The Libyan Gets A Look At Hell

Abu Laith al-Libi, "The Libyan," a senior al-Qaeda operative who tried to kill President Cheney in Afghanistan a year ago, became a charred, dismembered victim of superior US technology today.

A CIA Predator drone piloted via video controls a thousand miles away fired a missile into a passle of Taliban and al-Qaeda scum, killing 12, including al-Libi..

As it happens, the 12 were hanging out in Pakistan, in the Waziristan tribal area next to Pakistan. That makes the hit an even better tactical strike, since it lets the enemy know there are no safe havens, and it sends Musharaff a much-needed message that if he can't take care of Waziristan, we will.

Next up: drones over Iran. Even more cool.

AP quotes Eric Rosenbach, a terror expert at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School:

"Al-Libi has been waging jihad for more than 10 years and it will be a blow to both al-Qaida and the Taliban, but not in a way that will lead to the downfall of those organizations."

Blows are good, even if not fatal. They mean we have good intelligence in the al-Qaeda's backyards and we have the capability and will to act on that intelligence, even at the expense of another nation's sovereignty.

The attack must have dispirited and demoralized al-Qaeda greatly, so I hope there are more to come, and soon. Name the enemy (which the Dems can't do), attack the enemy and kill the enemy using technology that boggles their minds. Dispirit and demoralize them some more.

Can we do it again tomorrow?

Afghan Journalist Death Sentence: A Good Thing?

In Afghanistan, a young journalism student -- just 23 years old -- has been sentenced to death for printing up his own little newspaper with stuff he downloaded from the internet -- stuff Islamic judges have decreed violates Islam.

Click here for Sayad Parwez Kambaksh's story. The story is not at its final chapter yet, though. Kambaksh has a couple appeals before his fate, whatever it may ultimately be, will be sealed.

Some pundits will seize this story as an example of our failure to stop the Taliban and its influence in Afghanistan. They include Jules Crittenden, who wrote this a.m.:

I thought the point of that invasion was to bring an end to this kind of thing.

But he and the others miss the point by half. Yes, it would have been nice if the invasion would have instantaneously re-righted a ship that's been leaning hard-Islam for centuries, but could we have at least an iota of reasonableness in our expectations?

It may not have been the point of the invasion, but it is because of the invasion that we are reading about what's happening to Kambaksh. Until America had the audacity to secure freedom for Afghans -- something the Russians certainly never intended to offer them -- those who defied the Islamic inner circle's opinion of what was right suffered in medieval anonymity.

AP did not carry their stories. Memeorandum did not pick the stories up and re-distribute them broadly over the Internet. The secret councils just did their dirty work for Allah out of sight, with no one to stand up for the victims of Mohammed, He Who Must Never, Never, Ever Be Challenged. There was no public knowledge or public opinion -- because the public simply did not matter.

That has all changed with the invasion. The spotlight of the world is on the ancient brutality of Islam, and Islam is not standing up well to the scrutiny. As the West rises up in protest, and it certainly will rise up to defend Kambaksh, it empowers those within the repressive Islamic system who want to speak more freely, to vote in elections, to control their own destiny. And it weakens those who use the Koran to keep the people chained.

So yes, the invasion is putting and end to this sort of thing. But the invasion is not a superhero that can jump tall institutions in a single bound. It is a thing of incremental gains, and we will see this again in the case of this young journalist who, I'll bet you, will not be executed.

So hooray for the invasion. Without it, it would be much worse in Afghanistan, and much, much worse for a certain young journalism student.

Photo: Time

Religion Of Peace: The Bhutto Transcript

Pakistan has released a transcript that apparently proves radical Taliban Islamists affiliated with al-Qaeda were behind the Bhutto assassination. In the transcript, militant leader Baitullah Mehsud, is referred to as Emir Sahib. The other man is identified as a Maulvi Sahib, or "Mr. Cleric."

Maulvi Sahib: Peace be on you.

Mehsud: Peace be on you, too.

Maulvi Sahib: How are you Emir Sahib?

Mehsud: Fine.

Maulvi Sahib: Congratulations. I arrived now tonight.

Mehsud: Congratulations to you, too.

Maulvi Sahib: They were our men there.

Mehsud: Who were they?

Maulvi Sahib : There were Saeed, the second was Badarwala Bilal and Ikramullah was also there.

Mehsud: The three did it?

Maulvi Sahib: Ikramullah and Bilal did it.

Mehsud: Then congratulations to you again.

Maulvi: Where are you? I want to meet with you?

Mehsud: I am in Makin. Come I am at Anwar Shah's home.

Maulvi Sahib: OK I will come.

Mehsud: Do not inform their family presently.

Maulvi Sahib: Right.

Mehsud: It was a spectacular job. They were very brave boys who killed her.

