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Topic Review (Newest First)
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| Jan 21st, 2006 01:22 PM | ||
| Chojin | Ant would you like the be the official Philo board joke-getter | |
| Jan 21st, 2006 01:12 PM | ||
| Ant10708 | 'yourselfs with shitty grammar and spelling.' | |
| Jan 19th, 2006 07:38 PM | ||
| kahljorn | You guys need to shut up you're embarassing yourselfs with shitty grammar and spelling. | |
| Jan 19th, 2006 07:10 PM | ||
| KevinTheOmnivore | You guys are awesome. | |
| Jan 19th, 2006 07:05 PM | ||
| Pharaoh |
Quote:
 
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| Jan 19th, 2006 06:26 PM | ||
| ziggytrix |
Quote:
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| Jan 19th, 2006 05:59 PM | ||
| KevinTheOmnivore | yes, he will fall after being decisively beaten and berated with constant assaults of "I don't like liberals, liberals are stupid." | |
| Jan 19th, 2006 05:32 PM | ||
| Kulturkampf |
Quote:
I think you are incapable of forming an argument, and I advise you not to do so or you will embarass yourselve. |
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| Jan 19th, 2006 02:18 PM | ||
| KevinTheOmnivore |
From Reuters Senior al Qaeda figures believed killed in US strike Thu Jan 19, 2006 8:54 AM ET By Simon Cameron-Moore ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - An al Qaeda bomb expert with a $5 million bounty on his head and a son-in-law of the group's No. 2 were among four militants believed killed by a U.S. airstrike last week, Pakistani intelligence sources said on Thursday. Pakistani Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed acknowledged that "a few militants" had died in Friday's attack, which also killed 18 civilians, but said their bodies had not been recovered and their identity was under investigation. However, intelligence sources said they believed they knew the names of three men killed in the attack, which U.S. officials say was aimed at al Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri. Pakistani intelligence sources said al-Zawahri was not at the scene of the attack. One of the dead was thought to be his son-in-law, Abdul Rehman Al-Misri al Maghribi, who was responsible for al Qaeda's media department. Another was Midhat Mursi al-Sayid 'Umar, an expert in explosives and poisons. The U.S. government has posted a $5 million reward for him. Pakistani officials gave a slightly different spelling for the name, but the FBI says 'Umar ran a training camp at Derunta in Afghanistan and since 1999 had proliferated training manuals containing crude recipes for chemical and biological weapons. ABC News and the New York Times, citing Pakistani officials, also reported that the 52-year-old Egyptian had been killed. "If this person is gone, it is significant. His loss, and the loss of people like him, would certainly be a blow to al Qaeda in the region," said a U.S. counter-terrorism official, who asked not to be identified. The third man identified by Pakistani intelligence officers was Abu Obaidah al Misri, al Qaeda's chief of operations in Afghanistan's eastern Kunar province, where U.S. and Afghan forces regularly come under militant attack. INVITED TO FEAST The senior administrator in the Bajaur tribal district, where the attack took place, said on Tuesday that four or five militants from among 10-12 foreigners invited to a feast at the village of Damadola were thought to have been killed. "This appears to have been a meeting of the military committee of al Qaeda," said Rohan Gunaratna, author of "Inside al Qaeda" and security analyst at Singapore's Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies. "Almost all the key Egyptian leaders were present, and it would most likely have been chaired by Zawahri, except it seems he didn't show up for some reason," Gunaratna said. One Pakistani intelligence official said Khalid Habib, head of al Qaeda's operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan, may have also have been among the dead. But another official said there was no evidence of this. The officials said they were still trying to identify one other al Qaeda member believed to have been killed. They said pro-militant Muslim clerics removed the bodies from the scene after the 3 a.m. strike. Habib, according to Gunaratna, would be a very significant catch, as he had probably risen to No. 3 in the network after the capture and killing of the previous two occupants of that slot last year. Pakistan is a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terrorism, but news of the civilian deaths prompted a rare formal protest by Islamabad and demonstrations in several towns and cities. Friday's strike was the third believed to have been carried out since May by CIA-operated Predator drone aircraft in Pakistani tribal lands near the Afghan border. Abu Hamza Rabia, an Egyptian said to have been al Qaeda's No. 3 commander, was killed in December, and a known al Qaeda bombmaker, Haitham al-Yemeni, was killed in May. In both cases, Pakistan denied the men were killed by U.S. missiles. But witnesses found U.S. missile parts at the scene, and in Rabia's case, said they had seen the thin white drone. Despite Pakistan's diplomatic protest, intelligence sources believe the United States has Pakistan's tacit agreement to conduct such operations on its territory. (With reporting by Zeeshan Haider) |
