Al-Qaida Military Chief Killed, Taliban Confirms

Ananova ^ | 11-19-2001

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Al-qaida military chief killed, taliban confirms

The military chief of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network was killed along with seven colleagues in a US bombing raid three days ago, a Taliban official has confirmed.

Mullah Najibullah, a Taliban official in the south-east Afghan border town of Spinboldak, confirmed Atef's death but would not identify the location of the airstrike or the other al-Qaida members who died with him.

It was the first time a senior Taliban official has confirmed Friday's claim by US officials that Atef was killed in an airstrike outside Kabul.

Atef's death is seen as a serious setback to the al-Qaida terrorist network.

Atef was suspected of helping plan the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon that killed thousands. He directly planned the embassy bombings in Africa in 1998 that killed 224 people, according to a US indictment that charged him with murder.

He was also accused of helping plan a 1993 helicopter shotdown in Somalia that killed 18 US soldiers.

He also said that bin Laden was alive.

Story filed: 10:09 Saturday 17th November 2001

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Still no mention that a/the body was recovered.

[vbmoneyspender]

the body hasn't been recovered because it was put through a cheese-grater courtesy of some hellfires and a couple of jdams.

[blam]

"the body hasn't been recovered because it was put through a cheese-grater courtesy of some hellfires and a couple of jdams."

The same will happen with Osama, no body will ever be recovered. It will be stated, "He is assumed to have died."

[vbmoneyspender]

I almost wish they would capture him alive. I think it would be much more humiliating for Islamic fundamentalists if their bad boy was captured alive and he was then forced to give up the goods on all of his buddies, including Saddam Hussein.

[mrsmith]

"This just in: Atef still dead!"

:-)

[DinkyDau]

Can you confirm this? Is he as dead as he was the first time?

[mrsmith]

"This just in: Atef still dead!"

(an explanation for those who don't "get" the joke):
"A lenta e cruel morte de Franco - tão lenta que o comediante Chevy Chase passou meses abrindo o telejornal do humorístico da TV americana Saturday Night Live com esta manchete: "Madrid! Spanish Premier Francisco Franco is still seriously dead!" (Madri! O premier espanhol Francisco Franco continua seriamente morto!) - foi uma metáfora da interminável agonia de sua ditadura, uma decadência irreversível que só o caudilho e os falangistas não perceberam ou se recusaram a admitir. "

[DinkyDau]

My mother does NOT wear combat boots!

[piasa]

Just posting followup info on Atef and Al Marri. Al-Marri is an Illinois resident affiliated with some Islamic charities who earned the label enemy combatant; the FBI took an interest in a steamer chest he had in his home back in 2001 :

...Marri had been calling other numbers, in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, according to the complaint. Intelligence and law enforcement sources say he was calling senior al-Qaeda operatives. The government’s interest in Marri was soon heightened further. In mid-November 2001, al-Qaeda’s senior military commander, Muhammad Atef, was killed in a U.S. rocket attack on an Afghanistan safe house. ... “When he was killed, we found out there was a huge al-Qaeda interest in chemical and biological weapons,” said an intelligence source knowledgeable about the investigations of both Atef and Marri. ... Materials recovered from Atef’s safe house, the source said, revealed that Marri might be one of them. He and Atef had “shared contacts,” the source said. ----- "On the trail of an 'enemy combatant'~Details emerge on Marri's alleged role in 2nd wave...," Washington Post ^ | July 19, 2007 | Susan Schmidt

[piasa]

“The feeling was he was engaged in operational research, identifying targets and materials,” the intelligence source said. “We think al-Marri was here to carry out attacks, as part of a second or third wave.” [same source as above]

[piasa]

1994/1995 : (SUDAN REVEALS AL QAEDA'S MOHAMMED ATEF WAS INVOLVED IN GRUESOME AMBUSH OF PALKISTANI PEACEKEEPERS IN SOMALIA) 24 Pakistani Peacekeepers in Somalia are ambushed, shot to death, skinned, and their remains paraded through the streets by a mob. [Author's note: in 1994/95 it is revealed by the Sudanese govt that an Al Queda operative based in The Sudan, and several other Al Queda operatives including #3 man Mohammed Atef, had gone to Somalia, trained Somalis in tactics that had been learned during the fight against Soviets in Afghanistan, and had they themselves taken part in this attack.] ---------- "PRE-BUSH timeline/list of Iraq's Ties To Al Queda," by Sam Pender-author of Iraq's Smoking Gun and other books on the matter , 6/12/04

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Is Marri still among the living? If so, do we have any idea where he is?

[piasa]

He's locked up as an enemy combatant. He's supposedly part of a second or third wave plot and if so I suspect he ties in with Moussaoui's case and Warsame's case. [Warsame's the Somali-Canadian we have locked up]

It seems the plot was supposed to go down in summer of 2003. There were some very extreme things going on in 2003 including an incident Hitchens refered to in a piece titled "Night of the Long Knives." Look it up... also look up the key word "Chicagocell."

Everyone who keeps wondering why these guys aren't going to trial yet need to look at 2003.

