Fausta's Blog

Osama bin Laden Killed: ‘Justice Is Done,’ President Says

Osama bin Laden, hunted as the mastermind behind the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, has been killed, President Obama announced tonight.

The president called the killing of bin Laden the “most significant achievement to date” in the effort to defeat al Qaeda.

“Justice has been done,” Obama said.

Bin Laden was located at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, which was monitored and when the time was determined to be right, the president said, he authorized a “targeted operation.”

President Obama’s speech,

Richard Fernadez asks,

The location of Bin Laden’s hide-out and the use of a U.S. raiding team on settled Pakistani territory raises a number of questions. First, has Pakistan been hiding Osama Bin Laden all along? Second, did the U.S. independently discover the location of Bin Laden? Third, was the information shared by some elements of Pakistani intelligence, assuming that his location was known to them, in exchange from some quid pro quo which has not yet been revealed? Or was the discovery of Bin Laden simultaneous, the result of the mutual and cooperative investigation of the ISI and U.S. intelligence?

If highly placed persons in Pakistan have been instrumental in hiding Bin Laden these ten years, it suggests that some of the real masterminds of September 11, far from lying dead, are still at large.

The chances that Pakistan was wholly innocent were somewhat thrown into doubt by the possible location of the safe house. “President Barack Obama announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed in Abbottabad.” What must have been the raid was reported on Pakistani media, putting Osama’s safe house very close to the Pakistani Military Academy

Crowd celebrates Bin Laden’s death for hours outside the White House (h/t Instapundit)

The body of Osama bin Laden has been buried at sea after he was killed by US covert forces in Pakistan.

Burying bin Laden’s body at sea would ensure that his final resting place does not become a shrine and a place of pilgrimage for his followers.

Michael Yon doesn’t think that was a good idea. Expect conspiracy theories to flourish, too.

Huge string of articles and posts at Memeorandum

UPDATE:
A guy in Pakistan live-tweeted the raid.

More photos and video at FreedomTorch.

Last Monday I wrote about Mohsen Rabbani, the Iranian cleric recruiting for Islam in Brazil.

However, the Iranians are not limiting their activity to Brazil:
HACER continues on the story (emphasis added),

Along with the recruits in Belo Jardim, youth from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Mexico traveled to Iran. The group’s ties to South America go beyond recruitment. The Federal Police has information that Rabbani came to Brazil a few times in recent years. In one of those visits, almost three years ago, he used methods that could cause a diplomatic crisis. The extremist embarked in Tehran bound for Caracas, Venezuela. From there, he entered Brazil illegally. Operated by Iran’s state airline, the Tehran-Caracas flight was called “Aeroterror” by intelligence officials for allegedly facilitating the access of terrorist suspects to South America. The Venezuelan government shields passenger lists from Interpol on that flight. Professor Rabbani’s movements were being monitored. The idea was to detain him in Brazil. Notified, the Federal Police set up an operation, but the order to execute this operation took a while, due to a complicated discussion about the political implications. Once again, the extremist escaped.

Vogue Mag recently did a puff piece on the fashionable Asma Assad, treating her as if she was married to a guy who invented laser surgery or something while running a wonderful country. Austin Bay pulls the rug right under Vogue’s kowtowing to the dictator’s wife,
Syria: Father-Son Dictatorship Remains in Vogue

Vogue described Mrs. Assad as “young and very chic — the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies,” who “is on a mission … to put a modern face on her husband’s regime.”

But prose lipstick and cosmetic patois cannot camouflage Syria’s blood-splattered legacy and its ongoing horror. Just as the Vogue article appeared in late February, Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution began to shake Mr. and Mrs. Assad’s regime. Two months later, Syria continues to quake. The regime has killed around 200 demonstrators since the end of February, though no one knows for sure, since Assad’s government has restricted access within the country.

Vogue kowtowing to Asma? Swank, baby. The BBC interviewing anti-regime protestors? Suddenly the Vogue mask drops and the Assad regime’s hard face appears.

That hard face has quite a history. Troublemaking in Lebanon, common cause with Iran and relentless war with Israel are part of that history. But the Assads’ longest-running war has been against the Syrian people. Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father, ordered the February 1982 massacre in the city of Hama. Regime security forces murdered between 7,000 and 20,000 people; Syrians I know claim that one day the mass graves will be excavated and the 20,000 figure will be ratified.

