al-Qaida available on cell phones

Our enemy appears to be pretty hi-tech in spreading their propaganda:

Al-Qaida video messages of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri can now be downloaded to cell phones, the terror network announced as part of its attempts to extend its influence.

The announcement was posted late Friday by al-Qaida's media wing, al-Sahab, on Web sites commonly used by Islamic militants. As of Saturday, eight previously recorded videos were made available including a recent tribute to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former al-Qaida in Iraq leader killed by U.S. forces in Iraq in June 2006.

[...]

The terror network has been growing more sophisticated in targeting international audiences. Videos are always subtitled in English, and messages this year from bin Laden and al-Zawahri focusing on Pakistan and Afghanistan have been dubbed in the local languages, Urdu and Pashtu.

In December, al-Qaida invited journalists to send questions to al-Zawahri. The invitation was the first time the media-savvy al-Qaida offered outsiders to "interview" one of its leaders since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

I wish we could figure out a way to use it against them.

Brits target Taliban bash

They were celebrating the death of Bhutto:

BRITISH commandos launched a devastating blitz on the Taliban – as the evil terrorists held a party to celebrate Benazir Bhutto’s murder.

The dawn raid was staged after messages were intercepted about the sick knees-up in Afghanistan’s Helmand province.

Royal Marines crept into position as the fanatics partied the night away just hours after Ms Bhutto was killed in Pakistan.

[...]

Troop Sergeant Dominic Conway, 32 – who directed mortar rounds – grinned: “It must have had quite a detrimental effect on their morale.”

Sgt Conway, from Whitley Bay, Tyneside, said of the Taliban lair: “It used to be their backyard and now we’ve made it ours.”

(via)

Bin Laden warns against Iraq unity government

It undermines the establishment of an Islamic state:

Osama bin Laden warned Iraq's Sunni Arabs against joining tribal councils fighting al-Qaida or participating in any unity government, in a new Internet audiotape on Saturday.

"The most evil of the traitors are those who trade away their religion for the sake of their mortal life," bin Laden said in the tape.

He denounced Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, the leader of the Anbar Awakening Council, a tribal force fighting al-Qaida in western Iraq, who was killed.

Transcript of Alleged al-Qaida Intercept

The transcript of a call intercepted by the Pakistani government who participated in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto:

Maulvi Sahib: Peace be on you.

Mehsud: Peace be on you, too.

Maulvi Sahib: How are you Emir Sahib?

Mehsud: Fine.

Maulvi Sahib: Congratulations. I arrived now tonight.

Mehsud: Congratulations to you, too.

Maulvi Sahib: They were our men there.

Mehsud: Who were they?

Maulvi Sahib : There were Saeed, the second was Badarwala Bilal and Ikramullah was also there.

Mehsud: The three did it?

Maulvi Sahib: Ikramullah and Bilal did it.

Mehsud: Then congratulations to you again.

Maulvi: Where are you? I want to meet with you?

Mehsud: I am in Makin. Come I am at Anwar Shah's home.

Maulvi Sahib: OK I will come.

Mehsud: Do not inform their family presently.

Maulvi Sahib: Right.

Mehsud: It was a spectacular job. They were very brave boys who killed her.

Maulvi Sahib: Praise be to God. I will give you more details when I come.

Mehsud: I will wait for you. Congratulation once again.

Maulvi Sahib: Congratulations to you as well.

Mehsud: Any service?

Mauvliv: Thank you very much?

Mehsud: Peace be on you.

Maulvi: Same to you.

The jihad's been called off, guys

I guess the Great Satan has won:

One of Al Qaeda's senior theologians is calling on his followers to end their military jihad and saying the attacks of September 11, 2001, were a "catastrophe for all Muslims."

In a serialized manifesto written from prison in Egypt, Sayyed Imam al-Sharif is blasting Osama bin Laden for deceiving the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, and for insulting the Prophet Muhammad by comparing the September 11 attacks to the early raids of the Ansar warriors. The lapsed jihadist even calls for the formation of a special Islamic court to try Osama bin Laden and his old comrade Ayman al-Zawahri.