[piasa]

Yikes... I need some sleep... that should be Hitchen’s “The night of the weak knees”

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The night of the weak knees

Christopher Hitchens
Wednesday December 5, 2001
The Guardian (UK)

Four weekends ago, I really did receive two Friday-night telephone calls from well-positioned Washingtonians. "Leave now," they told me. "There's a tactical nuke on the loose, and it's headed for DC." One of these callers was in a position to know, and the other was in a position where he was actually paid to know. Calls were being placed to an immediate circle of friends to which, in theory, I was flattered to belong. Those who were calling were also leaving - while not informing the rest of the citizens. Why, then, did I resolve to stay? It wasn't just British pluck, strong as that naturally is. I thought, first, that it was unlikely that al-Qaida, if it had the bomb, would have conducted a petty dress rehearsal with United Airlines. I thought, second, that the detonation of a "use it or lose it" freelance nuke could not be predicted for any given weekend. And I thought, third, that I would feel a colossal cretin if I fled and then came slithering back on Monday morning (especially if the nuclear holocaust was timed for Monday's rush hour after all). In the end, I did take the family on a pre-arranged trip to Gettysburg, leaving late and returning early.

Officially, nobody now remembers this night of the weak knees. It rated a brief and embarrassed mention in Hugh Sidey's Time column, and that was it. But I shall not forget how some of those in supposed authority decided that the end had come, and made it a point to keep it to themselves and their immediate friends, perhaps to stop the crowding of the roads. That's how it will be on the day of Armageddon, and that's why the citizen should always plan to outlive the state, rather than the other way round.

The whole cult of "national security" depends upon the cultivation of national insecurity. Our new "tsar" (and what a telling word that is) Tom Ridge gave another perfect example of this idiocy on Monday last. High alert . . . something "generic" ... nothing specific. This was the third occasion on which he had told the American people to be on anxious lookout for - nothing in particular. At least he did not descend to the level of stupidity attained by Governor Gray Davis of California the preceding month. Davis announced that the Golden Gate bridge was under threat on a specific day, thus clogging traffic while simultaneously tipping off any bomber who might have pencilled that day into his (and with al-Qaida it's always his) calendar.

People are not at their best when they are frightened, and this goes twice for people in government who are temporarily "dressed in a little brief authority". I give you the instance of that devout Christian campaigner John Ashcroft, now in control of the Department of Justice. As an immigrant with a green card, I find that my American wife and American children will not insure me against a secret arrest, against undisclosed evidence, against a verdict with no appeal, or against my execution in a secret ceremony. (As the New Yorker puts it this week, the above procedure is so secret that it may, in theory, already have occurred.) I am forced to admit that I have not, as an Englishman in America, suffered all that much from "racial profiling". In the past few weeks, indeed, I have been so enthusiastic about the progress of the war that I considered taking out citizenship papers as a gesture of solidarity. But now I feel that, though America can have my body, it can't have my habeas corpus.

Simple truth

The new mantra in rightwing circles in Washington has it that Hamas and Hizbullah are the exact equivalents of al-Qaida. A brief thought-experiment shows how and why this is not so. If it were so, then we would expect to see British and American ground forces going right into Gaza behind General Sharon, and right into southern Lebanon to help restore Israel's once-proud "security zone". But this is not occurring. Ask yourself why not, and you will see that certain questions quite simply answer themselves.

The magic of monarchy

The American press was full of curious and pitying remarks about Japan this week. Now that Crown Princess Masako has given birth at last, some loyal Japanese are asking themselves why a woman cannot become emperor. There is much comment about the arcane and mystical rules that govern the succession in the land of the rising sun. The Japanese mind, one gathered, was more or less unfathomable on such matters. So different from the British mind, where a woman can become the head of state as long as she agrees to become head of the church and the armed forces, promises not to marry or become a Roman Catholic, and can prove that she is descended from a certain long-deceased Electress of Hanover. These are absurd conditions, yet this is described in American tabloids as "the magic of monarchy".

Tip for the (almost) top

Since I am recycling Washington whispers (high-grade whispers, I do assure you) I may as well tell you what the Republican conservatives are saying. Vice-President Dick Cheney, they inform me, is overdue for retirement. His dicky ticker (they don't actually call it that) has been over-strained by the constant demands of relocation, and by the stress of being the first Veep who has ever been compelled to live in a series of underground military-industrial caves - the "secure undisclosed locations" to which, come to think of it, I was not invited by my panic-callers of last month.

So, who is to fill the proximately presidential shoes? Not, I am told, Donald Rumsfeld, who is either (a) doing a splendid job or (b) has saved his once-endangered job only by the recent splendour of his performance or (c) cannot be spared anyway. No, it is Rudy Giuliani, the retiring mayor of New York, who is being groomed for greatness.

If this is true, it speaks well for George Bush and his circle. Not many presidents would pick a deputy who was more popular and respected, and who carried, if anything, more name-recognition, than themselves. But then, for all I know, this is the reason the story is being so energetically leaked in the first place. Either that, or Colin Powell has even more enemies within the administration than I had imagined.

· Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair.