Day: May 11, 2011

Take Me To Your Lawyer!

We have all seen all the razz-a – ma-tazz (what a great word) that has been flying all over the media…the back slapping by the Prez and his boyz and all the pouting and whining by the past prez’s gang of 10 or more…..everyone is taking credit for the death of Osama….or everyone WANTS the credit for the death, to be used as a political weapon later….which strikes me as humorous anyway…but what about the Reppubs in the House that REFUSE to issue an commendation to the unit that actually killed the man?  You see it would have to acknowledge that it was on Obama’s watch that we tasted success and the GOP cannot have that!

All that is just intro to a story….a lawsuit may well be in the making over the death of OBL….this from Jonathan Turley’s blog……

Omar bin Laden, bin Laden’s fourth eldest son, has allegedly issued a statement that calls the killing of his father as a “criminal” act and a humiliation for his family. Notably, he indicated the possibility of a lawsuit against the United States.The letter stated, in part: “We hold the American President (Barack) Obama legally responsible to clarify the fate of our father, Osama bin Laden, for it is unacceptable, humanely and religiously, to dispose of a person with such importance and status among his people, by throwing his body into the sea in that way, which demeans and humiliates his family and his supporters and which challenges religious provisions and feelings of hundreds of millions of Muslims.”

There are international principles that could be raised, including the statements by Pakistan that (despite conflicting statements from Obama Administration officials) they never approved the attack on Pakistani territory. Under U.S. common law, there are also obvious legal principles, including the mistreatment of corpses. However, the success of such a lawsuit in the United States is extremely doubtful. Since this was a foreign operation and involved foreign citizens, the jurisdiction of the courts would be hard to establish. Moreover, there is no legal requirement under U.S. law for the retention of these bodies and the disposal would be viewed as reasonable.

See…if this continues….then maybe they should have taken Shakespeare’s advice and “Kill All The Lawyers”……

OK, people sound off!

Take Me To Your Leader

Inkwell Institute

Middle East Desk

Pres. Obama gave the order…the special ops people carried it out and Osama is very dead….and now it is official…last Friday, 06 May 2011 a post on a terrorists website has confirmed that Osama is dead….maybe now the hot air windbags will stop some of the conspiracy crap that has plagued the airwaves for the last 5 days…..The details of the raid are still news and that is ALL that the media is fixated on for now…Osama is confirmed dead and by an independent source,  let it go and move on!

What should be the big story is the leadership of AQ…that will determine the direction the organization will travel…instead of second guessing the facts maybe it would behoove you guys to start thinking about the next voice of the terror in the night….I can help! (not that you would pay any attention to a lowly blogger)……

There are a handful of AQ members that could possibly be interested in the leadership roll….but there are few that I feel would be capable…..

The most popular theory is that Osama’s second in command will step into the leadership roll, on, Ayman al-Zawahri…only because this is the only guy they know…the truth of the matter is…he is a divisive personality…he is arrogant and detached from the membership of the organization…..he lacks a charismatic personality or the skills to hold AQ together as a cohesive unit…..under his leadership AQ will most likely splinter and become much weaker and eventually will fade from the international stage to be a regional irritant….

There is Ilyas Kashmiri–Kashmiri was a top general in the Pak special forces and eventually turned on them and joined al Qaeda in 2002, helping to train Afghan Taliban fighters to attack Americans and NATO troops in Afghanistan, and then attacking his former ISI handlers and the army. He has been linked to the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto…..and has become an outspoken AQ operative…there are some that feel he has the cajones to challenge Zahawri to take control of AQ….

If I were a betting person…my money would be on American born, Anwar al-Awlaki….he is a firebrand cleric that is living in Yemen and is the leader of AQ on the Saudi peninsula…..I like him, if he lives, because he speaks Arabic and English fluently and could be a very successful PR tool, plus he knows what Americans think and feel, after all he is an American of Yemeni ancestry…his knowledge of the US will be invaluable to AQ if it is too survive the coming power plays……

There are some minor players that could make a play for leadership….Abdullah, al-Adel, Gadahn,  Abu Ghaith and El-Hoorie are the most likely candidates, but these do not have the cajones for leadership……

Make no mistake, a power war is coming to AQ and it will depend on who wins the struggle as to what direction the organization will travel…only time and special ops will determine if they last or not….

