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June 5, 2012
Whack-A-Mole
Abu Yahya Al-Libi, a top Al Qaeda operative was killed in a U.S. drone strike Monday, confirmed White House spokesman, Jay Carney, on Tuesday.
First and foremost, BRAVO and KUDOS to the U.S. military and intelligence services for a job well done!! One less miscreant to roam this earth.
Second, U.S. officials speaking on condition of anonymity, as well as named “security analysts” (see below) would do well to temper their exuberance, and refrain from grandiose proclamations, as we’re currently engaged in a game of Whack-A-Mole. Knock one down, lots of others pop-up.
“Al Qaeda's leadership has been so thinned by the U.S. drone campaign in Pakistan that these men were the only two real leaders of the organization left,” according to CNN Security Analyst Peter Bergen. (This is the same Peter Bergen who, upon bin Laden’s death, announced that the war on terror was over.)
Well, al Qaeda has lots of "off-shoots," not to mention independent contractors who are plotting, planning and looking to do horrific things to the U.S. and the West.
Calling these other terrorist groups offshoots or “affiliates” of al Qaeda, or al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al Qaeda in Yemen, etc. is simply a ruse designed to deceive ourselves into believing that we face a discreet enemy, i.e., al Qaeda.
What about groups like Hezbollah (The “Party of God), for example? They’re just as deadly, if not more than al Qaeda, and definitely more well-armed. And like al Qaeda, they’re slowly laying the groundwork for spectacular attacks against the U.S. and U.S. targets, after having set up sleeper cells throughout the U.S., Mexico, South America and elsewhere. They are not affiliates of al Qaeda, although they (and other terrorist groups like them) do have one thing in common and that is Islamic fundamentalism.
Unless we face up to that fact, we’re doomed to repeat the same mistakes we made throughout the 1990s, when we ignored a then little-known group called al Qaeda.
We don’t have an al Qaeda problem, we have an Islamic problem.
CNN.com | June 5, 2012
White House: Al Qaeda No. 2 Leader Is Dead
By the CNN Wire Staff
Abu Yahya al-Libi has appeared frequently in videos on the Internet, including one in 2006 by an al Qaeda-linked media group. Photo courtesy: guardian.co.uk
(CNN) -- Abu Yahya al-Libi, the No. 2 man in al Qaeda and a longtime public face of the terror network, is dead, White House spokesman Jay Carney confirmed Tuesday.
Al-Libi's death was "another serious blow to core al Qaeda," said Carney, who was unable to provide further details.
"His death is part of the degradation taking place in core al Qaeda in the last several years," Carney said.
Earlier Tuesday, U.S. officials said that al-Libi was killed by a CIA drone strike in Pakistan launched Monday.
Al-Libi's death marks one of the most significant blows to al Qaeda since the U.S. military killed Osama bin Laden in a daring nighttime raid in Pakistan a year ago.
Al-Libi was second-in-command behind al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who took the helm after bin Laden's death.
"There is no one who even comes close in terms of replacing the expertise (al Qaeda) has just lost," said the U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Al-Libi "played a critical role in the group's planning against the West, providing oversight of the external operations efforts," the official said.
"Zawahiri will be hard-pressed to find any one person who can readily step into Abu Yahya's shoes," the official said. "In addition to his gravitas as a longstanding member of AQ's leadership, Abu Yahya's religious credentials gave him the authority to issue fatwas, operational approvals and guidance to the core group in Pakistan and regional affiliates."
Reports emerged a couple of years ago that al-Libi was slain, but they proved to be incorrect.
Al Qaeda's leadership has been so thinned by the U.S. drone campaign in Pakistan that these men were the only two real leaders of the organization left, U.S. counterterrorism officials said, according to CNN Security Analyst Peter Bergen. Al Qaeda offshoots in other parts of the world, such as the group's affiliate in Yemen, have meanwhile become more potent and worrisome to the United States.
An Islamic scholar and high-ranking member of the group, al-Libi frequently appeared in Internet videos. He gave many videotaped speeches praising al Qaeda leaders, urging resistance and trying to recruit new members.
“Al-Libi is a key motivator in the global jihadi movement and his messages convey a clear threat to U.S. persons or property worldwide,” said a “Wanted” statement posted on the website of the U.S. State Department’s “Rewards for Justice” program, which offers rewards for information about suspected terrorists.
“Al-Libi is believed to be in hiding in Afghanistan or Pakistan,” said the website, which offered a reward of up to $1 million for the 49-year-old Libyan.
Al-Libi purportedly was among al Qaeda leaders focusing on Libya since last year to establish a presence there.
In a video message to fellow Libyans distributed on jihadist forums in December, al-Libi said, “At this crossroads you have found yourselves: You either choose a secular regime that pleases the greedy crocodiles of the West and for them to use it as a means to fulfill their goals, or you take a strong position and establish the religion of Allah.”
Al-Libi was captured in 2002 and imprisoned at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, according to the U.S. government, but he escaped in 2005.
In 2008, a statement posted on radical Islamic websites known to carry messages from al Qaeda described how four “military leaders” including al-Libi escaped from the prison, but the statement said then that one of the escapees, Abu Abdallah al-Shami, had been killed in a U.S. airstrike.
The statement said that, among those escaping with al-Shami, was key al Qaeda figure Omar al-Faruq, who died in a subsequent British airstrike.
Another escapee, Abu Nasir al-Qahtani, was captured in Afghanistan in 2006. Al-Shami’s death left al-Libi as the only remaining member of that escape who had not been killed or captured.
President Barack Obama’s administration recently defended its use of unmanned drones to target suspected terrorists overseas in a rare public statement, with John Brennan, the president’s top counterterrorism adviser, saying the strikes are conducted “in full accordance with the law.”
The program uses unmanned aerial vehicles, often equipped with Hellfire missiles, to target suspected terrorists in remote locations overseas, with many such strikes occurring in Yemen and Pakistan, despite internal opposition to the practice within the latter country.
Brennan said the United States “respects national sovereignty and international law” and is guided by the laws of war in ordering those attacks.
The Pakistani border area is widely believed to be the operating base for the Haqqani network and other militant groups that have attacked international troops in neighboring Afghanistan.
Original article here.
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And what about Hamas and Hezbollah? As the aforementioned article mentions they are quietly creeping their way into our midst. Over five years ago while working on a drug-related wire-tap, Mexican drug cartel members operating in the Northeast were overheard discussing their association with members of Hamas. This may be the best kept dirty secret from the American public that a significant and dangerous threat exists at our porous border. Be-headings, car bombs, and tunnels constructed in similar fashion to those found on the Israeli border in Mexico perhaps should be as great a concern as the cave dwellers in Pakistan.
Notable Quotables
"Mr. Netanyahu is one of the most media-savvy politicians on the planet. On Friday he appeared live via video link on 'Real Time with Bill Maher,' taking the host’s alternately sardonic and serious line of questioning with gazelle-like alacrity."
~ Anthony Grant, jourrnalist who has written for many major newspapers and worked in television at Paris and Tel Aviv, interviewing former PM Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, at the outset of Mr. Netanyahu's new book (more here).
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