Al Qaeda News

9/11/01 To 9/11/11

10:18 am EST September 11th, 2011 | History | 3 Comments

FDNY 9/11It’s hard to believe that its been a whole ten years since the world flipped upside down.

It seems like it was just yesterday, and often when I see images or sounds of 9/11 all the feelings come back and I get a lump in my throat. All of those people, right here in the heart of America.

I don’t personally know anyone who died on 9/11, but they were our friends and neighbors. Struck down at random, the only “reason” they died because they were Americans.

Even though we have avenged them in a very concrete way – killing Bin Laden and disrupting the Al Qaeda network – they are all gone forever. Their families never saw them come home the way they left, smiling faces and love in their hearts. No military action can change that.

Time and politics have made us less unified than we were on that day and the subsequent weeks as we collectively mourned. But we have a spirit that still lies right below the surface. When push comes to shove, Americans can and will stand together.

We must honor those who died, remembering how it happened and never let the memory fade. Two giant towers were collapsed, the heart of our military was pierced, and a field in Pennsylvania was shaken to its core.

But America prevails, lives on, fights, and remembers.

September 11, 2011.

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Bush Let Bin Laden Get Away, Tries To Take Credit For His Death

11:33 am EST September 9th, 2011 | National Security | 62 Comments

George W. Bush allowed Osama Bin Laden to slip away at Tora Bora because he was focused on invading Iraq for no good reason in an action that killed thousands of Americans. From 2001-2009, under Bush, Bin Laden evaded kill and capture. The murderer of thousands of Americans, Kenyans, and other innocent people got away — on Bush’s watch.

On May 2, 2011, on direct orders from President Obama, Bin Laden was executed. Shot. In the face. Dead.

And now Bush is trying to take some credit for it, claiming that “The work that was done by intelligence communities during my presidency was part of putting together the puzzle that enabled us to see the full picture of how bin Laden was communicating and eventually where he was hiding.”

If that was the case, how come the capture/kill of Bin Laden didn’t occur until George W. Bush was back to being a private citizen? And while he was President, Bush told us that Bin Laden didn’t concern him that much?

Every time you stray from the notion that Bush may not have been our worst President ever, his legacy rears its head.

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Our Afghan Strategy

10:39 am EST June 23rd, 2011 | National Security, Terrorism | 17 Comments

I happen to agree with President Obama, though I understand the position of liberals who think we should accelerate leaving Afghanistan. The biggest problem with Afghanistan is that when it became difficult to get Bin Laden, Bush decided our mission in the country was about sending Afghan girls to school.

The problem is, that is not our mission. I’d like Afghan girls to go to school, but the first priority should have been the destruction of Al Qaeda. With the troop surge under President Obama, we’re a lot closer to achieving that goal – in addition to killing Bin Laden.

Afghanistan wasn’t a war of choice. They harbored the terrorist organization that attacked us. President Bush fumbled that conflict, badly, and many Americans died as a result while Bin Laden still lived to taunt us. That has changed, and we’re doing the right thing.

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Waterboarding Was NOT Used To Capture Bin Laden

10:36 am EST May 3rd, 2011 | National Security | 83 Comments

A quick death to a conservative talking point:

Mohammed did not reveal the names while being subjected to the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, former officials said. He identified them many months later under standard interrogation, they said, leaving it once again up for debate as to whether the harsh technique was a valuable tool or an unnecessarily violent tactic.

It took years of work for intelligence agencies to identify the courier’s real name, which officials are not disclosing. When they did identify him, he was nowhere to be found. The CIA’s sources didn’t know where he was hiding. Bin Laden was famously insistent that no phones or computers be used near him, so the eavesdroppers at the National Security Agency kept coming up cold.

Then in the middle of last year, the courier had a telephone conversation with someone who was being monitored by U.S. intelligence, according to an American official, who like others interviewed for this story spoke only on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive operation. The courier was located somewhere away from bin Laden’s hideout when he had the discussion, but it was enough to help intelligence officials locate and watch him.

(via)

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Drone Strike Kills Al Qaeda Commander Hussein al-Yemeni

8:53 pm EST March 17th, 2010 | Terrorism | 26 Comments

Predator Drone

Barack Obama appears to be really bad news for Al Qaeda.

