Long War Journal reports that yet another al Qaeda leader has been killed in Pakistan by the U.S. military using missiles fired from a Predator drone aircraft. The latest casualty was one Rashid Rauf, the man who planned the attempt a couple of years ago to bomb a dozen trans-Atlantic flights using liquid bombs.
This makes the fifth senior al Qaeda operative in Pakistan to have been sent to the throne of Allah this year. Imagine what it must be like to be one of these psychopaths never knowing when you go to bed if a hellfire missile will disturb your dreams. There must also be a lot of paranoia developing among the cadres since it's obvious that the Americans are getting a lot of actionable intelligence from somewhere inside the inner circles of these killers. Who's providing it? Are the Americans paying off underlings for information on their superiors? The big rats must be suspicious of the mice, and it's likely that there's going to be a lot of finger-pointing, purges, executions and other ugly episodes that will foster resentments among the formerly faithful. This sort of thing will only lead to a breakdown in loyalty and produce even more intelligence.
Al Qaeda must be reeling. Perhaps they're hope is that President Obama will scale back operations against them and give them a chance to catch their breath. Let's hope he's smarter than that.
RLC