This should say 4th (Stryker) Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division. Per Bill Roggio, the 2nd and 3rd brigades of the 2nd Division are already deployed in Baghdad.
Al
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
05/02/2007 19:04 Comments ||
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#3
Baqouba is a rats nest. Leave the Stryker's outside the gate until the B-52's have finished thier business.
BAGHDAD (AP) - The Interior Ministry is trying to gain custody of what it claimed was the body of Abu Ayyub al-Masri, a senior Iraqi official said Wednesday, amid widespread skepticism over reports that the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq had been killed. Meanwhile, a police official in Anbar province said al-Masri died when his explosives belt detonated during fighting but security forces could not retrieve the body because it was in a part of the desert controlled by the terror group.
So it's a tweezers and sponge operation
U.S. authorities urged caution about the reports, saying they had not been confirmed and warning that even if the claim were true, the death of the shadowy Egyptian militant likely would not spell the end of the terror movement in Iraq. ``We still don't know what the status is,'' U.S. military spokesman Rear Adm. Mark Fox said Wednesday, adding the U.S. military was not involved in the operation that purportedly killed al-Masri. ``I haven't seen any reports that we have any bodies, or that we took custody, or that we had any participation there,'' he said at a news conference in Baghdad, adding there were no American forces in the area where it was said to have occurred.
Reports of al-Masri's death first emerged Tuesday from the Interior Ministry, which said the al-Qaida leader was gunned down by rivals in his movement Tuesday at a bridge near Lake Tharthar just north of Baghdad, where the U.S. military believes al-Qaida operates training camps. In a series of conflicting statements, Iraqi officials later said al-Masri's death had not been confirmed, although they believed they had strong intelligence that it was true. Senior Interior Ministry official Maj. Gen. Hussein Kamal said Wednesday that officials were trying to gain custody of the body, but he declined to comment further.
Iraqi officials have released similar reports about the killing or capture of top insurgent figures, only to acknowledge later that the claims were inaccurate.
An al-Qaida front organization denied that al-Masri, who also is known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajer and has a $1 million bounty on his head, had been killed. The Islamic State of Iraq said in a Web statement that al-Masri was ``alive and still fighting the enemy of God.'' But the statement, posted on an extremist Web site, offered no evidence to support the claim. Al-Masri assumed leadership of al-Qaida after his charismatic predecessor, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in a U.S. airstrike last June.
Late Tuesday, the leader of a Sunni Arab group in opposed to al-Qaida told Iraqi television that his fighters tracked down and killed al-Masri along with seven of his aides, two of them Saudis. ``Eyewitnesses confirmed his death and their corpses are still at the scene,'' said Abdul-Sattar al-Rishawi, head of the Anbar Salvation Council in the vast insurgent stronghold.
Citing information from informants, police Lt. Col. Jabbar Rashid al-Dulaimi, who is a member the Salvation Council, said Wednesday that al-Masri had been killed along with two aides the day before when an explosives belt he was wearing detonated during fighting in the desert northwest of Baghdad. He identified the aides as Mullah Qahtan al-Marawi and Ismail al-Iraqi. He said Iraqi authorities had not been able to retrieve the body because it was in an area controlled by al-Qaida fighters but insisted they were ``100 percent certain'' al-Masri had been killed.
The report of al-Masri's death occurred at a time when al-Qaida is locked in a violent power struggle with other Sunni insurgents angry over its effort to dominate the movement and over the role of foreigners in the terror network. More than 200 Sunni sheiks in Anbar province have decided to form a political party to oppose al-Qaida.
U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said al-Masri's death would be a positive development, but he played down suggestions it would spell the end of the terror threat in Iraq. ``Clearly taking a major terrorist off the battlefield is an important thing and if we can confirm it, if this did happen, without question it would be a significant and positive development,'' Crocker told reporters in Washington via a teleconference. ``That said, I would not expect it to in any way bring to an end al-Qaida's activities in Iraq,'' he added. ``My sense is that it is now a very decentralized terrorist effort, so while removing its current head would be a good and positive thing, I think we have to expect that we will need to continue dealing with further al-Qaida attacks.''