Maulvi Sahib: Praise be to God. I will give you more details when I come.

Mehsud: I will wait for you. Congratulation once again.

Maulvi Sahib: Congratulations to you as well.

Mehsud: Any service?

Mauvliv: Thank you very much?

Mehsud: Peace be on you.

Maulvi: Same to you.

Peace be on you ... praise be to God. This is the Islamist enemy, praising God that in one blow they were able to strike out against modern roles for women, democracy (or a typically corrupt South Asian version thereof) and stability.

More on the suspect, from CNN:

Robert Grenier, former CIA station chief in Pakistan and former head of the CIA's counterterrorism center, describes Mehsud as an Islamic radical leader in northwest Pakistan's South Waziristan closely associated with the Taliban.

Grenier said that Mehsud spoke publicly before Bhutto's return to Pakistan in October after her self-exile that the former prime minister was marked for assassination.

Some say the assassination is all the more reason to withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan:

We don’t know what’s going on in these volatile countries. The best thing is to stay out of the way and let them solve their own problems. ...

Meanwhile, the U.S. government plants to “vastly expand” its forces in Pakistan. They’re just being sent into a rats’ nest.

Here’s a better idea: We get out of countries like this. We don’t let them come to our country. Let them stew in their own juices. If businessmen want to trade with these countries, they do so at their own peril.

America’s foreign policy should be that of non-intervention and neutrality, as our Founding Fathers, especially Washington and Jefferson, insisted. (John Seiler)

This is a chicken and egg argument, with the non-interventionists saying our presence in the Middle East caused 9/11 and interventionists saying earlier Islamists terror strikes necessitated our presence in the Middle East. Besides, that was then and cannot be undone. It is foolhardy to think that we can just withdraw from the Middle East and radical Islamism will stop fighting the West.

They have tasted power and they want more, in the name of Allah and the Islamist caliphate, which is the real lesson of the Bhutto assassination. It was not an attack on America; it was an attack on Muslim efforts to stop the jihad.

NYT Leaks Again, To Detriment Of War

It's a pipsqueak by comparison, but today's NY Times leak-driven story on the new Dept. of Defense planning for alliances in the tribal regions of Afghanistan is not entirely unlike the paper leaking details of the Normandy invasion during the months leading up to D-Day.

A new and classified American military proposal outlines an intensified effort to enlist tribal leaders in the frontier areas of Pakistan in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, as part of a broader effort to bolster Pakistani forces against an expanding militancy, American military officials said.

If adopted, the proposal would join elements of a shift in strategy that would also be likely to expand the presence of American military trainers in Pakistan, directly finance a separate tribal paramilitary force that until now has proved largely ineffective and pay militias that agreed to fight Al Qaeda and foreign extremists, officials said.

We're not talking a lot of U.S. troops here -- just the current 50 or so growing by "dozens." Any U.S. troops in the tribal regions of Pakistan are already at high risk of terrorist attack, and this story won't calm down the Islamists any.

Its real risk, though, is against the tribal leaders with whom we hope to ally. Until today, they were just tribal leaders under the watchful and threatening eye of Islamists, who have shown in Iraq and Afghanistan alike their eagerness to assassinate any leader who affiliates with the Americans. Now, they are potential U.S. allies.

We know that already this story has been translated and is circulating amidst al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders in Pakistan. They know the best tactic against the U.S.: Ruthlessly murder a few of the potential U.S. allies and their families, leave them beheaded in pools of blood, and let the other potential allies consider the road ahead.

Without the NYT, special ops forces could have quietly begun working with the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force recruited from the various border tribes. Granted, their presence there would have been known soon enough, but it would have been known on our terms, not the NYT's terms.

NYT acknowledges that aspects of the new effort have already been leaked by the LA Times and WaPo. These stories dealt with increased aid to the region and did not put soldiers or their allies at risk. The NYT got the leak on the military support and joined the leak-fest to avoid being journalistically one-upped.

The story itself is straightforward and remarkably non-critical, drawing parallels to successes in Anwar that it does not question ... much:

The proposal is modeled in part on a similar effort by American forces in Anbar Province in Iraq that has been hailed as a great success in fighting foreign insurgents there.

"Has been hailed as a great success" is about as positive as you'll get in the anti-military media today. But that sentence is followed with this:

But it raises the question of whether such partnerships, to be forged in this case by Pakistani troops backed by the United States, can be made without a significant American military presence in Pakistan.

Nowhere in the story is that concern addressed again, let alone attributed to any source, named or unnamed. Who raised the question? The three-reporter team it took to break the story? Did they, in raising the question, consider that by leaking the plan and putting the military and the tribal leaders at greater risk, and that they therefore may be contributing to the need for more than a few dozen additional troops?

Who knows? All we k now for sure is that beating the LAT and WaPo is reason enough to put soldiers' lives at greater risk.

