Tag Archives: al-Baghdadi

It was right to toss al-Baghdadi’s corpse into the drink

The head of U.S. Central Command, Marine Corps Gen. Frank McKenzie, has told us that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was “buried at sea” after Army Delta Force commandos completed their mission to take him out.

I guess I should accept the notion that the military personnel charged with disposing of the Islamic State founder’s remains did so with a modicum of respect. I mean, he didn’t show any respect to those victims he killed over his many years leading the hideous terrorist organization. Thus, he didn’t deserve the respect that Central Command reportedly gave his remains.

However, it was a prudent call to dispose of this individual’s corpse in the fashion that our military did. There would be no way in the world that we should bury him in the ground and create a shrine that would attract Islamic perverts to draw strength from being near his remains.

U.S. forces disposed of Osama bin Laden in the same manner after Navy SEALs killed him in May 2011. They hauled his remains out of the compound where the SEALs found him, took him to the USS Carl Vinson and then sent his body into the drink where it was likely consumed by undersea creatures.

I am going to presume that al-Baghdadi’s remains will meet the same fate. That’s fine with me.

Although it does anger me that these terrorist monsters likely got the respectful treatment they never accorded to their own victims. Whatever. They’re both dead. That’s the best part of how these stories have ended.

Now it’s Mick Mulvaney who’s on the Trump Bubble

This is hardly a flash, but it looks for all the world as if “acting” White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney is heading for the exit.

It turns out that Donald Trump chose to keep his chief of staff in the dark prior to the launching of the most important military mission of his presidency: the killing of Islamic State founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Mulvaney reportedly as at home in South Carolina when Trump tweeted the message: “Something very big has just happened.” Mulvaney then was brought up to speed as the mission was commencing.

What is so odd and frightening about this revelation is that White House chiefs of staff normally are part of the national security team that meets to discuss such operations prior to their being launched. Not so with Mulvaney.

Andy Card, chief of staff for President Bush 43, said he is “baffled” by Mulvaney being left out of the planning of such an event.

Mulvaney’s “acting” status has been in place since he took the job after John Kelly departed at the start of this year. Then he held that disastrous White House press briefing a couple of weeks ago in which he admitted that Trump asked for a political favor from the head of a foreign government, telling the media and others to “get over it.” 

So, the guy who once ran the Office of Management Budget only to step into the snake pit known as the White House is likely on his way out. Just think that this is payback for the guy who famously said when he took the White House job that he intended merely to “let Trump be Trump.”

Chaos, anyone?

No one’s keeping score, Mr. POTUS … except you!

Donald Trump is now engaging in a “Can you top this?” game involving the dispatching of international terrorists.

Disgusting!

The president had the gall to say that the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was “bigger” than the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden. While he was taking questions from reporters Sunday after announcing al-Baghdadi’s death at the hands of Army Delta Force commandos, Trump decided — and this is no surprise — to suggest he had one-upped the mission authorized by President Barack H. Obama to kill bin Laden.

Oh, he did say that killing the al-Qaeda leader, bin Laden, was “big,” but then he said taking out the Islamic State honcho was an even more significant event.

Well, I won’t enter a debate over which death was bigger. It is pointless and irrelevant.

I just want to re-state what I said earlier, which is that al-Baghdadi’s death was a gigantic blow to ISIS. Moreover, I applaud the president’s decision to authorize the mission.

It was huge. Then again, so was the Navy SEAL mission to kill bin Laden, who masterminded the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington that killed 3,000 innocent victims in both cities.

Why in the world does the president of the United States choose to cheapen a monumental military victory with an idiotic boast that this take-down was bigger than an earlier one?

Utterly bizarre.

Don’t trust the Democrats … but trust Russians and Turks?

I am not sure I get how this goes.

Donald Trump did not notify congressional Democratic leaders in advance of the raid that killed the leader of the Islamic State over the weekend on grounds that he feared “leaks” that could jeopardize the critical element of surprise.

The president, though, did inform congressional Republicans of the raid as well as — and this is really rich — the Russians and the Turks! Yep, Russia and Turkey got a heads-up in advance of the raid, apparently because the president trusted those two hostile powers, one of which attacked our electoral system in 2016 and is doing so again in 2020.

But not the Democratic leadership. Not the individuals who are chairing key House committees charged with monitoring events related to our national security. Not the folks who need to be kept in the loop when our armed forces are deployed on these critical missions.

Did he really believe the Democratic House chairs and the Senate Democratic leadership would blab to the world about what was about to happen? Or is he miffed because House Democrats want to hold him accountable for the deeds that are likely to lead to his impeachment?

I believe the embattled commander in chief is suffering from a case of acute and destructive petulance.

Trump ‘spikes the football’ in announcing terror leader’s death

I did not intend to venture down this alley, but now that I have given it some thought …

Donald Trump’s announcement of the death of Islamic State mastermind Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi contained language that seemed, well, more than a bit over the top.

Delta Force special operations commandos launched a raid overnight that resulted in al-Baghdadi’s death. The commander in chief tweeted a message about “something really big” happening and then this morning went on TV to tell the world that al-Baghdadi is dead.

However, the president went much farther than merely telling us about the bravery and precision of our special forces. He talked about how al-Baghdadi “died like a dog,” how he was a “coward,” how he was whimpering and sobbing before he detonated the suicide vest strapped to his body.