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| Jan 19th, 2006 09:55 AM | ||
| AChimp |
 I dislike liberals. Do not associate me with them because I oppose this air strike. |
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| Jan 19th, 2006 08:52 AM | ||
| ziggytrix | whatever, you closet liberal homo | |
| Jan 19th, 2006 03:33 AM | ||
| Kulturkampf |
Re: The CIA airstrike in Pakistan Quote:
We should insure that women and children do not die in our operations, and so I disagree with it. However, if this is used as more attacks against the Bush administration, you are wrong; all Presidents since Viet Nam have been more interested in techne than boots on the ground. Have it be an attack on the comprehensive policies governing warfare in recent years. BTW: I dislike liberals. Do not associate me with them because I oppose this air strike. |
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| Jan 19th, 2006 02:33 AM | ||
| Abcdxxxx |
I have no idea what this involved, but its pretty standard to still send someone in on the ground to verify, and target the area. The safest way to do this stuff is through espionage .... an inside job, like a bomb under a car, or a cell phone rigged to explode. Knocking out half a mountain is pretty aggressive by todays human rights standards. (thanks greatly in part to the myth of the "Jenin massacre" where Israel took out a couple buildings) Even a failed strike of this magnitude will scare the shit out of anyone who was considering hosting a wanted terrorist. |
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| Jan 19th, 2006 02:12 AM | ||
| El Blanco |
You also have to consider the logistics of sending in a ground team. You have to tear that uit away from whatever they are doing and trek them across one bitch of a mountain range. Lets say hypothetically (of course this is all academic),al-Zawahiri was there. A Marine Recon team is sent from Afghanistan to go and get him. They have to get across that mountain range, run into some resistence. The resistance get on their sat phone or even just use a crude relay set up and get word to the village. So, when our guys get there, the target has already fled and an ambush has been set up. And considering that hiding behind non-combatants for cover is a common tactic used by these assholes, 18 civilian casualties would be optimistic. |
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| Jan 18th, 2006 08:36 PM | ||
| ziggytrix |
I actually prefer targetted killings to civillian armies killing each other. Let the politicians murder each other directly and cut out the middlemen, it makes so much fiscal sense! |
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| Jan 18th, 2006 08:30 PM | ||
| Abcdxxxx |
They're claiming Egyptians were there right? What are Egyptians doing in rural Pakistan? The intelligence couldn't have been too far off... something was going on there. Is it right? Targeted killings are controversial. It's either that, or you give these peole diplomatic status so you can at least find them, and then watch them continue their illegal operations while they're enjoying being untouchable under international law. |
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| Jan 18th, 2006 08:13 PM | ||
| KevinTheOmnivore |
Geggy, the difference in those two scenarios is that one is on American soil, under American law, and the other is not. They use drone plane and strategic bombings, despite the outcome in this case, to try to minimize civilian casualties. |
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| Jan 18th, 2006 08:01 PM | ||
| Geggy |
I thought it was a silly tactic by the CIA to send a drone plane to the location of the dinner party and bomb everyone including the innocents. They only did it to prevent any US ground troop casualty. It shows they're apathetic towards the foreigners. If they want to perform a drug bust in a crackhouse in the US, they don't send planes and bomb the shit out of the house with druggies and dealers inside. Instead they send police force, swat team to make arrests and use suspects as a lead to the drug lord. Same thing should have been done with the ground troops in that situation if they want to catch Osama bin Laden. But then I doubt bin Laden is still alive anyway. |
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| Jan 18th, 2006 07:15 PM | ||
| KevinTheOmnivore |
The CIA airstrike in Pakistan Has anybody been following this story? Apparently the CIA was targeting a dinner party, in which top Bin Laden official Ayman al-Zawahiri was rumored to be in attendance. It turns out he probably wasn't, and as many as 18 civilians, including children, were killed in the strike. However, CNN is now reporting that we may have killed Al Qaeda's chemical weapons expert, Midhat Mursi, although that now sounds doubtful too. So my question is this-- Is what we did in Pakistan wrong? Critics of the war in Iraq will often say that nation state vs. nation state warfare won't defeat Al Qaeda, which I happen to agree with. But then aren't tactics such as this the alternative? I mean, I'm certain we could end our relationship with Pakistan, declare war, and simply invade the western/northern portion of the country. We'd kill a lot of innocent people, and probably piss people off, but we'd also quite possible find Osama Bin LAden, right? So if war in Iraq is wrong, and strategic strikes such as this are wrong, then what is right? |
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