Abu Laith al-Libi, “The Libyan,” a senior al-Qaeda operative who tried to kill President Cheney in Afghanistan a year ago, became a charred, dismembered victim of superior US technology today.

A CIA Predator drone piloted via video controls a thousand miles away fired a missile into a passle of Taliban and al-Qaeda scum, killing 12, including al-Libi..

As it happens, the 12 were hanging out in Pakistan, in the Waziristan tribal area next to Pakistan. That makes the hit an even better tactical strike, since it lets the enemy know there are no safe havens, and it sends Musharaff a much-needed message that if he can’t take care of Waziristan, we will.

Next up: drones over Iran. Even more cool.

AP quotes Eric Rosenbach, a terror expert at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School:

“Al-Libi has been waging jihad for more than 10 years and it will be a blow to both al-Qaida and the Taliban, but not in a way that will lead to the downfall of those organizations.”

Blows are good, even if not fatal. They mean we have good intelligence in the al-Qaeda’s backyards and we have the capability and will to act on that intelligence, even at the expense of another nation’s sovereignty.

The attack must have dispirited and demoralized al-Qaeda greatly, so I hope there are more to come, and soon. Name the enemy (which the Dems can’t do), attack the enemy and kill the enemy using technology that boggles their minds. Dispirit and demoralize them some more.

Can we do it again tomorrow?

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Pakistani officials begged for the country to “forgive and ignore” its earlier statement that Benazir Bhutto died from a fractured skull, and admitted that they no longer stand behind the earlier finding.

The Hindustan Times reports:

In a dramatic U-turn, Pakistan government has “apologised” for claiming that former premier Benazir Bhutto died of a skull fracture after hitting the sunroof of her car during a suicide attack.

Caretaker Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz Khan has asked the media and people to “forgive and ignore” comments made by his ministry’s spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema which were slammed by her Pakistan People’s Party as “lies” and led to an uproar at home and abroad.

The Interior Minister made the apology during a briefing for Pakistani newspaper editors on Monday. Punjab province on Tuesday issued a front-page advertisement in newspapers that offered a reward of Rs 1 crore for information about a gunman and a suspected suicide bomber seen in the photos and video footage of the assassination.

The government’s apparent damage control exercise on Cheema’s comments made at a news conference a day after Bhutto was assassinated at Liaquat Bagh in Rawalpindi on December 27, came after TV channels aired privately shot photos and video footage which showed a gunman shooting at Bhutto.

Cheema’s earlier statement was discredited all the more because he had blamed the fracture on a lever on the sunroof mechanism of Bhutto’s vehicle, but Bhutto’s family reports that no such knob exists on the car.

Despite all this, Pakistan Prime Minister Soomro turned away press suggestions that an independent investigation by international bodies, saying the government was fully capable of carrying out a professional investigation.

I don’t think an international investigation would provide much insight (as explained here), but the Pakistani government is going to have to start doing much better if it doesn’t want Bhutto’s assassination to become the ultimate playground of conspiracy theorists.

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I admit I made the same mistake, but I’m not running for president, touting my superior foreign policy skills. Thomas Houlahan, via Power Line, sets it all straight:

“If President Musharraf wishes to stand for election,” [Senator Clinton] told Blitzer, “then he should abide by the same rules that every other candidate will have to follow.”

My immediate reaction was: “Did I hear that correctly?”

As a Pakistan analyst, I know for a fact that Pervez Musharraf doesn’t wish to stand for election any time soon.

The upcoming elections are for the next parliament. Musharraf was just elected president of Pakistan, overwhelmingly, by popularly elected electors on Oct. 6. He’s just begun his five-year term as the president of the country. Why would he ever want to run for one seat in parliament? It wouldn’t make sense.

In other words, it’s like Hillary confusing the 2006 congressional elections with the 2008 presidential.

After several days, surrounded by her own magnificent mind and her massive staff, she went on George Stephanopolous’ show and …

Referring to a possible delay in the elections, Sen. Clinton said: “I think it will be very difficult to have a real election. You know, Nawaz Sharif [leader of the PML-N, an opposition party] has said he’s not going to compete. The PPP is in disarray with Benazir’s assassination. He [President Pervez Musharraf] could be the only person on the ballot. I don’t think that’s a real election.”

