Category: Terror War

AFP reports that al Qaeda leaders released a letter saying that they were “bursting with pain” over the deaths of more than 100 children last week when seven thugs from Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan went on a shooting spree in Peshawar;

“There is no doubt that the list of crimes and atrocities of the Pakistani army has crossed the limit and it is true that this army is ahead of everyone in America’s slavery and genocide of Muslims… but it does not mean that we should seek revenge from oppressed Muslims,” Mehmood said.

“The guns that we have taken up against Allah’s enemy America and its pet rulers and slave army should not be aimed towards children, women and our Muslim people,” he added.

That’s from the same people who have been indiscriminately bombing public markets in Iraq and Afghanistan, throwing acid in the faces of Afghanistan children, not to mention the attacks on 9-11-2001, and the bombings in London, Spain and Bali. Now we’re supposed to believe that they want to protect the innocent? The Afghan branch of the Taliban also condemned the TTP’s tactics.

Yeah, I believe it. The same article reports that Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al Qaeda has announced a new branch of al Qaeda to wage jihad in Myanmar, Bangladesh and India. Meanwhile, in Nigeria, Boko Harum, another al Qaeda-affiliated group, didn’t get the message about killing innocents;

A new video from Nigeria’s home-grown Boko Haram extremists shows gunmen mowing down civilians lying face down in a dorm, and a leader saying they are being killed because they are “infidels” or non-believers.

There are so many corpses the gunmen have difficulty stepping to reach bodies still twitching with life. Most appear to be adult men.

“We have made sure the floor of this hall is turned red with blood, and this is how it is going to be in all future attacks and arrests of infidels,” the group leader says in a message. “From now, killing, slaughtering, destructions and bombing will be our religious duty anywhere we invade.”

The New York Times reports that while the rest of the country was worried about some movie, the Obama Administration sent four more graduates of Guantanamo University back to Afghanistan, their home country. Remember yesterday when I mentioned that one graduate of the Balad Annex of Gitmo U was released back to Pakistan and he went to work plotting that massacre at the Pakistan military school? Well, you can lay those fears aside with this bunch, says Chuck Hagel;

Delays by Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel in signing off on transfers that had been approved by Mr. Obama’s national security staff contributed to tensions between the exiting Pentagon chief and the White House, particularly with the national security adviser, Susan Rice. But Mr. Hagel, who resigned under pressure last month, has maintained all year that he would not be rushed in releasing prisoners.

In May, Ms. Rice sent Mr. Hagel a memo pressuring him to pick up the pace, and Mr. Hagel told reporters during a flight to Alaska at the time that he was in no hurry to approve deals. “My name is going on that document; that’s a big responsibility,” Mr. Hagel said. He added: “What I’m doing is, I’m taking my time. I owe that to the American people, to ensure that any decision I make is, in my mind, responsible.”

Some military officers have expressed worry that prisoners released from Guantánamo may return to the battlefield and harm American troops who remain in Afghanistan.

But the Pentagon statement released Saturday said that “the United States has full confidence in the ability of the Afghan government to mitigate any threats that may be posed by these individuals, and to ensure humane treatment.”

Yeah, well, if Ms. Rice wants the pace of the releases to increase from the Guantanamo School for Boys, Mr. Hagel should release them all to her front porch, all 132 of them. For being a national security adviser, she doesn’t seem too concerned about national security.

OK, my timing was off a hair, but my prediction that the 82nd Airborne Division would send a brigade to Iraq is closer to realization, according to Stars & Stripes;

The soldiers from the 82nd’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team, based at Fort Bragg, N.C., will begin to deploy in late January to train, advise and assist the ISF, Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby told reporters.

Their mission is part of the coalition effort to build up the Iraqi army and Kurdish peshmerga so that they can recapture territory from Islamic State militants.

The paratroopers are preparing for a nine-month deployment, according to a spokeswoman for the 82nd Airborne.

Back on December 1st we wrote about 250 paratroopers from the 1-505th PIR who were going to Iraq this month, so this must be the rest of that battalion and some support folks. If I’m not mistaken, the 505th Regiment is the majority of the 3rd Brigade troops.

So here’s a story you can laugh at because it didn’t happen to you. Mark Oberholtzer a Texas City plumber traded in his old Ford pick up and promptly forgot about it until it started showing up in the news as a weapon platform for ISIS – it still had his logo and phone number on it.

Oberholtzer said he traded in the truck to an AutoNation dealership three years ago. He usually takes the decals off his vehicles when he sells them but he left it on this truck with the expectation that AutoNation would remove it.

“They were supposed to have done it and it looks like they didn’t do it,” Oberholtzer said. “How it ended up in Syria, I’ll never know.”

He began receiving calls about the truck and the picture on Monday afternoon, Oberholtzer said. By Tuesday he said his business had received a thousand calls and faxes about the image.

“A few of the people are really ugly,” he said.

I guess folks thought he was buying ad space from ISIS or something.

ISIS forces tried to penetrate the Ein al-Asad Iraqi military base last weekend where about a hundred US forces are deployed in Operation Inherent Resolve and an unknown number of them were sent to Allah, according to the UK’s Daily Mail;

Ein al-Asad came under repeated attack by ISIS troops in October, however, now bolstered by the U.S. assistance, it poses a much more formidable target.

Sheikh Mahmud Nimrawi, a tribal leader in the region, said ‘US forces intervened because ISIS started to come near the base, which they are stationed in, so (it was) out of self-defense,’ Shafaq News reported.

He added: ‘We have made progress in (the) al-Dolab area, in which ISIS has withdrawn from.’

Well, that’s what happens when you tell the world that you’re not sending combat forces into combat – they become politically attractive targets.

Thanks to Chief Tango for the link.

The Pakistan government says that they finally ended the seige at the Army Public School and College in Peshawar conducted by only seven Taliban terrorist Jihadists according to the Associated Press;

A 14-year-old, Mehran Khan, said about 400 students were in the hall when the gunmen broke through the doors and started shooting. They shot one of the teachers in the head and then set her on fire and shouted “God is great!” as she screamed, added Khan, who survived by playing dead.

From there, they went to classrooms and other parts of the school.

“Their sole purpose, it seems, was to kill those innocent kids. That’s what they did,” Bajwa said. Of the 141 people slain before government troops ended the assault eight hours later, 132 were children and nine were staff members. Another 121 students and three staff members were wounded.

The seven attackers, wearing vests of explosives, all died in the eight-hour assault. It was not immediately clear if they were all killed by the soldiers or whether they blew themselves up, he said.

I expect more scenes like this across Afghanistan soon. Although, the above-linked article says that Afghan Taliban called the attack “un-Islamic”. The Voice of America reports that another 120 people were wounded.

From Yahoo News;

“This was blowback we have been expecting for some time,” said Jalil Abbas Jilani, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, in a radio interview on “The Diane Rehm Show” Tuesday about the attack on the school.

The “blowback” theory was underscored by a statement from the TTP’s own spokesman, Mohammed Umar Khorasani. He called the assault “a revenge attack” for the army offensive, adding: “We targeted the school because the army targets our families. We want them to feel our pain.”

[…]

Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador to the U.S. who worked closely with Obama administration officials, said his country’s military offensive was flawed from the outset.

“It seems the Pakistani effort has been inadequate,” he told Yahoo News in an interview. The offensive was announced well in advance and “too well publicized,” giving key TTP leaders an opportunity to flee and escape the brunt of the attacks.