Top Al Qaeda Leader Killed In Pakistan by Predator Strike

Subtitle:

Top Al Qaeda Leader Killed By Twitter Hack3rz and High Explosives But Mostly High Explosives

I will give Obama a rare shout-out: China claimed that it would treat an attack on Pakistan as an attack on China. What "attack" means wasn't clearly defined; did they mean the state apparatus? Perhaps this was clarified through normal diplomatic channels.

In which case, if China expressly stated "we just mean attacks on the actual nation of Pakistan," not much of a kudo to Obama, but still not bad. He is doing a good job of killing Al Qaeda.

At Long War Journal:

The US has killed Ilyas Kashmiri, one of al Qaeda's most dangerous military commanders and strategists, in a Predator airstrike yesterday in South Waziristan.

Kashmiri is said to be one of nine members of the al Qaeda-linked Harkat-ul Jihad Islami, or HUJI, who were killed in yesterday's Predator airstrike that leveled a compound in the Wana area of South Waziristan. A Harkat-ul Jihad Islami spokesman told Dawn that Kashmiri was killed in the attack.

...

"HUJI's statement is a sure sign we got him, we are pretty confident he is dead but we cannot confirm 100 percent," one official told The Long War Journal.

The attack took place in an area of South Waziristan controlled by Mullah Nazir, a Taliban commander who has proudly admitted he is also an al Qaeda leader. The Pakistani military refuses to move against Nazir as he is considered a "good Taliban" leader because he does not attack the state. Nazir does shelter al Qaeda and other terror groups, and carries out attacks in Afghanistan.

The only good Taliban is a #Hacked! Taliban.

Thanks to Marilyn.

More: Hot Air already has this well-covered, and it turns out this seems a Big F'n' Deal, as Joe Biden might say, perhaps about Amtrak adding a new Scranton-to-Albany line.

Lots of important details plucked out there, but this quote gives a flavor:

“We will never recover from his loss,” a young Afghan who fought with al Qaeda in the tribal area in 2009 and who had seen Kashmiri there tells The Daily Beast. “He was the bridge between al Qaeda and the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban…But his spirit will rest calmly because he did his job, and his revenge will be bigger than bin Laden’s revenge.”

posted by Ace at 12:59 PM

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