I really can't believe how short this thread is. I figured it would be at 200 Number-2-joke posts by this time.
I guess you, Deo, and I just can't help a good thread hijacking. Sigh...
Posted on 06/17/2011 1:35:15 AM PDT by Pinkbell
In July 2005, Al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman Zawahiri sent a long letter to the group's lead operative in Iraq, urging him to tone down his activities.
In Iraq, Abu Musab Zarqawi had been orchestrating suicide bombings of Shiite Muslim shrines. His followers frequently videotaped the beheading of hostages. Zawahiri, an Egyptian doctor who helped organize the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. and other violence, told Zarqawi he was going too far.
"We are in a media battle, in a race for the hearts and minds" of Muslims, wrote Zawahiri, who was named Thursday to succeed Osama bin Laden as Al Qaeda's leader. And most Muslims "will never find [such tactics] palatable."
Zarqawi didn't heed the counsel, and a year later he was killed in a U.S. airstrike, aided by some of his growing number of enemies. If the attempt to rein him in revealed Zawahiri as a canny strategist, it also illustrated how little control Al Qaeda's leaders had over their affiliates even then.
Zawahiri, who has a $25-million American bounty on his head, will be looking to launch a major strike to prove himself and avenge Bin Laden, say U.S. officials and terrorism experts. But he may find the organization even more difficult to manage.
Al Qaeda and its offshoots have further splintered, Zawahiri lacks Bin Laden's charisma, and the U.S. drone campaign in Pakistan, where Zawahiri is presumed to be hiding, will make it more difficult for him to communicate, said Daniel Byman, director of research at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy, a Washington think tank.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
I really can't believe how short this thread is. I figured it would be at 200 Number-2-joke posts by this time.
I guess you, Deo, and I just can't help a good thread hijacking. Sigh...
Yeah, I can't figure it out either. This thread was just asking for jokes and pics like this:
Did someone say thread hijack? :-)
Thanks. I didn’t know it posted wrong. This computer that I am on right now has suddenly decided it wants to block photobucket, so currently all photobucket picks are just little red x’s until I can get this thing fixed.
It’s showing a “moved or deleted” box on mine, but the one I posted is the De Niro “hijack” pic.
I hope that you get that fixed up soon.
For a while, I couldn’t get on the Astronomy Picture of the Day NASA web site unless I used the IP instead of the http://apod.nasa.gov link.
Then my computer did a couple of upgrades, and suddenly the link worked again.
We could start a “Free Pun-Pun” campaign. (100 geek points to all who catch that reference.)
Ay, man!
Computers can be funny things.
D&D? (I looked it up, and I just know you’re a grand master, Slings)
Fine. Free Pun-Pun!!
Hilarious.
This headline is factual.......
and deadly...for AQ leaders.
I would hate to be #2 for more than one reason.
I’ll say this much for Al Qaeda - they make it easy to keep our target list current.
The SEALS will No. 1 all over his grave.
ROTFLOL!
Very true. ;o)
Oh! Then you’re a Real Man™, of course.
Of course.
The club owners were so in awe that they nailed his stool to the ceiling afterwards...
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