The disclosures from Mr. Sharif, also known as Dr. Fadl and Abd al-Qadir ibn Abd al-Aziz, have already opened a rift at the highest levels of Al Qaeda. The group's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, a former associate of the defecting theologian in Egypt, personally mocked him last month in a video, remarking that he was unaware Egyptian prisons had fax machines. Meanwhile, leading Western analysts are saying the defection of Mr. Sharif indicates the beginning of the end for Al Qaeda.

[...]

The director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University, Frank Cilluffo, said, "Here you have someone with the stature and credibility, who more or less wrote the book on jihadism and is oft cited by other jihadists, making the case against it. This is someone with the heft on legal and religious grounds to make the counter argument that we can't."

[...]

His latest texts are a renunciation of his earlier work, saying the military jihad or war against apostate states and America is futile. But the ex-jihadist also calls into question the virtue of Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri. In some ways the manifesto reads in parts like a spicy Washington memoir by an embittered former official.

Of his old associates he writes, "Bin Laden, al-Zawahri, and others fled at the beginning of the American bombing [in Afghanistan], to the point of abandoning their wives and families to be killed along with other innocent people," according to a translation provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute. It goes on, "I think that a sharia court should be established, composed of reliable scholars, to hold these people accountable for their crimes — even if in absentia — so that those who are ignorant in their religion do not repeat this futility."

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“Long Live the Islamic State”

An al Qaeda torture chamber uncovered in Iraq.

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Senior al-Qaeda leader killed in Iraq

A Syrian al-Qaeda leader! What? They have real al-Qaeda in Iraq not just Iraqis pretending to be al-Qaeda? Who knew? Certainly not Reid or Pelosi (according to their rhetoric):

The regions around Samarra and Tarmiyah in Salahadin province continues to be a flashpoint for raids against senior al Qaeda operatives and propaganda cells. US forces have confirmed killing a senior Syrian al Qaeda leader near the city, and another media cell was dismantled in the city. As the US targets al Qaeda's media operations, al Furqan released two new products over the past several days, including a tape by Abu Omar al Baghdadi.

Meanwhile, it looks like they al-Qaeda is targeting members of Awakening Councils:

In highlights of the speech, Baghdadi announces the formation of a new brigade, “Al Siddiq Brigades” to fight every “apostate and traitor”, and additionally announces an attack that will end on ... January 29, 2008. ... This attack involves bombings aimed at the “apostates” and members of Awakening Councils."

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Sunni insurgent turns to Americans in the middle of a gun battle

Here's a back story of what happened when one of the Sunni insurgent leaders turned on al-Qaeda in May:

He hailed the car carrying the feared leader of Al Qaeda in the neighborhood, a man known as the White Lion, on one of Amariyah's main streets. "We want you to stop destroying our neighborhood," he told the man.

"Do you know who you are talking to?" said the White Lion, getting out of his car. "I am Al Qaeda. I will destroy even your own houses!"

He pulled out his pistol and shot at Abul Abed. The gun jammed. He reloaded and fired again. Again, the gun jammed.

By this time, Abul Abed said, he had pulled his own gun. He fired once, killing the White Lion.

"I walked over to him, stepped on his hand and took his gun," Abul Abed, which is a nom de guerre, said at his new, pink-painted headquarters in a renovated school in Amariyah, as an American Army captain seated in the corner nodded his head in affirmation of the account. "And then the fight started."

It was the beginning of the end for Al Qaeda in Amariyah. The next day, a firefight erupted. Al Qaeda fighters closed in on Abul Abed. Most of the 150 men who had joined him fled. Holed up in a mosque with fewer than a dozen supporters, Abul Abed thought the end was near.

"The blue carpet was soaked red with blood," he recalled. Then the imam of the mosque called in American help.

A friendship was born.

[...]

'Americans are our protectors'

Abul Abed said the Sunni revolution has gone too far for that.

"Americans are our protectors and saviors," he said.

The real enemy of Iraq, he says, now is Iran. He pulled out his mobile phone to show pictures he has saved of the bodies of his four brothers, who were kidnapped and murdered in 2005 by what he suspects was a Shiite death squad with ties to Iran. One of them had a nail driven into his head. Another was missing a hand.

"Even animals wouldn't do that," he said, his face darkening. "Iran is so deeply infiltrated in Iraq, the problem here still cannot be solved. Iran wants to demolish us. If the Americans leave, then you can count Iraq as a second Tehran."

(via)

Iraq really is a quagmire...