Bhutto wasn’t running for President. Sharif isn’t. Musharraf isn’t. But Hillary is.

All this happened days ago and Houlahan is the first one to point out her error. Somehow I feel that if any of the GOP candidates had made the same mistake … twice … the media would have been all over it, at their mocking best.

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clipped from mypetjawa.mu.nu

Jawa Report has posted this video in which Benezir Bhutto names names of who is likely to killer her — and apparently gets it right. In it, she also drops in without comment this little tidbit: Naming Omar Sheikh as the man “who murdered Osama bin Laden.”

Did she really know something? If she did, does it die with her?

Probably not. More likely, she just got the wrong name into the sentence — speculation is that she meant to say “Daniel Pearl.”

hat-tip: memeorandum

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Pakistan has released a transcript that apparently proves radical Taliban Islamists affiliated with al-Qaeda were behind the Bhutto assassination. In the transcript, militant leader Baitullah Mehsud, is referred to as Emir Sahib. The other man is identified as a Maulvi Sahib, or “Mr. Cleric.”

Maulvi Sahib: Peace be on you.

Mehsud: Peace be on you, too.

Maulvi Sahib: How are you Emir Sahib?

Mehsud: Fine.

Maulvi Sahib: Congratulations. I arrived now tonight.

Mehsud: Congratulations to you, too.

Maulvi Sahib: They were our men there.

Mehsud: Who were they?

Maulvi Sahib : There were Saeed, the second was Badarwala Bilal and Ikramullah was also there.

Mehsud: The three did it?

Maulvi Sahib: Ikramullah and Bilal did it.

Mehsud: Then congratulations to you again.

Maulvi: Where are you? I want to meet with you?

Mehsud: I am in Makin. Come I am at Anwar Shah’s home.

Maulvi Sahib: OK I will come.

Mehsud: Do not inform their family presently.

Maulvi Sahib: Right.

Mehsud: It was a spectacular job. They were very brave boys who killed her.

Maulvi Sahib: Praise be to God. I will give you more details when I come.

Mehsud: I will wait for you. Congratulation once again.

Maulvi Sahib: Congratulations to you as well.

Mehsud: Any service?

Mauvliv: Thank you very much?

Mehsud: Peace be on you.

Maulvi: Same to you.

Peace be on you … praise be to God. This is the Islamist enemy, praising God that in one blow they were able to strike out against modern roles for women, democracy (or a typically corrupt South Asian version thereof) and stability.

More on the suspect, from CNN:

Robert Grenier, former CIA station chief in Pakistan and former head of the CIA’s counterterrorism center, describes Mehsud as an Islamic radical leader in northwest Pakistan’s South Waziristan closely associated with the Taliban.

Grenier said that Mehsud spoke publicly before Bhutto’s return to Pakistan in October after her self-exile that the former prime minister was marked for assassination.

Some say the assassination is all the more reason to withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan:

We don’t know what’s going on in these volatile countries. The best thing is to stay out of the way and let them solve their own problems. …

Meanwhile, the U.S. government plants to “vastly expand” its forces in Pakistan. They’re just being sent into a rats’ nest.

Here’s a better idea: We get out of countries like this. We don’t let them come to our country. Let them stew in their own juices. If businessmen want to trade with these countries, they do so at their own peril.

America’s foreign policy should be that of non-intervention and neutrality, as our Founding Fathers, especially Washington and Jefferson, insisted. (John Seiler)

This is a chicken and egg argument, with the non-interventionists saying our presence in the Middle East caused 9/11 and interventionists saying earlier Islamists terror strikes necessitated our presence in the Middle East. Besides, that was then and cannot be undone. It is foolhardy to think that we can just withdraw from the Middle East and radical Islamism will stop fighting the West.

They have tasted power and they want more, in the name of Allah and the Islamist caliphate, which is the real lesson of the Bhutto assassination. It was not an attack on America; it was an attack on Muslim efforts to stop the jihad.

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Read this passage from Counterterrorism Blog ..

