No Big Deal

A number of commentators seeking to minimize the accomplishment of killing Abu Zarqawi and to emphasize AZ's minor status as a terrorist leader point to the fact that he seems to have been fingered by some of his al Qaeda colleagues. I'm skeptical. Somebody may have spilled inadvertant information about him under interrogation, but whether he was deliberately "ratted out" is purely speculative.

A more plausible explanation, I think, is that the military has intentionally planted an ambiguous story that allows for the inference that AZ may have been betrayed by al Qaeda insiders. They did this, if they did, in order to create confusion and distrust within the organization on the assumption that if nobody trusts anybody else, al Qaeda will quickly lose its ability to function. Perhaps our military has deliberately planted this little disinformation meme in the media consciousness in hopes it will replicate across the globe and cause a little consternation and paranoia among the al Qaeda cadres.

Another related trope that's been making the rounds is that since AZ wasn't really all that important there's no reason to be particularly relieved that he's gone. Somebody else, we're being told, will soon take his place and the killing will continue.

I'm reminded of a local story from last week when a convicted violent sex offender escaped the custody of a constable and was roaming the county at large for a day or so. A lot of people were nervous and felt relieved when the man was reapprehended. Imagine someone saying when the criminal was caught that people shouldn't feel relief since somebody else will soon take his place and be preying on the weak and innocent again. His words, though perhaps true, would still be at best thought to be a little strange. Just because we'll always have killers among us is no reason not to be relieved when one of them is removed.

And then there's this excerpt from a Washington Times story which makes Rep. Pete Stark (D) look like a real dunce:

Some Democrats, breaking ranks from their leadership, today said the death of terrorist leader Abu Musab Zarqawi in Iraq was a stunt to divert attention from an unpopular and hopeless war.

"This is just to cover Bush's [rear] so he doesn't have to answer" for Iraqi civilians being killed by the U.S. military and his own sagging poll numbers, said Rep. Pete Stark, California Democrat. "Iraq is still a mess -- get out."

Stark apparently thinks Bush possesses the God-like power to orchestrate Zarqawi's demise at a time and place of his choosing, and that he's been waiting to do it at a time when it would afford him maximum political benefit.

This is a standard example of Bush Derangement Syndrome. It has the same psychotic effect on left-wingers as LSD - especially when, as it seems in Stark's case, the two are taken together.

At the Cuckoo's Nest

Al Zarqawi's meeting with some aides and associates was peremptorily adjourned this morning around 3:00 a.m. our time by a couple of 500 pound munitions lobbed into the meeting room by the U.S. Air Force. The whole world should be rejoicing and in Iraq they are (see photos here), but not everyone in the U.S. is happy.

A lot of the glum lefties at Democratic Underground just can't bring themselves to rejoice that a major terrorist is gone if it means that George Bush gets the credit.

Here are a few sample comments:

Very curious. I wonder how this plays into neocon plans to attack Iran?

Everything he's [Bush] done over the past 6 years can now be forgiven and forgotten. He will go down in History as the man who rid the world of the elusive yet lethal Al Zarqawi. All the freedom hating Americans on DU need to now fall over each other trying to praise Mr. Bush like the Dems did when Saddam was captured. Of course in the process we'll dutifully ignore the fact that Al Zarqawi and King George have much in common. I suspect they both loathe gays and wide ranging personal liberties. Both have an infatuation with violence and torture and both believe that they are in acting in accordance with God's will. Oh great day!!

Convenient too that this would happen now....guess we should just all forget about that Haditha mess, the fact that we are approaching 2,500 dead and the fact that our economy is in big trouble.

Sorry. Don't buy it.

I find it disturbing that people STILL fall for this crap.

This won't help Bush as much as Rove would like. It is just a desperate stunt in an attempt to prop up Bush's poll numbers and boost the popularity his failed war by feigning the killing of one of the psyop program's main character. But by next week they'll have thought up another one to take his place. This is a classic case of the tail wagging the dog. And what better way to shut down the story of Bush's bisexuality that were picking up a "head" of steam?

If anything, this news will simply fan the flames of the hell that is Iraq today.

And on it goes at the cuckoo's nest. Denial and paranoia. Two symptoms of mental illness. It's not that these people are just skeptical and want to wait until more confirmation comes in that we really got Zarqawi. Rather it is that a) they don't believe there is a Zarqawi, that he is an invention of the military, and b) even if there is a Zarqawi they don't believe that the military really got him because they don't believe the miltary can do anything right, and c) if the military did get him it won't make any difference in Iraq anyway.

In other words, for the left, nothing that is good for America and the Iraqi people is good news for them.

Canadian Blindness

This article by Patrick Poole at FrontPage Mag is fascinating reading:

One of the faces in the crowd (or more accurately, one of the pair of eyes seen through the slits in the burqa) was none other than Zaynab Khadr.

She was amongst the crowd of relatives gathered at the Toronto-area courthouse this past Saturday waiting for the appearances of 17 Canadian Muslims busted last Friday in Toronto. The accused were nabbed in a terrorist sting that authorities say prevented them from carrying out a plot to blow up various sites around Toronto with three tons of ammonium nitrate.

The name Zaynab Khadr may not be familiar to many Americans, but it is to terrorism analysts. Ms. Khadr, who appeared Saturday at the courthouse to advise and support the families of the accused along with well-known jihadist preacher Aly Hindy, is a member of what Daniel Pipes has called "Canada's First Family of Terrorism."