For bin Laden:

We're floundering in a quagmire in Iraq. Our strategy is flawed, and it's too late to change it. Our resources have been squandered, our best people killed, we're hated by the natives and our reputation around the world is circling the drain. We must withdraw.

No, I'm not channeling Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. I'm channeling Osama bin Laden, for whom the war in Iraq has been a catastrophe. Al-Qaida had little presence in Iraq during the regime of Saddam Hussein. But once he was toppled, al-Qaida's chieftains decided to make Iraq the central front in the global jihad against the Great Satan.

"The most important and serious issue today for the whole world is this third world war, which the Crusader-Zionist coalition began against the Islamic nation," Osama bin Laden said in an audiotape posted on Islamic Web sites in December 2004. "It is raging in the land of the Two Rivers. The world's millstone and pillar is Baghdad, the capital of the caliphate."

Jihadis, money and weapons were poured into Iraq. All for naught. Al-Qaida has been driven from every neighborhood in Baghdad, Maj. Gen. Joseph Fil, the U.S. commander there, said Nov. 7. This follows the expulsion of al-Qaida from two previous "capitals" of its Islamic Republic of Iraq, Ramadi and Baquba.

Al-Qaida is evacuating populated areas and is trying to establish hideouts in the Hamrin mountains in northern Iraq, with U.S. and Iraqi security forces, and former insurgent allies who have turned on them, in hot pursuit. Forty-five al-Qaida leaders were killed or captured in October alone.

Al-Qaida's support in the Muslim world has plummeted, partly because of the terror group's lack of success in Iraq, more because al-Qaida's attacks have mostly killed Muslim civilians.

"Iraq has proved to be the graveyard, not just of many al-Qaida operatives, but of the organization's reputation as a defender of Islam," said StrategyPage.

Canadian columnist David Warren speculated some years ago that enticing al-Qaida to fight there was one of the reasons why President Bush decided to invade Iraq. The administration has made so many egregious mistakes that I doubt the "flypaper" strategy was deliberate. But it has worked out that way. It may have been a mistake for the United States to go to war in Iraq. But it's pretty clear now it was a blunder for al-Qaida to have done so.

3,000 refugees return to Baghdad

I guess we all can agree now that the surge is working and making Iraq safer for the refugees to return. I wonder when Reid will apologize to the troops and admit he was wrong.

In a dramatic turnaround, more than 3,000 Iraqi families driven out of their Baghdad neighborhoods have returned to their homes in the past three months as sectarian violence has dropped, the government said Saturday.

Saad al-Azawi, his wife and four children are among them. They fled to Syria six months ago, leaving behind what had become one of the capital's more dangerous districts—west Baghdad's largely Sunni Khadra region.

The family had been living inside a vicious and bloody turf battle between al-Qaida in Iraq and Mahdi Army militiamen. But Azawi said things began changing, becoming more peaceful, in August when radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his Mahdi Army fighters to stand down nationwide.

About the same time, the Khadra neighborhood Awakening Council rose up against brutal al-Qaida control—the imposition of its austere interpretation of Islam, along with the murder and torture of those who would not comply.

The uprising originated in Iraq's west and flowed into the capital. Earlier this year, the Sunni tribes and clans in the vast Anbar province began their own revolt and have successfully rid the largely desert region of al-Qaida control.

At one point the terrorist group virtually controlled Anbar, often with the complicity of the vast Sunni majority who welcomed the outsiders in their fight against American forces.

But, U.S. officials say, al-Qaida overplayed its hand with Iraq's Sunnis, who practice a moderate version of Islam. American forces were quick to capitalize on the upheaval, welcoming former Sunni enemies as colleagues in securing what was once the most dangerous region of the country.

And as 30,000 additional U.S. forces arrived for the crackdown in Baghdad and central Iraq, the American commander, Gen. David Petraeus, began stationing many of them in neighborhood outposts. The mission was not only to take back control but to foster neighborhood groups like the one in Khadra to shake off al-Qaida's grip.

The 40-year-old al-Azawi, who has gone back to work managing a car service, said relatives and friends persuaded him to bring his family home.

