MSNBC says that the suicide bomber that killed 7 CIA agents and wounded 6 others was a Jordanian doctor who had played both the Agency and the Jordanian intelligence services:
Al-Balawi was arrested by Jordanian intelligence more than a year ago. He had moderated the main al-Qaida chat forum before his arrest and was known online as Abu Dujanah al-Khurasani.
“Abu Dujanah was an active member of jihadi forums,” said Evan Kohlmann, who tracks jihadi Web sites for NBC News. “He was actually an administrator on the now-defunct Al-Hesbah forum, previously al-Qaida’s main chat forum.”
The Jordanians believed that al-Balawi had been successfully reformed and brought over to the American and Jordanian side. They set him up as an agent and sent him to Afghanistan and Pakistan to infiltrate al-Qaida.
His specific mission, according to officials, was to find and meet Ayman al Zawahiri, al-Qaida’s No. 2, also a physician.
I’m guessing these particular doctors didn’t take the equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath all that seriously, which appears to be something of a trend.
A CIA spokesman went on record to say that “this ain’t over”:
A senior U.S. intelligence official told NBC the CIA is “looking closely at every aspect of the Khost attack.”
“The agency is determined to continue pursuing aggressive counterterrorism operations. Last week’s attack will be avenged. Some very bad people will eventually have a very bad day,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
I hate to be critical in a time of loss, and I know that The Company’s agents take this personally, but I would have thought that vengeance was already on the table.
Vengeance with a vengeance. That would go without saying,in my book. But then I’m just a former fleet sailor, what could I possibly know.
Make sure to Mirandize his body parts.
As one of them was an ex Seal, I would think the Company might get a little help.
Somehow, I don’t see the Guys & Gals at the Company as a “Forgive & Forget” kind of crowd…no real “Turn the other cheek” missives in their training jackets….No worries…a few more express tickets for “Allah” willbe punched.
I suspect that there will be no public revenge. What there will be is people disappearing and never being found.
Depends upon how The Company wants to play the game. You can disappear people and set up some worry, or you can turn a family estate into rubble and leave a calling card. My bet is there will be a mix of both, a bit of example sure to get the message out and a bit of whodunnit and speculation to keep them wondering lest they think they’re secure.
Which, in the grand scheme of things, is pretty much the way they’re trying to play us. The Company has a tendency to aquire whatever assets are needed to play the game better than the competition, and they keep news of victories and defeats pretty close to the chest.
– Max
Vengeance should have been on the table since 0846hrs, September 11th, 2001. I am glad that they are willing to do something about it, but this should have been the mentality for a long time. I guess they don’t feel as bad then for the 7,800+ men and women who have died on the line, or the 2,973 on September 11th (excluding the 19 hijackers in that last count).
2,976, exuse me.
Cheap shot alert. Who doesn’t personalize payback when they lose their own. Even if the job they do is the same before and after?
I’m getting to the point that if payback extended to immediate family of these murderers I’d be inclined to look the other way.
I seem to recall an incident that occurred in Lebanon some decades ago. Some Russians were kidnapped by the terrorists and ransom demands made. The KGB (from which Putin springs) collected some of the kidnappers family members and began sending small body parts to the kidnappers, with a promise of more to come if …
Result — kidnapped Russians were released, unharmed and without any payment of ransome. And there was NEVER another kidnapping of Russians in that theater.
Played indeed! But focus on vengeance overlooks incompetence… incompetence that must be corrected immediately, before vengeance.
As the good Col. Lang (who knows of such things) says: “…The CIA decided that the “take” sounded so appealing that they would bring this foreign espionage agent, recruited by the Jordanians but not a Jordanian intelligence man, into the CIA’s operating base near the Pakistan border for de-briefing? They did it because he wanted it that way? HELLO!! Anyone home here? Anyone? They drove him from Pakistan? From the Quetta area? Hello!!”
“What would have been wrong with de-briefing him in some distant place with the team sitting in by VTR?”
“Heads should roll, those that are left among the people who had any part in these stupidities.”