Her father, Ahmed Sa'id Khadr, was one of Osama bin Laden's closest lieutenants and a top al-Qaeda financier who received $325,000 from the Canadian government from 1988-1997 for his "charitable work" in Afghanistan. He was also involved in the 1995 bombing of the Egyptian embassy in Pakistan, was arrested by Pakistani authorities, and released only through the intervention of then-Canadian Prime Minister Jean-Paul Chr�tien. Immediately after his release, he enrolled several of his sons in al-Qaeda operated terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. He was killed in a gun battle with Pakistani troops in 2003 near the Afghan border, during which his son (Zaynab's brother), Abdul, was also shot and paralyzed. Abdul and his mother live in Toronto.

But Zaynab shouldn't be judged for the sins of her family; she has her own activities to answer for. When she returned to Canada last year, Royal Canadian Mounted Police anti-terrorist officers seized her laptop, cell phone, and other documents which proved to be a rich treasure-trove of al-Qaeda intelligence. In response, she vehemently denied that the family had any ties to al-Qaeda and said that the information found in her possession wasn't hers.

At 26, Zaynab Khadr is a twice-divorced single mother. One former suitor was none other than a Sudanese terrorist who purchased one of the trucks used in the 1995 Egyptian embassy bombing in Pakistan. She has been accused by Canadian intelligence authorities of formerly helping her father funnel money for various al-Qaeda and for helping her brother, Abdullah, run an al-Qaeda training camp.

Osama bin Laden was also amongst the guests at her 1999 wedding, and her family lived in bin Laden's compound in Afghanistan. But, of course, her family doesn't have any al-Qaeda ties, Khadr insists.

When she isn't helping the families of terrorism suspects, Khadr spends her time pressuring the Canadian government to obtain the release of her youngest brother, Omar, who currently resides at Guanatanamo Bay. At 17-years-old, he is the youngest person in U.S. custody related to terrorist activities. When he was 15, he was the sole survivor of a battle between non-Afghan al-Qaeda fighters and the 19th U.S. Special Forces Group at Ayub Kheyl, Afghanistan. After the battle ended, Sergeant First Class Christopher J. Speer, a Special Forces medic, was attending to the wounded when Omar jumped up from between two mud-brick buildings, threw a grenade at Sgt. Speer, killing him. Omar was shot twice (non-fatally), and was found surrounded by a large cache of grenades, ammunition, and automatic weapons.

After Omar's capture, the National Post (one of Canada's largest circulation papers), wrote a glowing portrait of Omar, including quotes from his doting sister Zaynab, entitled "The Good Son."

The long ordeal of Canada's accommodation of the Khadr family perfectly illustrates the utter inability or unwillingness for our northern neighbors to deal with their internal terrorist threat. As recent days have shown, many Canadians are content to let their potentially fatal immigration policies and lunatic multiculturalism slowly asphyxiate their society. The suicidal intentions of our Canuck friends and neighbors would be all well and fine if it didn't also threaten to have homicidal consequences for America, as well.

It might be worth mentioning that brother Omar is one of the "children" incarcerated at Guantanamo that the left is demanding be released.

Finally!

The Sheik of Slaughters is now cavorting with his seventy two virgins:

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaida leader in Iraq who waged a bloody campaign of suicide bombings and beheadings of hostages, has been killed in a precision airstrike, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Thursday. It was a long-sought victory in the war in Iraq.

Al-Zarqawi and seven aides, including spiritual adviser Sheik Abdul Rahman, were killed Wednesday evening in a remote area 30 miles northeast of Baghdad in the volatile province of Diyala, just east of the provincial capital of Baqouba, officials said.

"Al-Zarqawi was eliminated," Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said.

At the White House, President Bush hailed the killing as "a severe blow to al-Qaida and it is a significant victory in the war on terror."

Our only regret is that he probably never knew what hit him unlike Nicholas Berg whose head Zarqawi slowly cut off from his neck. An instant death is better than he deserved.

Read the details here.

Stepping Over the Line

I often enjoy Ann Coulter's refusal to bow to the liberal priesthood and genuflect to their pieties, but I cannot defend some of her statements in her new book Godless. In the book she allegedly says about some of the widows of 9/11 victims, in the words of Claudia Parsons at MyWay News, that they are:

...millionaire "witches" reveling in their status as celebrities.

"I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much," Coulter writes in her book "Godless: The Church of Liberalism," published on Tuesday, referring to four women who headed a campaign that resulted in the creation of the September 11 Commission that investigated the hijacked plane attacks.

Coulter wrote that the women were millionaires as a result of compensation settlements and were "reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis."

If all this is true Ann has stepped over the line. I admire her desire to be outrageous and provocative. I admire her willingness to shatter politically-correct protocols and sensibilities, but she has, in this instance, made herself look cold and churlish. It is one thing to criticize these women for the political positions they have taken, but to call them witches because their politics are at variance with one's own and to assert that they are enjoying their husbands' deaths is simply wrong. Nor is Coulter displaying good sense or taste in saying that they are revelling in their celebrity status unless she has some proof that this is so.

In any event, the opinions the women express are fair game, but accusing them of callously exploiting their families' tragedy for personal gain requires that some evidence be adduced. As far as I can tell from the MyWay article, though, Coulter simply makes the assertion and leaves it hang unsupported in mid-air.

This is despicable when the left does it. It is no less so when those one usually agrees with do it. If this is indeed what she does in the book [and I confess to not having read it] she should either produce the evidence or apologize.