Clashes have erupted between al-Qaida and other insurgent groups, notably the nationalist 1920 Revolution Brigades and the Islamic Army in Iraq, in at least three provinces, U.S. officers say. The decision to declare the Islamic State of Iraq under the leadership of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi was widely seen as an effort by al-Qaida to put an Iraqi face on the movement. Al-Masri is the ``war minister'' of the self-declared state.
At the same time, the U.S. military has stepped up covert operations to disrupt the terror network. Last Friday, the Pentagon announced the arrest of veteran jihadist Abdul al-Hadi al-Iraqi, an associate of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. The Pentagon did not say where al-Iraqi was arrested but said he was allegedly trying to return to his native Iraq.
According to associates in Afghanistan, al-Masri has been involved in Islamic extremist movements since 1982, when he joined Islamic Jihad, a terror group led by Ayman al-Zawahri, who became bin Laden's chief deputy. Al-Masri fought with Muslim rebels against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s and later ran al-Qaida training camps there.
Posted by: Steve ||
05/02/2007 08:53 ||
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#1
Meanwhile, a police official in Anbar province said al-Masri died when his explosives belt detonated during fighting...
Was this 'police official' trying to boost the legend of al-Masri among the kinds of people who think that kind of death is most glorious?
#2
Gateway Pundit has all sorts of information about Mr. Al Masri, including a photo. He does not look like a nice man. Oh, and Al Masri apparently emigrated to Iraq in 2002 - preceding Al Zarqawi - where he set up the first al Qaeda cell, in Baghdad.
BAGHDAD - Criminals in Baghdad are stealing corpses from the scenes of car bombings and killings in order to extract ransoms from grieving relatives.
In a macabre offshoot of the capital's kidnapping epidemic, the gangs pose as medics collecting bodies to be taken back to the city's overflowing morgues.
Instead, they take the corpses to secret places and demand payments of up to $5,000 to release each body to relatives for burial. Because Muslim custom dictates that a body must be buried as soon as possible after death, many families simply pay up, rather than involve the police.
"We have seen 40 families to whom this has happened, where people said that they have had to pay money to receive bodies," said Dr. Mohammed al-Nasrawi, an official at the Baghdad city morgue.
The new racket in "dead hostage taking" is thought to be run by gangs connected to the city's sectarian militias, many of whom are involved in conventional kidnappings.
Iraqi police said the gangs often respond to car bombings, which can leave more than 100 corpses on the streets. In the chaos, police and army units seldom question the credentials of people posing as ambulance crews.
Capt. Falah Saab al Mamouri of Iraq's Interior Ministry described how one such gang since apprehended operated: "They would look for bodies that had identity cards on them and then get in touch with the family.
"They would then ring the family of the dead person, tell them that their relative has been killed, and then demand between $3,000 and $5,000 to return the body.
"Once the family had handed the money over to a middle man, they would dump the corpse near the city morgue with the name written on a piece of paper pinned on the chest. Sooner or later someone would hand it over to the morgue, and the family would find it there."
The process is made simpler for the gangs by the current Iraqi habit of carrying around details of their next of kin in case they are unexpectedly killed. Frequently, such contact details are stored in a mobile phone.
Capt. al Mamouri added: "We noticed two ambulance crews at the scene of a bombing that were only taking away bodies with mobile phones on them. The Iraqi National Guard arrested the crews and they confessed what they had been doing."
He said that subsequent inquiries revealed that the crews had been employees of the Health Ministry, and they had been stashing the bodies in hospital mortuaries.
The ministry is run by Shi'ite groups loyal to the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and often has been accused of being infiltrated by sectarian gangs.
Police think, however, that up to a dozen other gangs are operating the same way.
Some get their pickings from areas known as "dead men's corners" garbage dumps and other secluded spots, where victims of sectarian gangs are often dumped.
#1
Look for people with large scale refrigeration facilities.