LINK
Yes they should roll, as lives were lost by incompetence. Fliterman thinks Pogo also had something to say about this…
Vengeance is already being reaped, and hopefully with continue wreaking wroth…..
The first deadly drone counter-strike occurred within 24 hours, and to date a total of four have cooled some hot jihadis.
Vengeance? On whom? The same bunch they were trying to use Abu Dujanah against?
If we were serious about this, Blackeagle had the right idea. Same with the muj wannabe in the USA who gets convicted–all of his family, out to the remotest cousin, should be rounded up and exiled, their property confiscated, with no hope of re-entry. Use the tribal ethos against them.
And Flit, you are dead on that there was a seriously high level of incompetence in this, starting with the broad assumption that you can actually “flip” a muj. You can maybe use a terrified muj, but flip? BS.
I agree with all you say, Zane, unfortunately all such methods run counter to the national vision (en grosso mondo) of what this nation is all about.The historical national paridigm (the “pictures in our head”, as the pol. scientist V.O. Key coined it) as currently held not so much by the nation at large, but by most key policy makers on the political scene is one of Wilsonian idealism, i.e., that nations can be remade and taught how to elect “good men.” And that, as, Sec. of State Henry Stimpson once famously said: “Gentlemen do not read other gentlemen’s mail.” They they pretty much recoil from such moves as you advocate Zane, is a reflection in their belief that whatever short-term is to be gained by using them, in this day and age of the cell phone camera and near instant planetary communications these more nasty details of foreign policy/milops sausage being made will disgust the senses of
John Q. Public and those of the world at large and thus become counter-productive in the long run.
Now in point of fact I would argue that this viewpoint is wrong in that a) the American public is a lot more bloody-minded than are the “chattering classes” that pass for a substitute for public opinion, and 2) the short-term (as measured in a decade or two) DOES matter as in the “long” run we are, in the famous words of Bertrand Russell, “all dead.” Just think, Zane, the period between the end of WWII (1945) and Vietnam ramp-up (1965) is but 20 years–years which just happen to be the 20 most stable and productive years in our history.
So I’ll drink and raise a toast to body parts and the short run, but I won’t hold my breath that the Obama administration is listening….
Blackeagle & Zane, don’t you think vengeance on family members is a little over the top? Eze 18:20: “The person who sins will die The son will not bear the punishment for the father’s iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son’s iniquity; the righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself.”
Bill, unfortunalely such things are the only language these people understand. Will such actions cause them to hate us even more? Ans: Yes, but as long as they fear us even MORE than they hate us and we cause them to remain relatively powerless, the lid will remain on. Will it blow eventually? Perhaps. But it also may not, and if it buys a generation or two of relative peace and stability, we should be satisfied with that. It is, as I pointed out above, the same amount of time that saw the greatest economic growth and relative stability in our history.
As to morality? One cannot worry about morality if one is dead. Keeping innocent Americans safe and alive comes first, we can worry about morality later. We wring our hands and tie ourselves in introspective moral knots about Hiroshima in the safety of today. Our predecessors had no such safety quotient available to give themselves the luxury of detached moralism.
I’ll submit the proposition that bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was taking the more moral path. Hundreds of thousands of American, and other Allied, lives were saved. And millions of Japanese.
I fail to see how those killed in the raids on those two cities would have been any less dead if they had been killed in a ‘conventional’ bombing raid. Look at the fire bombing in other Japanese cities. I guess the “horror” lies in not exposing more Americans to being killed in a 100 plane raid.
Or, we can continue proof-texting and I’ll suggest Psalm 136 (Septagent numbering):
8 O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed;
happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Rev. 18.6
9 Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth
thy little ones against the stones.
VX & Joe, I’m open to persuasion. Indeed it seems a fine line between war which does indeed punish all of the enemy, and what you suggest. And I’m with you Joe as to the morality of Hiroshima, no doubt in my mind.
Maybe I’m just a worry-wart that once one goes after perps & family members only, it seems so “Hatfield / McCoy”, capable of burning for generations. I’d almost rather wait until the enemy does something really dastardly (9/11 would surely qualify) and then carry out unrestricted warfare until the survivors unconditionally surrender. Be done with it! The rest of their society should have pulled those guys back from the brink too, and they didn’t.