The Syro-Iranian move to crush their opposition using the “window of opportunity”, created by the NIE and the “talk-to-Syria-and-Iran” campaign in Washington and Brussels, is not confined to these countries. This week, the “axis” war room delivered a deadly blow to the Lebanese Army, which is considered by Hezbollah as the only native force capable of engaging its militias at some point. The assassination of Brigadier General Francois Hajj is increasingly perceived as a preemptive strike by the Pasdaran-controlled Hezbollah against a future commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces. Hajj was the chief operations officer who planned and led the campaign to defeat Fatah al Islam in Nahr al Bared.

… and ask yourself: What are the odds that the Syria-Iran Axis is behind the assassination of Bhutto?

What better way could there be to destabilize American interests in Muslim South Asia than to create turmoil in Pakistan? And if Pakistan’s nukes were to fall into Islamist hands, how much better would that be for Iran and Syria, both of which clearly want nuclear weapons?

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I was tempted to title this post, “Did Bush Kill Bhutto?” on the heels of yesterday’s post about Jamie Lynn Spears and the media’s desire to discredit Bush’s abstinence program, but the subject is too significant for such a headline.

Dec. 26, 2004: The tsunami. Dec. 27, 2007: The Bhutto assassination. The two events mingled in my mind as I read the news accounts, because both are epochally bad news events. The impact of the first we now understand well; the impact of the second is anyone’s guess.

I assume that many of Bhutto’s inner circle were in fact physically close to her in Rawalpindi when the attack occurred, so her party will be more than merely leaderless going into the elections scheduled next month. Nevertheless, it’s hard to imagine Pervez Musharraf surviving today’s attack politically. I doubt the attack had any Musharraf fingerprints on it — save for not providing enough government security for Bhutto — but the nation will turn against him even more now.

The assassination probably also spells doom for radical Islamic parties sympathetic to al Qaeda, since many Pakistanis will blame Islamist terrorists for the attack. Still, the attack shows how long the road will be in the war on terror:

The lesson for the West is that the war with the Islamists is not only far, far from over but in fact may be accelerating, and that more leaders with the sort of courage, resolve and energy displayed by Bhutto are needed now more than ever.

President Musharraf must take the war to the ungoverned places of the country or see such atrocities continue. Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is the most inviting goal for the al Qaeda cells, an issue which could have used a lot of attention in the presidential campaign reaching its crescendo. (Hugh Hewitt)

It is on that note that I circle back to the lead, and how the media addressed Bush in its coverage of the Bhutto assassination. In the first round of reporting, all but one of the US’ major news outlets covered the story responsibly. Guess which one didn’t.

Yes, the NY Times, whose story included these decidedly non-objective and wholly inappropriate paragraphs:

The assassination also adds to the enormous pressure on the Bush administration over Pakistan, which has sunk billions in aid into the country without accomplishing its main goals of finding the Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden or ending the activities of Islamic militants and the Taliban in border areas with Afghanistan.

and

Bush administration officials began working behind the scenes over the summer to help Ms. Bhutto and Mr. Musharraf create a power-sharing deal to orchestrate a transition to democracy that would leave Mr. Musharraf in the presidency, while not making a mockery of President Bush’s attempts to push democracy in the Muslim world.

The goal of our aide to Pakistan is not to catch Osama bin Laden, but to win the larger War on Terror and contain the nation’s nuclear arsenal. The NYT’s blind focus on negatives puts it in a place which would have the paper declare the capturing of Hitler to be the prime reason why we spent so much money on WWII, and because he was never found, the whole bloody affair was a waste and an embarrassment to America.

And whether the NYT likes it or not, Pakistan is a Muslim democracy today. Not ideal by any reckoning, but in recent months, the government has functioned well enough. The Supreme Court stood up to Musharraf, who then acted dictatorially, but had to back down due not to the UN for cryin’ out loud, but due to the will of the Pakistani people, who made their voices heard, so an election was set for January.

Does the NYT not see the benefit of trying to bring democracy to the Islamic world? Or is it just too lazy and shortsighted to go for anything valuable that requires a long slog?

