The Day the Music Stopped

The real surprise was that Osamawas so clearly involved with the day to day planning and operational issues andwas not just lying low at all.  Thus hisloss is certainly a death blow to Al Qaeda itself although the copy cats willpossibly still give us pause for some time.

Certainly everyone who everprovided succor is now on the run and targeted by the USA.  The intelligence grab was really that totaland nothing got destroyed before it was retrieved.  One could not have asked for a more complete resultand this comes after all the necessary agencies have had a decade to mastertheir task.  Whatever is left of Al Qaedais today disintegrating on the run as participants lose all contact informationand try to lose themselves in order to survive. It really has to be that desperate.

I held back on commenting in thefirst few days in order to get some perspective and a sense of how complete thetactical action was.  I can now say thatthis action was as complete as the elimination of Che Guevara back in thesixties.  Until his ignomious death in asharp jungle fire fight in Bolivia,the model of the Cuban revolution was an exportable idea to almost every nationin Latin America and Africa.  There were imitators and these wereattracting financial support.  All thatdied in the jungle firefight.

The fact is that impressionableyoung boys do not want to emulate dead freedom fighters at all.  Their heroes must stay alive to reassure themthat it is possible to survive such a nihilist philosophy. The death of Osamaand Che ends the delusion.

The remnants will now be hunteddown and eliminated rather swiftly.

So yes, global jihad is trulyended even though it will take a lot of time for this to be obvious.

A Crippling Blow to Al-Qaeda

Posted by Matt Gurney on May 9th, 2011 and filedunder Daily Mailer, FrontPage. You can follow any responsesto this entry through theRSS2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently notallowed.

http://frontpagemag.com/2011/05/09/a-crippling-blow-to-al-qaeda/

The death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of U.S.Navy SEALs last Sunday is a victory for America, the West and the entirefree world. The death of bin Laden is a triumph for the victims, both livingand dead, of the September 11th attacks, and a sign to the world that America doesnot forgive or forget crimes committed against its citizens. But thekilling of bin Laden promises to be more than just a long-sought, symbolicvictory. Though little is known at this early date, according to U.S. officials, documents and digital datacaptured by the U.S.forces that stormed bin Laden’s compound are already proving enormouslyinvaluable. After the intelligence obtained from the operation is processed,last Sunday’s raid could very well be the greatest victory so far in the war onterror — all considerations of symbolism and justice aside.

The impact of bin Laden’s death, and America’s capture of troves ofvaluable intelligence, will be measurable in three key areas (not counting theaforementioned moral victory). Once he was found, the SEALs entered not justone man’s hideout, but what U.S.intelligence officials havecalled “an active command and control center.” In an interview withCNN, White House National Security Advisor Tom Donilon compared the documentsfound in the compound to a “small college library,” a “really extraordinary”find — the largest ever seized in a single anti-terrorist operation.

Already made public was al-Qaeda’s interest in hitting American railwaytargets on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks this year. Theintelligence suggested the attack was in the “aspirational” stage — al-Qaedahad decided to move ahead, but did not yet have a plan in place about whichtrains to derail or what terminals to bomb. The intelligence also confirmedwhat is already known — for maximum psychological effect, the organizationsought to strike out at the West on civic and religious holidays. Recall, forexample, the attempt by terrorist Mohamed Osman Mohamad to bombthe annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony in lovely Portland, Oregon.While Mohamad may have been acting alone, he shared the same fondness forsymbolic dates as al-Qaeda.

It will likely not be known for some time what other plots similar tothe Portlandbombing or the public transit attack have been discovered. And as is often thecase with intelligence operations, it is possible that many of thecounterintelligence victories achieved from the raid will never be known.

It is equally easy to accept that still further lives will be saved asal-Qaeda goes into damage-control mode and attempts to cope with a catastrophicbreach of its operational security. Clearly, given how long it took bin Ladento be found, the organization places a high value on secrecy. If all the variousfactions of al-Qaeda were to be joined at any one place, it would likely be thetop — with bin Laden himself. Furthermore, the raid caught the al-Qaeda leadercompletely by surprise, without giving him any opportunity to warn his fellowterrorists to seek cover or to destroy evidence. Indeed, two telephone numberswere found sewninto his clothes — one can only imagine how nervous the people at theother end of those telephone lines now are.