“If we were serious about this, Blackeagle had the right idea. Same with the muj wannabe in the USA who gets convicted–all of his family, out to the remotest cousin, should be rounded up and exiled, ”
Exiled? Humm…. that’s not really the step we need to take, is it?
Why the Hell not? They do what they do with the tacit and often explicit approval and assistance of their families–you think sister Fatimah isn’t aware of what brother Ahmad is up to? She is, and they are lying through their teeth when they say, “Why, we never suspected… ” So put it on them–what matters more, obeying American law or Islamic/tribal mores? Seems pretty simple to me.
Vengeance is nice but perhaps first there needs to be some introspective sorting out…? The story that was reported here was that the bomber was not searched on arrival so as not to offend him as they were wanting to recruit him…like, hello? If that’s the case then this was largely a self-inflicted home goal…The Warehouse (local version of Walmart) has better security protocols than that…
The idea that vengeance is to be sought harder, and extended to innocents, because someone committed a rookie mistake, and it cost the organization dearly in blood and embarrassment, does not increase my confidence or my comfort.
Stupidity is self punished by the opportunity it provides a ruthless opponent.
Mourn. Grieve. Get back on the job. Learn from the mistake. Neither speak of it outside the family, nor EVER forget it.
Focus. On. Relentless untiring sure delivery of death to the enemy. Not to his innocent relatives. Let the enemy bear the blood guilt of blood feud.
We have a whole lot more rat killin’ to do. So yes, this isn’t over.
Couple of thoughts:
You have to talk to bad people and people who know bad people to learn about bad people and what they plan. And that doesn’t make the people you talk to trustworthy or good people just because they are talking to you.
We call them barbarians and crazies, but our opposition has dedicated and skilled people working against us. Our enemies are smart, patient, and competent. The only thing we can do to fight it is be smart, patient, competent, skilled and dedicated. Even then, sometimes even the best get complacent or screw up. In war that gets people killed – no matter what side they are on. Our job is to make the other guy complacent and let him screw up.
The best vengeance is continuing on. The CIA folks (or any of our people over there) get targeted precisely because they were doing their jobs… so if you really want to screw over the other side, then we keep up the pursuit.
Risk is required to succeed. We can “what if…” or “they should have…” this all we want but at the end of the day our very well trained, very competent people did their best. We can nitpick and cry for vengeance from our living rooms thousands of miles away and worlds apart… and yet every day every soldier and civilian, CIA agent, DEA agent, PRT and NGO member over there is running a risk of death and injury ranging from disease to mortar bomb, suicide bomber to helo crash. And they have done it for YEARS. Maybe they screw up something and it kills them, maybe they do everything right and still die. If we want good intel, if we want to win this damn thing, then we have to have people like those CIA agents meeting shady characters and asking them questions. And that cannot be done from DC or ensconced in a fortress cut off from the outside.
Finally, we has been very lucky. We are fortunate that we have not lost MORE intelligence officers doing what can be one of the most dangerous invisible jobs on earth. THANK GOD the CIA Wall of Honor, the DIA Patriot’s Memorial, the NSA Cryptologic Memorial are not thousands of names long. Thank god our intelligence folks aren’t killed more often, because we send them to places where normal people from this country don’t want to be, ask them to do things they can’t talk about but necessary. Our intel people push on in silence, unrecognized, nearly faceless because they have to be, blamed for every failure and rarely able to show their successes, no Memorial Days, no Veterans Days, no parades, no telling the kids what they did at work today, only criticisms, blame, stupid conspiracy theories, threats of prosecution, dumb cliche movies, and a public that is hypnotized into believing “Intelligence Work” either means a suave man with a martini and a gun or evil nitwits reading your email for nebulously nefarious reasons.
We are lucky – not just because there have not been more lost in the line of a quiet and under appreciated duty. We are lucky because we continue to find such people for the work.
Social engineering is the most artistic, and most effective form of hacking. Puts people like me at a serious disadvantage, dammit!