One Rat Down, Four to Go

When I heard of the killing of Ben Laden in Pakistan I felt a strong sense of relief; but as the details came out I felt a sense of frustration that we may have botched the opportunity to roll up the top leadership of Al Quaidi. Why couldn’t the White House simply not make any announcements for at least 30 days, while analyzing the intelligence information gathered? In addition why wasn’t there greater effort made to capture one or both of the couriers rather than kill them? Can you imagine the information they possessed on locations of the other top rats. I also didn’t need to know he was taped by a CIA operator and I didn’t need to know it may have included some personal from Seal Team 6

I don’t fault the operators whether US Seals or CIA or Delta because I think they did a magnificent job and it simply may not have been possible to capture them due to the intensity of the fight. I hope the Seals all received Navy Crosses with CIA DSM’s to the CIA operators and DSM’s to the Delta Team members and the Army Black Hawk pilots. My heartfelt thanks go out to these outstanding individuals. I would hope their identities remain TS-SCI classified for their sakes: We don’t need to see their scalps displayed at some future time on an Al Qaeda trophy belt.

I don’t know whether Mullah Omar was in recent touch with Ben Laden but the chance to get him could have resulted in a significant shortening of the war in Afghanistan. I personally think Ayman al-Zawahiri is more important to the US than Ben Laden was; and I sincerely hope he is now at the top of our priority kill list. I purposely left off the “capture” because I simply don’t want to deal with the “do gooder’s” who wish to give him a fair trial.

A name that is almost unknown to the US public is” Nasir al-Wahisi the leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula” a Yemeni who presents the most likely operational danger to the US. He and and Anwar al-Awaki have been responsible for some of the recent attempts to attack the US. They need to be up there with Zawahiri on the kill list along with the Pakistani; Ilyas Kashmiri. I suspect that including Kashmiri on our kill list would strongly improve our ties to India at the obvious expense of souring them with Pakistan. So be it; I no longer trust the Pakistani’s as an ally.

I am going to do something I rarely do and that is to thank O Bama for having the stones to undertake a risky operation. I would not have faulted him if it had failed. I did not fault Carter for the “disaster in the desert” and although the outcome was horrible; it was an honorable rescue attempt. Clinton’s equivocation over killing Ben laden however was less than honorable. My personal thanks also go out to former president George Bush for laying the groundwork for this achievement. For all of O Bama’s dopy rhetoric he seems to have learned something from Bush’s policies. Let us hope that continues.