Target Centermass

Category: War on Terror

  • British Troops Kill al Qaeda Fugitive

    The bastard escaped captivity in Afghanistan only to reach his own death in Iraq.

    British forces killed a top terrorist leader yesterday, an al Qaeda leader who escaped from a US prison in Afghanistan and returned to Iraq.

    Omar al Faruq was killed in a predawn raid on his home in Basra by 250 troops from the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment. He was killed after he opened fire on British soldiers entering his home, said Major Charlie Burbridge, a British forces spokesman.

    The Ministry of Defence said al Faruq was closely linked to terrorist activity such as murders and kidnappings.

    “We had information that a terrorist of considerable significance was hiding in Basra. As a result of that information we conducted an operation in an attempt to arrest him,” Burbridge said.

    “During the attempted arrest Omar Faruq was killed, which is regrettable because we wanted to arrest him.”

    He said he could not comment on whether Faruq was the leader of al Qaeda’s southeast Asia operations.

    However, a Basra police officer said it was the same man, adding al Faruq was an expert bomb-maker.

    The officer said al Faruq was living in Basra under the name Mahmoud Ahmed and had entered Iraq three months ago.

    Neighbours said al Faruq was a member of al Qaeda and had received training in camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

    Al Faruq was one of four al Qaeda suspects who broke out of the prison in Bagram, the main US base in Afghanistan, in July 2005. The escape was an embarrassment for the US military, and the Pentagon waited until November to confirm it.

    Al Faruq and three other escapees later appeared in a video sent to the Dubai-based television station Al Arabiya and boasted of their feat.

    The story rang familiar and piqued my curiousity and, yes, I had blogged the original news of the escape. At the time, I stated that I hoped to be able to follow up on this story. Well, here I am and here, more than fourteen months later, is the follow-up: scratch one bad guy.

    It does appear that al Faruq, a.k.a. Mahmood Ahmad from Kuwait, was a bigger dog in the fight than we realized at the time. That, or he was just a rapid promotee in opening-rich environment that we have bloodily provided the terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan. Oh yeah, despite some that insist that the conflict in Iraq is still a separate fight than the war against Islamist terror in the Afghan theater, this little story of an enemy’s commute to a new office should end such an argument … but sadly it won’t.

  • Somalis Killed in Protests against Islamic Militiamen

    Obviously, violence and madness in Somalia is nothing new. Black Hawk Down, anyone? However, things have changed of late, as radical Islamists move ever closer to taking complete control of the strife-ridden country. I have been negligent in pointing this out, so here’s the latest bit o’ news that should boost the Somali tourist industry.

    Islamic fighters in the Somali port of Kismayo opened fire yesterday on residents who were burning tyres, throwing stones and chanting to protest against their takeover of the city hours earlier.

    A 13-year-old boy was shot dead and two other people were injured as violence raged for several hours in Somalia’s third biggest city, witnesses said.
    Click to learn more…

    “We have been taken over by extremists, the Islamic courts have taken us by force, and now they are firing at us,” said Dahabo Dirie, a protester.

    The Mogadishu-based Islamic militiamen poured into Kismayo overnight to extend their grip on south-central Somalia and effectively flank the powerless central government on three sides.

    Ministers accused the militias of mounting the offensive using fighters from Eritrea, Pakistan and Yemen.

    “There are foreign forces … which attacked Kismayo,” Hussein Mohamed Farah Aideed, the Somali interior minister said.

    A militia official, who spoke to a crowd in Kismayo before the protests began, said the movement was receiving help from abroad, but did not specify.

    Unfortunately, the kinds of tourists that developments such as this will draw are the radical Islamist expansionists and jihadists. Indeed, while the media blasts the clarion call of a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan, that resurgence has only led to them dying by the bushel in much the same manner that they have in every one of their annual spring offensivepaloozas since they were swept from power. The only obvious differences this year is that they’ve garnered far more press for their strengthening and they are becoming martyrs in great numbers at the hands of so-called “second rate crusaders.”

