Biden: Killing of al-Qaida leader is long-sought 'justice'
By MATTHEW LEE, NOMAAN MERCHANT, MIKE BALSAMO and JAMES LAPORTA
14 mins ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden announced Monday that al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Kabul, an operation he hailed as delivering “justice” while expressing hope that it brings “one more measure of closure” to families of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
The president said in an evening address from the White House that U.S. intelligence officials tracked al-Zawahri to a home in downtown Kabul where he was hiding out with his family. The president approved the operation last week and it was carried out Sunday.
Al-Zawahri and the better known Osama bin Laden plotted the 9/11 attacks that brought many ordinary Americans their first knowledge of al-Qaida. Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan on May 2, 2011, in operation carried out by U.S. Navy Seals after a nearly decade-long hunt.
“He will never again, never again, allow Afghanistan to become a terrorist safe haven because he is gone and we’re going to make sure that nothing else happens,” Biden said.
“This terrorist leader is no more,” he added.
The operation is a significant counterterrorism win for the Biden administration just 11 months after American troops left the country after a two-decade war.
The strike was carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to five people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Neither Biden nor the White House detailed the CIA's involvement in the strike.
Biden, however, paid tribute to the U.S. intelligence community in his remarks, noting that “thanks to their extraordinary persistence and skill” the operation was a “success."
Al-Zawahri’s loss eliminates the figure who more than anyone shaped al-Qaida, first as bin Laden’s deputy since 1998, then as his successor. Together, he and bin Laden turned the jihadi movement’s guns to target the United States, carrying out the deadliest attack ever on American soil — the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings.
The house Al-Zawahri was in when he was killed was owned by a top aide to senior Taliban leader Sirajuddin Haqqani, according to a senior intelligence official. The official also added that a CIA ground team and aerial reconnaissance conducted after the drone strike confirmed al-Zawahri’s death.
A senior administration official who briefed reporters on the operation on condition of anonymity said “zero” U.S. personnel were in Kabul.
Over the 20-year war in Afghanistan, the U.S. targeted and splintered al-Qaida, sending leaders into hiding. But America’s exit from Afghanistan last September gave the extremist group the opportunity to rebuild. U.S. military officials, including Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have said al-Qaida was trying to reconstitute in Afghanistan, where it faced limited threats from the now-ruling Taliban. Military leaders have warned that the group still aspired to attack the U.S.
The 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon made bin Laden America’s Enemy No. 1. But he likely could never have carried it out without his deputy. Bin Laden provided al-Qaida with charisma and money, but al-Zawahri brought tactics and organizational skills needed to forge militants into a network of cells in countries around the world.
U.S. intelligence officials have been aware for years of a network helping al-Zawahri dodge U.S. intelligence officials hunting for him, but didn’t have a bead on his possible location until recent months.
Earlier this year, U.S. officials learned that the terror leader’s wife, daughter and her children had relocated to a safe house in Kabul, according to the senior administration official who briefed reporters.
Officials eventually learned al-Zawahri was also at the Kabul safe house.
In early April, White House deputy national security adviser Jon Finer and Biden’s homeland security adviser Elizabeth D. Sherwood-Randall were briefed on this developing intelligence. Soon the intelligence was carried up to national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
Sullivan brought the information to Biden as U.S. intelligence officials built “a pattern of life through multiple independent sources of information to inform the operation,” the official said.
Senior Taliban figures were aware of al-Zawahri’s presence in Kabul, according to the official, who added the Taliban government was given no forewarning of the operation.
Inside the Biden administration, only a small group of officials at key agencies, as well as Vice President Kamala Harris, were brought into the process.
On July 1, Biden was briefed in the Situation Room about the planned operation, a briefing in which the president closely examined a model of the home Zawahri was hiding out in. He gave his final approval for the operation on Thursday. Al-Zawahri was standing on the balcony of his hideout when the strike was carried out.
“We make it clear again tonight: That no matter how long it takes, no matter where you hide, if you are a threat to our people, the United States will find you and take you out,” Biden said.
Al-Zawahri was hardly a household name like bin Laden, but he played an enormous role in the terror group's operations.
The two terror leaders' bond was forged in the late 1980s, when al-Zawahri reportedly treated the Saudi millionaire bin Laden in the caves of Afghanistan as Soviet bombardment shook the mountains around them.
Zawahri, on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist list, had a $25 million bounty on his head for any information that could be used to kill or capture him.
Al-Zawhiri and bin Laden plotted the 9/11 attacks that brought many ordinary Americans their first knowledge of al-Qaida.
Photos from the time often showed the glasses-wearing, mild-looking Egyptian doctor sitting by the side of bin Laden. Al-Zawahri had merged his group of Egyptian militants with bin Laden’s al-Qaida in the 1990s.
“The strong contingent of Egyptians applied organizational know-how, financial expertise, and military experience to wage a violent jihad against leaders whom the fighters considered to be un-Islamic and their patrons, especially the United States,” Steven A. Cook wrote for the Council on Foreign Relations last year.
When the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan demolished al-Qaida’s safe haven and scattered, killed and captured its members, al-Zawahri ensured al-Qaida’s survival. He rebuilt its leadership in the Afghan-Pakistan border region and installed allies as lieutenants in key positions.
He also reshaped the organization from a centralized planner of terror attacks into the head of a franchise chain. He led the assembling of a network of autonomous branches around the region, including in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, North Africa, Somalia, Yemen and Asia. Over the next decade, al-Qaida inspired or had a direct hand in attacks in all those areas as well as Europe, Pakistan and Turkey, including the 2004 train bombings in Madrid and the 2005 transit bombings in London.
More recently, the al-Qaida affiliate in Yemen proved itself capable of plotting attacks against U.S. soil with an attempted 2009 bombing of an American passenger jet and an attempted package bomb the following year.
But even before bin Laden’s death, al-Zawahri was struggling to maintain al-Qaida’s relevance in a changing Middle East.
He tried with little success to coopt the wave of uprisings that spread across the Arab world starting in 2011, urging Islamic hard-liners to take over in the nations where leaders had fallen. But while Islamists gained prominence in many places, they have stark ideological differences with al-Qaida and reject its agenda and leadership.
Nevertheless, al-Zawahri tried to pose as the Arab Spring’s leader. America “is facing an Islamic nation that is in revolt, having risen from its lethargy to a renaissance of jihad,” he said in a video eulogy to bin Laden, wearing a white robe and turban with an assault rifle leaning on a wall behind him.
Al-Zawahri was also a more divisive figure than his predecessor. Many militants described the soft-spoken bin Laden in adoring and almost spiritual terms.
In contrast, al-Zawahri was notoriously prickly and pedantic. He picked ideological fights with critics within the jihadi camp, wagging his finger scoldingly in his videos. Even some key figures in al-Qaida’s central leadership were put off, calling him overly controlling, secretive and divisive.
Some militants whose association with bin Laden predated al-Zawahri’s always saw him as an arrogant intruder.
“I have never taken orders from al-Zawahri,” Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, one of the network’s top figures in East Africa until his 2011 death, sneered in a memoir posted on line in 2009. “We don’t take orders from anyone but our historical leadership.”
