Posted by
on Tuesday, January 09, 2007 1:59:48 AM
Well, if this isn't a pleasant little surprise in Somalia which I'm sure al Qaerda wasn't expecting. Nothing like being caught between a rock and a hard place, huh?
A U.S. Air Force gunship has conducted a strike against suspected members of al Qaeda in Somalia, CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports exclusively.
The targets included the senior al Qaeda leader in East Africa and an al Qaeda operative wanted for his involvement in the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in Africa, Martin reports. Those terror attacks killed more than 200 people.
The AC-130 gunship is capable of firing thousands of rounds per second, and sources say a lot of bodies were seen on the ground after the strike, but there is as yet, no confirmation of the identities.
The gunship flew from its base in Dijibouti down to the southern tip of Somalia, Martin reports, where the al Qaeda operatives had fled after being chased out of the capital of Mogadishu by Ethiopian troops backed by the United States.
Once they started moving, the al Qaeda operatives became easier to track, and the U.S. military started preparing for an air strike, using unmanned aerial drones to keep them under surveillance and moving the aircraft carrier Eisenhower out of the Persian Gulf toward Somalia. But when the order was given, the mission was assigned to the AC-130 gunship operated by the U.S. Special Operations command.
If the attack got the operatives it was aimed at, reports Martin, it would deal a major blow to al Qaeda in East Africa.
Meanwhile, a jungle hideout used by Islamic militants that is believed to be an al Qaeda base was on the verge of falling to Ethiopian and Somali troops, the defense minister said Monday.
I'm reminded of a song right now that seems so appropo for the Islamofascist fighters, and in honor of those animals, I dedicate it to them:
Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right, here I am,
Stuck in the middle with you.
Yep, those poor schmucks are caught between the US Navy, and the Ethiopian forces that have been kicking their butts all over the country, and we're strafing the heck out of them right now. An AC-130 "Spectre" gunship is nothing to argue with, and no one can say we haven't taken a new offensive to our enemies. Marcie and I noted about two weeks ago when this started that we had forces in the area. Those were Spec-Ops guys, and we knew they had the AC-130s in place. But I'll bet you, good readers, that al Qaeda never figured we'd jump into the fight.
Allah over at Hot Air reminds us that our strike was specific. We were looking to nail a couple of these bad guys to the wall, and he points out that if we did get any of them, we'll be seeing their names pop up soon in the papers:
America is worried about four people. To start, the deputy commander of the union’s military wing, Aiden Hashi Ayro, is said by American intelligence and a recent report by the International Crisis Group to have been trained in Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan before September 11, 2001. After the attacks, he returned to Afghanistan to join the fight against the Americans.
Mr. Ayro’s boss and commander of the union’s military, Hassan Dahir Aweys, was placed on the State Department’s list of international terrorists in November 2001 and named in a presidential executive order the same month on international terrorism. American counterterrorism officials have long said Mr. Aweys was a key source of coordination for the 1998 Al Qaeda attacks on America’s embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Also of interest for America are Fazil Abdullah Mohammad, or Harun, and Abu Tala al Sudani, two alleged terrorists who helped plot the 1998 bombings and are now key leaders in the courts union.
Allah also notes that the Eisenhower has been dispatched there, and that the initial reports look promising:
[The strike] was based on joint military-CIA intelligence and on information provided by Ethiopian and Kenyan military forces operating in the border area…
Sources said last night that initial reports indicated the attack had been successful, although information was still scanty…
One target of the strike, sources said, was Abu Talha al-Sudani, a Sudanese who is married to a Somali woman and has lived in Somalia since 1993 — the year of the attack against U.S. troops that was chronicled in the book and movie “Black Hawk Down.” In a 2001 U.S. court case against Osama bin Laden, Sudani was described by a leading witness as an explosives expert who was close to the al-Qaeda leader…
Others have identified Sudani as the financier for Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, believed responsible for the 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. All are among the senior al-Qaeda operatives the Bush administration has charged were sheltered by Somalian Islamic fundamentalists controlling Mogadishu, the country’s capital. They are believed to have fled late last month when Ethiopian troops drove the fundamentalists out of the capital and toward the Kenyan border.
Hoo-Rah, boys and girls. Let's hope that this goes just as well as the reports are saying. We needed a major victory against these animals. And with the president preparing to announce an influx of troops into Iraq, this sort of a victory can only lead to better things. Now, if we can just get a handle on al-Sadr (though I'd settle for a pair of hands around his throat), all will be good.
And let this serve as a lesson to a Qaeda. You can run, but you can't hide. We will get you.
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