Another arab terrorist takes a Cuban vacation.

[Dinner]

Faraj al-Libbi, Al Qaeda's #3 man, has been captured in Pakistan's northern tribal area along with 10 other Al Qaeda suspects. Faraj al-Libbi was a pivitol man in Al Qaeda's operations and is wanted for master minding two assassination attempts on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. Supposedly, the CIA has been tracking him since last January however they waited to have Pakistani security forces arrest him because they wanted to observe his movements and see who Libbi had contact with. I'm betting that there will be more arrests soon as they sweep up everyone Libbi has been working with over the last 4 month.

No word about where he's being held but likely his ass is on a plane to Cuba just like his pal Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/05/04/pakistan.arrest/index.html

[chequita guevara]

Good.

[Dinner]

The really interesting part is how he was captured alive. All the terrorist big wigs never seem to decide to die in battle and instead get captured alive. They send other people on suicide missions while they themselves are to scared to make a last stand.

[Spiffor]

Most war leaders are like that.

[DeathByTheSword]

that is what i dont understand about suisicide bombers...you can just leave the backpack full of nails and semtexs in the buss when you get out of it right?...but know the terrorist 'masterminds' want people to blow themselves up

[Dinner]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7732035/

That's the MSNBC link from Lancer's soon to be closed thread.

[Lancer]

Still looks like Ming...

[Dinner]

Yeah, your title was way better then mine.

It looks like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is just another Islamic front group working with Al Qaeda. Do these Islamist groups come up with new names on a weekly basis or something

[Lancer]

Call themselves what they will, they're still going d o w n !

It's pretty exciting.

Someone said Bin Laden might be living inIran, but this may indicate he's in Pakistan, which gives hope. I guess if he's got an aide he's not quite as dead as I was hoping however. I was wondering if maybe he was buried under tons of rubble at the bottom of a spiderhole or in a cave.

Oerdin, do you think they want him alive? A trial might be a stage for him to whip up more terrorism while a dead body is just as good and less mouthy.

[DanS]

[lord of the mark]

I dont think he will be seeing the azure waters of the Caribbean for some time. With the sensitivities about interrogation techniques (thank YOU Doug Feith, for spreading them to Iraq and screwing the whole thing up) it would seem likely that we give the Pakis a nice long shot at squeezing him dry first.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
[...]With the sensitivities about interrogation techniques (thank YOU Doug Feith, for spreading them to Iraq and screwing the whole thing up)[...]

I love it. Torture is only bad when it leaks out to the general opinion

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Spiffor

I love it. Torture is only bad when it leaks out to the general opinion

Torture is bad A. when it is done on innocents B. when it pervades a judicial system, and becomes a tool in the hands of the state against domestic political enemies C. When classic "torture" methods are used that inflict so much pain that they elicit false and unreliable information.

None of which is what Gitmo was all about. It was the use of a borderline techniques designed to break people and make them more likely to reveal info - it was used against a fairly small number of individuals, all of whom were foreigners (an important point, since it means it could not be used as a domestic political tool) almost all of whom were clearly connected with Al Qaida, who by their status as unlawful combatants were NOT protected by the Geneva convention, etc. And who WERE connected to an organization that is at war with virtually the entire world.

By using said techniques in Iraq(and by mismanaging the prisons in Iraq, so that further techniques which were not approved ANYWHERE were used), the DoD has endangered their justified usage elsewhere. Feith is longer working for the government (a fact about which there seems to be an odd silence) Im not sure Rummy shouldnt also be held responsible.

[Dinner]

They want these guys alive if for no other reason then they can work them over and have them rat out their friends. That's how the Germans broke the Red Army Faction and that's how we'll unravel Al Qaeda, if we ever do. The real question is if the Americans were smart enough to be patient or if they just swept in and took the guy the first chance they got. MSNBC is saying they were waiting while CNN said they tracked him down and took him the first chance they got. If you just capture one of these guys then you get him and little else but if you are patient enough to watch them and follow them then you can get not only the one guy but everyone he leads you to.

[Dinner]

The techniques used at Gitmo which are being caled torture are things like sleep deprovation, changing temperatures so that it is alternately very hot or very cold, playing with the lights so that the subject can't figure out what time of day it is, changing meal times so that he might be served 6 meals in a day or only one, etc...

These are done to confuse and disorientate the subject so that he loses track of time and all feeling for the outside world. They are pschological tools used to break someone's will to resist and I understand they work fairly well. In my mind that isn't the same as the old iron rack or the Vietnamese Communist's favored tactic of baboo shoots hammered under finger nails. No one is ever physically hurt.

There was an issue in the first days of the Afghanistan war were one CIA agent was using "pressure holds" that is holding people in such a way as to make it difficult to breath. That was never legal and he got put in jail for it. The Abu Gherrab thing was also illegal and the people who did that are mostly in jail as well. One thing that does trouble me is the higher ups all walked when they were the ones who demanded guards get tough with prisoners and use questionable tactics against them. In my mind that did create the atmosphere were real abuse could later occur and that is a failure of leadership.

The officer corp is one big good old boy network though with all top officers having gone to the same schools. Don't ever expect to see any of them face real justice or a real inquory unless it is independent of the military. Any military inquiry will/has amounted to nothing more then friends & former class mates all trying to find reasons to excuse their friend.