Bashar took charge in 2,000, after Hafez died. He was a fresh face with a bit of style. But like father, like son, the secret police remained employed and the jails remained filled. Like father, like son, the body count, inside and outside Syria, continued to mount. A U.N. investigation of the February 2005 assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri found evidence of Syrian involvement. Former Syrian Vice President Abdel-Halim Khaddam later told the German magazine Der Speigel, “I am convinced that the order (to kill Hariri) came from (Bashar) Assad.”

Under Bashar, Syria continues to arm Shia Hezbollah and Sunni Hamas. Hezbollah gives Assad a way to exert backdoor control over Lebanon. With Hezbollah and Hamas as allies, together Syria and Iran wage a war of political and economic attrition against Israel.

Bashar, like Hafez, wears the hard face well. Despite secret police intimidation and the mass deployment of security forces, however, demonstrations in Syria have not subsided. Still, 200 killed in 2011 isn’t 1982’s slaughter of 20,000. What gives?

Videos of the protests, taken by Syrian activists, are cropping up on the Internet. New media may have given Bashar’s regime pause. Bashar is clearly not repeating Moammar Gadhafi’s mistake of threatening the mass murder of dissidents. Bashar claims he will lift Syria’s state of emergency. It has been in effect since 1963 — again, like father, like son.

The Vogue article goes on to mention Asma’s “alliance” with the Louvre Museum, as if Asma herself had any personal resources to back up such “alliance”, other than her marriage to a dictator.

Over in Syria, another day, another massacre.

Fresh face on a dictator’s regime? It’s Vogue, babeee…

Brazil will be hosting the World Cup in 2014, and the Olympics in 2016. Meantime, Mohsen Rabbani, an Iranian cleric who is wanted by Interpol in connection with two terrorist attacks in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994 that killed 114 people, is in charge of converting young Brazilian men to Islam and training them in Iran.

Reinaldo Azevedo blogs at Veja (link in Portuguese) that once converted to Islam, the young Brazilian men will travel to Iran, all expenses paid, with the official objective of “religious instruction.”

Rabbani is considered one the two masterminds of the Buenos Aires attacks, and is also wanted for his involvement in terrorist acts of 2006, according to Veja’s report (my translation. Please link to this post and credit me)

“Now based in Iran, he continues to play a significant role in propagating extremism in Latin America”, said Alberto Nisman, chief investigator at the Argentinian Public Ministry special unit for terrorism.

Veja reports that three groups of Brazilians have traveled to Iran for “religious instruction.” The participants are hand-picked by Rabbani.

A brief Carnival today, due to a very busy weekend:

Read Jackson Diehl’s article in the Washington Post: Why isn’t Obama fighting Colombia’s dirty deal with Chavez?

Few people had heard of Makled before last year, but he has recently made himself famous thanks to a series of jailhouse interviews. In them, Makled, whom the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has accused of shipping up to 10 tons of cocaine a month from Venezuela to the United States, has described bribing or collaborating with scores of the highest officials of Chavez’s government — including his general in chief, the head of military intelligence, the commander of the Navy and some 40 other generals.

Makled says he has videotapes and other evidence documenting his transactions with the generals and with other senior government officials — provincial governors, members of Congress, cabinet secretaries. He says he has information about Venezuela’s help for Hezbollah and other Middle Eastern terrorist groups.

All this, he said repeatedly in an interview with the Univision network, “I will tell to the prosecutor” in New York, where Makled has been indicted on drug charges. That could give the Justice Department the evidence to indict, and the Treasury Department the grounds to sanction, scores of Venezuela’s top leaders.

It could also lead, as Carl Meacham of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff told me, to “a massive turning point in how people look at the Chavez regime.” A self-styled socialist regarded as the successor to Fidel Castro would be reborn as the heir of Manuel Noriega — ruler not of a revolution but of a narco-state.

Only Santos says he will deliver Makled to Chavez — who scurried to make an extradition request ahead of the Justice Department. Chavez, who had a falling-out with Makled when one of the trafficker’s brothers ran for office without his permission, has charged Makled with two murders. He has also offered Santos a rich array of concessions: an end to the near-state of war between their countries; payment of the nearly $1 billion Venezuela owes to Colombian exporters; the return of Colombian drug traffickers captured in Venezuela. It goes without saying that if Makled goes to Caracas, his allegations about the regime’s drug trafficking will be quickly stifled.

Go read the rest for the answer to his title question.

BRAZIL
My post on the murderer of 12 children: Was the Rio shooting a Jihad attack? The answer to that question is, “No.”

