Al Qaeda in Iraq "never closer to defeat"-US envoy

File under: Ryan Crocker offers up a pony and its peeing rainbows.

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq praised Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Saturday for cracking down on Shi'ite militias and Sunni Arab militants and said al Qaeda in Iraq had never been closer to defeat.

"You are not going to hear me say that al Qaeda is defeated, but they've never been closer to defeat than they are now," Ryan Crocker told reporters during a visit to the Shi'ite holy cities of Najaf and Kerbala in southern Iraq.

Maliki, a Shi'ite, has led a crackdown on Sunni Arab militants in the northern city of Mosul, where the government says al Qaeda fighters took refuge after being driven from other areas.

Maliki has also confronted Shi'ite militias in Baghdad's Sadr City slum and in the southern city of Basra.

Crocker said it was important that Iraqi forces were leading operations in Basra and Mosul -- where U.S.-led coalition forces played a supporting role -- and acting alone in Sadr City.

"That's a level of capability that simply wasn't possible even six months ago," he said.

"The government, the prime minister are showing a clear determination to take on extremist armed elements that challenge the authority of the government and they've made it clear that they will do that no matter who these elements are," he said.

Note: Headline links to source.

Who's the man?

He refers to the Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki and the now at least 88,000 strong U.S. contracted, mostly Sunni Muslims, who are fighting Al Qaida in Iraq. The U.S. military now calls them the Sons of Iraq, before that they were the Concerned Local Citizens.

Most of them are former insurgents and many people say a lot of Al Qaida are now part of these groups, paid to stay out of trouble. [emphasis mine]

Why the hell does "lie down with dogs" come to mind?

Hey, I finally made the "D" list!!!1!! W00t!

Via Baghdad.

Warfare of the Whisper –Dividing the People and Keeping Them Ignorant

My only problem with this story is the implication (my interpretation) people now acknowledge the truth and do recognize the lies they've been told and are being told daily and that just isn't true at all.

When the truth is too horrible to acknowledge, then it becomes very easy to believe in a series of lies instead. If the truth is that our leaders are really monsters, who have purposely manufactured a planned genocidal world war, in order to preserve America’s fading position in the world, then the truth becomes almost impossible to believe.

It is difficult to believe, but there are some people who were shocked to learn that White House spokesmen issued 935 documented falsehoods to lie us into the Iraq war. This says nothing of the far greater number of lies told to create the “war on terror” itself. If it wasn’t for the flowing river of lies known as the “US Government,” we would not now be staring down the barrel of the nuclear gun at another innocent Muslim country. It took thousands of dedicated war party disinformation agents, working non-stop for decades, to give substance to the myth of al Qaida, the official justification for the war. Unraveling the Myth of Al Qaida. It has taken many thousands more to sustain the war based on lies, against an imaginary enemy. It is only another small step to extend those lies about wars against imaginary enemies to Iran, an imaginary enemy with imaginary nuclear weapons.

I always take the Daily Scare with a modicum of suspicion, but in the past its often proven to be quite perceptive. You can do some of the work and decide if you believe the post is plausible or not.

If you have reason to believe its true, please add a comment and site links.

I just find the Daily Scare very thought provoking.

Via Daily Scare.

Pakistan air strike bodies buried, Qaeda death not confirmed: army

Schultz
Hogan's Heroes
TV show
Now this is shock and awe. At least they seem to be honest about it now. Mistakes should be corrected.

But why do they immediately make claims about al-Qaeda leaders killed if they don't know for sure? Is it a chain of command problem? And, if so, how far up the chain does it go before someone say, "Ya, know. We aren't sure Abu Laith al-Libi was in there or not".

The bodies from a missile strike that killed several militants have been buried and it was impossible to confirm or refute if a top Al-Qaeda operative was among them, the army said Friday.

An Islamist website reported Thursday that Al-Qaeda commander Abu Laith al-Libi was killed in Pakistan, and a Western official said there were "very strong indications" that he had been slain.

The report came after a suspected US missile raid in the Pakistani tribal region of North Waziristan on Monday night which security officials said had killed seven Arab militants and six Central Asians.

"Our position is that who fired, who ordered, who removed the bodies etc is not known to us," chief Pakistani military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas told AFP.

"We cannot negate nor confirm because the moment it happened, they removed the bodies and buried them. So, how would anybody confirm who got killed?" Abbas added, without elaborating on who buried the bodies.

...