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Al-Zawahri Threatens Libya

This is an interesting turn of events. It seems that al-Qaeda wants to make sure that Muslim nations don't become America's allies. Maybe since they're losing the war in Iraq, they're going to hit on other fronts:

Al-Qaida's No. 2 figure harshly criticized Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in a new audio tape Saturday, accusing him of being an enemy of Islam and threatening a wave of attacks against the North African country because it improved relations with the U.S.

In the 28-minute audio tape called "Unity of the Ranks," Ayman al-Zawahri also announced that the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group was joining ranks with al-Qaida.

"The Islamic nation is witnessing a blessed step ... The brothers are escalating the confrontation against the enemies of Islam: Gadhafi and his masters, the Washington crusaders," al-Zawahri said in the audio tape. The recording could not be independently verified, but it appeared on a Web site commonly used by insurgents and carried the logo of al-Qaida's media production house, as-Sahab.

The recording also carried a message from Abu Laith al-Libi, a Libyan al-Qaida commander in Afghanistan who accused Gadhafi of decades of tyranny.

"He is the tyranny of Libya and is dragging the country to the swamp," al-Libi said in the recording that also featured old video footage of him walking with other masked gunmen.

Leak shuts down al-Qaeda's network

When the video of bin Linden was leaked to the press al-Qaeda releazed that we had access to their secret network and shut the whole thing down:

Al Qaeda's Internet communications system has suddenly gone dark to American intelligence after the leak of Osama bin Laden's September 11 speech inadvertently disclosed the fact that we had penetrated the enemy's system.

The intelligence blunder started with what appeared at the time as an American intelligence victory, namely that the federal government had intercepted, a full four days before it was to be aired, a video of Osama bin Laden's first appearance in three years in a video address marking the sixth anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001. On the morning of September 7, the Web site of ABC News posted excerpts from the speech.

But the disclosure from ABC and later other news organizations tipped off Qaeda's internal security division that the organization's Internet communications system, known among American intelligence analysts as Obelisk, was compromised. This network of Web sites serves not only as the distribution system for the videos produced by Al Qaeda's production company, As-Sahab, but also as the equivalent of a corporate intranet, dealing with such mundane matters as expense reporting and clerical memos to mid- and lower-level Qaeda operatives throughout the world.

(via)

Go read the rest.

Amazing! It's as if our intelligence agencies don't get that we are at war.

Here's more:

A small private intelligence company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups obtained a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last month, and around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, it notified the Bush administration of its secret acquisition. It gave two senior officials access on the condition that the officials not reveal they had it until the al-Qaeda release.

Within 20 minutes, a range of intelligence agencies had begun downloading it from the company's Web site. By midafternoon that day, the video and a transcript of its audio track had been leaked from within the Bush administration to cable television news and broadcast worldwide.

The founder of the company, the SITE Intelligence Group, says this premature disclosure tipped al-Qaeda to a security breach and destroyed a years-long surveillance operation that the company has used to intercept and pass along secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the terrorist group's communications network.

[...]

The precise source of the leak remains unknown. Government officials declined to be interviewed about the circumstances on the record, but they did not challenge Katz's version of events. They also said the incident had no effect on U.S. intelligence-gathering efforts and did not diminish the government's ability to anticipate attacks.

[...]

She spoke first with White House counsel Fred F. Fielding, whom she had previously met, and then with Joel Bagnal, deputy assistant to the president for homeland security. Both expressed interest in obtaining a copy, and Bagnal suggested that she send a copy to Michael Leiter, who holds the No. 2 job at the National Counterterrorism Center.

(via)

I hope that someone will investigate this so that we can find out where the leak came from.

Banner of Jesus washing the feet of bin Laden

A banner depicting Jesus washing the feet of world leaders including bin Laden has sparked a controversy:

Large posters depicting Jesus Christ washing the feet of world leaders as well as terrorist Osama bin Laden have generated numerous complaints at the Oregon malls where they were featured and mall officials planned to remove them Wednesday.

The posters promote the Good News Tour – a religious conference – and organizers say they were trying to make a statement about God, not politics.

[...]

“No one is Judas in the picture, but the meaning is that Jesus would stoop to wash the feet of his enemies. The meaning is that in that painting of powerful world leaders -- and one powerful terrorist -- the one with all the power is ultimately Jesus.”

