Target Centermass

We aimed for Ayman al-Zawahiri, ranked number two in the latest al Queda polls but bouyed in the BCS by being ranked higher in some computer rankings. We apparently missed.

Now, the news is that it looks like we nailed some key bad guys.

Pakistani intelligence agents hunted Wednesday for the graves of four al-Qaida militants believed killed in an airstrike near the Afghan border including one authorities suspect was a high-ranking al-Qaida figure.

ABC News reported that a master bomb maker and chemical weapons expert for al-Qaida was killed in the attack on the village of Damadola last week. He was identified as Midhat Mursi, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri, who ran an al-Qaida training camp and has a $5 million reward on his head.

According to ABC, Pakistani officials also said two other terror network officials were killed: Khalid Habib, the al-Qaida operations chief for Pakistan and Afghanistan; and Abdul Rehman al Magrabi, a senior operations commander for the group.

Pentagon officials said they had no information on the report. A Pakistani intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he’s not authorized to speak to journalists, said authorities still did not know the names of the dead foreign militants but suspect one was a ranking al-Qaida figure.

“We have no names. We know one of them had value in al-Qaida. He had intelligence value in the network, but we are still checking his name,” said the official.

[...]

The U.S. government refuses to discuss the airstrike, which has been condemned by Pakistan.

Provincial authorities say the attack killed 18 residents of the Pashtun village, and they also say they believe sympathizers took the bodies of four or five foreign militants to bury them in the mountains, thereby preventing their identification.

“Efforts are under way to investigate further,” said Shah Zaman Khan, director-general of media relations for Pakistan’s tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.

He said authorities were also looking for two prominent pro-Taliban clerics accused of harboring militants, Maulana Faqir Mohammed and Liaqat Ali, who were allegedly in Damadola and survived the assault.

Intelligence officials say the dead foreigners could be aides of al-Zawahri, who is thought to have sent them in his place to an Islamic holiday dinner to which he’d been invited in Damadola on the night of the attack.

My first point is this: either the residents of this village knew how to spin on a global stage or the international media was willing to give them a helping hand.

Hours after the attack, an Associated Press reporter visited the village, which consists of a half-dozen widely scattered houses on a hillside about four miles from the Afghan border.

Residents said then that all the dead were local people and no one had taken any bodies away. However, it appeared feasible bodies or wounded could have been spirited away in the darkness after the attack, which took place about 3 a.m.

Islamic custom dictates that bodies be buried as soon as possible, and the reporter saw 13 freshly filled graves with simple headstones and five empty graves alongside them apparently prepared for more dead. When the reporter returned the next day, the five empty graves were filled in, apparently because no more bodies had been found in the rubble.

The only tidbits of official information that have surfaced since then have come from provincial authorities, and they have yet to give a list of the dead. But Pakistani intelligence officials have said they believe some of those killed were Pakistani militants and that their bodies were also removed from the scene.

A Pakistani army official has told the AP that some bodies were taken away for DNA tests information at odds with reports from provincial authorities. The federal government has not confirmed the report about DNA tests.

The rush by the media resulted in a major gaffe, as Michelle Malkin and a good chunk of the blogosphere showed us yesterday.

My second point is that our intelligence appears to have been rather good and timely in this case — certainly a nice development. And some bad guys are taking that long dirt nap. Hooah!

Assuming Zawahiri lives, I’d reckon his ties with the locals have certainly become a wee bit less enthusiastic … from both perspectives.

Next stop on the Iranian nuke journey: the United Nations Security Council.

An emergency meeting over Iran’s controversial nuclear programme is to be held by the United Nations’ atomic weapons watchdog at the request of Britain, France and Germany, it was revealed yesterday.

The so-called EU3 and the United States are expected to push at the session of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s governing board to have Tehran referred to the UN Security Council after it resumed research that could be used for generating electricity or making atomic bombs.

The US and EU said yesterday they saw no point in holding further negotiations with Iran on its nuclear programmes and it was time for the Security Council to tackle the issue.

Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, said there was “not much to talk about” and Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy chief, agreed. Ms Rice said the international community was united in mistrusting the Islamic republic and its present leadership with nuclear technology.

‘Bout freakin’ time. It was obvious from the beginning that the Euro-led negotiations were a waste of valuable time, time Iran has used to its advantage. A week ago, I blogged the following:

It is time, actually well past time, to admit that the Euro diplomacy path was a gambit doomed to fail. The U.S. was forced to allow it, as the Bush administration had been painted into a corner with all the false and politically-driven accusations of unilateral action and rush to war surrounding the Iraqi theater. From the beginning, there was a key fault with the negotiations — one side didn’t actually want them to succeed.

So now we find the matter heading toward the UNSC. Make no mistake, however — that will not be the last stop on this hellish ride. It’s just another point on a journey that will likely end in flame. The true story ultimately lies in just who will decide the locations of said flame.

The United States is upping the ante on Syria, with its latest maneuver focused on a single key figure in the Syrian regime.