There have been rumors of al-Zawahri’s death on and off for several years. But a video surfaced in April of the al-Qaida leader praising a Indian Muslim woman who had defied a ban on wearing a hijab, or headscarf. That footage was the first proof in months that he was still alive.
A statement from Afghanistan’s Taliban government confirmed the airstrike, but did not mention al-Zawahri or any other casualties.
It said it “strongly condemns this attack and calls it a clear violation of international principles and the Doha Agreement,” the 2020 U.S. pact with the Taliban that led to the withdrawal of American forces.
“Such actions are a repetition of the failed experiences of the past 20 years and are against the interests of the United States of America, Afghanistan, and the region,” the statement said.
—-
Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor, Ellen Knickmeyer, Zeke Miller, Aamer Madhani and Darlene Superville in Washington; Rahim Faiez in Islamabad; and Lee Keath in Cairo contributed reporting.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
i think drone strikes are extremely cowardly, however, with nobody else injured or killed, this was the cleanest possible outcome. the dude lived 21 years too many.
i do fucking hate drone strikes though.
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.- Hemingway
Ahmad Naser came to Kabul to escape the Taliban. The 30-year-old had been a guard at the American military’s Camp Lawton, in Herat, and had applied for a US Special Immigrant Visa to leave the country, given the risk of reprisals. His fears were directed at the wrong army.
In the early evening of 29 August, the day before the last American military planes left Afghanistan, a US drone lit up Khwaja Burga, a densely populated district in Kabul. The strike killed a total of 10 civilians, including Mr Naser and seven children, according to family members. They had reportedly been coming outside to greet relative Zemari Ahmadi, also killed, who worked with a US aid group distributing food to refugees.
The US initially praised the strike for “eliminating an imminent Isis-K threat” to the Kabul airport, adding that it didn’t have indications of any apparent civilian deaths in the residential neighborhood it just hit with a missile. US Central Command (CENTCOM) eventually issued an update, saying, “It is unclear what may have happened, and we are investigating further”, though it maintained it had foiled an Isis plot. Relatives of the deceased insist no one present was a terrorist.
“The Americans said the airstrike killed Daesh members,” a neighbor toldTheWashington Post, using the Arabic abbreviation for Isis. “Where is Daesh here? Were these children Daesh?”
After the Kabul strike, Pentagon spokesperson John F. Kirby told NPR: “No military on Earth does as much as we do to try to prevent civilian casualties.”
Even if that is true, Ahmad Naser will very likely be forgotten in the US, where the vast, uncounted mass of civilians slain by Americans remains far outside the popular understanding of 9/11. On that day, 2,977 people were killed, and the US has avenged these innocents many hundreds of times over. US airstrikes alone have killed as many as 48,308 civilians, according to conflict monitor Airwars.
But neither the public, nor the victims’ families, will likely ever get a full accounting of the deaths. The American government has steadfastly avoided true accountability on the ‘War on Terror’, from explicitly refusing to count bodies, to half-heartedly committing to transparency, to outright revelling in the killing of innocents.
Each year, America and the world mourns those lost in the atrocities of 9/11. Yet 20 years later, we still don’t know how many others should be mourned along with them for the atrocities that followed.
More than 363,000 civilians have been killed in the War on Terror, according to an estimate from Brown University’s Costs of War Project. . And many times more people have been slain after the battles are over. Cumulatively, the overall civilian death toll could very well exceed 1 million people, when taking into account indirect deaths from war that come from destroyed infrastructure and hospitals, disease, and displacement, Neta C. Crawford, a Boston University political science professor who directs the Costs of War project, told The Independent.
And that’s just what we know from afar.
Because Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen and other post-9/11 battlefields are war zones – where the US has launched more than an estimated 90,000 strikes – large-scale attempts from researchers to count the dead remain difficult.
“It’s going to be very hard until these places are peaceful to figure that out,” Ms Crawford said.
The biggest hurdle, however, has been the US government itself. After years of agitation from families, rights groups, and journalists, the US military began publicly disclosing how many civilians it kills each year in 2018, but it regularly undercounts that figure to the point of near-irrelevance. A New York Times investigation, for example, found that during the air campaign against Isis in Iraq, 31 times more civilians were killed than officially acknowledged.
The US military tends to look into cases when someone else, be they a grief-stricken family or a crusading journalist, demands more information. Some estimates suggest two thirds of US casualty estimates come from referrals, rather than internal investigations. Inquiries that do go forward, on attacks such as drone strikes, are often threadbare at best.
Us Air Strike Targets Is Member In Afghanistan M199223
“They’re not speaking to local witnesses,” said Aisha Dennis of Reprieve, a civil rights organisation that advocates for victims of drone strikes. “All of the basic investigatory tools that you would normally use to find out what happened in a crime scene or when somebody has been killed ordinarily, they’re not using those.”
The Independent requested comment from CENTCOM, which oversees US forces in the Middle East, on the number of civilians killed during the War on Terror. A spokesperson recommended submitting a Freedom of Information Act request, a public records request that often takes months or years to get a satisfactory reply to, and declined to answer policy questions about how the military counts civilian deaths.
“It’s a manifestation of the project of elite impunity that has always run through this entire enterprise and a manifestation of American exceptionalism, whereby the people that America kills are not somehow as real human beings as Americans are,” said Pulitzer Prize-winning national security reporter Spencer Ackerman, author of Reign of Terror, a recent history of the War on Terror. “The United States has made detailed announcements every time a service member was killed in the War on Terror. They know how to count this. They choose not to do it.”
This impunity has been a central feature of the War on Terror for the last 20 years, regardless of whether a Democrat or Republican was in the White House.
During the Bush administration, American officials talked openly about how unimportant they felt counting civilian deaths was. Their argument was both that body counts were “not knowable”, as a CENTCOM spokesperson once put it, but also not helpful. They worried a detailed picture of the war could turn the public against it, as had happened during the Vietnam War.
“Having been a rifle platoon leader in Vietnam, asking questions from Washington about how many dead today is truly counterproductive,” general Peter Pace said in 2002.
“You know, we don’t do body counts,’’ general Tommy R. Franks added that same year.
As late as 2006, well into serious fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, George Bush told a group of conservative reporters, “We have made a conscious effort not to be a body-count team.”
“That was a lie,” said Chris Woods, co-founder of Airwars, a group that meticulously tracks civilian casualties.
The information was always there, Mr Woods said, it just hasn’t been made public.
“We found out from the WikiLeaks releases on Afghanistan and Iraq that of course the US was counting civilian casualties, not only from its own actions, but from terrorists like Al Qaeda. It just wasn’t releasing its own information.”
As a result, the early, crucial years of the War on Terror remain factually hazy, even as their geopolitical impact was fundamental.
There was a measure of hope that the administration of Barack Obama, a former constitutional law professor, would be different, more humane.
In 2009, the commander of US forces in Afghanistan at the time, general Stanley McChrystal, made the rules for airstrikes far stricter, drastically reducing the number of unintended casualties for the next few years.