    Iran is an obvious problem, and its rulers seem willing to work with the al Queda-type terrorist groups … to a degree. They share a common enemy in the Great Satan, but both have extremely different views about their hopes for the world and the Middle East in the event of success.

    Obviously, the radical Islamists that once found a home in Afghanistan, a home that harbored their training camps and allowed them to project their terror, are under too much pressure there now to be anything more than a threat against the westerners in that country. Likewise, they cannot find a strong base for their own growth in the long term in Iran. At this point, an Islamist seizure of Somalia would seem to be the best hope for a new base from which to train the jihadists and expand the bloodshed. Luckily, any such shift is something that has been in our game-planning for some time now.

  • A Must Read: ‘You’ll Never Know What We Did’

    Often times I have bemoaned the coverage of our efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq by our media. I’ve repeatedly pointed out the wealth of words for every setback, the ignoring or twisting of any success, the near void that is the coverage of our heroes and the harsh brass trumpeting of our villains and their misdeeds.

    I’m man enough to admit that I have also overlooked an important piece of our efforts — the contractors. Callimachus at Done with Mirrors has a personal tie to the scene and brings us an up-close-and-personally-bitter look at this unreported story.

    My friend, Kat, worked in and around Iraq for roughly two years, for a U.S.-based contractor doing reconstruction work there.

    I’ve picked up bits and pieces of her story as she’s written to me from abroad, but recently she’s been back in a place with regular Internet access and some time on her hands, and I finally got to ask her some questions and she got to write some full answers. We’ve talked a lot about her experience over there, and the more I read the more I wanted to tell it. She gave me permission to distill down some of her letters and our chats into a post.

    Reconstruction is the eternally under-reported third leg of the Iraq story (the other two are overthrow of Saddam and removal of his threat, and establishing a stable Iraqi popular control of the country). It was part of what we went in there to do, and its success or failure is part of the full measure of success or failure of our entire operation.

    Yet on this important story, our media blew it. Who can name a single contractor who did work in Iraq, besides the one that begins with “H” and maybe Blackwater USA? How many people can describe accurately the relationship between Halliburton and KBR? How many faces of Iraq contractors did you ever see in the news, except the ones who got kidnapped and beheaded? How many were the subject of news stories, or were quoted in any of them?

    With that intro, Callimachus essentially hands the reigns over to his contractor friend. At times, it’s a tale only an accountant would love. At others, when the job description fades and the emotion seeps in, it becomes a personal tale that must be read but you’ll probably never find in newsprint. Here’s a little tidbit:

    I know that in comparative numbers there really won’t be enough of us coming back from Iraq to confront or challenge the MSM. Even if we all gathered together in Washington for a week to bitch and moan about it, we still couldn’t assure that we were covered. We know you’ll never know what we did.

    So what many of us are left with is a really nasty taste in our mouths. It’s hurt me almost as much to be telling this as it has been to live through it, and I know I’m not alone in my feelings. I feel so very sorry for and protective of the soldiers and marines who protected me. They’re all my little brothers now, and I feel the same towards the inexperienced Iraqi soldiers who put themselves in harm’s way for me.

    Okay, one more:

    Beyond a couple of poorly received White House briefings that went all but completely ignored, I never saw a thing mentioned about the massive reconstruction projects underway in Iraq. There were no fact-filled and hard-hitting stories on those jobs. By and large, the US and European publics are completely clueless about the rebuilding process and the complexities that have been involved in it. Because the press ignored it completely.

    Instead they waited like vultures for the first monetary discrepancies to hit, under Halliburton of course. Because of Dick Cheney, it’s what everybody on the left was wanting to hear, and nothing else mattered. The press lept on that with full claws fully extended, never paying a moment’s notice to the realities of large-scale construction projects.

    […]

    Within weeks of my arrival in Iraq, I knew exactly what would happen to US public opinion if media coverage continued as it was at the time.

    Seriously, go read it already. Hat tip to Gates of Vienna.

  • Europe Pathetically Caves

    Gerard Baker mixes a night spent stranded at a NATO base in Afghanistan with several events of the last week, and his final result is not a cheery concoction for the future of Europe.

