Online Journal of Politics and Foreign Affairs
So reports the BBC: Ayman al-Zawahiri appointed as al-Qaeda leader The statement announcing his appointment was posted on a militant website and attributed to al-Qaeda’s General Command. "Sheikh Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, may God guide him, assumed responsibility as the group’s amir [leader]", it said. It vowed that under Zawahiri, it would pursue jihad or holy [...]
American drone strikes in Yemen are intensifying. Is this a new war. or just the same one we’ve been fighting since October 2001?
It wasn’t quite as dramatic as the raid that took out Osama bin Laden, but the United States has gotten another top ranked al Qaeda leader: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — One of Pakistan‘s most wanted militant commanders, Ilyas Kashmiri, was killed in an American drone strike in the tribal territory of South Waziristan, residents and a [...]
Via NPR: Reports: British Intelligence Battled Al-Qaida With Cupcakes British anti-terror activities took a decidedly sweet turn, last year. The Telegraph, The Guardian and the Associated Press, among others, are reporting that British intelligence agents hacked into one of al-Qaida’s English language publications and swapped out a recipe for home-made bombs with recipes for American [...]
Glenn Greenwald asks two questions about the cases of Osama bin Laden and Ratko Mladic. Helpfully, the second answers the first.
Kentucky Senator Rand Paul wants a full debate on the PATRIOT Act. What’s Congress so afraid of?
As James Joyner noted in the days after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, the helicopter that was disabled and had to be destroyed in bin Laden’s compound was a previously secret stealth helicopter that the U.S. military had never revealed before. In the aftermath of the raid there was concern over what Pakistan [...]
Frank R. Lindh, father of Abu Sulayman al-Irlandi (aka Sulayman al-Faris, Abdul Hamid, and John Walker Lindh) has an op-ed in the NYT asking “Bin Laden’s Gone. Can My Son Come Home?” The answer is, sure: In another 8 to 11 years.
Via the BBC: Osama Bin Laden: Al-Qaeda releases posthumous message Plus some speculation on Osama’s replacement: Speculation is mounting that al-Qaeda has appointed a former Egyptian army colonel, Saif al-Adel, as temporary leader to replace Bin Laden. Adel was once Bin Laden’s security chief, and is suspected of involvement in the 1998 US embassy bombings [...]
Rick Santorum, may have made the dumbest comment of the Presidential campaign so far: Here’s Santorum: HH: Now your former colleague, John McCain, said look, there’s no record, there’s no evidence here that these methods actually led to the capture or the killing of bin Laden. Do you disagree with that? Or do you think [...]
I think it’s safe to say that tensions between Pakistan and US/NATO forces in Afghanistan are on a bit of a hair trigger: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistani ground troops opened fire on two NATO helicopters that crossed into Pakistan’s airspace from Afghanistan early Tuesday morning, the Pakistani Army said in a statement. A firefight then [...]
President Obama’s approval numbers shot up after Osama bin Laden was killed two weeks ago. They’ve already settled back to where they were
The outgoing Secretary of Defense made a somewhat startling admission the other day regarding the leaks that have come out regarding the raid that killed Osama bin Laden: The Department of Defense is looking into ways to “pump up the security” for the team of Navy SEALs who helped kill Osama bin Laden after the [...]
Among the items recovered by SEAL Team Six from Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound was, apparently, an extensive collection of pornography: (Reuters) – A stash of pornography was found in the hideout of Osama bin Laden by the U.S. commandos who killed him, current and former U.S. officials said on Friday. The pornography recovered in [...]
Texas Congressman Ron Paul, who will enter the Presidential race tomorrow, says he wouldn’t have tried to have Osama bin Laden killed.
John McCain thoroughly dismantles the argument that Osama bin Laden’s capture vindicates the use of so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques.”
Another day, another TSA absurdity: The Rev. Jacob Jester wasn’t trying to start anything. But when he saw security screeners at Kansas City International Airport patting down a baby — a baby — he took a picture. And then he shared that picture on Twitter. It went viral, and voila: Jester’s snapshot is the flashpoint [...]
Not surprisingly, having ordered a successful mission to kill Osama bin Laden is being highlighted on President Obama’s re-election tour.
Did a deal between the U.S. and Pakistan during the infancy of the war against al Qaeda play a role in the raid against Osama bin Laden?
Pakistan is trying to explain how the world’s most wanted man was able to hide in plain sight for six years, and failing badly.
One U.S. Senator wants to bring elements of the TSA’s security theater to America’s rail system.
Call it the legacy of Osama bin Laden: Two Muslim religious leaders who were removed from a commercial airliner in Memphis say they were told it was because the pilot refused to fly with them aboard. Masudur Rahman and Mohamed Zaghloul were supposed to travel on an 8:30 a.m. Delta flight, run by a subsidiary, [...]