Pakistani forces never officially confirm US strikes on their territory, saying foreign forces are not permitted to operate on Pakistani soil because it would infringe national sovereignty.

I love that last paragraph. ...foreign forces are not permitted to operate on Pakistani soil because it would infringe national sovereignty. So Pakistan just looks the other way. "I know nothing &mdash Schultz"

Something is fishy about this, but we'll never know. One good thing is the US military wasn't making the claim.

Via AFP.

Al-Qaeda plays dealbreaker in Pakistan

Universal handcuff keys - $1.99 per set
"Easy to use, carry, or conceal"
Sometimes stories don't seem to be what they seem to be. If this tautology seems silly, please bear with me.

The extraordinary "escape" from police custody of Rashid Rauf, a British subject of Pakistani origin, points to a deal between the authorities in Islamabad and militants in an effort to ensure smooth national elections on January 8, but al-Qaeda remains a threat to this seemingly inventive initiative.

Police reported on Monday that Rauf, 26, had disappeared a day earlier while returning from court to Adiala jail, a high-security prison in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, near Islamabad. He is said to have asked his two police guards for time to say afternoon prayers at a mosque. He went in handcuffed, and never came out.
Rauf was raised in Britain and returned to Pakistan in 2002, where he married and settled. He was arrested by Pakistani authorities in August 2006 in connection with a plot to use liquid explosives to blow up aircraft flying from Britain to the United States. This led to scores of arrests in Britain - the suspects are still to be charged - and prompted a major security alert at airports worldwide. Stiff restrictions on passengers' carry-on items also resulted.

But Rauf was cleared in Pakistan of terrorism charges last December and only faced charges relating to possessing chemicals that could be used in making explosives and with carrying forged travel documents.

These charges were dropped, but Rauf remained in custody over an extradition request from Britain in connection with the killing of his maternal uncle, Mohammed Saeed, who was stabbed to death in Birmingham in April 2002.

Pakistani Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz is reported to have told British Ambassador Robert Brinkely that Rauf's recapture is a "priority". It could be, though, that his release was more of a priority.

So, what is it? Did Rauf "escape"? Was he allowed to scamper out the back door? Why weren't police covering all the exits to the mosque? Is someone, out of sight in a mosque, really "in police custody"? Doesn't everyone have handcuff keys? I do.

An aside. I can't speak for other countries, but most of the handcuffs in the US use the same key. Interesting isn't it?

Added link to handcuff key site. Good present for Xmas.

SPIIDERWEB™ Rulz!

Via Asia Times.

Only a U.S. Withdrawal Will Stop Al Qaeda in Iraq

I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir, but this stuff is true. Perhaps if we keep sending it out over the internets tubes enough times some people will "get it".

Who am I kidding?

One of the last justifications for continuing the U.S. occupation of Iraq despite overwhelming opposition from Iraqis, Americans and the rest of humanity has come down to this: U.S. forces must remain in order to battle "al Qaeda in Iraq."

Like so many of the arguments presented in the United States, the idea is not only intellectually bankrupt, it's also the 180-degree opposite of reality. The truth of the matter is that only the presence of U.S. forces allows the group called "al Qaeda in Iraq" (AQI) to survive and function, and setting a timetable for the occupation to end is the best way to beat them. You won't hear that perspective in Washington, but according to Iraqis with whom we spoke, it is the conventional wisdom in much of the country.

The Bush administration has made much of what it calls "progress" in the Sunni-dominated provinces of central Iraq. But when we spoke to leaders there, the message we got was very different from what supporters of a long-term occupation claim: Many Sunnis are, indeed, lined up against groups like AQI, but that doesn't mean they are "joining" with coalition forces or throwing their support behind the Iraqi government.

Several sources we reached in the Sunni community agreed that AQI, a predominantly Sunni insurgent group that did not exist prior to the U.S. invasion -- it started in 2005 -- will not exist for long after coalition forces depart. AQI is universally detested by large majorities of Iraqis of all ethnic and sectarian backgrounds because of its fundamentalist interpretation of religious law and efforts to set up a separate Sunni state, and its only support -- and it obviously does enjoy some support -- is based solely on its opposition to the deeply unpopular U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. [emphasis mine]

AQI didn't exist until two years ago.

So the US effectively created AQI, or provided the atmosphere for its creation, and now needs them as the bogeyman. Always have to have bogeymen.

To be fair, this isn't strictly a GOP or US political affliction. All countries' leaders need bogeymen to keep the people focused, motivated, supportive, willing to sacrifice and such.

