If confirmed, this is great news!!! Another success in the war on terrorism.


Somalia Says al Qaeda Leader Dead

Somalian officials say that according to American intelligence reports, the planner if the 1998 African embassy bombings, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, was among those killed in the AC130 strikes that took place earlier this week. Airstrikes have continued, but the same Somalian officials say that American special forces will be needed to finish rooting out the remaining al Qaeda enclaves. They also say that they expect such American forces to be forthcoming.

American sources have not yet confirmed these reports. It has been widely rumored that special forces units are already participating in the fighting in Somalia.

I wouldn't be surprised if President Bush talks about the fighting in Somalia, and perhaps the death of Fazul, in his speech on Iraq tonight.

UPDATE: Ralph Peters hails developments in Somalia, under the headline "Terrorizing Terrorists":

the devastation left behind by our gunships is only part of a very big U.S. win:
* Thanks to resolute military action by Ethiopia's government (quietly backed by Washington), the terror regime in Mogadishu crumbled overnight - collapsing the lie that extremist Islam is on the march to an inevitable victory.

* The speed of the Ethiopian advance cornered hundreds of hardcore Islamist fighters in a forlorn backwater, where they can be killed out of sight of their media defenders. And be killed they will.

* Islamist outrages and subversion inspired unprecedented cooperation between moderate Somalis, Ethiopians, Kenyans and Americans.


Peters views what's happening today in Somalia as payback:

Our special-ops forces are getting their revenge: After Army Rangers and Delta Force troops won a hands-down victory in the streets of Mogadishu back in 1993, President Bill Clinton sold them out (as the Pelosi-Reid Democrats threaten to do to our soldiers in Iraq on a greater scale). Now they're killing al Qaeda fanatics and their local allies with the full support of a new Somali government."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/

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U.S says none were killed.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070111/..._af/somalia_us

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I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.

That's why I said-----"if confirmed" in my first post. It was clear that it wasn't a for sure thing yet until they did DNA testing.

Too bad they didn't get the top guys yet. I think there's a lot of "tipping off" that goes on in these situations. We will just keep at it.

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"This is a time for a national imperative not to fail in Iraq." Condoleeza Rice, January 11, 2007

I saw the "if confirmed". I was merely updating the news.

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I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.

Oops, don't you just hate that??? You send in a few airplanes to take out al-Qaeda, and all you get is a few wanabees! I wonder who the guy was that got killed that they thought was Fazul Abdullah Mohammed? Ah, who cares...just another useless Muslim African that surely deserved to die anyway. After all, this is war...well, not exactly our war, but close enough to justify shooting any jungle bunny that happens to be leaping across the Savanna. I mean even our own Constitution call these kind of people as "three fifths" of a Person. Guess there are so many in Africa, they're all kind of disposable, right?

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Hobo
Charter member of 'Republicans Who Hate Bush" Club

Your sympathy for al-Qaida terrorists is moving.

Even a small mission such as this cost the tax payers at LEAST $10 million. Hell we moved an aircraft carrier to the area for support. Not much of an ROI if you only kill "up to" 10 lower ranking terrorists.

A dead terrorist is a dead terrorist, but these strike missions can get costly. We'd want them to be as effective as possible.

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No argument with that. They were clearly hoping to get some important terrorists here. It appears they successfully hit a terrorist cell but unfortunately the big dawgs escaped.

The larger issue is we have the US one again going into a foreign country, shooting up a group of people that were supposedly terrorists. How far does this privilege of violating national sovereignty to shot some criminals go? We wouldn't consider doing this in Europe if we knew some terrorists were hanging round. In these countries of Africa and the Middle East the US military plays by different rules.

Doesn't the US have some respect for international law? If these men really were al Qaeda (no proof except the usual untrustworthy sources) in a small pocket they are criminals not combatants. We just can't take our planes in where ever we like and shoot down suspected criminals. If Somalia was unprepared to extradite them, we could go in and extract them to stand trial. But just to shoot people, and worse yet, the wrong people in a foreign country is exactly the kind of human rights abuse that we are constantly harping on other countries to stop.

Surely no one can believe that the War on Terror and labeling someone "al Qaeda" does not give us the right to simply shoot anyone in any country. That is absurd, illegal. and most important, unethical.

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Hobo
Charter member of 'Republicans Who Hate Bush" Club