Brazil’s opposition
When toucans can’t
The opposition needs generational and policy change if it is to stay relevant

CUBA
The Missed Parade

ECUADOR
U.S. Expels Ecuador Ambassador

Ecuadorean-American relations
A new scalp

HAITI
Mary O’Grady: Will Haiti Get the Rule of Law?
Maybe a pop star is not such a bad choice.

Haiti’s new president
Tet offensive
Popular result, murky past

MEXICO
Why doesn’t the Obama administration designate the Mexican cartels as terrorists and a threat to our national security?

Dozens of Bodies Are Found in Mexico

Mexico’s politics
It’s the economy…right?

VENEZUELA
‘We Do Not Want Him’: As Drug Kingpin Implicates Chavez, DOJ Rejects Extradition to US

The week’s posts:
Hugo Chavez’s Bolivarian militia
Will the Colombia Free Trade Agreement finally get approved?
Why is Mexico’s Calderon silent about the ATF Gunwalker scandal?

The Wall Street Journal reported about the shooting at a Rio de Janeiro school,

Rio School Shooting Shocks City

A heavily armed former student went on a shooting rampage at an elementary school in this beach front city, killing 11 students and wounding 17 before turning the gun on himself, an unprecedented incident that left the country in shock.

The violence claimed the lives of 10 girls and one boy at the Tasso da Silveira public school in the Realengo neighborhood on the city’s west side. The wounded were ferried to local hospitals via helicopter from a makeshift airfield erected at a nearby soccer field. Officials said that, given the gravity of some of the injuries, the death toll could climb.

The Reuters video above rules out gang violence, however, at Monsters and Critics (via Gates of Vienna

Police Colonel Djalma Beltrami said the killer used two handguns and a lot of ammunition. The suspect left behind a letter, in which he anticipated committing suicide after the attack. Beltrami, however, gave no details of any possible motive.
Beltrami described the letter as ‘the words of a person who no longer believes in anything, full of sentences that made no sense and references to Islamic fundamentalism.’

Atlas Shrugs links to local media reports that show that the killer’s suicide note had “Islamist fundamentalism” wording and that he was linked to Islamism.

O Globo’s psychiatric profile mentions that “individuals with fragile personalities can be seduced by ideologies and cults, as appears to have been the case.”

However, upon reading the portion of the text of the suicide note published by O Globo (in Portuguese), Wellington Menezes de Oliveira refers to how he wants his body prepared after his death “not touched by the unclean”, but does not directly refer to Islam. He did mention Jesus.

UPDATE, 4:45PM:
I was reading Ace’s post where he refers to Menezes de Oliveira as a likely jihadist. Ace makes a good point, considering that the killer had expressed interest in Islam, but the fact remains that the suicide note itself asks for God’s forgiveness (not Allah’s), and prays that Jesus “wakes me up from the sleep of death into life”.

This was an act of a homicidal lunatic, but not an Islamist.

Post re-edited to include omitted sentence.

Publicity-hungry crackpot pastor Terry Jones (not the Monty Python guy) in Florida creates a media flurry by burning a Koran at a small Florida church. The incident made it to the news, and then Karzai put it to use for his own purposes (emphasis added),

Both Afghan and international news media had initially played down or ignored the action of Mr. Jones, the Florida pastor. This Thursday, however, President Hamid Karzai made a speech and issued statements condemning the Koran burning and calling for the arrest of Mr. Jones for his actions. On Friday that theme was picked up in mosques throughout Afghanistan.

Gee, thanks, Hamid!

There is no provision in American law for arresting anyone for burning a Koran, or for that matter a Bible, which the courts would consider protected free speech.

“Karzai brought this issue back to life, and he has to take some responsibility for starting this up,” said a prominent Afghan businessman, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of concern over retribution if he was publicly critical of the president.

“Karzai’s speech itself provoked people to take such actions,” said Qayum Baabak, a political analyst in Mazar-i-Sarif. “Karzai should have called on people to be patient rather than making people more angry.”

Officials in Mazar-i-Sharif blamed Taliban agitators from other provinces for stirring up violence in the Friday protests there. Zemarai Bashary, the spokesman for the Ministry of Interior in Kabul, said a high-level delegation had been sent to Mazar-i-Sharif to investigate the cause of the attack, including whether Taliban were involved and why police were not able to prevent the bloodshed inside the U.N. compound.

