Jan 04 2009
Bush’s Final Act: Decapitating al Qaeda
It seems the recent increase in surgical drone strikes on al Qaeda and Taliban leadership, hiding out in the some of the tribal areas of Pakistan, has been very successful:
The top hierarchy of al-Qaeda has taken such a hit from US missile strikes that Osama bin Laden and his deputy have had to replace people in the terrorist organisation with men they have never met, according to Western intelligence sources.
A dozen of al-Qaeda’s “senior management†have been killed by Predator drone attacks, which have been so effective in locating their targets that the militant group has been forced to move from traditional outdoor training camps to classroom-style facilities that are hidden from view.
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Predators, armed with Hellfire missiles and precision-guided penetration bombs, have already succeeded in targeting two individuals believed to have ranked number three in the al-Qaeda chain of command: Hamza Rabia and Abu Laith al-Libi. They have also killed Mohammed Atef, reputedly the chief of military operations, and several of the group’s most experienced explosives and biological weapons specialists.
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The only al-Qaeda commander to have been killed by other means in the past 12 months was Abu Ghadiyah, who was in charge of the production line of suicide bombers from Syria into Iraq. He died during a controversial US commando helicopter raid across the border from Iraq in October.
I for one want to thank President Bush and all the people who worked in his administration and stayed focus on the mission – destroying al Qaeda. Bush was misrepresented by lesser people in the news media and the Democrat Party, but history will sort that all out. In the end it is not rhetoric but results that matter. The Democrats predicted and fought for failure in Iraq. They lost. Bush pushed through the tough times and fought to victory in Iraq. The lesser people are glaringly clear.
Just think of how many lives UVA’s have saved. I also say thank you to the guys who invented them. Just think, a guy sitting in Florida takes out a bad guy in the rugged mountains of Pakistan. Yes we are good, but it takes a strong leader, who wants to win, to employ all our assets of power to get the job done. I thank President Bush and all our men and woman in uniform as well as those Americans who wanted to win this struggle.
This is a struggle that many more Presidents are going to have to deal with, radical Islam. For those in the MSM who are unhappy about of the state of the world that Bush is leaving Obama to deal with I would like them to think back to the state of the world Clinton left for Bush. Think the Cole, Kenya, Tanzania, 1993 World Trade Center bombing, bin Laden moving from Sudan to Afghanistan, Yasir Arafat the first terrorist, sleeping in the White House and at Camp David. I hope Obama is up for the task.
With the Pakistani army leaving the area for the Indian border, the Pakistanis can’t make a lot of noise about ramped up predator flights. I hope the Pakistani government understands what is going on and why Mumbaii was hit. I wish our military would go in and clean out thses terrorist nests once and for all. Bomb every one of the suspected houses.
Disgusting!… Harry Reid Still Thinks the Iraq War Is Lost…. And There Is Civil War in Iraq and Israel? (Video)
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2009/01/disgusting-harry-reid-says-iraq-war-is.html
There is a nice companion article on General Patraeus:
It will take humanity as well as guns to beat the Taliban, says General David Petraeus
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article5437950.ece
excerpt:
It seems Petraeus drew precisely the opposite conclusions from the Vietnam war to those drawn by the likes of General Colin Powell. Powell believed that the US army should become a machine that delivered a massive, technologically awe-inspiring military punch at high speed but would not get involved in “nation-building†or the “messy stuffâ€. In contrast, Petraeus believes that “we don’t get to choose what kinds of wars we fight†and that the lesson of Vietnam is not that the US army should avoid counterinsurgency, but that it should become much better at it. Petraeus’s Princeton dissertation of 1987 also forecast that this would be made necessary in any case by “the rise of terrorismâ€.
excerpt:
Petraeus compares America’s soldiers of today to their forefathers who fought the second world war. They were called “the greatest generationâ€, he says, but the young warriors of the Iraq campaign “should be called the new greatest generationâ€.