The only difference I've noticed between leaders is how evil, imminent, dangerous, vile the perceived threats posited to the people. Some are mild and iterate a few simple trade problems which need correcting. The really "great" leaders like, (Jesus H Christ with a Honda dealership, but I can't believe this name is coming) Bush warn of imminent destruction or defilement of all the people from the bogeymen.

China is poisoning our food and children. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won't be happy until he nukes the US. NoKo also wants to nuke US. Al-Qaeda wants to eat our young. That is the ones we lefties haven't eaten. Cuba would destroy our way of life. Especially by sending doctors to help in NOLA. Chavez? He has horns doesn't he? Its a matter of time until he will be building nukes too. Syria, Lebanon, Palestinian Authority, Canada, Iraq, the Taliban, Osama bin Laden, Hezbollah, Muslims, brown people, gays. All threats.

I apologize for being a lazy ass blogger, but you have to find your own links to all of the accusations in the previous paragraph.

Well, not so much Canada. They just send US a little meat with mad cow disease and tainted food isn't really a problem for the king who has tasters.


California somehow gets a pass, what with the E coli thing. Perhaps they forget most lettuce from California is picked by brown people. And Europe gets a pass with the frog in lettuce thing. Which is true. Such maroons.

Bush and his fellow hyenas have done a remarkable job of finding bogeymen of which we need be afraid.

SPIIDERWEB™ Rulz!

Via Reuters.

U.S. hopes to arm Pakistani tribes against Al Qaeda

Two things. One, this probably isn't going to come out well and two, of course they would promise to fight al-qaedo to get the money and arms. They aren't stupid.

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, [emphasis mine] officials said. The United States now has only about 50 troops in Pakistan, a Pentagon spokesman said, a force that could grow by dozens under the new approach.

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 [by Bush? -ed] in fighting foreign insurgents there. But it raises the question of whether such partnerships can be forged without a significant American military presence in Pakistan. And it is unclear whether enough support can be found among the tribes.

Arming these people because they're your "friends" today doesn't always work out too well. Al-Qaeda anyone?

Via IHT.

Monkey business at Indian airport

Wildlife officials were struggling to catch a monkey which sneaked inside the security area of New Delhi's international airport and forced the brief closure of the VIP lounge, a security official said on Monday.

The lounge at the airport was partially closed for more than an hour on Sunday after the monkey scampered through the international departures terminal.

Wildlife officials have been trying to capture him.

Of course the Bush administration identified said monkey as a member of al-Qaeda and immediately sent several hundred troops in to help with the capture. In spite of recent changes to interrogation rules, it will be water-boarded and forced to eat red meat.

Via Reuters.

CIA inquiry urged holding Tenet, others to account for 9/11

They do protect their own, don't they. This is, if true, a glaring dereliction of duty. What could have been more important in early 2001?

A two-year-old CIA inquiry urged holding former CIA director George Tenet and other top agency officials to account for leadership failures before the September 11, 2001 attacks, a summary released Tuesday said.

The CIA's inspector general recommended in June 2005 that CIA set up "accountability boards" to consider disciplinary action against Tenet and other top officials for the failures, but was turned down by then CIA director Porter Goss.

Michael Hayden, the spy agency's current director, said in declassifying the top secret summary that he saw no reason to revisit the inspector general's recommendations.

The report found that Tenet failed to produce a comprehensive strategy to fight al-Qaeda before the September 11 attacks, and did not make effective use of his authority to marshal support for a counter-terrorism effort that he had proclaimed as a top priority.

Via Agence France-Presse.

'Al-Qaida' hijacks Cyprus plane

This story is pretty old, technically, but it was just a matter of time before al-Qaeda got mentioned.

The hijacking itself is not why I'm posting. Notice the quote marks in the headline. That's goodness.

Hijackers claiming to have bombs and to be members of al-Qaida today hijacked a Turkish passenger plane heading from northern Cyprus to Istanbul.

The hijackers had asked that the plane be diverted to Iran or Syria, but the pilots landed the plane at Antalya airport, near the Mediterranean coast, chief executive of the private Atlas-Jet airline company Tuncay Doganer said.

Most of the passengers managed to escape from the rear exit of the plane while the hijackers were releasing the women from the front exit, one passenger told private NTV television.

The reason the quote marks are important is because one passenger said the hijackers were al-Qaeda whereas a second passenger said the hijackers did not make an announcement about who they were.

So there you have it. Two diametrically opposed witnesses and the reporter went with one of them. And the most dramatic one at that. The person writing the headline obviously read the story first.