A spokesman for the Taliban, however, denied that the insurgents had any role in the disturbances in either Mazar or Kandahar. “This was the reaction of the people of Afghanistan,” said Zabiullah Mujahid.

Also on Saturday, a team of suicide bombers attempted to breach the front gate at an American military base in Kabul, Camp Phoenix, according to Mohammed Zahir, chief of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Kabul Police. Two of them were disguised as women, wearing full-length burqas, and two others were carrying small arms, he said. One of the burqa-clad bombers blew up at the gate of the camp, and the other managed to get about five yards inside the gate before also detonating. The other two attackers were shot and killed by guards before they could enter, he said.

Now the Guardian is asking, Is the Florida pastor who burnt the Qur’an morally responsible for the deaths of UN staff in protests in Afghanistan? The short answer is no; the murders were perpetrated by a fanatical group of men. They and their leaders are responsible. Richard Fernandez puts the Guardian’s question in perspective,

The Guardian poll is a story within a story within a story. Terry Jones burns a Koran. Some people in Afghanistan kill and behead UN workers who had nothing to do with Terry Jones. The Guardian sits in judgment — not on the killers in Afghanistan, but of Terry Jones, but not because they care whit for any of the first two stories but because they want to create some kind of talking point upon which to sit moral judgment of a fourth party, as yet unnamed though you can guess who it might be.

The West should stand for freedom of expression. If we allow the possible reaction of the most dogmatic, evil people who might hear the message to govern our expression, we don’t have freedom at all.

UPDATE,
Reader DavidK sent link to Reid, Graham: Maybe it’s time for congressional action on Koran-burning
Whatever happened to free speech?

while the Obama administration sues Arizona for enforcing Federal immigration law:
Patrick Poole writes,
DOJ Memo Confirms Terrorists Have Crossed the Border
PJM reveals a court filing showing that federal prosecutors have admitted a terror threat involving an Al-Shabaab human smuggler who claimed asylum. (h/t Instapundit).
While many Latin American observers have been writing about this issue, what is significant is that this time the Department of Justice is documenting it a court filing in the pending sentencing of convicted Ahmed Muhammed Dhakane in a San Antonio federal court:

In this court filing, provided exclusively here at Pajamas Media, prosecutors admit that Dhakane, who ran a human smuggling ring based in Brazil for the Somali Al-Shabaab terrorist group, transported “violent jihadists” into the country. He stated that “he believed they would fight against the U.S. if the jihad moved from overseas locations to the U.S. mainland.” (p. 7)
…
Dhakane was charged in March 2010 with lying about his terror ties when he applied for asylum in 2008, specifically omitting information that he had worked for two specially designated global terrorist entities (SDGT). He pleaded guilty earlier this year to lying to the FBI and awaits sentencing next month. Rather than trying him on terror charges, federal prosecutors are asking for terror enhancements on the sentence for lying to the FBI.

Poole, who is scheduled to testify today before the Arizona House Military Affairs and Public Safety Committee on the topic of “Cross-border Terror Threats and Islamic Radicalization in Arizona,” correctly points out

This is far from the first time that Islamic terrorists are known to have attempted to enter the U.S, or actually succeeded. Just last year Homeland Security authorities put out an alert concerning a group of terror-tied Somalis who were attempting to enter the country through Mexico. Then last May anotherterror alert was issued for a known Al-Shabaab official, Mohamed Ali, who was suspected of trying to cross the border from Mexico. And in February 2010, a Virginia convert to Islam who was in contact with Al-Shabaab officials, Anthony Joseph Tracy, was charged for his role in an international smuggling ring that brought at least 200 Somalis into the U.S. on Cuban travel documents.

Other terrorist operatives are known to have successfully crossed the border:

• In February 2001, Mahmoud Kourani crossed the border from Tijuana in the trunk of a car, eventually settling in Dearborn, Michigan. Kourani, who federal prosecutors claimed had received training in weapons, intelligence, and spy craft in Iran, bribed a Mexican embassy official in Beirut to obtain a visa. Kourani’s brother is known to be Hezbollah’s security chief in southern Lebanon.
• In December 2002, Salim Boughader was arrested for smuggling 200 Lebanese, including Hezbollah operatives, across the border. Boughader had previously worked for Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV satellite network.
• In July 2004, Farida Goolam Mohamed Ahmed was arrested at a Texas airport boarding a flight to New York. According to the Washington Post, she was connected to a Pakistani terrorist group. Believed to be ferrying instructions to U.S.-based al-Qaeda operatives, authorities issued a terror alert for Washington D.C., New York, and New Jersey.
• In January 2005, two Hamas operatives, Mahmoud Khalil and Ziad Saleh, were arrested as part of a criminal enterprise in Los Angeles. Both had entered the U.S. after paying a smuggler $10,000 each to take them across the border.
• Rep. John Culberson said in November 2005 that an Iraqi al-Qaeda operative on the terror watch list was captured living near the Mexico-Texas border.