Come on, folks. How much more ghoulish is this going to get? Just when you think Islamic scumbags can't stoop any lower, they dig a new tunnel. Time to stage some fake auto accidents with a few unclaimed corpses that are loaded with C-4 GPS reporting systems. We could win a ton of good will from the people and it wouldn't take a lot to put these necro-kleptos out of business.
#4
Regardless, Iraq is usefully placed as a land base from which to attack or interdict so many of the regions playas. Helping stabilize the country is a plausible reason for keeping troops there, and expanding permanent cantonments. Not to mention, as lotp once explained, the more training foreign troops receive from us, the more professional they become and, even more importantly, the better they understand what a very bad idea it would be to ever go up against us.
#5
Iraq was the next place after Afghanistan because it was right smack dab in the center of gravity of the Axis of Bad-A$$ Dudes, to wit:
*Iran
*Syria
*Saudi Arabia
Iraq was always known to be difficult because it is in the Middle East, and it has been under the thumb of a ruthless dictator for 35 years or so, and has had a brutal history before that. In short, it is a disfunctional sh*thole, fueled by oil money.
So the idea was to establish a base for neutralizing or dismembering similar neighboring oil-fueled dictatorships that brought their psychotic ideas and mischief to the world, and ultimately the US.
To do this required that we be strong of will, and appropriately forceful and brutal. It appears that we, collectively as a nation, now lack this will to do what must be done to achieve our goals.
If we lack the will to take the bull by the horns, it just brings us closer to the ultimate brutality of Wrechard's Three Conjectures. Like the Fram filter guy sez, "Pay me now, or pay me later."
This corpse ransom enterprise is just another symptom of the thuggery of the society. Just think what could have been done if, for example, Tater and his Tots militia were exterminated back in 2004, when they started their reign of terror. Instead of making an example out of these thugs, we played footsie with Sistani, and ultimately Tater. By destroying Tater and his minions, we would have sent an appropriate message to the Iraqi people that these behaviors are a dead end, and cease and desist these type of activities.
As long as there are no consequences for these behaviors, they will continue, and our troops will be stuck in this meat grinder. This applies to Syria and Iran, and to Saudi Arabia, too.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
05/02/2007 13:35 Comments ||
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#6
Omavith
It is not hopeless. Reports like this infuriate us. But to be honest, the disrespect I have seen for Life and decent things that we see in this article I ahve seen among the worst US gangs and other criminal element. Dirt is Sirt no matter where it is
Posted by: LSU fan ||
05/02/2007 14:28 Comments ||
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#7
LSU Fan:
Omavath may be right, been there a few times. My assessment is they are "hopeless" as is much of the Muzzie ME. I hope we've learned a lesson from this kak and stay the phuech outta Africa and the ME. It ain't Kansas, it ain't never gonna be Kansas, not in 10,000 years. Stay clear of it and let them slug it out.
#8
Problem is that it always ends up outside their yard and into yours. Do you deal with it pre-emptively, or do you wait until it's knocking on your door?
Abu Ayyub al-Masri's claimed death is only the latest in a series of unconfirmed reports on the shadowy Egyptian leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq whose true role in the insurgency has never been established.
The Iraqi interior ministry announced on Tuesday that they had "strong" intelligence" that Masri had been killed in clashes between insurgent groups. But the Al-Qaeda kingpin, who has been given several different names, had already been erroneously reported dead in October and wounded in February.
Masri, an Egyptian, succeeded Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as head of one of Iraq's deadliest insurgent groups after Zarqawi was killed in a US air strike in June 2006. The details about Masri's real identity -- even his name-- have been a source of debate among Iraqi and US security officials and analysts trying to monitor the group. Al-Qaeda, for its part, has said in Internet messages that its new leader is one Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, rather than the more foreign-sounding Masri, whose name means "the Egyptian." US officials say the two are one and the same. "al-Muhajer" means "the immigrant." Presumably he "immigrated" from Egypt by way of Afghanistan, but they don't want to push the issue of his being an Egyptian.