So I am left to wonder: Why did Donald Trump feel the need to prance and preen over the death of a monster? Why did he spike the proverbial football and seemingly gloat over the mission he authorized?

According to Time.com: Trump was doing more than running down an adversary; he was actively trying to break the spell al-Baghdadi holds over his followers, says a White House official. “He felt it was important to mock this guy,” the official says, adding that Trump wanted to “rub in everybody’s face that this guy was killing and ordering rape of thousands of people and at the end of the day blew himself up with his three kids rather than fight.”

Make no mistake. I applaud the decision to launch the mission. The president could have chosen other options that carried less risk to our special forces. He chose instead to rely on the extraordinary skill of our soldiers who carried out the mission with extraordinary precision and professionalism.

I am thinking at this moment of the evening of May 1, 2011 when President Barack Obama told the world of the SEAL mission that killed Osama bin Laden. He spoke for about 9 minutes. He told us bin Laden was dead; he hailed the men who conducted the mission; he heaped praise on our intelligence team that toiled for many years over two administrations to find bin Laden; he offered words of comfort to the friends and loved ones of the 3,000 people who died on 9/11. He asked for God’s blessing on the United States of America and then walked away from the microphone.

Trump didn’t do that this morning. He went into extraordinary detail about what he perceived about al-Baghdadi’s final moments on Earth.

The president seemed — if you’ll pardon my use of the term — to “glorify” the circumstances of al-Baghdadi’s death.

It was unbecoming. It was, oh, let’s see, so very un-presidential.

War on terror: a conflict with no end in sight

While the world digests the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi at the hands of U.S. Delta Force and CIA commandos, it is grappling with what the Islamic State leader’s death means in the war against international terrorism.

I want to offer this perspective, which is that al-Baghdadi’s death won’t signal the end to the war against terrorists, let alone against the Islamic State.

It is my view at least that 9/11 signaled a new era in U.S. geopolitical activity that doesn’t appear to have an end anywhere in sight.

We’ve known for many decades that terrorists were out to “get” us. The 9/11 attack 18 years ago simply burst that awareness to the front of our minds. Al-Qaeda’s daring attack signaled to us all that we were perhaps more vulnerable than we ever thought.

So the war has commenced. I share the critics’ view that the war on terror has taken a bizarre turn at times, particularly with our invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and the misery that the Iraq War brought, given that Iraq had no connection with al-Qaeda, nor did it possess weapons of mass destruction.

However, the war on terror is likely to continue until the world no longer contains terrorists willing to die for the perverted cause to which they adhere.

In other words, we’ll be fighting this war forever.

Whether we fight at the level we have been fighting remains to be seen over the span of time. If 9/11 taught us anything it should have taught us that we cannot let our guard down for a single moment.

Not ever.

Baghdadi is dead, but ISIS remains a threat

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s death overnight in northwestern Syria at the hands of U.S. Army Delta Force and CIA commandos is a gigantic blow to the Islamic State terrorist organization he led.

But forgive me for emphasizing what ought to be the obvious: ISIS will remain a serious threat for as long as there are young men and women willing to buy into the terrorists’ religious perversion.

Donald Trump this morning confirmed what had been reported during the night, that special forces conducted a raid that killed Baghdadi. The commander in chief had authorized the raid after hearing extensive briefings from military and intelligence analysts that they had located the terrorist monster hiding underground near the Syria-Turkey border.

One cannot possibly overstate the importance of killing Baghdadi, just as the death of al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden in May 2011 was a huge blow to that terrorist organization. Let us take stock in the fact that just as al-Qaeda was able to reconstitute its leadership after bin Laden’s death at the hands of a Navy SEAL team in Pakistan, so will ISIS likely be able to do the same thing.

I believe it is important, too, to salute the meticulous work done by our intelligence forces in tracking Baghdadi down and enabling our special forces to find him, hunt him down and deliver ultimate justice to him. The president, infamously I should add, has been critical of some aspects of the intelligence community’s work in certain areas … relating, for example, to the Russian interference in our election.

They did their job with great skill and professionalism, which we all know they are capable of doing.

As for the special forces team that completed this highly dangerous mission, their capabilities are unmatched all of the world’s military history.

All that said, the fight against ISIS, al-Qaeda and all other terrorists who declared war on the United States on 9/11 must go on.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead. May he rot in hell.

ISIS leader becomes new No. 1 target

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Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has become a marked man.

Who is this guy? He is the leader of the Islamic State. He heads the world’s most formidable terrorist organization.

What if we get him? Will it mean the end of the organization. Probably not by itself, but it would cripple the Islamic State in a way that all the bombs and missiles we’re dropping on the terrorists.

This is a big deal at many levels.

According to Bloomberg News Service: “Eliminating Baghdadi is seen as a particularly important goal, the official said, because he holds a unique role in being able to inspire and organize extremists beyond the territory held by the group. While declining to compare the effort to the operation that led to the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in 2011, the official said the U.S. has a proven track record of finding a top target once it sets its sights.”

President Obama and Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced recently the deployment of a special operations team that is set up to help Kurdish and Iraqi forces fighting ISIS units. The team is expected to deploy teams acting on intelligence gathered by CIA operatives, the National Security Agency, the FBI, Navy SEALs and Army Delta Force commandos.

These folks all are quite good at what we ask them to do.

Which is to hunt down and eliminate bad guys.