Addendum:  Perhaps the US government agrees with my assessment…..recently a drone was sent to target Al-Awlaki…it missed but did kill a couple of low level AQ operatives…..better luck next time…..

Remember Iraq?

Inkwell Institute

Middle East Desk

Can you remember why we attacked and occupied Iraq?  Of course, you can……he had WMD….well, that was a LIE…..and finally we went to take out Saddam…the madman of the Euphrates….that we did..,..we caught him….tried him…..and then hung him…….and then we set about neutralizing AQ in Mesopotamia……well that was pretty much a snow job….AQ was NOT a major problem in Iraq, because Saddam did not trust them and was doing all he could to eliminate them until we attacked and his plans went down the crapper…..

And then we set about forcing democracy on a tribal society….you may NOT want to hear that….but pretty much what we did….forced democracy on the country of Iraq…..here is an analysis from Tariq Alhomayed, a very knowledgeable journalist from the Middle East……..

The current Iraqi regime has proven to be worse than Saddam Hussein’s and even more dangerous. Whereas there was a consensus that Saddam’s regime was a dictatorship, the problem today is that the current regime is portrayed as a democracy, yet it is a regime based on abhorrent sectarianism and its exportation.

How can we accept, for example, some of the comments from members of political parties governing Iraq, about what is happening in Syria? Rather than such figures declaring their concern for what is happening to unarmed citizens, and instead of stressing that Syria must be a democracy – as they call it – we find that they are expressing fears that the “Salafis” will gain control in Syria, and of course here they mean the Sunnis. These Iraqis see the arrival of Sunnis to power in Syria as a danger to them, so they say there is no basis to the demands of the Syrian masses, and that what is happening there has external dimensions, in addition to defending the Syrian Baath party. Is this conceivable? Especially as the Iraqi regime talked about how the Arab peoples in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, had rebelled against tyrant regimes, yet today look at what they say about the events in Syria!

In Iraq, after the dissolution of the Baath party and its elimination, and the demobilization of the army because a large part of it was Sunni, it is strange that the new Iraqis today come to the defense of the Syrian Baath party! If this is the logic of the new Iraq, how will the Iraqi regime deal with an essential component of its people, the Sunnis, not to mention the Christians? Is this a democratic Iraq? Is this the kind of democracy that America supports in the region?

The US may have created yet another Iraq that has its fingers in the governance of other countries.  We have created not a democracy but yet another authoritarian regime….not now….but once we leave it will not take long to return to the days of the dictator……and then we need to ask ….will Iraq then be a friend before they are an enemy?  Yet again!

Addendum: A bit of other info has come to my attention since writing this draft…….remember in the days of the “surge” and the statement that we had crippled AQ in Mesopotamia?  That we had all but destroyed AQ’s effectiveness…..that may not be entirely accurate…this from al-Azzaman a newspaper in Iraq……..

Iraq has tightened security measures, particularly in restive areas, to foil attacks by Qaeda following the assassination of its leader Osama Bin Laden by U.S. troops in Pakistan, a senior police source said.

The source, refusing to be named on security grounds, said the measures were the toughest in the provinces where al-Qaeda is still active.

He said more security and military forces were deployed in the Provinces of Anbar and Diyala, still believed to be the group’s strongholds.

Al-Qaeda is reported to be active in the Province of Nineveh, of which Mosul is the capital, and the Province of Salahudeen, of which Tikreet is the capital.

al Qa’eda is making a comeback there, recruiting new fighters and informants, astutely choosing its targets and outsmarting local security forces.

Does not sound like they, AQ, was as crippled as we were lead to believe…..just more inaccurate info coming out of Iraq……so what’s new?