Analysts believe Masri was part of a generation of Islamist militants who carried out attacks in Egypt throughout the 1980s and 1990s before travelling to Afghanistan and joining Al-Qaeda. "His real name is Yussef al-Dardiri, he is around 38 years old and he comes from Upper Egypt," Montasser al-Zayat, an Egyptian lawyer and former member of the Islamist group Gamaa Islamiya, told AFP last year. According to Zayat, who says he does not know him personally, Masri lived in the Cairo slum of Zawiya Hamra before going to Afghanistan in the late 1980s and then on to Iraq via Iran. Egyptian security services, however, claim to have never heard of him.
The US military believes he is an explosives expert specialising in the construction of car bombs, a key weapon of Iraq's Sunni insurgency, and that he made his way to Iraq from Afghanistan after the March 2003 invasion. Masri and Zarqawi met in Afghanistan in 1999, added US officials, when they were both at Al-Faruq training camp where he became an explosives expert, a skill he would use to great effect in Iraq.
But Diaa Rashwan, a leading expert on political Islam at Cairo's Al-Ahram Center for Strategic Studies, said he had not come across the name. "There is no trace of such a name in the Egyptian radical Islamic files," he said. "The Americans have given details of his past, saying he joined Islamic Jihad in 1982 and make him out to be one of the founders of Al-Qaeda in Iraq without knowing his real name, which is difficult to believe," says Rashwan. "The Americans are eager to establish a non-Iraqi identity for Zarqawi's successor for political reasons. They need a symbol of international jihad (holy war) to justify their occupation of Iraq."
In June 2006 a posting on an Al-Qaeda-linked website said Muhajer had ordered the killing of two kidnapped American soldiers. "We announce good news to the Islamic nation from the battlefield... The two crusaders taken hostage have been executed by having their throats cut," the message said. The two US soldiers were later found south of Baghdad, their bodies showing signs of brutal torture, according to the Iraqi defence ministry.
In recent months, there have been indications that other more nationalist insurgent groups have grown disaffected with Al-Qaeda's tactics, including the large-scale attacks on Shiite civilians. There are unconfirmed reports of clashes between insurgent groups, and a coalition of powerful Sunni tribes from the western province of Anbar that was once sympathetic to the cause has thrown its lot in with the Americans. The US State Department posted a one million dollar reward for information leading to Masri's arrest.
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05/02/2007 00:00 ||
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About 15 per cent of government schools in Thailand's Muslim majority south have been torched while 71 teachers have been killed in three years of bloody unrest, officials said Wednesday.
A total of 71 teachers have been killed and 68 wounded in shooting and bomb attacks, said Pradit Rasittanont, director of the regional education office. Some 166 of the region's 1,098 schools have been torched by suspected Islamic insurgents, he added. Five of them had been repaired and reopened only to be set ablaze again, Pradit said.
The attacks were more frequent during the six-week school holidays, he added. "There were 32 schools burnt during the holiday, which was unprecedented, and there is a growing tendency for the militants to carry out arson attacks during daytime," Pradit added.
Armed soldiers escort teachers to and from school, and patrol the campuses every day. Education authorities have not compiled data on how many students have been affected by the violence or how much the damage has cost, Pradit said.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
SANGIN VALLEY: NATO-led troops killed 75 suspected insurgents on the first day of an offensive against Taliban militants in a valley in southern Afghanistan, a British military officer said on Tuesday. The militants died on Monday, when British, Danish and Afghan troops fought their way up the Sangin Valley in Helmand province, said Maj Dominic Biddick, who commanded a company of British troops in the operation. 
“We’ve killed up to 56 Taliban, including lots of Pakistanis,” said General Moheydin Ghori from the Afghan army. Local and international forces are trying to “create security conditions in the Sangin valley so that meaningful reconstruction and development can occur”, said an ISAF spokesman.
Intelligence agencies have shelved investigations into 10 suicide bombing after failing to identify the suicide bombers, Daily Times has learnt. At least 161 people have been killed in 27 suicide bombings in different parts of the country since 2002.