    But the scale of Europe’s moral crisis is larger than ever. Opposing the war in Iraq was one thing, defensible in the light of events. But opting out of a serious fight against the Taleban, sabotaging efforts to get Iran off its path towards nuclear status, pre-emptively cringing to Muslim intolerance of free speech and criticism, all suggest something quite different.

    They imply a slow but insistent collapse of the European will, the steady attrition of the self-preservation instinct. Its effects can be seen not only in the political field, but in other ways — the startling decline of birth rates across the continent that represent a sort of self-inflicted genocide; the refusal to confront the harsh realities of a global economy.

    Many will greet this piece with knowing, resigned nods. Others will shrug off the negative outlook, denying the danger. Few if any on the continent will stir to do anything to confront the danger of their own demise anytime soon.

  • Wanted Terrorist Spotted?

    In Texas?!!

    The tale starts unlikely enough. A story comes out of Pakistan claiming that al Queda is set up for an attack inside the U.S. involving explosives and nuclear materials. It even goes so far as to name a particular terrorist, Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, claiming that he had brought the bad stuff in through Mexico over the last two years and was now waiting somewhere in the U.S.

    Okay, the odds are already poor. How many threats and rumors and promises of attacks greater than 9/11 have we endured over the last five years? Well, I don’t have the exact figure, but suffice it to say that I am willing to take Target Centermass out on the limb and assure the reader that the answer is a number probably greater than pi. Trust me. Keeping that hollowness of earlier stories of evil shenanigans, let’s stretch this tale into the fantastic.

    A commenter at Ace of Spades, after reading about the above, posts that he thinks he saw this guy … trying to rent a house … some time earlier this year … in Texas. Apparently he feels strongly enough about this to have contacted the FBI.

    Okay, let’s take the long odds against each aspect of this compound story and multiply them into a probability approaching zero. Still, that leaves a trace of a chance. I almost feel paranoid even writing up this story except for two points — first, they are eventually going to hit us again so we must be vigilant and, second, we are talking about the Lone Star state. Besides, even long odds must pay off some time. Douglas knocked out Tyson. Snub fighters took out the Death Star. Lyle Lovett married Julia Roberts.

    Hat tip to Gateway Pundit, who expands the story even a bit more.

  • An Amphibian, a Dictionary and an Alliance

    CDR Salamander takes a look at the current situation of NATO’s involvement in Afghanistan and struggles to find the right word.

    Culminate is a strong word in this line of work.

    […]

    In military terms, it can often be seen as a high-water mark. A point where a force has lost its ability to advance.

    My concern is that Salamander may have the right word but the wrong verb tense. I’ve repeatedly expressed my concerns about the value of NATO in the post-Cold War era [see here and here for examples]. I even briefly held out a resurrection of personal optimism for the alliance after a commitment to the Afghan theater, but CDR Salamander points out that my hope for a better distribution of burden among our allies was misplaced.

    Notice what troops are where. Notice where the fighting is (RC South, and RC East). Have we reached the point that only English speakers will die for NATO? Is that a fair alliance? Is this what you get for keeping (most of) them safe from Communism? At least Poland will try to step in some, after the fact. Maybe. They have a history of helping.

    He provides more information, including some sweet military history links, before concluding the following:

    This is gut check time NATO, and from what I see, you have a yellow stain running down your pants.

    This is not too far from something I wrote not too long ago:

    I’d say it’s not very complimentary to brag that NATO, an alliance based upon mutual defense, can heartily be relied upon for humanitarian disasters but is rather pick-and-choose on military assistance, always quite willing to find a reason to avoid exposure to potential danger. That is not a strong foundation for mutual defense. NATO really must be re-envisioned or cast away as a Cold War relic.

    Culminates or culminated?

  • 9/11: Five Years On

    As I’ve stated repeatedly, Ralph Peters is one of my favorite columnists and writers, dating back to my introduction to his fiction in 1993. In his latest column, Mr. Peters looks optimistically at our progress since the atrocity that was the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on America.

