BillCosby

HERE WE GO: This nuke armed nation does not want the us on it's soil assinating ppl & has said so......... SO they just do it any way..

This man & ???? have been assassinated... By what law is this not murder??? They have not been charged w/, nor convicted of any crime....... & Now they are not around to act in their own defense nor confront their accusers..... Why is it only the usa & Israel that have this right???


Al-Qaeda commander killed in Pakistan

A missile from a US Predator drone has killed a top al-Qaeda commander in Pakistan.

Abu Laith al-Libi was killed during an air strike on a suspected terrorist safe house in Pakistan's North Waziristan region, the lawless tribal area bordering Afghanistan. (lawless according to who??? Them or bush???)

He believed to have been behind a brazen bomb attack during a visit last year by the US vice president to Afghanistan, an American official said.

The death was reported by postings on two Islamist websites and confirmed by a US official on Thursday.

Although a Pakistan government spokesman in Islamabad said he had no information to prove al-Libi was dead, intelligence officials in Miran Shah, a main town in North Waziristan, said there were strong indications he had been killed.

"Our sources among militants ... are telling us that al-Libi died in the US missile attack," said a security official. A second intelligence official confirmed that account.

The killing of such a major al-Qaeda figure on Pakistani soil is likely to embarrass Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, who has repeatedly said he would not permit US military action against al-Qaeda members believed to be regrouping in the wild borderlands near Afghanistan.

It could also signal a more robust covert operation against al-Qaeda figures who have sought refuge on Pakistani soil.

An estimated 12 people were killed in the strike, including Arabs, Turkmen from central Asia and local Taliban members, according to an intelligence official. He said the bodies of those killed were badly mangled by the force of the explosion and it was difficult to identify them.

The Predator is an unmanned reconnaissance aircraft that has been armed by both the US Air Force and CIA with Hellfire anti-tank missiles. Even though all signs point to the CIA, agency officials (aren't these the torture & waterboarding guys???) would not confirm that their aircraft were involved in the strike.

In the past, coalition forces in Afghanistan are believed to have launched a number of similar missile strikes against Taliban and al-Qaeda militants hiding on the Pakistani side of the border, but the US military has never confirmed any of them.

"We have no official information on this. Coalition forces do not conduct operations in Pakistan," Major Chris Belcher, a spokesman for the US-led coalition troops in Afghanistan, said on Friday.

A senior US official said last week that the top two US intelligence officials made a secret visit to Pakistan in early January to seek permission from Musharraf for greater involvement of American forces in trying to ferret out al-Qaeda and other militant groups active in the tribal regions along the Afghanistan border.

The official declined to disclose what was said, but Musharraf was quoted two days after the January 9 meeting with CIA Director Michael Hayden and Mike McConnell, director of national intelligence, as saying US troops would be regarded as invaders if they crossed into Pakistan to hunt al-Qaeda militants.

The CIA first used the remotely piloted Predator as a strike plane in November 2002 against six alleged al-Qaeda members travelling in a vehicle in Yemen.

In January 2006, Ayman Al-Zawahri, al-Qaeda's second-in-command, was the target of a missile allegedly fired from a CIA Predator drone near Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. The terror leader was not at the site, but officials said four key al-Qaeda operatives were killed.

The US says al-Libi - whose name means "the Libyan" in Arabic - was likely behind a February 2007 bombing at the US base at Bagram in Afghanistan during a visit by US Vice President Dick Cheney.

The attack killed 23 people but Cheney was deep inside the sprawling base and was not hurt.

Terrorism experts said al-Libi's death was a significant setback for al-Qaeda because of his extensive ties to the Taliban, but they said the terror network would likely regroup and replace him.

"Al-Libi has been waging jihad for more than 10 years and it will be a blow to both al-Qaeda and the Taliban, but not in a way that will lead to the downfall of those organisations," said Eric Rosenbach, terror expert and executive director of the Centre for International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School.

A website that frequently carries announcements from militant groups said al-Libi had been "martyred with a group of his brothers in the land of Muslim Pakistan" but gave no further details.

Residents near the Pakistani town of Mir Ali in North Waziristan said they could hear US Predator drones flying in the area shortly before the explosion, which destroyed the compound.

A Pakistani intelligence official said local militants quickly retrieved and buried the bodies in the village cemetery after the attack.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said he did not "have anything definitive" to say on reports of al-Libi's death.

The Libyan-born al-Libi was among the most high-profile figures in al-Qaeda after its leader, Osama bin Laden, and his deputy al-Zawahri.

Al-Libi also led an al-Qaeda training camp and appeared in a number of al-Qaeda internet videos.

In spring 2007, al-Qaeda's media wing, Al-Sahab, released a video interview with a bearded man identified as al-Libi. In it, he accuses Shi'ite Muslims of fighting alongside American forces in Iraq, and claimed that mujahideen would crush foreign troops in Afghanistan.

Al-Libi was known to maintain close ties with tribes living on the Pakistani side of the mountainous border, where US officials believe al-Qaeda has been regrouping.

A Pakistani intelligence official said al-Libi was based near Mir Ali until late 2003, when he moved back into Afghanistan to take charge of al-Qaeda operations on both sides of the border area. But he retained links with North Waziristan, the official said.

Farhana Ali, a terror expert at the RAND Corporation, said Al-Libi's death was a "significant blow" to al-Qaeda but added that "al-Qaeda's strength is that it knows how to secure membership and recruitment, and because the movement will continue, al-Libi will be replaced."

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Preventive war is not war!!!!Counter-terror is not terror