Compare the NYT’s snideness to the reporting of AP and MSNBC. The AP account is straightforward, reportorial, despite a long history of anti-Bush reporting from the wire service:

Pakistan is considered a vital U.S. ally in the fight against al-Qaida and other Islamic extremists including the Taliban. Osama bin Laden and his inner circle are believed to be hiding in lawless northwest Pakistan along the border with Afghanistan.

The U.S. has invested significant diplomatic capital in promoting reconciliation between Musharraf and the opposition, particularly Bhutto, who was seen as having a wide base of support in Pakistan. Her party had been widely expected to do well in next month’s elections.

MSNBC also raised the same points as the NYT, but again without the cheekiness. These level-headed paragraphs are from a media outlet that has openly positioned itself as the anti-Fox, pro-left cable outlet, but today at least, the staff at MSNBC appears to understand the requirements of objective reporting:

Bhutto’s return to the country after years in exile and the ability of her party to contest free and fair elections had been a cornerstone of Bush’s policy in Pakistan, where U.S. officials had watched Musharraf’s growing authoritarianism with increasing unease.

Those concerns were compounded by the rising threat from al-Qaida and Taliban extremists, particularly in Pakistan’s largely ungoverned tribal areas bordering Afghanistan despite the fact that Washington had pumped nearly $10 billion in aid into the country since Musharraf became an indispensible counter-terrorism ally after Sept. 11, 2001.

The LA Times coverage was similar to AP’s and MSNBC’s, while WaPo and CNN reported the story without reference to Bush Administration policies.

Against this background of responsible reporting of a tragedy with potentially inconceivable consequences, the NYT stands out as an immature, inappropriate and unruly guest at the party, hardly differentiated from the Kos-tic rants of the leftyblogs.

Isn’t there someone who can spank their bottom and send them to their room?

hat-tip: memeorandum

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Bad Karma For Islam

On October 8, Muslims in Pakistan followed in the footsteps of their Taliban brothers gang members, dynamiting the face of this wonderful 23 foot tall bas relief Buddha carved into a mountainside at Jenanabad in the Swat Valley. You can see the before and after here.

The history of the Swat Valley is one of marvelous cultural cross-pollination; a history now crushed by Islamic totalitarianism and intolerance. Tufts University history prof Gary Leupp explains (Counterpunch via HNN):

Conquered by Alexander the Greek and his Macedonians in the 320s BCE, this region became part of the Mauryan Empire. Emperor Ashoka in the mid-third century BCE promoted the spread of Buddhism here, and in the second century BCE the local Greek King Menander may have been a convert. (The Questions of Menander—supposedly a conversation between the king and a Buddhist monk—is unique among ancient Buddhist texts in its dialogue form, characteristic of Greek philosophical texts, and may have actually been composed originally in Greek.) Later the Kushan Empire centering on the Gandhara region encouraged the emergence of an Indo-Greek Buddhist style of sculpture.

The Swat Valley was at the cutting edge of one of the most extraordinary syntheses in art history: Buddhist content and classical realistic western sculpture. The Buddha, earlier represented symbolically (as a footprint), came to be depicted as a Greek deity or king, standing or seated in meditation.

The act was carried out by followers of cleric Maulana Fazlullah, who heads the “Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law,” which is aligned with the Taliban. Leupp says the news was not reported widely in the West because it would have shown the spread of Taliban influence outside Afghanistan.

I doubt that was what motivated it, as our press is only too happy to show any failure in the War on Terror, and Taliban influence in the Swat Valley is already well understood. Leupp’s piece is remarkably poor for a historian, blaming this on Bush, because his invasion drove the Taliban out of Afghanistan and into Pakistan.

Historians should understand the porosity of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, the longstanding social and religious cross-border ties, and the fact that the Russians created a much larger exodus in the 1980s, which further cemented cross-border melding. And Leupp should ask himself if the Taliban demolition of the great Buddhas of Bamiyan wouldn’t have been followed by the destruction of the Jenanabad Buddhas much more quickly if the Taliban hadn’t had their hands full trying to stay alive.

