I was way skeptical of Leon Panetta's swaggerific boast of al-Qaida's near defeat. But Atiyah Abd al-Rahman just got got. A/K/A Shaikh Atiyallah, Atiyah was operational leader, ideologue and all-around underboss. Despite some hasty tweeting, it's not clear yet how Atiyah was killed, though the AP -- which I believe broke the story -- suggested that it was by a drone strike in North Waziristan on August 22.
Hang 'em high. If I was Zawahri, I'd be pretty nervous. Especially because now I probably have to promote Adam Gadahn. al-Q is down to the scrubs, the flunkies and the nerdstroms.
UPDATE: Chris Albon adds this brilliance:
UPDATE UPDATE: Mark Mazzetti reports it was a drone whut done it.
Yeah. I think AQ Central's been pretty much done since 9/11, although to be fair it would have been hard to reach that conclusion at the time. But they have been unable to make themselves a factor ever since, except for being the boogieman that MIGHT strike anytime, anywhere.
It's an interesting consideration that they've kind of followed the same arc as technology, building a successful organization a la IBM or Microsoft, only to see a fairly precipitous decline from their peak as we now see the rise of decentralized organizations and distributed processes. I see it as kind of the Open Source Jihad movement, where contact with the established "commercial" providers is risky and even toxic, and independent actions and loosely coupled organizations represent the future...
Posted by: mikey | 08/27/2011 at 12:38 PM
Strange Bedfellow?
Abdelhakim Behadj a.k.a. Abu Abdullah Assadaq is the commander of Tripoli Military Council. It appears that this person is none other than a high ranking Al Qaeda operative...Is NATO -- a.k.a. the war council of President Obama -- once again in the tender embrace of Al Qaeda?
Posted by: Robert Arnold | 08/28/2011 at 07:54 AM
mikey,
"...... I think AQ Central's been pretty much done since 9/11....."
you don't think that it would be fairer to say that AQ was pretty much done AFTER we spent a couple of years post-9/11 messing them up?
I don't really think that the 9/11 attacks themselves exhausted their capacity and caused them to poop out.
seems more akin to Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, where he managed a success that set in train events that did him in.
Posted by: fuster | 08/28/2011 at 09:43 AM
He is a good friend that speaks well of us behind our backs.
Posted by: North Face us | 11/17/2011 at 01:34 AM