“We’re going to lose this f****** war if we don’t stop killing civilians,” he told his staff, according to his memoir.
Mr Obama also instituted more inter-agency deliberation on issues like civilian harm before launching strikes, and late in his administration, signed an executive order mandating the US train its personnel to protect civilians, accept responsibility for attacks, and make regular public reports about strikes outside of traditional war zones, explaining the general differences between official and NGO analyses of the killings.
Civilians and non-combatants were, and are, often killed in “signature strikes”, launched not at a known target, but rather individuals who seemed like they might be terrorists based on their personal networks, as well activities such as driving in convoys or carrying weapons, a common practice for non-militant young men in war zones in the Middle East.
Mistakes were rampant. In Yemen, for example, a cluster of five US drone strikes and a special forces raid killed 34 members of two families, including nine children, the youngest being a three-month-old baby shot by a US Navy SEAL. One of these attacks, in 2013, killed 12 men in a wedding convoy, all farmers and construction workers, leaving 73 children without breadwinners.
The Yemeni government and United Nations both condemned the strike. The US has never issued an apology.
“People in the village are afraid to gather,” Abdullah Mabkhout Al Ameri, some of whose family was killed during the strikes, told Reprieve. “Everybody feels that they are a target. We thought these drones only kill wanted people, never innocent people. Some people now when they walk, they just keep staring at the sky.”
The unmanned aircraft, often portrayed as silent, surgically precise weapons, make an audible buzz for those living underneath them. For many, it’s a sound on the numerous, obscure battlefields of the War on Terror that stands for accidental death far more than intentional peacekeeping.
Whatever safeguards were in place drifted off as the Obama administration confronted Isis in Iraq and Syria. The battle for Mosul, which one general called the “most constant heavy combat that we have [seen] probably since before Vietnam”, killed as many as eleven thousand civilians, 10 times more than the official US estimate.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Great news this president kills people too…glad he’s got it in him. Hope 20 years of collateral damage was worth it.
You don't support killing one of the guys responsible for 9/11?
I don't support killing. Eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind and all of that. Surely those wars have killed enough people to get justice for the 2,994 victims and then some. Not to mention the fact that this didn't happen in a vacuum of hate for Americans. There were many moves(read: Blunders) in the Middle East up to 9/11 that led to the anti-american sentiment in the region, including the 1953 CIA backed coup in Iran, The US, Russia proxy war in Afghanistan where we trained and supplied arms to many Muhjahideen that later became al qaida, generally using the entire area as if we own the oil and backing whatever side in any conflict that will favor us. And now we are still doing the same thing, the questionable legality of toppling Libya and the awful aftermmath, Supporting the war in Yemen, backing MBS and the Saudis. All the while we still haven't seen all of the connections between 9/11 and the Saudis due to our special relationship with them. I see this as nothing more than a timed killing to promote some US jingoism at a time when our public support of our current proxy war is flagging.
Scio me nihil scire
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
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The Juggler
Behind that bush over there. Posts: 47,272
Great news this president kills people too…glad he’s got it in him. Hope 20 years of collateral damage was worth it.
You don't support killing one of the guys responsible for 9/11?
I don't support killing. Eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind and all of that. Surely those wars have killed enough people to get justice for the 2,994 victims and then some. Not to mention the fact that this didn't happen in a vacuum of hate for Americans. There were many moves(read: Blunders) in the Middle East up to 9/11 that led to the anti-american sentiment in the region, including the 1953 CIA backed coup in Iran, The US, Russia proxy war in Afghanistan where we trained and supplied arms to many Muhjahideen that later became al qaida, generally using the entire area as if we own the oil and backing whatever side in any conflict that will favor us. And now we are still doing the same thing, the questionable legality of toppling Libya and the awful aftermmath, Supporting the war in Yemen, backing MBS and the Saudis. All the while we still haven't seen all of the connections between 9/11 and the Saudis due to our special relationship with them. I see this as nothing more than a timed killing to promote some US jingoism at a time when our public support of our current proxy war is flagging.
You didn't support the killing of Osama either then?
Great news this president kills people too…glad he’s got it in him. Hope 20 years of collateral damage was worth it.
You don't support killing one of the guys responsible for 9/11?
I don't support killing. Eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind and all of that. Surely those wars have killed enough people to get justice for the 2,994 victims and then some. Not to mention the fact that this didn't happen in a vacuum of hate for Americans. There were many moves(read: Blunders) in the Middle East up to 9/11 that led to the anti-american sentiment in the region, including the 1953 CIA backed coup in Iran, The US, Russia proxy war in Afghanistan where we trained and supplied arms to many Muhjahideen that later became al qaida, generally using the entire area as if we own the oil and backing whatever side in any conflict that will favor us. And now we are still doing the same thing, the questionable legality of toppling Libya and the awful aftermmath, Supporting the war in Yemen, backing MBS and the Saudis. All the while we still haven't seen all of the connections between 9/11 and the Saudis due to our special relationship with them. I see this as nothing more than a timed killing to promote some US jingoism at a time when our public support of our current proxy war is flagging.
You didn't support the killing of Osama either then?
No I did not support that or the way it was done, I am not a fan of state sanctioned extra judicial killings against civilians or foreigners, and wayyyyyyy back when I did not support the invasion and occupation of Iraq or Afghanistan. There was a minute during september-oct 2001 where I got swept up in a patriotic fervor like everyone else, but luckily I pulled my head out of my star spangled ass long enough to not do something stupid like join the service and rush off to kill Afghani civilians and instead joined local anti war movements.
Scio me nihil scire
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
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Options
The Juggler
Behind that bush over there. Posts: 47,272
Great news this president kills people too…glad he’s got it in him. Hope 20 years of collateral damage was worth it.
You don't support killing one of the guys responsible for 9/11?
I don't support killing. Eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind and all of that. Surely those wars have killed enough people to get justice for the 2,994 victims and then some. Not to mention the fact that this didn't happen in a vacuum of hate for Americans. There were many moves(read: Blunders) in the Middle East up to 9/11 that led to the anti-american sentiment in the region, including the 1953 CIA backed coup in Iran, The US, Russia proxy war in Afghanistan where we trained and supplied arms to many Muhjahideen that later became al qaida, generally using the entire area as if we own the oil and backing whatever side in any conflict that will favor us. And now we are still doing the same thing, the questionable legality of toppling Libya and the awful aftermmath, Supporting the war in Yemen, backing MBS and the Saudis. All the while we still haven't seen all of the connections between 9/11 and the Saudis due to our special relationship with them. I see this as nothing more than a timed killing to promote some US jingoism at a time when our public support of our current proxy war is flagging.
You didn't support the killing of Osama either then?
No I did not support that or the way it was done, I am not a fan of state sanctioned extra judicial killings against civilians or foreigners, and wayyyyyyy back when I did not support the invasion and occupation of Iraq or Afghanistan. There was a minute during september-oct 2001 where I got swept up in a patriotic fervor like everyone else, but luckily I pulled my head out of my star spangled ass long enough to not do something stupid like join the service and rush off to kill Afghani civilians and instead joined local anti war movements.
You are nothing if not consistent then! God speed.