    The biggest story since 9/11 is that there hasn’t been an other 9/11. According to our hysterical media culture, everything’s always going wrong. The truth is that we’ve gotten the big things right.

    On this fifth anniversary of the cold-blooded murder of thousands of Americans by Islamist fanatics, it’s tempting to settle for grand rhetoric honoring our dead and damning our enemies. But the greatest tribute to those lost on that September morning is what we’ve since achieved.

    In this vile political season, with those on the left suggesting that our president’s a worse threat to civilization than Islamist terror, the rest of us should just review what’s happened – and what hasn’t[.]

    Mr. Peters’ keystone argument is that we haven’t been hit again on our home front by the murderous Islamist bastards. While this is true, I’ll be the first to admit that this is a rather “iffy” point. First, in some of the few plans we’ve known of meant to strike us here, luck has played a role in their prevention. Second, we have been aided by the terrorists’ apparent post-9/11 love for the long ball, as we are still extremely open prey for a great number of assaults of lesser nature throughout our homeland. Third, this whole keystone rides upon a razor’s edge — one mistake and it’s all gone, while all of the other progress may remain valid but then ignored.

    Still, Mr. Peters makes and supports his arguments for progress. I’ll turn them into mere bullet points and leave it to y’all to read the whole column for Mr. Peters’ explanations.

    • Islamist fanatics have not been able to stage a single additional attack on our homeland.
    • Al Qaeda is badly crippled.
    • Terrorists no longer operate in freedom.
    • Our enemies fear our military again.
    • Iraq has become al Qaeda’s Vietnam.
    • We’ve achieved new levels of domestic security without compromising civil liberties.
    • America is much stronger today than we were five years ago.

    Mr. Peters then sums up his five-year-later thoughts quite rationally.

    Does that mean everything’s perfect? Of course not. As noted above, some terrorists will manage to hit us again. But if attempt No. 500 succeeds, it doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth stopping the other 499. Yet, after the next attack, we’ll hear no end of trash-talk about how the War on Terror “failed.”

    The truth is that we’re winning. Hands down. We just can’t afford to revert to yesteryear’s weakness and indecision.

    What should we worry about? Plenty. First, the unscrupulous nature of those in the media who always discover a dark cloud in the brightest silver lining. They’re terror’s cheerleaders. Second, the rabid partisanship infecting our political system – when “getting Bush” is more important than protecting our country, something’s wrong.

    A third concern is the Internet’s empowerment of fanatics, conspiracy-theorists and all of the really good haters – on both extremes of the political spectrum. If there’s one thing all responsible citizens, conservative, centrist or liberal, should agree on, it’s that all extremism is un-American.

    On a related note, the White House has released its own detailed report of progress over the last five years since that terrible day when radical Islamists succeeded in bringing terror to our shores.

  • The 9/11 Conspiracy Theorists and Their Poisonous Reach

    Mary Katharine Ham takes a look at the 9/11 conspiracy buffs, those fools who see evil committed before them, deny it and start looking for an even greater, albeit hidden and unsupported, evil at home [hat tip to Jack M. blogging at Ace’s digs].

    Flight 77 careened over that same road on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 moments before slamming into the Pentagon and taking the lives of 184 people. Last night, a beam of light shone for each of those victims, rising toward the moon on a clear September night.

    Hani Hanjour, a 29-year-old Saudi, flew that plane into the Pentagon in a suicidal strike on the “Great Satan,” America , driven by a sick Islamofascist ideology.

    But there are some who don’t believe that. There are some who call that the “official story.” They say they seek the “truth” about what really happened on 9/11. The “truth,” according to them, is that a sinister cabal of neocon politicians arranged for a missile to hit the Pentagon and for a controlled demolition to bring down the Twin Towers.

    These neocons killed almost 3,000 Americans in a bid to increase both the power of the Bush administration and the willingness of American citizens to support military action in the Middle East, according to the conspiracy theorists. They subsequently covered it up with the “official story” of bin Laden and 19 hijackers, according to members of the “9/11 Truth Movement.”