See more coverage at memeorandum.

Iran Ignores Shi'ia-Sunni Rift, Aids Taliban

Long dead is the old thinking by diplomats and strategists that Shi'ia Iran would not aid Sunni terrorists like al Qaeda and the Taliban -- even more dead today, as this news breaks:

NATO officials say they have caught Iran red-handed, shipping heavy arms, C4 explosives and advanced roadside bombs to the Taliban for use against NATO forces, in what the officials say is a dramatic escalation of Iran's proxy war against the United States and Great Britain.

"It is inconceivable that it is anyone other than the Iranian government that's doing it," said former White House counterterrorism official Richard Clarke, an ABC News consultant. ...

"This is part of a considered policy," says the analysis, "rather than the result of low-level corruption and weapons smuggling." ...

The coalition analysis says munitions recovered in two Iranian convoys, on April 11 and May 3, had "clear indications that they originated in Iran. Some were identical to Iranian supplied goods previously discovered in Iraq."

The April convoy was tracked from Iran into Helmand province and led a fierce firefight that destroyed one vehicle, according to the official analysis. A second vehicle was reportedly found to contain small arms ammunition, mortar rounds and more than 650 pounds of C4 demolition charges.

A second convoy of two vehicles was spotted on May 3 and led to the capture of five occupants and the seizure of RPG-7mm rockets and more than 1,000 pounds of C4, the analysis says.

Also among the munitions are components for the lethal EFPs, or explosive formed projectiles, the roadside bombs that U.S. officials say Iran has provided to Iraqi insurgents with deadly results.

"These clearly have the hallmarks of the Iranian Revolution Guards' Quds force," said Jones. (ABC News)

Yeah, yeah, I know I advocate talking to the Iranians, but I'm no softy. It bothers me no end when I hear some Dem candidate or other point out that we talked to the Russians throughout the cold war, so we should talk to the Iranians.

It's not parallel. In the cold war, we had overt threats (mutually assured destruction) and proxy wars (Vietnam, Afghanistan), but the Russians weren't supporting terrorist actions. The Iranians are, making them a more evil enemy than even the athiest Soviet rulers.

Still, I feel more can be gained by forcing them to look us in the eye from time to time -- especially right after we catch them red-handed working to kill our boys.

A Dead Dadullah On Mother's Day

What a lovely shade of purple, like wrapping paper on a Mother's Day gift -- and quite a gift this is, the dead body of Mullah Dadullah, the Taliban's top general.

Here's a guy the planet could have done without, described by AP as "a one-legged fighter who orchestrated an ethnic massacre and a rash of beheadings."

Par for the course for the Taliban. He's the second big loss for the Taliban; in December, a U.S. airstrike near the Pakistan border killed Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani, who with Dadullah was one of the three top lieutenants of Taliban top dog Mullah Omar.

There will be other brutal Islamist pigs to replace Dadullah and Osmani, and more vicious, evil pigs to replace them. Islam will continue to raise up jihadists who will not be content to leave their jihad to themselves, so we will fight them and kill them, and kill them, and kill them until Islam becomes a non-aggressor religion ... or until forever.

Reuters Keeps Taliban Location Secret

Reuters ran this photo today of some of the 10,000 Talibani hiding in some secret location, reading to attack us when the snow melts.

This raises two questions:

First, what's the fourth guy back going to do with the cooking pot? Throw it at a NATO soldier? And the third guy -- are those garden sheers? So we have five fierce Talibani with one rifle between them. Does this alter the intelligence estimate filed addressing Talaban chief Mullah Abdul Rahim's statement:

"Our war preparations, especially in southern Afghanistan and in Helmand province, are complete and for this our 10,000 fighters are ready to take up arms the moment they are ordered."

"Heave those pots for Allah!" "Clip that hedge for paradise!" "And you two, Muhammed and Muhammed -- clap loudly!!"

Second, and actually important, Reuters received a photo from a "secret" location and talked to Rahim via satellite phone, both of which involved contacts, coordination, telephone signals, maybe even IP addresses. Reuters obviously had some information military intelligence could use to make the secret location not so secret, but opted not to share it.

The media now subscribes to moral relativism, placing safety of correspondents and continued access to sources above the victory of good over evil.

Protecting their correspondents is always Reuters' excuse -- it's why they use "insurgent" instead of "terrorist," and they've admitted as much -- but in this, they are no different from the Dems, who are OK with war as long as it's bloodless and is strategically unimportant to our interests.

Here's what they could do instead: Recruit just-retired military public communications personnel, bump their salaries several-fold, and send them back to report on the troops and from the field that they're familiar with. Let them color their news with a clear knowledge of who needs to win this war.

Let them be part of the process of victory, instead of cogs in the wheel.