I'm good with it. It would suck if innocents were killed but there were a lot of innocents killed on 9-11
Remember the Thomas Nine !! (10/02/2018)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago 2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy 2013: London ON, Chicago; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE) 2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston 2020: Oakland, Oakland:2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana 2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
What actual policy did VP Biden influence or change as it related to Ukraine while Hunter was on the board of Burisma?
I’d appreciate a credible link to actual policy or legitimate news reports. Considering how nefarious and well known this scandal is, there must be something in the public record, right? State Department docs released under FOIA? Repub congressional investigation? Records requested from someone somewhere? Maybe a lawsuit from a repub “think” tank?
I look forward to two years of house repub hearings and investigation leaks, sprinkled with threats of impeachment beginning in January 2023.
Yep. And nothing will be done about the actual corruption by high ranking government officials from the previous administration .
What actual policy did VP Biden influence or change as it related to Ukraine while Hunter was on the board of Burisma?
I’d appreciate a credible link to actual policy or legitimate news reports. Considering how nefarious and well known this scandal is, there must be something in the public record, right? State Department docs released under FOIA? Repub congressional investigation? Records requested from someone somewhere? Maybe a lawsuit from a repub “think” tank?
I look forward to two years of house repub hearings and investigation leaks, sprinkled with threats of impeachment beginning in January 2023.
Yep. And nothing will be done about the actual corruption by high ranking government officials from the previous administration .
Previous as well as current!
Magnitude matters. To put improprieties of the Biden administration on the same level as Trump's is not grounded in reality.
'05 - TO, '06 - TO 1, '08 - NYC 1 & 2, '09 - TO, Chi 1 & 2, '10 - Buffalo, NYC 1 & 2, '11 - TO 1 & 2, Hamilton, '13 - Buffalo, Brooklyn 1 & 2, '15 - Global Citizen, '16 - TO 1 & 2, Chi 2
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
What actual policy did VP Biden influence or change as it related to Ukraine while Hunter was on the board of Burisma?
I’d appreciate a credible link to actual policy or legitimate news reports. Considering how nefarious and well known this scandal is, there must be something in the public record, right? State Department docs released under FOIA? Repub congressional investigation? Records requested from someone somewhere? Maybe a lawsuit from a repub “think” tank?
I look forward to two years of house repub hearings and investigation leaks, sprinkled with threats of impeachment beginning in January 2023.
Yep. And nothing will be done about the actual corruption by high ranking government officials from the previous administration .
Previous as well as current!
What corruption by the current admin? Please be specific.
What actual policy did VP Biden influence or change as it related to Ukraine while Hunter was on the board of Burisma?
I’d appreciate a credible link to actual policy or legitimate news reports. Considering how nefarious and well known this scandal is, there must be something in the public record, right? State Department docs released under FOIA? Repub congressional investigation? Records requested from someone somewhere? Maybe a lawsuit from a repub “think” tank?
I look forward to two years of house repub hearings and investigation leaks, sprinkled with threats of impeachment beginning in January 2023.
Yep. And nothing will be done about the actual corruption by high ranking government officials from the previous administration .
Previous as well as current!
What corruption by the current admin? Please be specific.
Hunter's laptop...obvi
Remember the Thomas Nine !! (10/02/2018)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago 2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy 2013: London ON, Chicago; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE) 2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston 2020: Oakland, Oakland:2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana 2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
What actual policy did VP Biden influence or change as it related to Ukraine while Hunter was on the board of Burisma?
I’d appreciate a credible link to actual policy or legitimate news reports. Considering how nefarious and well known this scandal is, there must be something in the public record, right? State Department docs released under FOIA? Repub congressional investigation? Records requested from someone somewhere? Maybe a lawsuit from a repub “think” tank?
I look forward to two years of house repub hearings and investigation leaks, sprinkled with threats of impeachment beginning in January 2023.
Yep. And nothing will be done about the actual corruption by high ranking government officials from the previous administration .
Previous as well as current!
What corruption by the current admin? Please be specific.
Hunter's laptop...obvi
I thought it was Hillary’s emails from the Oval as she’s really in charge. Lets go Brenda!
What actual policy did VP Biden influence or change as it related to Ukraine while Hunter was on the board of Burisma?
I’d appreciate a credible link to actual policy or legitimate news reports. Considering how nefarious and well known this scandal is, there must be something in the public record, right? State Department docs released under FOIA? Repub congressional investigation? Records requested from someone somewhere? Maybe a lawsuit from a repub “think” tank?
I look forward to two years of house repub hearings and investigation leaks, sprinkled with threats of impeachment beginning in January 2023.
Yep. And nothing will be done about the actual corruption by high ranking government officials from the previous administration .
Previous as well as current!
What corruption by the current admin? Please be specific.
Hunter's laptop...obvi
I thought it was Hillary’s emails from the Oval as she’s really in charge. Lets go Brenda!
My favorite are the Let's Go Brandon stickers I see on vehicle windshields now. There sure are some extreme people out there. It's like their way of signaling to other assholes like them that they're on the same page. The cult fervor is unlike any I've ever seen.
What actual policy did VP Biden influence or change as it related to Ukraine while Hunter was on the board of Burisma?
I’d appreciate a credible link to actual policy or legitimate news reports. Considering how nefarious and well known this scandal is, there must be something in the public record, right? State Department docs released under FOIA? Repub congressional investigation? Records requested from someone somewhere? Maybe a lawsuit from a repub “think” tank?
I look forward to two years of house repub hearings and investigation leaks, sprinkled with threats of impeachment beginning in January 2023.
Yep. And nothing will be done about the actual corruption by high ranking government officials from the previous administration .
Previous as well as current!
What corruption by the current admin? Please be specific.
Hunter's laptop...obvi
I thought it was Hillary’s emails from the Oval as she’s really in charge. Lets go Brenda!
My favorite are the Let's Go Brandon stickers I see on vehicle windshields now. There sure are some extreme people out there. It's like their way of signaling to other assholes like them that they're on the same page. The cult fervor is unlike any I've ever seen.
Or guy in my hood with the F**K JOE BIDEN flag....the asterisks are on the flag but still. How white fucking trash can you get?
As much as these fuckers used to say that dems put Obama on a pedestal I sure as fuck don't remember seeing any Obama flags or hats. I loved Obama and all I have is a shot glass.
Remember the Thomas Nine !! (10/02/2018)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago 2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy 2013: London ON, Chicago; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE) 2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston 2020: Oakland, Oakland:2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana 2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
What actual policy did VP Biden influence or change as it related to Ukraine while Hunter was on the board of Burisma?
I’d appreciate a credible link to actual policy or legitimate news reports. Considering how nefarious and well known this scandal is, there must be something in the public record, right? State Department docs released under FOIA? Repub congressional investigation? Records requested from someone somewhere? Maybe a lawsuit from a repub “think” tank?
I look forward to two years of house repub hearings and investigation leaks, sprinkled with threats of impeachment beginning in January 2023.
Yep. And nothing will be done about the actual corruption by high ranking government officials from the previous administration .
Previous as well as current!
