A pair of white British Muslim converts who joined al-Qaeda have been killed in a drone attack in a mountainous region of Pakistan, according to reports.
By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent Telegraph 8:40PM GMT 15 Dec 2010
The men, one of whom was apparently called Steve, died five days ago when a Hellfire missile was fired from a remote controlled American drone in the town of Datta Khel. If confirmed, they would be the first white British converts to have been killed in the area. The militants, who were aged 48 and 25 and using the pseudonyms Abu Bakr and Mansoor Ahmed, were in a vehicle with two other fighters.
They had entered the country last year and travelled to the town in North Waziristan in the lawless tribal belt bordering Afghanistan, to join al-Qaeda, the report on Channel Four News said.
In September another British militant called Abdul Jabber, who was of Asian descent, died in a drone attack in the same area.
There have been at least 25 such strikes in Pakistan since September, killing around 50 people. The tactic has been stepped up as the United States attempts to tackle fighters who gather openly in Pakistani villages and compounds.
However the strategy is not officially acknowledged by the CIA and last night Western intelligence sources were unable to confirm the reports.
The nihilism of British society bred a generation that believes in nothing. Nature abhors a vaccuum and islam is ready and willing to pull in the naive and socially untethered.
ReplyDeleteThis is going to cost us.
I have really grown to detest religion.
ReplyDeleteI cringe when I hear someone commenting on someone who has died, that they have gone on to a better place.
ReplyDeleteAll eyes will be on a Moscow court on Wednesday as it convenes to start reading the verdict in the second trial against jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev.
ReplyDelete...
Khodorkovsky's case will certainly be raised at the EU-Russia Parliamentary Cooperation Committee, said Bart Staes, a lawmaker for the Belgian Green party.
...
The head of the Russian delegation, United Russia Duma Deputy Andrei Klimov, said that while he expected the Europeans to raise the issue, he had little understanding for them.
Khodorkovsky Waits
There are some strange folks out there.
ReplyDeleteStunning EIA Inventory Data, today. Oil Inventories down 10 Million Barrels for week. Total Petroleum Products Down 15 Million Barrels.
ReplyDeleteTotal Petroleum Products Inventories have fallen something like 70 Million Barrels in 3 months.
Look at the chart on the lower left. Run the cursor over the product you want to check. Doesn't include Jet Fuel, Bunker Oil, or Asphalt.
EIA Data
I cringe when I hear someone commenting on someone who has died, that they have gone on to a better place.
ReplyDeleteBut that is truly wrong.
You simply misunderstand.
You need more reading.
Please
Deuce
THINK
Take all the thinkers I have mentioned to your mind.
It's simply cause you relaxed, in your youth, and read Any Rand, and not Evelyn Underhill.
ReplyDeleteNow I know it is true
ReplyDeleteWhat I guessed once
Such a transcendent
Summer morning
And death is different
ReplyDeleteThan any one guessed
And luckier
both from our national poet
Walt Whitman
That transcendent summer morning can just as easily come in December, as in May
ReplyDeleteBut it will come....
It is a morning of the mind....
Not of the calender of the time of year...
Greensleeves - King's Players
ReplyDeleteAnd if Whitman isn't right --why in the world be a Catholic?
ReplyDeleteOr a Jew -- or Swede -- or any damned thing?
ReplyDeleteMorning Allen -- I'm going back to bed.
Say hello to Melody if she gets up.
Allen, I'm overly impressed with your song choices these days.
ReplyDeleteConsider this
ReplyDeleteMeLoDy said...
ReplyDeleteAllen, I'm overly impressed with your song choices these days.
Thu Dec 16, 07:49:00 AM EST
???
... two new classified intelligence reports are particularly downbeat about the ease with which Pakistani-based militants cross into Afghanistan, as well as Pakistan’s refusal to shut down the sanctuaries used by the militants for rest and resupply.
ReplyDeleteWhile some American military commanders disputed the reports’ overall pessimism, there have been disturbing signs on our visit this week that the Pentagon is increasingly resigned to Pakistan’s inaction.
A defense official argued that Pakistan’s army is so overstretched — from flood relief and 19 months of sustained combat that has caused thousands of Pakistani casualties — that it cannot possibly undertake any more operations.
That may be true, but it would not take a major offensive for Pakistan to weaken the insurgents. The country’s intelligence service, the ISI, could start by withdrawing all support and protection from the militants.
Even as Pakistan’s army vows to take on militants spreading chaos and mayhem inside Pakistan, the intelligence service still sees the Afghan Taliban as a way to ensure influence on the other side of the border and keep India’s influence at bay. It is a dangerous game, based on a flawed premise. American officials say the Taliban, Al Qaeda and other groups increasingly act like a syndicate, sharing know-how and colluding when needed. General Kayani, whose previous job was heading the ISI, should certainly know that.
The NYTimes, praising Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff with little cause for it.
General Kayani, the ISI and the Pakistani Government has played Adm. Mullen and the rest of US, like a violin.
Suckers for the hook, line and sinker of the Wahhabi bait and switch, that we are.
My alma mater is naming their new gymnasium after Kobe Bryant. Yippee yahoo...
ReplyDeleteI am intoxicated with elation over the 411 thousand dollars he donated towards the 100 million dollar new school they built that wasn't needed.
Paul Ryan, soon to be House Budget Chairman, notes that nondefense discretionary spending rose 24% over those two years. Add stimulus funding and federal agency spending soared to $796 billion in 2010 from $434 billion, an 84% spending increase.
ReplyDelete...
The bill's 6,630 earmarks will cost more than $8.1 billion, according to Citizens Against Government Waste ...
Earmarks, 1% of the total, but generate the majority of the political noise.
Even if they were removed, it'd be of no consequence. They are but a pittance.
Besides they'd just get included earlier in the process, if the process changes. Becoming part and parcel of the other 99% of the Budget, sooner, rather than later.