Jesus washed the feet of his disciples, not his enemies, this image demonstrates a shocking lack of understanding what Jesus wanted to demonstrate to his disciples:

John13:1 Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. 2 During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him, 3 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, 4 rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. 5 Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. 6 He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, do you wash my feet?” 7 Jesus answered him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.” 8 Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.” 9 Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” 10 Jesus said to him, “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you.” 11 For he knew who was to betray him; that was why he said, “Not all of you are clean.”

12 When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done to you? 13 You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. 14 If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. 15 For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. 16 Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. 17 If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. 18 I am not speaking of all of you; I know whom I have chosen. But the Scripture will be fulfilled, ‘He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me.’ 19 I am telling you this now, before it takes place, that when it does take place you may believe that I am he. 20 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.”

This act was done in context of the church and it demonstrated what his death would accomplish:

There was more on Jesus' mind than this when he washed his disciples' feet: Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love (lit. "he loved them to the end"). Jesus' love was expressed not only in performing the menial service of footwashing but also in what this act symbolized: his humiliating death upon the cross by which spiritual cleansing was made possible....Jesus' self-humiliation in washing the feet his disciples' feet symbolized his self-humiliation in accepting death upon the cross to bring about their cleansing from sins. In this respect, Peter and the rest of the disciples must accept what Jesus did for them, for if they did not, clearly they could have no part with him...Jesus was saying to Peter that unless he was prepared to accept what he would do for him on the cross there could be no relationship between them.

Colin G. Kruse, pp. 279-81

Bin Laden isn't a disciple of Jesus so this image makes no sense. There's a difference between Jesus' treatment of his disciples and his treatment of the world. Jesus didn't wash the feet of Pontius Pilot, he washed the feet of his disciples.

Here's a different take on the banner.

Another al-Qaeda leader killed in Iraq

Our military got another one!

A senior leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq was killed in a US air strike near Baghdad on Tuesday, the US military reports.

Gen Joseph Anderson said the death of Abu Osama al-Tunisi, who had led a group of foreign militants in Iraq, was a major blow to the organisation.

The US general accused him of leading a cell responsible for kidnapping and killing three US soldiers in June 2006.

The group is linked to some of the bloodiest insurgent attacks in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion.

It was led by the Jordanian militant, Abu Musab a-Zarqawi, until he was killed by a US air strike in June 2006.

[...]

"His presence was confirmed by one of the two detainees from the operation, one who left the target area just prior to the air strike, who we eventually captured minutes later," the chief of staff of Multi-National Corps Iraq said.

US ground forces later recovered a handwritten note believed to have been written by Tunisi at the site, Gen Anderson added.

"His presence was confirmed by one of the two detainees from the operation, one who left the target area just prior to the air strike, who we eventually captured minutes later," the chief of staff of Multi-National Corps Iraq said.

US ground forces later recovered a handwritten note believed to have been written by Tunisi at the site, Gen Anderson added.

New video from al-Zawahri

He speaks of al-Qaida's success in Iraq and Afghanistan and how we admit to defeat.

Al-Qaida's deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri said the United States was being defeated in Afghanistan, Iraq and other fronts in a new video released Thursday, the latest in a series put out by the terror network.

The video came days after Osama bin Laden released two messages to mark the Sept. 11 anniversary—including his first new appearance in a video in nearly three years.

The 80-minute video posted on Islamic militant Web sites Thursday was in a documentary style, touting al-Qaida's activities in various areas, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and North Africa.

"What they claim to be the strongest power in the history of mankind is today being defeated in front of the Muslim vanguards of jihad six years after the two raids on New York and Washington," al-Zawahri said, speaking in what appeared to be an office, with shelves of religious books and an automatic rifle leaning against them.

"The Crusaders themselves have testified to their defeat in Afghanistan at the hands of the lions of the Taliban," he said. "The Crusaders have testified to their own defeat in Iraq at the hands of the mujahideen, who have taken the battle of Islam to the heart of the Islam world."

(via)

Yeah, we do testify to our defeat in our papers and in the floor of the Senate. We give our enemy tools for their propaganda. They did a good job picking their enemy.

Osama Bin Laden Video

Oh. My. Heck!!! This is freaky and funny!

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Bin Laden's been sidelined

According to the Telegraph Ayman al-Zawahiri has taken control of al-Qaeda.

Osama bin Laden's deputy has seized control of al-Qaeda and rebuilt the terror network into an organisation capable of launching complex terror attacks in Britain and America.

