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As featured on p. 218 of "Bloggers on the Bus," under the name "a MyDD blogger."

Monday, May 09, 2005

High-Level Temp Captured in the War on Terror

You may have noticed in-between runaway bride updates that the Bush Administration was touting a "major capture" of the #3 in the al-Qaeda leadership last week. They're not talking much about it as the week begins. Probably because it was one of those wacky "Three's Company" misunderstandings:

THE capture of a supposed Al-Qaeda kingpin by Pakistani agents last week was hailed by President George W Bush as “a critical victory in the war on terror”. According to European intelligence experts, however, Abu Faraj al-Libbi was not the terrorists’ third in command, as claimed, but a middle-ranker derided by one source as “among the flotsam and jetsam” of the organisation...

Another Libyan is on the FBI list — Anas al-Liby, who is wanted over the 1998 East African embassy bombings — and some believe the Americans may have initially confused the two. When The Sunday Times contacted a senior FBI counter-terrorism official for information about the importance of the detained man, he sent material on al-Liby, the wrong man.


You know, maybe we should give George 'n' the gang some slack on this one. After all, "Libbi" and "Liby" almost sound the same, if there were any Arabic translators left in the CIA to pronounce it.

So who was the al-Libbi that we got, anyway?

No European or American intelligence expert contacted last week had heard of al-Libbi until a Pakistani intelligence report last year claimed he had taken over as head of operations after Khalid Shaikh Mohammad’s arrest. A former close associate of Bin Laden now living in London laughed: “What I remember of him is he used to make the coffee and do the photocopying.”

Now that'll show bin Laden who's boss. Now he'll have to do the photocopying HIMSELF! He'll have to figure out the coffee machine ON HIS OWN! This is a major blow for the forces of liberty against the forces that now have to understand that it takes 2 tablespoons of the Kenyan roast blend per cup of filtered water.

Finally, here's my vote for the "Dumbest Cover-Your-Ass Comment of the Year" Award:

One American official tried to explain the absence of al-Libbi’s name on the (terrorist most) wanted list by saying: “We did not want him to know he was wanted.”

I got nothing for that one. Make your own jokes.

...UPDATE: Will Bunch has the money insight:

Of course, all the KYWs of the world, the places where Joe Average American Voter gets his news, headlined the arrest for a couple of days. Not many of them pick up reports from the Times of London, so we doubt this will be ever corrected. Sad.

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