Shoddy reporting, but good headline writing.

(read more)

Top Al-Qaida leaders had fled before U.S.-led offensive began

You see the thing is, al-Qaeda is so stupid they have to read about an imminent attack in the newspapers or they have no idea its coming. When is the US military going to quit underestimating al-Qaeda fighters?

The American general commanding troops battling to clear fighters serving with Al-Qaida from Baquba said Friday that 80 percent of the top Al-Qaida leaders in the city fled before the American-led offensive began earlier this week, just as the Al-Qaida leadership fled Al-Fallujah ahead of the American offensive that recaptured that city in 2004.

Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the second-ranking American commander in Iraq, told reporters that leaders of Al-Qaida in Iraq had been alerted to the Baquba offensive by widespread public discussion of the American plan to clear the city before the attack began. He portrayed the Al-Qaida leaders' escape as cowardice, saying that "when the fight comes, they leave," abandoning "mid-level" Al-Qaida leaders and fighters to face the might of American troops - just, he said, as they did in Al-Fallujah.

Some American officers in Baquba have blamed the Al-Qaida leaders' flight on public remarks about the offensive in the days before it began by top American commanders, including Gen. David Petraeus, the overall commander in Iraq. But Odierno cast the issue in broader terms, saying Al-Qaida leaders were bound to know an attack was coming in light of President Bush's decision to pour nearly 30,000 additional troops into the fight in a bid to secure Baghdad and areas around the capital that have been insurgent strongholds. That included Baquba, which lies 40 miles north.

"Frankly, I think they knew an operation was coming in Baquba," Odierno said in a teleconference with Pentagon reporters from the American military headquarters in Baghdad. "They watched the news. They understood we had a surge. They understood Baquba was designated as a problem area. So they knew we were going to come, sooner or later."

Still, he implied American commanders may have played a part by flagging the offensive in advance. "I think they were tipped off by us talking about the surge, the fact that we have a problem in Diyala province," he said.

Jesus H Christ in a TV commercial, but reports have been coming out of Iraq for years about how the Iraqi police and military have been infiltrated by Al-Qaeda. The country's crawling with spies.

(read more)

OK, you can relax now

News from United States Central Command (CENTCOM).

Less than 10 miles from training camps that produced many of the 9/11 hijackers, a team of coalition servicemembers are working together to make sure the area once home to Osama Bin Laden's terrorist organization becomes an environment that will deny such people a support base ever again.

The al-Qaeda problem is under control. Sheesh!

I'd like to believe such a thing, but al-Qaeda isn't location specific. Take away a little real estate and they'll just train elsewhere. Its all a fucking shell game.

(read more)

No problem

I'm sure Bush will take this threat as seriously as he took the CIA warnings before 9/11. Gawd I feel so comfortable.

An American member of al-Qaida warned President Bush on Tuesday to end U.S. involvement in all Muslim lands or face an attack worse than the Sept. 11 suicide assault, according to a new videotape.

Wearing a white robe and a turban, Adam Yehiye Gadahn, who also goes by the name Azzam al-Amriki, said al-Qaida would not negotiate on its demands.

"Your failure to heed our demands ... means that you and your people will ... experience things which will make you forget all about the horrors of September 11th, Afghanistan and Iraq and Virginia Tech," he said in the seven-minute video.

OK, its only words and words can't harm you, right?

(read more)

Al-Qaida's next generation

Face it. What we're doing isn't going to stop terrorists. They're like the Hydra.

The news is alarming. U.S. and French intelligence agencies are convinced that terrorist network al-Qaida has reorganized and, what's more, developed new training camps in both Afghanistan and the remote tribal regions of northern Pakistan. They believe that a new generation of terrorists has come of age, and some are suspected of planning attacks in the West.

Five and a half years have passed since Sept. 11, 2001, and the beginning of the war against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The physical presence of Osama bin Laden's network was largely destroyed at the time -- the terrorist camps, which had trained an estimated 20,000 men, quickly reduced to rubble. Two years ago, the White House crowed that two-thirds of al-Qaida's leadership had been eliminated. "We're winning," President Bush claimed recently. "Al-Qaida is on the run."

But are those terrorists really on the run? Of course, there can be no doubt that the network no longer has nearly the capacity it had when it organized the 9/11 attacks. But the attempts to reorganize are obvious, and the new camps are an indication that the efforts have been successful. According to Time magazine, each of the camps has the capacity to train between 10 and 300 jihadists. "We know they exist, but it's like finding a needle in a haystack," the magazine quotes a U.S. military official in Afghanistan as saying.

