Friday, November 5, 2010

Widening the War

I haven't heard anything about this on the normal media channels, but if it's true it marks a widening of the war against terrorists. Never before, at least according to the article, have American forces targeted an al Qaeda operative in Gaza.

From the article:
A missile fired from an American warship in the Mediterranean hit the car in which Muhammad Jamal A-Namnam, 27, was driving in the heart of Gaza City Wednesday, Nov. 3 and killed him, debkafile's exclusive counter-terror sources report. Namnam was an operational commander of the Army of Islam, Al-Qaeda's Palestinian cell in the Gaza Strip. He was on a mission on behalf of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula – AQAP to plan, organize and execute the next wave of terrorist attacks on US targets after last week's air package bomb plot.
According to our sources, the Palestinian cell members were planning to infiltrate northern Sinai from the Gaza strip over the coming weekend and strike American personnel serving with the Multinational Force and Observers Organization – MFO, which is under American command and is stationed at North Camp, El Gorah, 37 kilometers southeast of El-Arish. In a coordinated operation, Al Qaeda fighters hiding up in the mountains of central Sinai were to have attacked US Marines and Air Force troops stationed at the South Camp in Naama Bay, Sharm el Sheikh.
Meanwhile, American and allied forces are quietly continuing to mass in the seas near Iran. Whether this is merely an attempt to intimidate Iran or a prelude to taking out their nuclear weapons facilities is hard to tell, but I imagine we'll find out soon enough.

The Package Bombers

The package bombs found on planes bound for the United States originated in Yemen and U.S. intelligence agencies know where the bad guys are. They want to launch a special forces operation against them, but the Yemeni president Abdullah Ali Saleh, despite U.S. and Saudi pressure, has been very uncooperative. Ultimately, the decision to go after these terrorists may be taken out of his hands.

Here's the story.