What corruption by the current admin? Please be specific.
Hunter's laptop...obvi
I thought it was Hillary’s emails from the Oval as she’s really in charge. Lets go Brenda!
My favorite are the Let's Go Brandon stickers I see on vehicle windshields now. There sure are some extreme people out there. It's like their way of signaling to other assholes like them that they're on the same page. The cult fervor is unlike any I've ever seen.
Or guy in my hood with the F**K JOE BIDEN flag....the asterisks are on the flag but still. How white fucking trash can you get?
As much as these fuckers used to say that dems put Obama on a pedestal I sure as fuck don't remember seeing any Obama flags or hats. I loved Obama and all I have is a shot glass.
It's super white trash. It's like having upscale porn magazines lying around the house.
What actual policy did VP Biden influence or change as it related to Ukraine while Hunter was on the board of Burisma?
I’d appreciate a credible link to actual policy or legitimate news reports. Considering how nefarious and well known this scandal is, there must be something in the public record, right? State Department docs released under FOIA? Repub congressional investigation? Records requested from someone somewhere? Maybe a lawsuit from a repub “think” tank?
I look forward to two years of house repub hearings and investigation leaks, sprinkled with threats of impeachment beginning in January 2023.
Yep. And nothing will be done about the actual corruption by high ranking government officials from the previous administration .
Previous as well as current!
What corruption by the current admin? Please be specific.
Hunter's laptop...obvi
I thought it was Hillary’s emails from the Oval as she’s really in charge. Lets go Brenda!
My favorite are the Let's Go Brandon stickers I see on vehicle windshields now. There sure are some extreme people out there. It's like their way of signaling to other assholes like them that they're on the same page. The cult fervor is unlike any I've ever seen.
Or guy in my hood with the F**K JOE BIDEN flag....the asterisks are on the flag but still. How white fucking trash can you get?
As much as these fuckers used to say that dems put Obama on a pedestal I sure as fuck don't remember seeing any Obama flags or hats. I loved Obama and all I have is a shot glass.
Guy down the road from me flies that flag and the Don't Blame me I voted for Trump flag. This coupled with his drunk driving plates on his truck and that he regularly does burn outs in front of our drunken red neck neighbor's house in his Chrysler Sebring with the top down speaks volumes.
What actual policy did VP Biden influence or change as it related to Ukraine while Hunter was on the board of Burisma?
I’d appreciate a credible link to actual policy or legitimate news reports. Considering how nefarious and well known this scandal is, there must be something in the public record, right? State Department docs released under FOIA? Repub congressional investigation? Records requested from someone somewhere? Maybe a lawsuit from a repub “think” tank?
I look forward to two years of house repub hearings and investigation leaks, sprinkled with threats of impeachment beginning in January 2023.
Yep. And nothing will be done about the actual corruption by high ranking government officials from the previous administration .
Previous as well as current!
What corruption by the current admin? Please be specific.
Hunter's laptop...obvi
I thought it was Hillary’s emails from the Oval as she’s really in charge. Lets go Brenda!
My favorite are the Let's Go Brandon stickers I see on vehicle windshields now. There sure are some extreme people out there. It's like their way of signaling to other assholes like them that they're on the same page. The cult fervor is unlike any I've ever seen.
Or guy in my hood with the F**K JOE BIDEN flag....the asterisks are on the flag but still. How white fucking trash can you get?
As much as these fuckers used to say that dems put Obama on a pedestal I sure as fuck don't remember seeing any Obama flags or hats. I loved Obama and all I have is a shot glass.
Wearing a hat out in public that says,”Fuck Biden,” except the U is a ‘Murican flag. Seen it at the post office the other day. The post office seems to attract all kinds. I used to love running the Lyndon LaRouche supporter gauntlet.
I had an Obama bottle opener that a friend picked up in Hawaii but I dropped it and his head came off.
What actual policy did VP Biden influence or change as it related to Ukraine while Hunter was on the board of Burisma?
I’d appreciate a credible link to actual policy or legitimate news reports. Considering how nefarious and well known this scandal is, there must be something in the public record, right? State Department docs released under FOIA? Repub congressional investigation? Records requested from someone somewhere? Maybe a lawsuit from a repub “think” tank?
I look forward to two years of house repub hearings and investigation leaks, sprinkled with threats of impeachment beginning in January 2023.
Yep. And nothing will be done about the actual corruption by high ranking government officials from the previous administration .
Previous as well as current!
What corruption by the current admin? Please be specific.
Hunter's laptop...obvi
I thought it was Hillary’s emails from the Oval as she’s really in charge. Lets go Brenda!
My favorite are the Let's Go Brandon stickers I see on vehicle windshields now. There sure are some extreme people out there. It's like their way of signaling to other assholes like them that they're on the same page. The cult fervor is unlike any I've ever seen.
Or guy in my hood with the F**K JOE BIDEN flag....the asterisks are on the flag but still. How white fucking trash can you get?
As much as these fuckers used to say that dems put Obama on a pedestal I sure as fuck don't remember seeing any Obama flags or hats. I loved Obama and all I have is a shot glass.
It's super white trash. It's like having upscale porn magazines lying around the house.
What's funny to me is that his house sits right on the 18th tee box of the golf course running through our hood. His yard looks like shit...tree beds full of weeds...grass growing in the cracks of the sidewalk, etc. Not looking down on that necessarily except it's probably a $600K house.
Remember the Thomas Nine !! (10/02/2018)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago 2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy 2013: London ON, Chicago; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE) 2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston 2020: Oakland, Oakland:2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana 2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
What actual policy did VP Biden influence or change as it related to Ukraine while Hunter was on the board of Burisma?
I’d appreciate a credible link to actual policy or legitimate news reports. Considering how nefarious and well known this scandal is, there must be something in the public record, right? State Department docs released under FOIA? Repub congressional investigation? Records requested from someone somewhere? Maybe a lawsuit from a repub “think” tank?
I look forward to two years of house repub hearings and investigation leaks, sprinkled with threats of impeachment beginning in January 2023.
Yep. And nothing will be done about the actual corruption by high ranking government officials from the previous administration .
Previous as well as current!
What corruption by the current admin? Please be specific.
Hunter's laptop...obvi
I thought it was Hillary’s emails from the Oval as she’s really in charge. Lets go Brenda!
My favorite are the Let's Go Brandon stickers I see on vehicle windshields now. There sure are some extreme people out there. It's like their way of signaling to other assholes like them that they're on the same page. The cult fervor is unlike any I've ever seen.
Or guy in my hood with the F**K JOE BIDEN flag....the asterisks are on the flag but still. How white fucking trash can you get?
As much as these fuckers used to say that dems put Obama on a pedestal I sure as fuck don't remember seeing any Obama flags or hats. I loved Obama and all I have is a shot glass.
Guy down the road from me flies that flag and the Don't Blame me I voted for Trump flag. This coupled with his drunk driving plates on his truck and that he regularly does burn outs in front of our drunken red neck neighbor's house in his Chrysler Sebring with the top down speaks volumes.
