Monday, December 05, 2005

US Drone linked to al-Qaeda leader's death

If we can wage this kind of war, we will win the GWOT despite what the Democrats think.

(AXcess News) Islamabad, Pakistan - Egyptian-born Abu Hamza Rabia, no. 3 in the chain of command of al Qaeda, was supposedly killed along with four other terrorists in Haisori, a remote location between Afghanistan and Pakistan. A robot drone US Predator aircraft had flown in over the target area late Thursday night blasting the building to pieces, killing all five occupants instantly, Pakistani authorities said.

The Bush administration has not confirmed that Rabia was killed, though DNA tests from Pakistan allege that it was the Egyptian terrorist that was killed. Local villagers had said that terrorists came into the village and took the five badly mangled bodies away, so their were no bodies to make positive identifications from. Only blood found in the rubble could be used to identify Rabia.


This is excellent news for several reasons. One being al-Qaeda #3 is dead; another notch for Dubya to carve on the oval office desk. Two, it was hi-tech. Out of nowhere. Message to terrorists: we can get you anytime, anywhere, and there's no way for you to know it's coming. Three, this has the earmarks of excellent intelligence gathering. That's men (US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and CIA) on the ground, interrogating captured terrorists (torture?), and possibly agents/informants on the inside of terrorist groups' (al-Qaeda) operations.

This is why we can win and why Dubya keeps saying it is going to take time. Building up intelligence gathering in an area that had been sorely neglected during the Clinton years takes time. But these are the kind of results that we can get if we've got a little patience and persistence.