A strike by an unmanned drone last week killed a senior Qaeda commander who had played a significant role in planning the killing of Central Intelligence Agency operatives in late December at a base in Afghanistan, according to American officials.

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The official described Mr. Yemeni as an “al Qaeda planner and facilitator” in his late 20s or early 30s, who had established ties with the Haqqani network, which has planned many Taliban attacks in Afghanistan, and with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. His role was described by one American official as a “conduit in Pakistan for funds, messages, and recruits, but his real specialty was bombs and suicide operations.”

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Al-Qaeda “On The Run” Says CIA Chief

4:43 pm EST March 17th, 2010 | Terrorism | 21 Comments

Wait, so Obama’s strategy to hit them in Pakistan and wherever they are seems to be working?

Relentless attacks against al-Qaeda in the Pakistan tribal region appear to have driven Osama bin Laden and other top leaders deeper into hiding, leaving the organization rudderless and incapable of planning sophisticated operations, CIA Director Leon Panetta said Wednesday.

So profound is al-Qaeda’s disarray that one of its lieutenants, in a recently intercepted message, pleaded to bin Laden to come to the group’s rescue and provide some leadership, Panetta told The Washington Post in an interview.

Panetta credited an increasingly aggressive campaign against al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies, including more frequent strikes and better coordination with Pakistan. He called it ‘the most aggressive operation that CIA has been involved in in our history.’

So. A president actually interested in disrupting and fighting Al Qaeda is having some effect? Who would have known?

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Gadahn NOT Captured

12:11 pm EST March 8th, 2010 | Terrorism | 5 Comments

So that story was totally wrong. Adam Gadahn wasn’t captured, and though the Pakistanis are saying it’s an American, even that’s in question.

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Adam Gadahn, American Al Qaeda, Captured

1:19 pm EST March 7th, 2010 | Terrorism | 10 Comments

Adam Gadahn

According to AP. Apparently he’s under arrest by the Pakistanis. The hits just keep on coming now. It’s like the commander in chief is focused on fighting terrorism or something, and our allies know it.

Adam Gadahn background:

Adam Yahiye Gadahn (Arabic: آدم يحيى غدن‎, Ādam Yaḥyā Ghadan; born Adam Pearlman, September 1, 1978) is an American-born senior operative, cultural interpreter, spokesman and media advisor for the terrorist group Al-Qaeda.

Since 2004, he appeared in a number of videos produced by Al-Qaeda as “Azzam the American” (‘Azzām al-Amrīki, عزام الأمريكي, sometimes transcribed as Ezzam Al-Amerikee). He is believed to have inspired bin Laden’s September 2007 video.

In 2004, he was added to the FBI Seeking Information – War on Terrorism list. On October 11, 2006 he was removed from that list, and placed on the Bureau of Diplomatic Security Rewards for Justice Program list of wanted criminals. On the same day, Gadahn was indicted based on the testimony of the FBI case agent E.J. Hilbert II, in the Southern Division of the United States District Court for the Central District of California by a federal grand jury for the capital crime of treason for aiding an enemy of the United States (i.e. Al-Qaeda). Gadahn is the first American charged with treason since Tomoya Kawakita in 1952.

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The KSM Cave

10:42 am EST March 5th, 2010 | Terrorism | 47 Comments

I don’t know what to think of the idea to retreat to the right on trying Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, other than to say: Stupid. The courts can handle these guys, have handled worse, and we ought to be able to do so without conceding to conservative bed wetting.

Once again Democrats punt on being strong and right.

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Afghanistan

3:39 pm EST December 1st, 2009 | Terrorism | 30 Comments

The details are apparently to come tonight in his prime time speech, but I’m pretty much on board with the strategy in Afghanistan. I frankly am surprised that folks on the left are expressing some kind of shock or anger when this is what he has said forever on the issue.

Afghanistan harbored the plotters of the 9/11 attack. Al Qaeda is there, supported by the Taliban. I don’t think there is much hope of a western-style democracy in much of the middle east, and that pipe dream should remain dead with the Bush administration. But we can’t allow our clearly defined enemies to continue to operate, nor can we give them room to do so. That is why I believe President Obama is engaging in this strategy in Afghanistan.

And I think its the right thing to do.

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