Not sure what he is referring to but to us those are plates that have a sheriff's star or FOP star that rednecks think protect you from getting pulled over.
Remember the Thomas Nine !! (10/02/2018)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago 2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy 2013: London ON, Chicago; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE) 2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston 2020: Oakland, Oakland:2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana 2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
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hedonist
standing on the edge of forever Posts: 24,524
What actual policy did VP Biden influence or change as it related to Ukraine while Hunter was on the board of Burisma?
I’d appreciate a credible link to actual policy or legitimate news reports. Considering how nefarious and well known this scandal is, there must be something in the public record, right? State Department docs released under FOIA? Repub congressional investigation? Records requested from someone somewhere? Maybe a lawsuit from a repub “think” tank?
I look forward to two years of house repub hearings and investigation leaks, sprinkled with threats of impeachment beginning in January 2023.
Yep. And nothing will be done about the actual corruption by high ranking government officials from the previous administration .
Previous as well as current!
What corruption by the current admin? Please be specific.
Hunter's laptop...obvi
I thought it was Hillary’s emails from the Oval as she’s really in charge. Lets go Brenda!
My favorite are the Let's Go Brandon stickers I see on vehicle windshields now. There sure are some extreme people out there. It's like their way of signaling to other assholes like them that they're on the same page. The cult fervor is unlike any I've ever seen.
Or guy in my hood with the F**K JOE BIDEN flag....the asterisks are on the flag but still. How white fucking trash can you get?
As much as these fuckers used to say that dems put Obama on a pedestal I sure as fuck don't remember seeing any Obama flags or hats. I loved Obama and all I have is a shot glass.
Guy down the road from me flies that flag and the Don't Blame me I voted for Trump flag. This coupled with his drunk driving plates on his truck and that he regularly does burn outs in front of our drunken red neck neighbor's house in his Chrysler Sebring with the top down speaks volumes.
What are drunk driving plates?
“I got busted for DUI and all I got were these lousy plates “
What actual policy did VP Biden influence or change as it related to Ukraine while Hunter was on the board of Burisma?
I’d appreciate a credible link to actual policy or legitimate news reports. Considering how nefarious and well known this scandal is, there must be something in the public record, right? State Department docs released under FOIA? Repub congressional investigation? Records requested from someone somewhere? Maybe a lawsuit from a repub “think” tank?
I look forward to two years of house repub hearings and investigation leaks, sprinkled with threats of impeachment beginning in January 2023.
Yep. And nothing will be done about the actual corruption by high ranking government officials from the previous administration .
Previous as well as current!
What corruption by the current admin? Please be specific.
Hunter's laptop...obvi
I thought it was Hillary’s emails from the Oval as she’s really in charge. Lets go Brenda!
My favorite are the Let's Go Brandon stickers I see on vehicle windshields now. There sure are some extreme people out there. It's like their way of signaling to other assholes like them that they're on the same page. The cult fervor is unlike any I've ever seen.
Or guy in my hood with the F**K JOE BIDEN flag....the asterisks are on the flag but still. How white fucking trash can you get?
As much as these fuckers used to say that dems put Obama on a pedestal I sure as fuck don't remember seeing any Obama flags or hats. I loved Obama and all I have is a shot glass.
Guy down the road from me flies that flag and the Don't Blame me I voted for Trump flag. This coupled with his drunk driving plates on his truck and that he regularly does burn outs in front of our drunken red neck neighbor's house in his Chrysler Sebring with the top down speaks volumes.
What are drunk driving plates?
“I got busted for DUI and all I got were these lousy plates “
i liked obama and i don't think i ever owned anything with his image on it.
i did save the 3rd obama/biden campaign yard sign i got because of the historical significance when he won the first election but ended up tossing it when i moved in 2016. someone stole the first one i had in the yard, and then another someone ripped the 2nd sign out of my yard and threw it on my driveway, so out of spite i put a 3rd one in the yard and that one actually survived.
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.- Hemingway
a guy on my street has a pretty nice ford pickup truck, and he has a huge "let's go brandon" sticker covering up 1/3 of the entire back window. i drive by every day and when i see it i think "is it worth advertising how much of an idiot you are every time you leave the house?"
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.- Hemingway
Comments
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden announced Monday that al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Kabul, an operation he hailed as delivering “justice” while expressing hope that it brings “one more measure of closure” to families of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
The president said in an evening address from the White House that U.S. intelligence officials tracked al-Zawahri to a home in downtown Kabul where he was hiding out with his family. The president approved the operation last week and it was carried out Sunday.
Al-Zawahri and the better known Osama bin Laden plotted the 9/11 attacks that brought many ordinary Americans their first knowledge of al-Qaida. Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan on May 2, 2011, in operation carried out by U.S. Navy Seals after a nearly decade-long hunt.
“He will never again, never again, allow Afghanistan to become a terrorist safe haven because he is gone and we’re going to make sure that nothing else happens,” Biden said.
“This terrorist leader is no more,” he added.
The operation is a significant counterterrorism win for the Biden administration just 11 months after American troops left the country after a two-decade war.
AFGHANISTAN
EXPLAINER: Who was al-Zawahri — and why did US kill him?
Al-Zawahri's path went from Cairo clinic to top of al-Qaida
Iran says border guards have clashed with Afghan Taliban
Taliban say 2 died in Friday explosion at Kabul cricket game
The strike was carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to five people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Neither Biden nor the White House detailed the CIA's involvement in the strike.
Biden, however, paid tribute to the U.S. intelligence community in his remarks, noting that “thanks to their extraordinary persistence and skill” the operation was a “success."
Al-Zawahri’s loss eliminates the figure who more than anyone shaped al-Qaida, first as bin Laden’s deputy since 1998, then as his successor. Together, he and bin Laden turned the jihadi movement’s guns to target the United States, carrying out the deadliest attack ever on American soil — the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings.
The house Al-Zawahri was in when he was killed was owned by a top aide to senior Taliban leader Sirajuddin Haqqani, according to a senior intelligence official. The official also added that a CIA ground team and aerial reconnaissance conducted after the drone strike confirmed al-Zawahri’s death.
A senior administration official who briefed reporters on the operation on condition of anonymity said “zero” U.S. personnel were in Kabul.
Over the 20-year war in Afghanistan, the U.S. targeted and splintered al-Qaida, sending leaders into hiding. But America’s exit from Afghanistan last September gave the extremist group the opportunity to rebuild. U.S. military officials, including Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have said al-Qaida was trying to reconstitute in Afghanistan, where it faced limited threats from the now-ruling Taliban. Military leaders have warned that the group still aspired to attack the U.S.
The 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon made bin Laden America’s Enemy No. 1. But he likely could never have carried it out without his deputy. Bin Laden provided al-Qaida with charisma and money, but al-Zawahri brought tactics and organizational skills needed to forge militants into a network of cells in countries around the world.
U.S. intelligence officials have been aware for years of a network helping al-Zawahri dodge U.S. intelligence officials hunting for him, but didn’t have a bead on his possible location until recent months.
Earlier this year, U.S. officials learned that the terror leader’s wife, daughter and her children had relocated to a safe house in Kabul, according to the senior administration official who briefed reporters.