The Young and the Newsless

The writer’s strike may effect the presidential election?! On its face it seems that the writers of sit coms and reality shows (you have to wonder why reality shows need writers …) would have no impact at all on who should be the leader of the most powerful nation in this corner of the galaxy, but Adam Kelly, writing in The Phoenix, has a different viewpoint:

It’s easy to be flip about the deep implications of the Writers Guild of America strike, which is now stretching into its fourth week. After all, what’s the harm in missing a few episodes of Two and a Half Men?

But this take is too facile. In today’s media landscape, more and more serious-news coverage — particularly political news — is coming from written (read: fake) TV-news programs, with The Daily Show and The Colbert Report as exhibits A1 and A2. We’re also in the midst of a wide-open presidential campaign. And with those shows out of commission, stories that could change the course of the race haven’t been getting the attention they otherwise would.

Kelly quotes a couple surveys that back him up:

In 2004, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press reported that about as many young viewers were getting their presidential-campaign news from comedy programs including The Daily Show and Saturday Night Live (21 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds who were polled) as from the nightly newscasts of NBC, ABC, and CBS (23 percent of the same group). The same study found that a whopping 61 percent of that same demographic got their campaign information from comedy and/or late-night talk shows, either regularly or occasionally.

In 2006, meanwhile, an Indiana University study of coverage of the ’04 race found that The Daily Show contained just as much substantive information as its network-news counterparts. Is it really surprising, then, that Democrat John Edwards announced his 2004 presidential candidacy on The Daily Show? Or that Republican John McCain did the same on Letterman’s show earlier this year, with fellow Republican Fred Thompson following suit on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno?

Can you imagine what these outlets would have done with the recent stories on Rudy’s Byzantine billings for his Hamptons get-aways? And can you imagine a combined Stewart, Colbert, Maher, Leno and Letterman joke-a-thon not having an impact on Rudy’s numbers?

It is only fitting that in this era of fakey candidates, fake news can have a real influence.

Japanese Work Ethic?

Apparently the reputation of the Japanese as notorious over-workers still has merit:

TOKYO (Reuters) – A Toyota Motor Corp employee died of overwork after logging more than 106 hours of overtime in a month, a judge ruled Friday, reversing a ministry’s earlier decision not to pay compensation to his widow.

The Toyota Labor Standards Inspection office, a local branch of Japan’s labor ministry, refused to pay the widow the usual compensation for a spouse’s work-related death, saying the man had only logged 45 hours of overtime in the month before he died, Japanese media reported.

But the court ruled that the employee had worked far more than that …. The employee, who was working at a Toyota factory in central Japan, died of irregular heartbeat in February 2002 after passing out in the factory around 4 a.m.

Perhaps this can best be viewed as seppuku (hari kari) with a timeclock.

High-Priced Liberalism

San Francisco is facing a whopper of a $229 million budget deficit and there’s only one target for the blame. And it’s not the housing slump.

Much of the projected $229 million budget deficit that now preoccupies San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom was created with his blessing – and with his full knowledge that the city didn’t have the dough to cover it.

Newsom and his aides, however, didn’t let the cat out of the bag until after his re-election last month. (SF Chron)

Newsome supported a $28 million public transit program and a four-year, 24% pay hike for police, fire and nurse city employees, all the while knowing the usual padding — a $100 million budget carry-over — was non-existent.

Asked how Newsome felt about this economic Balaklava, an aide said hizonner “doesn’t even have one tiny morsel of regret.”

Liberalism is never having to say you’re sorry.

Far, Far From Kyoto

Orange Punch, the OCRegister’s opinion blog, passes along this tidbit:

“Strikingly, three Chinese power companies, South Africa’s giant Eskom, and India’s NTPC all generate more CO2 emissions than any single U.S. firm—underscoring the shared challenge posed by global climate change,” according to U.S. News and World Report. “The largest, Huaneng Power International of China, has emissions 68 percent higher than American Electric Power’s.”

What do you want to bet that the U.S. will remain the principle target of global warming alarmists?

Good bet.

Dr. Doom

We conclude this week’s Sunday Scan on a note of terror, calling your attention to an LA Times op/ed by Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins, authors of The Nuclear Jihad.

