Free Republic

Speaking recently with Deputy Assistant to the President Sebastian Gorka, I learned there is room to entertain the possibility that al-Badri, if located, may well fall into the hands of the US and its allies in the region, such as the Kurdish forces known as the YPG. “Do we want al-Badri alive?” I asked. “Unlike the Obama administration, we’re not going to second guess the theater commanders,” Gorka explained. “We’re not going to have the eight thousand mile screwdriver that literally was the last eight years. We will leave those decisions to how you effectively neutralize an HVT, a high...

Baghdad (AFP) - Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the enigmatic self-proclaimed "caliph" of a state straddling Iraq and Syria, is increasingly seen as more powerful than Al-Qaeda's chief. The leader of the powerful Islamic State (IS) militant group was on June 29 declared "caliph" in an attempt to revive a system of rule that ended nearly 100 years ago with the fall of the Ottoman Empire. In a video posted online on Saturday, purportedly the first known footage of Baghdadi, he ordered Muslims to obey him during a Ramadan sermon delivered at a mosque in the northern militant-held Iraqi city of Mosul.

The FBI “most wanted” mugshot shows a tough, swarthy figure, his hair in a jailbird crew-cut. The $10 million price on his head, meanwhile, suggests that whoever released him from US custody four years ago may now be regretting it. Taken during his years as a detainee at the US-run Camp Bucca in southern Iraq, this is the only known photograph of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the new leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq and Syria. But while he may lack the photogenic qualities of his hero, Osama bin Laden, he is fast becoming the new poster-boy for the global jihadist movement....