    The head of this tinfoil hat brigade is Dylan Avery, a 22-year-old conspiracy theorist who has parlayed his creative version of history into two very popular Internet films, “Loose Change” and “Loose Change 2nd Edition.”

    Avery and his cohorts’ research, theories, and “evidence” are so laughable that it can be easy to laugh off the movement itself.

    Yes, it’s safe to say that that was my reaction for quite some time. In fact, up until this morning I was willing to shrug these fools off as either misled or nuttier than squirrel crap, but we’ll get back to this morning in a bit.

    Ms. Ham continues with her reasons for the need to more directly confront these twisted conspiracy ideas.

    It’s important for those of us who know what took the lives of 3,000 Americans five years ago today—four commercial planes with full loads of jet fuel and passengers driven by 19 murderous maniacs—to understand that there is a disturbingly large and vocal segment of the American population that doesn’t believe that.

    A recent Scripps poll found that more than a third of Americans believe 9/11 was an “inside job.”

    Truthers are professors and Democrat candidates for Congress.

    The Truthers believe the American government planned and carried out the carnage of Sept. 11 on its own people, and they’re determined to tell the rest of us all about it.

    Feel free to read it all, including the linked details of the “truthers.” Ms. Ham’s advice for dealing with the conspiracy theorists and those that have fallen under their sway is simple: aggressively present them with or guide them to the facts of 9/11.

    Take some time to watch “Screw Loose Change.” It is long, but it’s worth it to truly understand the dangerous deniers we’re facing in our own country. Read the “Screw Loose Change” blog and Popular Mechanics’ book, “Debunking 9/11 Myths.”

    But you might want to hold off until tomorrow. On this day, it will make you too angry.

    So why did my view on this matter change this morning, why the sudden urgency to confront these idiots? A key piece of my kick-off-the-day ritual is a perusal of my local paper, which these days is the Dallas Morning News. As part of the paper’s 9/11 opinion page coverage was a collection of thoughts from Dallas-area high school seniors. As I glanced over them, the following header caught my mind and I read one student’s thoughts.

    … Conspiracy-minded

    In May of my junior year, an online video titled Loose Change became a sensation. The documentary basically stated that the attacks were a hoax masterminded by a secret government conspiracy. Sounds a little far-fetched, right?

    Well, the students in my Advanced Placement American history class began questioning the legitimacy of Sept. 11. This class was college-level and filled with high-achieving students. It’s a shame when our future leaders begin to see the “land of the free, home of the brave” as a destructive place that perversely kills its own citizens.

    Kind of makes me want to cry all over again.

    Lela Atwood, Naaman Forest High School, Garland

    These dangerously idiotic and undermining “truths” are apparently being discussed openly during class at Naaman Forest High School, and discussed in such a manner that students are left unsure or even believing them. As scary as that is in and of itself were it to be anywhere in the great U.S. of A., that school is only 3.7 miles from my home and, should my wife and I have children and not move, would be the public school option for my family.

    That surpasses frightening and reaches into disgusting. The conspiracy fools must be confronted — facts must address shady twistings into demented “truths.”

    After all, I believe that children are our future; teach them well and let them not become demented, misled fruitcakes.

  • Some of History’s Other 9/11s

    For the military history buff, here are a few key events in time that befell the date September 11. The first was a famed moment in Scotland’s past while the latter two relate directly to our struggles today against an expansionist and violent Islamist movement.

    1297: The Battle of Stirling Bridge [hat tip to Smash]

    1565: Malta

    1683: Vienna

  • Five Years Later: Remembering 9/11

    [Originally posted on Sept. 11, 2004. My only update is that I watched the movie again last night. It was the first time my wife has viewed it.]

    I recommend this:
    9/11

    I also prefer to remember this, my alma mater’s first home game post-9/11. The color-coordinated shirts were the idea and hard work of a small handful of students. Thousands of dollars were raised for victims’ charities.
    Red, White and Blue-Out at Kyle Field, 9/22/01
    (image from the Houston Chronicle)