Officials eventually learned al-Zawahri was also at the Kabul safe house.
In early April, White House deputy national security adviser Jon Finer and Biden’s homeland security adviser Elizabeth D. Sherwood-Randall were briefed on this developing intelligence. Soon the intelligence was carried up to national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
Sullivan brought the information to Biden as U.S. intelligence officials built “a pattern of life through multiple independent sources of information to inform the operation,” the official said.
Senior Taliban figures were aware of al-Zawahri’s presence in Kabul, according to the official, who added the Taliban government was given no forewarning of the operation.
Inside the Biden administration, only a small group of officials at key agencies, as well as Vice President Kamala Harris, were brought into the process.
On July 1, Biden was briefed in the Situation Room about the planned operation, a briefing in which the president closely examined a model of the home Zawahri was hiding out in. He gave his final approval for the operation on Thursday. Al-Zawahri was standing on the balcony of his hideout when the strike was carried out.
“We make it clear again tonight: That no matter how long it takes, no matter where you hide, if you are a threat to our people, the United States will find you and take you out,” Biden said.
Al-Zawahri was hardly a household name like bin Laden, but he played an enormous role in the terror group's operations.
The two terror leaders' bond was forged in the late 1980s, when al-Zawahri reportedly treated the Saudi millionaire bin Laden in the caves of Afghanistan as Soviet bombardment shook the mountains around them.
Zawahri, on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist list, had a $25 million bounty on his head for any information that could be used to kill or capture him.
Al-Zawhiri and bin Laden plotted the 9/11 attacks that brought many ordinary Americans their first knowledge of al-Qaida.
Photos from the time often showed the glasses-wearing, mild-looking Egyptian doctor sitting by the side of bin Laden. Al-Zawahri had merged his group of Egyptian militants with bin Laden’s al-Qaida in the 1990s.
“The strong contingent of Egyptians applied organizational know-how, financial expertise, and military experience to wage a violent jihad against leaders whom the fighters considered to be un-Islamic and their patrons, especially the United States,” Steven A. Cook wrote for the Council on Foreign Relations last year.
When the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan demolished al-Qaida’s safe haven and scattered, killed and captured its members, al-Zawahri ensured al-Qaida’s survival. He rebuilt its leadership in the Afghan-Pakistan border region and installed allies as lieutenants in key positions.
He also reshaped the organization from a centralized planner of terror attacks into the head of a franchise chain. He led the assembling of a network of autonomous branches around the region, including in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, North Africa, Somalia, Yemen and Asia. Over the next decade, al-Qaida inspired or had a direct hand in attacks in all those areas as well as Europe, Pakistan and Turkey, including the 2004 train bombings in Madrid and the 2005 transit bombings in London.
More recently, the al-Qaida affiliate in Yemen proved itself capable of plotting attacks against U.S. soil with an attempted 2009 bombing of an American passenger jet and an attempted package bomb the following year.
But even before bin Laden’s death, al-Zawahri was struggling to maintain al-Qaida’s relevance in a changing Middle East.
He tried with little success to coopt the wave of uprisings that spread across the Arab world starting in 2011, urging Islamic hard-liners to take over in the nations where leaders had fallen. But while Islamists gained prominence in many places, they have stark ideological differences with al-Qaida and reject its agenda and leadership.
Nevertheless, al-Zawahri tried to pose as the Arab Spring’s leader. America “is facing an Islamic nation that is in revolt, having risen from its lethargy to a renaissance of jihad,” he said in a video eulogy to bin Laden, wearing a white robe and turban with an assault rifle leaning on a wall behind him.
Al-Zawahri was also a more divisive figure than his predecessor. Many militants described the soft-spoken bin Laden in adoring and almost spiritual terms.
In contrast, al-Zawahri was notoriously prickly and pedantic. He picked ideological fights with critics within the jihadi camp, wagging his finger scoldingly in his videos. Even some key figures in al-Qaida’s central leadership were put off, calling him overly controlling, secretive and divisive.
Some militants whose association with bin Laden predated al-Zawahri’s always saw him as an arrogant intruder.
“I have never taken orders from al-Zawahri,” Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, one of the network’s top figures in East Africa until his 2011 death, sneered in a memoir posted on line in 2009. “We don’t take orders from anyone but our historical leadership.”
There have been rumors of al-Zawahri’s death on and off for several years. But a video surfaced in April of the al-Qaida leader praising a Indian Muslim woman who had defied a ban on wearing a hijab, or headscarf. That footage was the first proof in months that he was still alive.
A statement from Afghanistan’s Taliban government confirmed the airstrike, but did not mention al-Zawahri or any other casualties.
It said it “strongly condemns this attack and calls it a clear violation of international principles and the Doha Agreement,” the 2020 U.S. pact with the Taliban that led to the withdrawal of American forces.
“Such actions are a repetition of the failed experiences of the past 20 years and are against the interests of the United States of America, Afghanistan, and the region,” the statement said.
—-
Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor, Ellen Knickmeyer, Zeke Miller, Aamer Madhani and Darlene Superville in Washington; Rahim Faiez in Islamabad; and Lee Keath in Cairo contributed reporting.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
i do fucking hate drone strikes though.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/911-civilian-casualties-iraq-afghanistan-b1912816.html
Ahmad Naser came to Kabul to escape the Taliban. The 30-year-old had been a guard at the American military’s Camp Lawton, in Herat, and had applied for a US Special Immigrant Visa to leave the country, given the risk of reprisals. His fears were directed at the wrong army.
In the early evening of 29 August, the day before the last American military planes left Afghanistan, a US drone lit up Khwaja Burga, a densely populated district in Kabul. The strike killed a total of 10 civilians, including Mr Naser and seven children, according to family members. They had reportedly been coming outside to greet relative Zemari Ahmadi, also killed, who worked with a US aid group distributing food to refugees.
The US initially praised the strike for “eliminating an imminent Isis-K threat” to the Kabul airport, adding that it didn’t have indications of any apparent civilian deaths in the residential neighborhood it just hit with a missile. US Central Command (CENTCOM) eventually issued an update, saying, “It is unclear what may have happened, and we are investigating further”, though it maintained it had foiled an Isis plot. Relatives of the deceased insist no one present was a terrorist.
“The Americans said the airstrike killed Daesh members,” a neighbor toldTheWashington Post, using the Arabic abbreviation for Isis. “Where is Daesh here? Were these children Daesh?”
After the Kabul strike, Pentagon spokesperson John F. Kirby told NPR: “No military on Earth does as much as we do to try to prevent civilian casualties.”Even if that is true, Ahmad Naser will very likely be forgotten in the US, where the vast, uncounted mass of civilians slain by Americans remains far outside the popular understanding of 9/11. On that day, 2,977 people were killed, and the US has avenged these innocents many hundreds of times over. US airstrikes alone have killed as many as 48,308 civilians, according to conflict monitor Airwars.
But neither the public, nor the victims’ families, will likely ever get a full accounting of the deaths. The American government has steadfastly avoided true accountability on the ‘War on Terror’, from explicitly refusing to count bodies, to half-heartedly committing to transparency, to outright revelling in the killing of innocents.
