In a Reuters article speculating over whether the terrorists who attacked the U.S. consulate had “inside help” (a phrase striking me as a possible redundancy), I read about a man thought to be heavily involved.
One group that has been linked to the attack is Ansar al Sharia, or Supporters of Sharia. U.S. officials acknowledged this week that a leader of that militant faction is a former inmate of the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The officials told Reuters that the militant leader, known as Abu Sufian Ibrahim Ahmed bin Qumu, was released from Guantanamo in 2007 by President George W. Bush’s administration.
The officials said that it was unclear whether Qumu participated in or helped to direct the Benghazi attack. At least one purported Ansar al Sharia spokesman has denied the group’s involvement in the violence.
I find it odd that unlike a number of other reports, there’s no mention of al-Qaeda, much less Qumu’s long history as an al-Qaeda fighter and operative going back to the early 1990s in Afghanistan. Back in April of this year, he was described as being (I am serious) a U.S. “ally”:
DARNAH, Libya — For more than five years, Abu Sufian Ibrahim Ahmed Hamuda bin Qumu was a prisoner at the Guantánamo Bay prison, judged “a probable member of Al Qaeda” by the analysts there. They concluded in a newly disclosed 2005 assessment that his release would represent a “medium to high risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the U.S., its interests and allies.”
Today, Mr. Qumu, 51, is a notable figure in the Libyan rebels’ fight to oust Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, reportedly a leader of a ragtag band of fighters known as the Darnah Brigade for his birthplace, this shabby port town of 100,000 people in northeast Libya. The former enemy and prisoner of the United States is now an ally of sorts, a remarkable turnabout resulting from shifting American policies rather than any obvious change in Mr. Qumu.
Read it all, and if you can, try to consider the man’s, um, “street creds” from the perspective of your typical virulently anti-American Islamic terrorist wannabe type. He’s a tried and true Afghan veteran (“he’s an Afghan” is an insider term of the highest respect in such circles), who joined the Taliban in 1998, and has enough seniority to have been on the al-Qaeda payroll for years. And he’s a Gitmo survivor! Those weak, sniveling Americans could not break him, and by Allah (PBUH) the cowards had to let him go!
Sorry, but reading the word “ally” in conjunction with such a man was a real eye-opener.
Who is running this country? You’d almost think we were being led by naive, Ivy-League-educated pacifists with not the slightest clue of how the real world operates.
As to whether the attackers of the consulate had “inside help,” gee… ya think?
Comments
8 responses to ““Inside help”? (Whatever that means these days…)”
What I find interesting is how vocal the special operations community has gotten about the two former SEALs who died. They’ve been proclaiming to anyone who will listen that the two had NOTHING to do with Amb. Stevens’ security detail. Y’hear me? NOTHING! They were just, y’know, hanging around the consulate when the attack started.
Now, we’re not talking about Sgt. Major John Doe (ret.), Glen Doherty’s neighbor in Virginia Beach, giving a man-on-the-street interview to the Virginian-Pilot. Nope, this is Pentagon types talking to friendly news outlets, wanting to distance themselves and SOF from…something.
There’s something dank and nasty at the bottom of this business.
The Generals at The Pentagon don’t take a dump until they get JAG permission to sit down. Yet when they are ordered to build schools with soldiers wearing “kick me” signs they do it and send the bodies back home in a box.
Where is their truth-telling before the fiasco? They won’t risk a reprimand but they will leak to the press after the fact.
No wonder every war is a replay if Vietnam.
Just FYI – got a malware warning on your site – you might want to check it out. Might be nothing, might be something – I didn’t see anything in your code but…that could also mean you already fixed it… 😉
Specifically: “Visiting this page may be harmful. It has been reported for distributing malicious software.” Which could be just that someone hates you…but do check it out.
We got hacked, and Host Matters has fixed the problem. No idea who or why.
Hmm – they fixed the problem – and they are good, I’ve dealt with them in my job, (probably why I couldn’t find it in the code 😉 – but you’re still on some blacklists because of it.
That’ll wear off, and I’ll ignore it till it does. Just as I ignored it before – lol. We get that at work far more than I’d like to admit – and my comp is SERIOUSLY hardened so I can boldly go.
But just a suggestion…if you are logging in to post, and WP says update… UPDATE.
And now back to topic:
“You’d almost think we were being led by naive, Ivy-League-educated pacifists with not the slightest clue of how the real world operates.”
Umm. Ahem. (Cough cough). Ya think?
Of COURSE we are, more’s the pity. I’d rather be being led by raving paranoids. These are the sort of people who think hugging wild bears is a good idea…
Thanks Kathy! I’m glad that, thanks to Host Matters, we are back up!