At least they weren’t named Perez.

Long-term regular readers of this blog know that I have been asserting that border security is a national security issue.

When will the Obama administration realize that?

UPDATE
Welcome, The Other McCaine readers!

I have not posted on the murder of five members of the Fogel family by member(s) of the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, the terrorist wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s “moderate” Fatah party, because reading about the crime and its aftermath actually made me ill.

Caroline Glick explains what took place,

Ruth Fogel was in the bathroom when the Palestinian terrorists pounced on her husband Udi and their three-month-old daughter Hadas, slitting their throats as they lay in bed on Friday night in their home in Itamar.

The terrorists stabbed Ruth to death as she came out of the bathroom. With both parents and the newborn dead, they moved on to the other children, going into a bedroom where Ruth and Udi’s sons Yoav (11) and Elad (four) were sleeping. They stabbed them through their hearts and slit their throats.

The murderers apparently missed another bedroom where the Fogels’ other sons, eight-year-old Ro’i and two-year-old Yishai were asleep because they left them alive. The boys were found by their big sister, 12-year-old Tamar, when she returned home from a friend’s house two hours after her family was massacred.

Tamar found Yishai standing over his parents’ bodies screaming for them to wake up.

In today’s Wall Street Journal Brett Stephens asks, Are Israeli Settlers Human?
A family of five slaughtered in their beds. Some Palestinians call it ‘natural.’

Just what kind of society thinks it’s “natural” to slit the throats of children in their beds?

The answer: The same society that has named summer camps, soccer tournaments and a public square in Ramallah after Dalal Mughrabi, a Palestinian woman who in March 1978 killed an American photographer and hijacked a pair of Israeli buses, leading to the slaughter of 37 Israeli civilians, 13 children among them.

The Palestinians handed out sweets to celebrate the murder of the Fogels.

And the world?

Even worse is that Palestinians have grown accustomed to the waiver the rest of the world has consistently granted them over the years no matter what they do. Palestinians ought to have expectations of themselves if they mean to build a viable state. But their chances of doing so are considerably diminished if the world expects nothing of them and forgives them everything.

Stephens is more optimistic than I. I do not believe for a moment that the Palestinians and their backers have any trace of humanity left in their souls.

An 8.9 magnitude earthquake and tsunami hit Japan,

It is the strongest earthquake in the history of Japan. Tsunami waves are hitting areas of the Pacific. Not to be missed, the Communications Minister of Bolivia blames the earthquake and tsunami on global warming, and that people aren’t listening to Evo Morales. Richard Fernandez, however, manages to speak with reason,

Planetary forces are so enormously powerful that attempts to control the environment must often fall a far second to simply being able to survive what Mother Nature throws in humanity’s way. Man has survived on this planet by adapting; by storing away in times of safety the food, energy and resilience that are needed to recover from catastrophes he can neither foresee nor prevent.

Whirlpool created following the earthquake,

Venezuelan crude oil is now at $101/barrel. Hugo Chavez’s going to stay in power for a long time.

The soaring gasoline prices are a War On The Poor.

Jamie Glazov has panelists Michael Ledeen, Pavel Stroilov, Lt. General Ion Mihai Pacepa and Nonie Darwish, in a Symposium: The Red Arabs

Robert Romano writes about The Phony Shutdown Showdown; The Time to Cut Spending is Now

As regular readers of this blog know, I think the compact fluorescent lightbulbs are hazardous, inefficient, a ripoff, and, worst of all, make you look like Lilly Munster. Rand Paul lets it rip on “people who believe in some choices but don’t let the consumer choose what’s in their homes”:

Joy and Stacy are arguing about feminism, again.

Michelle Obama sports a $1,000 handbag, which looks like a $40 tote from Target to my untrained eyes. John Hinderaker proposes, LET’S MAKE OBAMA KING, but John may be a little late, at least in Obama’s mind.

Where’s Mel Brooks when we need him? Eva Braun in drag as Al Jolson.