Last Week's Suicide Bomb Attack Against CIA In Afghanistan Gets Even More Ominous

The suicide bombing at CIA camp in Afghanistan on 31 December killed seven of our intelligence operatives, a Jordian intelligence official who was also a member of the royal family, and injured several others. The CIA officers killed were very experienced officers whose loss, tragic in human terms, is also a severe blow to our intelligence operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

We now know that the suicide bomber, Humam Khalil Mohammed, aka Abu Dujanah al-Khorasani, was a physician, a prolific and vitriolic jihadi cyber activist, and a double agent, apparently for the Taliban. He made a "martyrdom video" in the month prior to his death:



There is also a disturbing report suggesting that elements of Pakistan's Intelligence Service, ISI, may have had a hand in this mass murder:

Early evidence in the December 30 bombing that killed seven CIA agents suggests a link to Pakistan, two senior Afghan sources, including an official at their spy agency, told The Daily Beast. The pair said that U.S. has already taken a chemical fingerprint of the bomb used by a Jordanian double agent in the attack, and that it matches an explosive type used by their Pakistan equivalents, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI.

If there is ISI involvement, then it compounds the issues raised by this bombing significantly.

Nibras Kazimi at Talisman Gate explains how this will reverberate through the jihadi community:

[Khorasani] is someone that many jihad-watchers have followed over the years . . .

If all the facts here are true, then this is huge. Huge. This story's immediate effect is to give the jihadists a massive morale boost. They will mythologize this story into a recruiting tool that encourages more and more young men who sympathize with the jihadists to surmount their instinctual fear of the nebulous intelligence services of the Middle East, and to challenge the autocracies that supposedly keep a lid on jihadism. Khorasani has left a lot of hero-worship material, much of it very smart at manipulating emotions. Now, he himself is the hero in the eyes of jihadist wanna-bes. Many will seek to emulate him, or even outdo him. . . .

This also raises a host of issues regarding security, field craft, and counterintelligence. Anyone can be fooled, but for six senior agents all to be milling about within the kill radius of a suicide bomb before Khorasani was searched is simply inexplicable. Leon Panetta claims that Khorsani was about to be searched when the bomb was set off, as if that somehow is an explanation for six deaths. It actually makes their failure to observe even basic common sense security procedures all that more blatant.

Dave In Boca discusses several of these issues in a very good post and I highly recommend you read it. He also adds this bon mot:

Robert Baer just came back from a visit to Kabul and environs and found that only two CIA officers spoke a local language, Dari, while NONE speaks or understands Pushtun, the language [that] most of the Al Qaeda Pathan in Afghanistan and their Taliban Punjabi brothers in Pakistan and Baluchi Taliban in Quetta converse in.

We are nine years into the war in Afghanistan. If this report is true, then there are more sucking chest wounds in our intelligence wing than merely security and counterintelligence. Indeed, I find this as breathtaking in its implications as is the fact that a suicide bomber was able to kill six senior CIA agents with a single suicide bomb. It means that nine years in, we essentially have an intelligence presence in Afghanistan - now America's main war effort - that is functionally deaf and illiterate. How the hell can the CIA expect to accomplish its intelligence mission without agents in country trained in the primary language spoken in Afghanistan. This isn't the stuff of 007 - its the stuff of a very bad Pink Panther movie. It is so 180 degrees off from what I would expect of a professional intelligence agency that I am near speachless. I am dead serious when I say that, between this failure of basic security procedures and the failure to have Pashtun speakers in a Pashtun speaking country when we are nine years into a war in said Pashtun speaking country, Sylvester Reyes and Leon Panetta should be emasculated and have their testicles hung at the Langley main entrance. This is utterly beyond belief.

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Jihad & Counter-Terrorism Linkfest

All of the most interesting links on the world of jihadism and efforts to counter it below the fold
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The above cartoon unabashedly stolen from Always On Watch.

Always On Watch is blogging on a major attack by Muslims on a Christian school in Jakarta, Indonesia, injuring hundreds of students. The attack was spearheaded by the local imam and chairman of the Muslim Brotherhood Forum of Kampung Pulo Village, who in the past opposed the opening and continued existence of the Christian institute.

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser ponders the significance of the resignation of Parvez Ahmed from CAIR's Board of Directors. What he observes is a change in tactics rather than any fundamental shift away from the goal of instituting political Islam in America.

Someone is killing the Syrian leadership running Hezbollah. A few months ago, uber terrorist and Hezbollah operations chief Imad Muginayah was assassinated in Damascus. Today its Syrian President Bashar Assad's top aide, adviser, and liaison officer to the Hizbullah, General Mohammed Suleiman. Anti-Mullah is blogging on news reports that he was shot and killed by an unidentified sniper in the Syrian port city of Tartous. This is a positive trend.

Atlas Shrugs covers the testimony of Steve Emerson before Congress on the thoroughly backwards State Dept. attempts to engage the Muslim community in the U.S. by going through organizations set up and funded by radical foreign elements. The meat of Mr. Emerson’s testimony:

"While the outreach to the Muslim community by the State Department "is an honorable and worthwhile pursuit, the State Department has conducted outreach to the wrong groups, sending a terrible message to moderate Muslims who are thoroughly disenfranchised by the funding, hosting and embracing of radical groups that purport to be opposed to terrorism and extremism."

As I have blogged on several occasions before, this is precisely the same mistake Britain is making.

CAIR is celebrating the dismissal of Michael Savage’s lawsuit over CAIR’s use of parts of his radio program to organize a boycott of his show’s sponsors. Given the serious implications of Savage’s lawsuit for the fair use doctrine and freedom of speech, I have to say that, in this one very unusual and discrete instance, CAIR was right. Meanwhile, the American wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, the MAS, is supporting the insane decision by a judge to release Sami al Arian on bond.