Intelligence officials have told The Sunday Telegraph that bin Laden has not chaired a meeting of al-Qaeda's ruling shura, or council, in more than two years.
Instead, Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's nominal number two, is credited with rebuilding the terror network since the Afghan war in 2001.

Intelligence sources in Washington have revealed that Western spy chiefs were recently forced to revise dramatically their view that al-Qaeda was so depleted that it was little more than a cheerleader for extremists.

Instead, British and American intelligence agencies believe that a network of terrorist cells, funded, controlled and supported by al-Qaeda's central command, based in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan, is in place again.

(via)

It shouldn't surprise us that al-Qaeda survives our attempts to destroy them. They are a lot more cunning than we realize. The Looming Tower author, Lawrence Wright on the resurgence of al-Qaeda (from an interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show):

What it is the state of al-Qaeda six years after the attack on 9-11?

LW: Well, it’s a mixed report. You know, al Qaeda central has been, to some extent, reduced, isolated. It’s been unable to accomplish many of its major goals, especially capturing a Muslim country, and restoring the caliphate, and creating a kind of theocratic law. That it’s failed to do. But on the other hand, essentially after November, December, 2001, after the Tora Bora battle, al Qaeda was pretty much a zombie. It was over. The war on terror was at an end, and it’s been amazing to see how that organization has been able to reconstitute itself. It’s now deeply rooted in a lot of countries where it wasn’t present before. The banner of al Qaeda has been taken up by a lot of disaffected young Muslims around the world who hadn’t been interested in it before. So on balance, I think it’s as dangerous as it was before 9/11, but in different ways.

[...]

HH: Is the anger towards Bush in this most recent document the fact that the one thing he thought he knew best about the West has just proven not to be the case?

LW: No, I think that he is frustrated that we’re still in Iraq. And honestly, Hugh, there’s a…I think al Qaeda’s a little frustrated in Iraq as well, you know, they’re still in Iraq. That’s where al Qaeda’s preoccupied, and where it’s been pouring all of its resources in, and it doesn’t have much to show for it, either. It’s been frankly a draw. Al Qaeda’s in a great public relations situation, whereas if we withdraw, then they can say that they won, and that they defeated the other superpower. And if we stay, then Iraq is still a beacon for disaffected jihadis who want to go join the war. So they are in an enviable position, but really, they haven’t accomplished what they hope to do in Iraq.

"9/11 was a failure of human understanding"

These are the words of Mass. Governor Deval Patrick. He's right. 9-11 was the failure of humans (us) to understand that a guy half way around the world could take out 3,000 of our people with our own planes and a handful of pilots. We didn't understand the depth of his hatred and the fact that he meant it when he declared war on us and that he had the ability to carry it out. We didn't understand pure evil until it stared us in the face on 9-11.

Unfortunately, Patrick's words had a different context:

“Among many other things, 9/11 was a failure of human understanding,” Patrick said. “It was a mean and nasty and bitter attack on the United States. But it was also a failure of human beings to understand each other, to learn to love each other.”

He should have stopped before the last sentence.

(via)

We will never forget

We remember those who were killed, the grief of their families and the loss of our assurance that we are impervious to attack. We continue to pray for those who mourn the loss of a loved one, may God comfort them with his presence today.

Bin Laden was at Tora Bora but escaped

According to a doctor who treated the wounded at Tora Bora:

A doctor who treated wounded al-Qaida fighters at Tora Bora in Afghanistan has confirmed Osama bin Laden was at the mountain stronghold as U.S. and Afghan forces attacked — and said the al-Qaida chieftain seemed concerned about only his own welfare.

Ayman Saeed Abdullah Batarfi, a doctor from Yemen, told a military panel at Guantanamo Bay that he carried out amputations with a knife and scissors in the caves of Tora Bora during the siege in late 2001 and had to abandon his patients several times when B-52 bombers flew overhead.

[...]

"Most of all the total guns in the Tora Bora area was 16 Kalashnikovs and there are 200 people," Batarfi told the Guantanamo military panel, which was weighing whether to release the detainee, in broken English. "He did not prepare himself for Tora Bora and to be frank he didn't care about anyone but himself.

"He came for a day to visit the area and we talked to him and we wanted to leave this area. He said he didn't know where to go himself and the second day he escaped and was gone."

(via)