Pakistani Taliban chief killed in CIA missile strike

If this report pans out, good on 'em. This is how you hunt terrorists: by being sneaky (for example, with Predator UAVs as the CIA is doing) so they can't see and hear you coming.<blockquote>ISLAMABAD – U.S. and Pakistani authorities were investigating whether Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, who has led a violent campaign of suicide attacks and assassinations against Pakistan's government, was killed in a CIA missile strike.

A Pakistani official said Friday that reports of the militant leader's death were based on communication intercepts. A senior U.S. intelligence official said there were strong indications that Mehsud was among those killed in the attack, but he would not elaborate.

If confirmed, Mehsud's demise would be a major boost to Pakistani and U.S. efforts to eradicate the Taliban and al-Qaida.

Mehsud has al-Qaida connections and has been suspected in the killing of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Pakistan views him as its top internal threat and has been preparing an offensive against him. The U.S. sees him as a danger to the war effort in Afghanistan, largely because of the threat he is believed to pose to nuclear-armed Pakistan.</blockquote>http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090807/ap_on_re_as/as_pakistan_taliban_21

 

Re: Report: Pakistani Taliban chief possibly killed in CIA missile strike

Update: His people say he's dead, and that's good ... :<blockquote>For years, the U.S. considered Mehsud a lesser threat to its interests than some of the other Pakistani Taliban, their Afghan counterparts and al-Qaida, because most of his attacks were focused inside Pakistan, not against U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan.

That view appeared to change in recent months as Mehsud's power grew and concerns mounted that increasing violence in Pakistan could destabilize the U.S. ally and threaten the entire region. . . .

In December 2007, Mehsud became the head of a new coalition called the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or Pakistan's Taliban movement. Under his guidance, the group killed hundreds of Pakistanis in suicide and other attacks.

Analysts say the reason for Mehsud's rise in the militant ranks is his alliances with al-Qaida and other violent groups. U.S. intelligence has said al-Qaida has set up its operational headquarters in Mehsud's South Waziristan stronghold and neighboring North Waziristan.

Mehsud has no record of attacking targets in the West, although he has threatened to attack Washington.

However, he is suspected of being behind a 10-man cell arrested in Barcelona in January 2008 for plotting suicide attacks in Spain. Pakistan's former government and the CIA have named him as the prime suspect behind the December 2007 killing of Bhutto, the former Pakistani prime minister. He has denied a role. </blockquote>... if it's true:<blockquote>Last year, a doctor for Mehsud announced the militant leader had died of kidney failure, but the reports turned out to be false. </blockquote>http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090807/ap_on_re_as/as_pakistan_61

 

Re: Report: Pakistani Taliban chief possibly killed in CIA missile strike

We can kill all of these other clowns but we can't seem to find a 6-7 guy on a dialysis machine named Bin Laden?

 

This must have taken place before Leon Panetta pulled the plug on CIA Assassin Program.

Nancy Pelosi must have gone ballistic when she heard about this.

Personally I am not a big fan of political assassinations.

 

I've got mixed feelings about killer drones.

On the plus side, we're able to off some bad guys with less risk to our fighting folks.

But (hopefully other than target selection), I'm not sure how much different using them is from an IED. Terrorists use the technology available to them. So do we.

It just seems a bit cold and calculated that someone at a computer in Colorado or somewhere is making life-and-death decisions to be carried out thousands of miles away.

If the other side could do the same, it would scare the marshmallow peeps out of me.

But, I guess that's the point. War isn't supposed to be comfortable. And any misgivings I might have pale in comparison to those actually doing the heavy lifting.

 

Are we really at war with the Taliban though?

I wonder what ever happened to that other leader Mullah Omar. You never hear anything mentioned about him from either side. Maybe the CIA flipped him and he is now summering on the Jersey shore.

 

We should send a college basketball recruiter. They can laser in on anyone over 6-6 with eligibility left.

 

I think what happened is that Bin Laden is only 6'4". The Al Queda basketball federation fudged on his height so he would be drafted higher.

 

Gee, it's a shame we couldn't just sit down and have a beer with him.

 

Not the same program. The Predator program has been supported by the new administration; unlike the proposed Bush/Cheney-era assassination-squad program, the humans involved in the Predator program are the ones remotely piloting the UAVs. The assassination-squad program never got past the feasibility-study stage under George Tenet, was dead on arrival within the Special Operations Group as far back as 2004 under both of the Bush-era appointees (Hayden and Goss¹) and only existed on paper when CIA officials presented Panetta with new training options for the program.

Definitely a poor choice.

Believed to be in hiding somewhere in the Pakistan/Afghnistan border regions. Easier to do when your enemy has diverted the bulk of its attention to a region that had nothing to do with you for 7 years. There's a $10 million reward for him, dead or alive.

¹Even though it probably fit the administration's vision of the CIA under the Bush Doctrine (the only reason it was still on the books?), it probably wasn't going to get through DNI Negroponte and had no chance with the two admirals who followed Negroponte in that post. Based on the timeline as reported by the Washington Post and others, it looks like it got deeply buried by Porter Goss, which is kind of surprising given his background as part of the CIA's operations side. On the surface, it looks like somebody with an extensive resume in the Directorate of Operations would have embraced it; Goss worked for Operations and reportedly took part in the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban missile crisis and the Eisenhower-authorized and Nixon-directed Operation 40, among others. In fact, the Bush-era assassination-team proposal greatly resembled Operation 40. Maybe that's why Goss buried it, if he did so.

 

He didn't insult anyone's mama.

 

So it's ok to target an individual for assassination using a drone piloted by an assassin hundreds of miles away but it's not ok to target the same individual for assassination by a sniper a hundred yards away.

I'm glad we got this animal but that seems like a pretty hypocritical stance to take.