Each year, America and the world mourns those lost in the atrocities of 9/11. Yet 20 years later, we still don’t know how many others should be mourned along with them for the atrocities that followed.
More than 363,000 civilians have been killed in the War on Terror, according to an estimate from Brown University’s Costs of War Project. . And many times more people have been slain after the battles are over. Cumulatively, the overall civilian death toll could very well exceed 1 million people, when taking into account indirect deaths from war that come from destroyed infrastructure and hospitals, disease, and displacement, Neta C. Crawford, a Boston University political science professor who directs the Costs of War project, told The Independent.
And that’s just what we know from afar.
Because Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen and other post-9/11 battlefields are war zones – where the US has launched more than an estimated 90,000 strikes – large-scale attempts from researchers to count the dead remain difficult.
The biggest hurdle, however, has been the US government itself. After years of agitation from families, rights groups, and journalists, the US military began publicly disclosing how many civilians it kills each year in 2018, but it regularly undercounts that figure to the point of near-irrelevance. A New York Times investigation, for example, found that during the air campaign against Isis in Iraq, 31 times more civilians were killed than officially acknowledged.
The US military tends to look into cases when someone else, be they a grief-stricken family or a crusading journalist, demands more information. Some estimates suggest two thirds of US casualty estimates come from referrals, rather than internal investigations. Inquiries that do go forward, on attacks such as drone strikes, are often threadbare at best.
“They’re not speaking to local witnesses,” said Aisha Dennis of Reprieve, a civil rights organisation that advocates for victims of drone strikes. “All of the basic investigatory tools that you would normally use to find out what happened in a crime scene or when somebody has been killed ordinarily, they’re not using those.”
The Independent requested comment from CENTCOM, which oversees US forces in the Middle East, on the number of civilians killed during the War on Terror. A spokesperson recommended submitting a Freedom of Information Act request, a public records request that often takes months or years to get a satisfactory reply to, and declined to answer policy questions about how the military counts civilian deaths.
Many attacks that kill civilians are never officially acknowledged in the first place. In 2019, the Trump administration limited the number of air strikes US forces had to disclose to the public, and numerous attacks go unconfirmed, even if the effects on the ground are very real.
“It’s a manifestation of the project of elite impunity that has always run through this entire enterprise and a manifestation of American exceptionalism, whereby the people that America kills are not somehow as real human beings as Americans are,” said Pulitzer Prize-winning national security reporter Spencer Ackerman, author of Reign of Terror, a recent history of the War on Terror. “The United States has made detailed announcements every time a service member was killed in the War on Terror. They know how to count this. They choose not to do it.”
This impunity has been a central feature of the War on Terror for the last 20 years, regardless of whether a Democrat or Republican was in the White House.
During the Bush administration, American officials talked openly about how unimportant they felt counting civilian deaths was. Their argument was both that body counts were “not knowable”, as a CENTCOM spokesperson once put it, but also not helpful. They worried a detailed picture of the war could turn the public against it, as had happened during the Vietnam War.
“Having been a rifle platoon leader in Vietnam, asking questions from Washington about how many dead today is truly counterproductive,” general Peter Pace said in 2002.
“You know, we don’t do body counts,’’ general Tommy R. Franks added that same year.
As late as 2006, well into serious fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, George Bush told a group of conservative reporters, “We have made a conscious effort not to be a body-count team.”
“That was a lie,” said Chris Woods, co-founder of Airwars, a group that meticulously tracks civilian casualties.
The information was always there, Mr Woods said, it just hasn’t been made public.
“We found out from the WikiLeaks releases on Afghanistan and Iraq that of course the US was counting civilian casualties, not only from its own actions, but from terrorists like Al Qaeda. It just wasn’t releasing its own information.”
As a result, the early, crucial years of the War on Terror remain factually hazy, even as their geopolitical impact was fundamental.
There was a measure of hope that the administration of Barack Obama, a former constitutional law professor, would be different, more humane.
In 2009, the commander of US forces in Afghanistan at the time, general Stanley McChrystal, made the rules for airstrikes far stricter, drastically reducing the number of unintended casualties for the next few years.
“We’re going to lose this f****** war if we don’t stop killing civilians,” he told his staff, according to his memoir.
Mr Obama also instituted more inter-agency deliberation on issues like civilian harm before launching strikes, and late in his administration, signed an executive order mandating the US train its personnel to protect civilians, accept responsibility for attacks, and make regular public reports about strikes outside of traditional war zones, explaining the general differences between official and NGO analyses of the killings.
But President Obama was no dove. He pioneered the most controversial weapon in the US arsenal: unmanned combat drones, launching 10 times more strikes than his predecessor, publicly disclosing casualty numbers that fell far below outsider estimates or made dubious claims to killing not a single civilian.
Civilians and non-combatants were, and are, often killed in “signature strikes”, launched not at a known target, but rather individuals who seemed like they might be terrorists based on their personal networks, as well activities such as driving in convoys or carrying weapons, a common practice for non-militant young men in war zones in the Middle East.
Mistakes were rampant. In Yemen, for example, a cluster of five US drone strikes and a special forces raid killed 34 members of two families, including nine children, the youngest being a three-month-old baby shot by a US Navy SEAL. One of these attacks, in 2013, killed 12 men in a wedding convoy, all farmers and construction workers, leaving 73 children without breadwinners.
The Yemeni government and United Nations both condemned the strike. The US has never issued an apology.
“People in the village are afraid to gather,” Abdullah Mabkhout Al Ameri, some of whose family was killed during the strikes, told Reprieve. “Everybody feels that they are a target. We thought these drones only kill wanted people, never innocent people. Some people now when they walk, they just keep staring at the sky.”
The unmanned aircraft, often portrayed as silent, surgically precise weapons, make an audible buzz for those living underneath them. For many, it’s a sound on the numerous, obscure battlefields of the War on Terror that stands for accidental death far more than intentional peacekeeping.
Whatever safeguards were in place drifted off as the Obama administration confronted Isis in Iraq and Syria. The battle for Mosul, which one general called the “most constant heavy combat that we have [seen] probably since before Vietnam”, killed as many as eleven thousand civilians, 10 times more than the official US estimate.
continues
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
would have preferred a trial then burial under a prison, but extradition not lijely....
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
But I’d still fist bump Biden for this. I guess I’m not as evolved yet.
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Chicago; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Chicago; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
As much as these fuckers used to say that dems put Obama on a pedestal I sure as fuck don't remember seeing any Obama flags or hats. I loved Obama and all I have is a shot glass.
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Chicago; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
I had an Obama bottle opener that a friend picked up in Hawaii but I dropped it and his head came off.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Chicago; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Chicago; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
Seriously, I’m just glad I don’t know.
i did save the 3rd obama/biden campaign yard sign i got because of the historical significance when he won the first election but ended up tossing it when i moved in 2016. someone stole the first one i had in the yard, and then another someone ripped the 2nd sign out of my yard and threw it on my driveway, so out of spite i put a 3rd one in the yard and that one actually survived.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."