1月18日
Al Qadea's Bomb Maker Bombed
My how this story has evolved. First the missle strike was a complete failure which had the Kos Kids in a tizzy about Americans killing innocent civilians.
ABC News has learned that al Qaeda's master bomb maker and chemical weapons expert was one of the men killed in last week's U.S. missile attack in eastern Pakistan.
Midhat Mursi, 52, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri, was identified by Pakistani authorities as one of three known al Qaeda leaders present at an apparent terror summit conference in the village of Damadola.
The United States had posted a $5 million reward for Mursi's capture. He is described by U.S. authorities as the man who ran al Qaeda's infamous Derunta training camp in Afghanistan, where he used dogs and other animals as subjects of experiments with poison and chemicals.
"This is extraordinarily important," said former FBI agent Jack Cloonan, an ABC News consultant, who was the senior agent on the FBI's al Qaeda squad. "He's the man who trained the shoe bomber, Richard Reid and Zacharias Mousssaoui, as well as hundreds of others."
This is indeed great news regarding the war on terror, assuming that you're on the side of the free world.
Now any side can make mistakes by pre-judging information before all the facts are in. I'm not trying to say "I told you so" to the Kos Kids and their ilk. But the point is that we shouldn't be quick to assume that the "villagers" were innocent. I explained this in more detail in a post yesterday:
I agree that civilian casualties are a profound concern first morally and second because it hurts our credibility and reputation in a delicate and critical region like Pakistan. To the extent the Kos-Kids are sincere about their concern for human life I will join them (but I suspect their biggest motivation is bashing the US military, the war on terror, and painting our President as BushHilter).
But here is a thought. What is a civilian? Sure some "civilians" and "villagers" were killed in the missle strike. But what were they doing in the same building as Al-Queda terrorists perparing to host a dinner for the second highest ranking member of al Queda? al Queda being an organization that has murdered thousands across the globe -- not just the 9-11 attacks but also attacks in Spain, Jordan, Iraq and SE Asia, Africa and more.
Again what is a "civilian" or a "villager"? Does Al-Queda have uniforms or membership badges? It seems to me that anyone associating or gathering with senior Al-Qaeda leaders should consider themselves in harms way.
The US or CIA appeared to be acting on accurate intelligence here. We may not have gotten Zahwahiri, but we got those he was planning on meeting with. Keeping al Queda's leadership on the run is certainly a good thing.
And the defense by the Daily Kos of the New York Times "missle" photo is even more laughable in light of this information.
UPDATE: I can't recall where but yesterday I saw a major media article (AP?) say that the bodies of the terrorists may have been removed from the scene by "sympathetic villagers". What "innocent villager" is going to remove the bodies of al Qadea terrorists from the rubble but leave all the rest, clearly in an attempt to remove the evidence from the scene of the crime?
The New York Times fake photo lives on. Once in the bloodstream of the left wing media, staged pictures acieve immortality because they are so useful. Slate uses* the posed pic (without comment) to illustrate an araticle questioning the legality of the air strike aimed at al Zawahiri.
As clueless as the New York Times editors, the Slate folks do not realize that an artillery shell could not have been fired by a Predator drone, nor by a helicopter, Slate cites as having attacked another site in a separate incident.
UPDATE:
*Slate has taken down the photo. That was quick! They don’t have the decency to acknowledge the change or admit their sloppiness, though.
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