How nice that this piece ran in the liberal LAT, where blinders to the threat of global jihad abound. Frantz and Collins lay out in frightening detail the story of Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the man who sold Pakistan’s nuclear technology to Libya and Iran, and Iran’s subsequent efforts to mask its true nuclear ambitions from international scrutiny.

Do read the piece, even though it doesn’t include anything new to people who have tracked this issue in the blogosphere. What’s illuminating about the piece is that what we know — Iran’s lies and cover-ups, the true extent of their nuclear program — is now becoming more broadly covered in MSM outlets read by Libs.

Will they take note or just hide under their “blame everything on Bush” denials?

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Now-civilian Pakistan prez Pervez Musharraf now says he will withdraw the state of emergency in his country on December 16 — the day after candidates can withdraw their applications to run, as they would have to do if they move forward with plans to boycott the election.

And if that happens, some experts say the state of emergency could be reinstated.

Political analyst Shafqat Mahmood told private English channel DAWN NEWS that the date of Dec. 16 is significant because it came a day after the date by which candidates are allowed to withdraw their nomination paper.

“If political parties boycott elections, he might not withdraw [the] emergency an [Provisional Constitutional Order],” he said.

It’s a long, long way to a stable Pakistan — something there’s precious little precedent for — but at least the toes aren’t hanging over the cliff now.

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It’s a pipsqueak by comparison, but today’s NY Times leak-driven story on the new Dept. of Defense planning for alliances in the tribal regions of Afghanistan is not entirely unlike the paper leaking details of the Normandy invasion during the months leading up to D-Day.

A new and classified American military proposal outlines an intensified effort to enlist tribal leaders in the frontier areas of Pakistan in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, as part of a broader effort to bolster Pakistani forces against an expanding militancy, American military officials said.

If adopted, the proposal would join elements of a shift in strategy that would also be likely to expand the presence of American military trainers in Pakistan, directly finance a separate tribal paramilitary force that until now has proved largely ineffective and pay militias that agreed to fight Al Qaeda and foreign extremists, officials said.

We’re not talking a lot of U.S. troops here — just the current 50 or so growing by “dozens.” Any U.S. troops in the tribal regions of Pakistan are already at high risk of terrorist attack, and this story won’t calm down the Islamists any.

Its real risk, though, is against the tribal leaders with whom we hope to ally. Until today, they were just tribal leaders under the watchful and threatening eye of Islamists, who have shown in Iraq and Afghanistan alike their eagerness to assassinate any leader who affiliates with the Americans. Now, they are potential U.S. allies.

We know that already this story has been translated and is circulating amidst al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders in Pakistan. They know the best tactic against the U.S.: Ruthlessly murder a few of the potential U.S. allies and their families, leave them beheaded in pools of blood, and let the other potential allies consider the road ahead.

Without the NYT, special ops forces could have quietly begun working with the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force recruited from the various border tribes. Granted, their presence there would have been known soon enough, but it would have been known on our terms, not the NYT’s terms.

NYT acknowledges that aspects of the new effort have already been leaked by the LA Times and WaPo. These stories dealt with increased aid to the region and did not put soldiers or their allies at risk. The NYT got the leak on the military support and joined the leak-fest to avoid being journalistically one-upped.

The story itself is straightforward and remarkably non-critical, drawing parallels to successes in Anwar that it does not question … much:

The proposal is modeled in part on a similar effort by American forces in Anbar Province in Iraq that has been hailed as a great success in fighting foreign insurgents there.

“Has been hailed as a great success” is about as positive as you’ll get in the anti-military media today. But that sentence is followed with this:

But it raises the question of whether such partnerships, to be forged in this case by Pakistani troops backed by the United States, can be made without a significant American military presence in Pakistan.

Nowhere in the story is that concern addressed again, let alone attributed to any source, named or unnamed. Who raised the question? The three-reporter team it took to break the story? Did they, in raising the question, consider that by leaking the plan and putting the military and the tribal leaders at greater risk, and that they therefore may be contributing to the need for more than a few dozen additional troops?

Who knows? All we k now for sure is that beating the LAT and WaPo is reason enough to put soldiers’ lives at greater risk.

See more coverage at memeorandum.

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