The United States on Wednesday froze the U.S. assets of Syrian military intelligence director Asef Shawkat, accusing him of fomenting terrorism against Israel and backing Syria’s intrusion in Lebanon.

The U.S. Treasury Department, in the Bush administration’s latest effort to pressure Syria, named Shawkat a “Specially Designated National” — freezing his assets in the United States and banning U.S. citizens from doing business with him.

“Shawkat has been a key architect of Syria’s domination of Lebanon, as well as a fundamental contributor to Syria’s long-standing policy to foment terrorism against Israel,” said Stuart Levey, under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence at the U.S. Treasury.

The U.S. Treasury did not specify whether Shawkat, who is Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s brother-in-law, had any assets in the United States.

The United States accused Shawkat of cooperating with groups like Hizbollah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in his position as military intelligence chief.

The U.S. Treasury also cited Shawkat for contributing to Syria’s military and security presence in Lebanon, an enduring source of tension following last year’s killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri for which a U.N. probe has implicated Syrian officials.

Though international pressure following the assassination caused Syria to withdraw its military presence from Lebanon, the United States has accused Syria of continuing to interfere in Lebanese affairs, which it says undermines efforts to stabilize Iraq and supporting terrorism in the region.

The White House in 2004 imposed sanctions that prohibited certain U.S. exports to Syria, severed banking ties with the Commercial Bank of Syria, froze the assets of Syrians believed linked to terrorism or weapons of mass destruction, and banned Syrian airlines from flying to and from the United States.

Yes, international pressure on Syria has certainly increased since the country’s apparent involvement in the Hariri assassination. Still, as the story points out, the U.S. began ramping up the heat before the hit, and that would certainly be a result of the Syrian role as accomplice to ongoing bloodshed in Iraq. I do like that Hizbollah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad were specifically named, as it is well past time to start joining together the many jigsaw pieces of Islamic terror throughout the region and the globe.

Tumultuous Ivory Coast looks to be spinning its way back to internal strife and bloodshed.

Ivory Coast, once one of the wealthiest countries in Africa, was close to its second civil war in five years yesterday as gangs of armed thugs loyal to President Gbagbo ran amok across the southern half of the country.

A 300-strong contingent of Bangladeshi UN troops was forced to withdraw after an attack on their base at Guiglo, 300 miles west of Abidjan, the commercial capital. At least four people died when the peacekeepers opened fire to defend themselves.

Another contingent of 70 international peacekeepers was evacuated from the town of Douéké. Peacekeepers at the UN headquarters in Abidjan fired in the air and used teargas to keep the thugs at bay. Businesses across the city closed as Mr Gbagbo’s supporters blocked roads with burning tyres and stopped vehicles.

President Obasanjo of Nigeria will fly to Ivory Coast today to try to defuse the troubles. The UN and France, the former colonial power, called for calm.

Late last night Mr Gbagbo responded by calling on his supporters to end the protests and return to work.

The rebels, who control the northern half of the country, had given warning of renewed war if Mr Gbagbo reneges on a UN-brokered peace agreement negotiated last year. They have been fighting for real powersharing with the southern elite and equal distribution of the country’s wealth.

The violence erupted on Monday when international mediators demanded that the mandate of the country’s parliament, a rubber-stamp body packed with Mr Gbagbo’s supporters, be wound up pending elections.

The ruling party, the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI), said that it was quitting immediately the transitional Government and the UN-backed peace process.

“If the FPI succeeds in making a putsch against the peace process, that means war,” Sidiki Konate, a spokesman for the northern New Forces rebel movement, said. Mr Gbagbo unleashed the ruling party’s Young Patriots, a favourite tactic of a man who has clung to power since the end of the 2002-03 civil war divided his country, and who has resisted all attempts to persuade him to share power.

Gangs of Young Patriots have spread out across Abidjan and other main population centres controlled by government forces. The few foreigners left in Abidjan, once the jewel in France’s colonial crown, are hiding in the basements of their houses or in the homes and offices of Ivorian friends.

The last time that machete-wielding gangs hit the streets, they beat and raped any white foreigners they found.

“There are virtually no whites left. The only foreigners left in Abidjan who are not in the well-protected UN compounds are Lebanese who are busy picking up what business the expatriates left behind,” a regional analyst said.

[...]

In France, which has 4,000 troops operating alongside the 7,000-strong UN peacekeeping force, General Henri Bentegeat, the chief of the Armed Forces, said that the time had come for the UN Security Council to make good its threat of imposing sanctions on Ivory Coast.

[...]

The FPI has called for the departure of the UN peacekeepers and the French troops whom they accuse of supporting the rebels in order to take control of Ivory Coast’s cocoa industry — the world’s biggest.

Despite the presence of the United Nations and the French, it seems that a true quagmire and civil war can be managed.

If interested, check out the original story for a timeline of Ivory Coast’s spiral into madness.