There is an utter outrage in Pakistan. Kidnapping and rape of pre-teen Christian girls has been given the green light by Pakistan’s lower courts. Christians Under Attack has the story of two young Christian girls kidnapped by Muslims, "married," forced to convert to Islam. In a lawsuit by the children’s parents to force the return of their children, the lower court ruled that they are now Muslims and the rightful property of their "husbands." There is an update to this story at Gates of Vienna.

The Terror Wonk blogs on the ramifications of the CIA making public allegations, carried in the NYT, that Pakistan’s intelligence agency, ISI, is actively involved in supporting the Taliban. The ISI has been a snakes den for decades.

Robert Spencer at Dhimmi Watch blogs on a Turkish soap opera about an Islamic man and wife who act as equal partners. It apparently has Saudi women enthralled and Saudi clerics up in arms.

The Wahhabi purists in al Qaeda are upset with King Abdullah for attempting to reach out to other faiths. Dinah Lord posts on the latest al Qaeda video calling for beheading the King.

Via Europe News, there is Diana West’s column on how serious the problem of radical Islam is in the UK and the utter failure of the chattering class to face the issue. Indeed, to the contrary, they are doing all they can to silence any attempt to raise or debate the issue. Among the many facts they are ignoring are items like this from an interview with Egyptian Islamic Preacher 'Amr Khaled: "Within 20 Years, Muslims Will Be Majority in Europe" And the Gathering Storm posts on how one small community in Britain that rejected plans for building a Mosque in their town are now having the decision taken away from them by the government.

Winds of Jihad has an eye opening post on how Muslims are turning areas of Germany into no-go zones for police and non-Muslims.

From Eye On The World: "The son of one of the most prominent Hamas MPs coverts to Christianity, calls Islam a religion of death, admires Israel and cautions that Islam will never allow Muslims to achieve a peace agreement with the Jews."

Michael Ledeen blogs at PJM on the interaction between "soft power" and brute force, making the important point that the determining factor of success in a counterinsurgency is who the populace believes is going to win the "brute force" end of things.

At Ironic Surrealism, a chilling video about the goals of jihadism in the words of their spiritual leaders.

Europe News reports that Denmark is 'liberalizing' its laws to allow for the possibility of greater immigration as the result of "cousin marriages" among the Muslim population.

From Islamist Watch, an article by David Rushin on Muslim intimidation and threats of violence against "apostates" in the West who convert from Islam.

At the Lebanese news outlet, Ya Libnan, an editorial on the prospects for the new Cabinet: "To expect Hezbollah to play a positive role in the creation of a Lebanese civil society is to believe in the supernatural and to suspend rationality in favour of miracles."

At LGF, the Turkish AKP party, having just survived a challenge to its constitutionality, has backed down on the issue of "allowing" females to wear headscarves as a sign of their faith in public buildings and universities.

From Marked Manner, Obama has been getting sizable campaign contributions from individuals in Rafah, GA. GA stands for Gaza, not Georgia.

Freedom of speech and radical Islam in all its manifestations are diametrically opposed. Thus it is no surprise when Muslims Against Sharia reports that Kuwait has now declared criticism of Islam on the internet to be a criminal offense.

Debbie at Right Truth has an exceptional update on uranium enrichment and other activities directed towards the imminent creation of a nuclear arsenal by the mad mullahs

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Interesting News - 15 January 2008

Operation Iron Harvest is going on in Northern Iraq to push al Qaeda out of their final footholds. The Washington Post reports that the operation has resulted in 60 insurgents killed and over 200 captured during the past week. The NYT apparently missed the briefing.

The NYT is a case study in the failure of journalistic ethics and yellow journalism. Their latest the other day was a lead story clearly meant "to convince Americans that combat experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan are turning troops into murderers when they come home." True, returning vets committed or are charged with 121 murders in the United States since our current wars began. But, as Ralph Peters points out – but the Times does not – in context that means our soldiers "are five times less likely to commit a murder than their demographic peers."

And according to the NYT in an editorial yesterday, Iraq and the surge are no longer of importance to the general election. The Weekly Standard sees it a bit differently. "As the surge in Iraq has succeeded, the presidential campaign of John McCain has risen from the ashes. This is no coincidence, and the message is simple and unmistakable. The surge is now a powerful force in American politics. In the jargon of the 2008 presidential race, it's a game-changer."

The Iraqi Minister of Defense sees a security need for U.S. troops in Iraq for about another decade. He estimates that Iraq "will be able to take full control of the internal affairs of the country" by 2012. "[R]egarding protection from any external threats, our calculation appears that we are not going to be able to answer to any external threats until 2018 to 2020." The Defense Minister made these statements as the U.S. and Iraq negotiate U.S. troop presence in the country following the end of the UN mandate.

Bringing much needed sanity to the tort bar’s the search for deep pockets irrespective of responsibility is the Supreme Court with its 5-3 decision in Stoneridge Investment Partners v. Scientific-Atlanta. The court held that third party actors and business associates of the corporate entity that committed fraud cannot be held liable for the fraud if investors did not rely on their statements in making an investment decision. Read the entire decision here.

The spectre of Islamic radicalism in Pakistan is very much a Frankenstein’s monster. Radicalism was nurtured in Pakistan by Pakistan’s ISI and funded by Saudi Arabia to produce militants useful in pressuring India and controlling Afghanistan. But those radicals have long since cut the imbelical cord, and the ISI itself is suspect.

In the People’s Republic of California, the state plans to take control of the thermostats. One is both amazed at the incredible hubris of the left and the amount of damage and mischief their schemes of centralized control for the greater good of mankind inevitably portent.

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