In what may well be the most idiotic piece of commentary arising out of the successful mission against Osama bin Laden, former Bush Justice Department lawyer (he of the torture memos and “Unitary Executive” theory) claims that the Obama Administration chickened out by killing the al Qaeda leader rather than capturing him: John Yoo says [...]
At least according to his wife: Osama Bin Laden spent the last five years living in the room of his mansion where he was shot and killed by U.S. forces, according to Pakistan security officials. The claims were made by the terrorist leader’s wife, who apparently told interrogators that she and her husband had not [...]
In a move sure to satisfy Deathers as much as a contemporaneous newspaper story satisfied Birthers, al Qaeda has released a statement confirming that Osama bin Laden is dead.
The free world rallied around the United States after the 9/11 attacks–but not all back the killing of the man who ordered it.
Count John McCain among those who are skeptical about the role waterboarding played in finding Osama bin Laden: Sen. John McCain denounced “advanced interrogation” methods like waterboarding Wednesday amid a growing debate over its effectiveness reopened by the killing of Osama bin Laden. McCain told reporters leaving an intelligence briefing for senators by CIA director [...]
Safia bin Laden says that her infamous father was caught alive by U.S. forces and murdered in cold blood.
Congress is getting complaints that calling the Osama raid “Geronimo” is offensive to Indians.
The former half-term Governor of Alaska has chosen for some reason to chime in on the controversy surrounding the release of postmortem photos of Osama bin Laden: Good lord Sarah, why don’t we just chop his head off and put it on top of the Statue of Liberty’s flame? The blood lust that I’m seeing [...]
MSNBC is reporting that the White House has decided against releasing any postmortem photos of Osama bin Laden: The president has decided not to release photographs of Osama bin Laden’s body, according to a senior White House official. On the one hand, this seems to be potentially problematic to the extent it could give rise [...]
Randall Holcombe: The damage al Qaeda’s attack caused when it destroyed the World Trade Center was about $10 billion (not including the substantial cost in terms of human life). Meanwhile, the TSA’s annual budget is $6.3 billion, so we’re spending more than half the cost of the destruction of the World Trade Center every year [...]
The debate over “enhanced interrogations” has been renewed by the bin Laden mission, but whether it “worked” or not isn’t the question.
Time Magazine has an interesting piece as part of its special edition on the death of Osama bin Laden about the children who were with President Bush when first learned of the September 11th attacks: There has rarely been a starker juxtaposition of evil and innocence than the moment President George W. Bush received the [...]
Former President Bush has declined an invitation to join President Obama at Ground Zero on Thursday: WASHINGTON — Former President George W. Bush has declined an invitation to join President Barack Obama at a New York City ceremony later this week marking the death of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, NBC News reported on Tuesday. [...]
There’s been some question since Sunday of the role that waterboarding or other forms of “enhanced interrogation” may have played in obtaining the information that eventually led to the location of Osama Bin Laden. In that regard, I give you the words of Donald Rumsfeld himself: Asked if harsh interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay played [...]
Fox News Channel host Shepard Smith seems to think that the operation that took out Osama Bin Laden was illegal: His colleague former New Jersey State Municipal Court Judge Andrew Napolitano agrees: Both of them, however, seem to have forgotten something called the Authorization For Use Of Military Force Against Terrorists, which states: a) IN [...]
The question of how the world’s most wanted man could’ve hidden in plain sight in Pakistan continues to be asked.
The myth that the U.S. armed and trained Osama bin Laden in the early 80′s is rearing its ugly head again.
Cartoonist John Cole of the Scranton Times-Tribune offers this take on yesterday’s big news: His blog commentary: Abottabad, the Pakistani city wherein justice finally caught up with Osama bin Laden, reportedly crawls with that country’s military. A major army base and military academy are located in the city of 100,000, which begs the question: How [...]
Interesting: Could Osama bin Laden have been found faster if the CIA had followed the advice of ecosystem geographers from the University of California, Los Angeles? Probably not, but the predictions of UCLA geographer Thomas Gillespie, who, along with colleague John Agnew and a class of undergraduates, authored a 2009 paper predicting the terrorist’s whereabouts, [...]
Americans are rallying around the President in the wake of the mission against bin Laden, but it’s likely to be short-lived.
Less than 48 hours after the mission that ended in the death of Osama bin Laden took place, the conspiracy theories are already in full bloom: In an age of mistrust for authority, and when the mainstream media has lost its ability to damp down discredited theories, bin Laden’s death is already in dispute. An [...]
In addition to taking out the leader of al Qaeda, Sunday’s raid in Pakistan apparently yielded a treasure trove of intelligence: The assault force of Navy SEALs snatched a trove of computer drives and disks during their weekend raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound, yielding what a U.S. official called “the mother lode of intelligence.” [...]
Gary Weddle, a schoolteacher from East Wenatchee, Washington, has cut his beard after waiting almost ten years for Osama bin Laden to be killed.
From the White House Flickr page: President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, along with members of the national security team, receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House, May 1, 2011. Please note: a classified document seen in this photograph has been obscured. [...]