If you can't kill all terrorists in 5-6 years, the 9-11 year olds will have come of age and have been indoctrinated in that time. That means the only way to stop terrorists is to kill all of them within a year which is ludicrous. It will never happen.

The only sensible thing to do is win hearts and minds (gawd I hate that cliché, but it works) which is what the Taleban and al-Qaeda do as well as Hizballah.

(via Salon - sponsor click required)

Cato institute recommends Iraq withdrawl

In a "real" think tank, unlike the Heritage Foundation or American Enterprise Institute, the folks actually do think. And the Cato institute thinks the US should get the hell out of Iraq.

The U.S. military occupation of Iraq has already cost more than 3,000 American lives and $350 billion. In a new policy analysis, "Escaping the Trap: Why the United States Must Leave Iraq," Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, argues for a rapid and comprehensive withdrawal from Iraq. "It is time to admit that the Iraq mission has failed and cut our losses. We need an exit strategy that is measured in months, not years," says Carpenter.

"Withdrawal will not be without cost," Carpenter concedes. "We can minimize that damage by refocusing our efforts on al Qaeda in Afghanistan and elsewhere, but there is no way to eliminate the damage. Whatever price we will pay for withdrawing from Iraq, however, must be measured against the probable cost in blood and treasure if we stay."

(read more)

Must Read IMHO

Someone else who sees an attack on Iran as inevitable and thinks it might well destroy Israel. I'm not so sure Israel will be the only country destroyed. Its very likely the whole Mid-East will go up in flames and those flames could spread like a forest fire outside the Mid-East.

For this is the inevitable consequence of the planned air and missile attack on Iran. The pockmarked, littered landscape in Iraq, Lebanon, and Afghanistan and the endless applicant queues at al-Qaeda and other terrorist recruiting stations testify eloquently to the unintended consequences of myopic policymakers in Washington and Tel Aviv.

Mesmerized. Sadly, this is the best word to describe those of us awake to the inexorable march of folly to war with Iran and the growing danger to Israel’s security, especially over the medium and long term.

An American and/or Israeli attack on Iran will let slip the dogs of war. Those dogs never went to obedience school. They will not be denied their chance to bite, and Israel’s arsenal of nuclear weapons will be powerless to muzzle them.

In my view, not since 1948 has the very existence of Israel hung so much in the balance. Can Bush/Cheney and the Israeli leaders not see it?

Pity that no one seems to have read our first President’s warning on the noxious effects of entangling alliances. The supreme irony is that in their fervor to help, as well as use, Israel, Bush and Cheney seem blissfully unaware that they are leading it down a garden path and off a cliff.

(read more)

File under: WTF?

Will this fucking meme ever go away? Al-Qaeda and Hussein were not connected.

Some of the Pentagon's prewar intelligence work, including a contention that the CIA underplayed the likelihood of al-Qaida connections to Saddam Hussein, was inappropriate but not illegal, a Defense Department investigation has concluded. [emphasis mine]

Downplayed the likelihood? There was no likelihood. Anyone knowledgeable about the Mid-East knew Hussein did not support al-Qaeda.

As to whether twisting, fudging and contorting intelligence to suit president idiot is a crime, I don't know what the legal system would say, but its a huge crime to my mind.

(read more)

When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?

Bush was warned al-Qaeda was determined to attack US.

Bush was given detailed information about how to protect US after the 9/11 attack.

Bush was told our ports are not properly protected.

Bush was told he needed many more troops than planned in Iraq to have any chance for success.

Bush was given detailed information about how to handle the disaster in Iraq.

Bush was told a SURGE™ would not work.

Now Bush has been given information about the dangers of global warming.

Bush didn't use the information from the first six reports. Why does anyone think he would act on the seventh? Just asking.

The Bush administration says a new United Nations report on the dangers of global warming is very valuable, but stopped short of calling for mandatory government controls on greenhouse gasses.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] released a study Friday warning that human activities are 'very likely' to blame for global warming, and that the world can expect the trend to continue.

U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said the Bush administration welcomed the report, but repeated the administration's opposition to mandating caps on the emission of greenhouse gasses. Greenhouse gasses are produced by fossil fuels and carbon-intensive industries.

I will post this slowly so even the most obtuse amongst us can understand.

Bush. Doesn't. Care. What. The. Fuck. The. Facts. Are.

(read more)