Following the news of a close call for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in which the United States military missed Zarqawi but captured his laptop, little has been known regarding what was in the laptop. We now know at least some of what was in it.

WASHINGTON — Information seized from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s laptop computer show that the Jordanian terrorist has been expanding his jihad network outside Iraq and may be emerging as Al Qaeda’s preeminent global military commander, The New York Post reported Wednesday.

[snip]

The data in his computer reveals Zarqawi is directing scores of fanatics from Yemen, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states who volunteered for “martyrdom” missions in Iraq and other countries, sources said.

“The information has given us new insight into the scope of his operations outside of Iraq that we did not know about previously,” a U.S. intelligence official familiar with the analysis told the Post.

The official said new secret counterterror operations have been launched by the CIA and intelligence services of other countries as a result of information in his laptop.

Sources said the computer files also yielded recent communications with al Qaeda leaders, including a message from bin Laden’s No. 2 man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in which he urged Zarqawi to expand his operations outside Iraq to include attacks on Americans in the United States.

Largely there is nothing contained on the computer that surprises me other than communication with Ayman al-Zawahiri. Previous we had known of his contact with Bin Laden and Fox News reports there were more traces of the two terrorists communicating on Zarqawi’s laptop, however the inclusion of Zawahiri into this trio gives further credence to the belief many intelligence analysts have regarding Zarqawi’s rise in stature in Al Qaida. I believe it either signifies Zarqawi’s rise or, and possibly both, Bin Laden and Zawahiri being able to do anything other than release a video or audio tape every few months to their adoring fans while Zarqawi is in an area where he is able to direct and participate in attacks.

According to SITE, terrorists and terrorist sympathisers are abuzz at the idea that Osama Bin Laden is set to release a tape of some kind formally ending his “truce” offer to Europe. I’ve reported on this site that many intelligence agencies believe Zarqawi is, or at least was at some time, planning a chemical attack in Europe. Bin Laden has already urged Zarqawi to branch out of Iraq and strike the United States on our soil and Europe in their soil. Now word is that Zawahiri is arguing much of the same.

Two conclusions can be drawn from this information. The first conclusion is that Zarqawi, through newly found information that he has cells and is planning attacks, is trying to carry out the will of both Bin Laden and Zawahiri in attacking outside of Iraq. One thing we all should have learned by now is that Zarqawi is narcissistic to say the least and pre-occupied with garnering attention for his “cause.” Terrorists have learned that in order to gain notoriety for their cause they attack areas which are not seen as threatened, thus the act and rationale of terrorism as a whole.

The second conclusion is that Zarqawi may very well want to strike outside of Iraq yet does not have the capability of doing so. I have absolutely no doubt Zarqawi would carry out, that is he would send someone else to do the dirty work, a terrorist attack on a massive scale in either Europe or the United States or both if he could. What is stopping him? Possibly the saving grace is the very war in Iraq is keeping him occupied with directing terrorist attacks and ordering suicide bombers to the pits of hell while he’s moving every few hours to avoid capture. Simply put, he has no time to put an entire structure together because he is on the run constantly.

Now that we know more information that was found on Zarqawi’s laptop, I still wonder why he would bring it along with him and not either format the hard drive or encrypt the laptop to the best of his ability. We do know that Al Qaida’s computer experts are not kids sitting at home on mom and dad’s DSL, they are as or possibly even more proficient than many computer experts that do this type of thing for a living. The truck carrying Zarqawi had the time to turn around and run, why didn’t Zarqawi have the time to format his computer?

And again, this was not the first time computers being used for propoganda videos and communications have been found in Iraq. You would think they would learn, however perhaps the U.S. and Iraqi military has Al Qaida in Iraq on the run so much they forget to carry out the basic steps in which would keep the group in hiding and their enemy unsuspecting of future operations.

Update:
Heh.

During Russian President Vladimir Putin’s historic visit to Israel, Putin and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak argued for two key things that would help further peace in the Middle East; more UN involvment in Iraq and peace talks to be held in Moscow.

“The United Nations should play a role in helping Iraq and in particular in rebuilding its constitutional and legislative institutions,” Mubarak told reporters at the news conference.

“It should also play a role in the reconstruction of Iraq,” Mubarak was quoted by AP as saying.

Well, it’s about damn time someone other than the United States and England are asking the United Nations to step up to their earlier pledge to help reconstruction and the political scene in Iraq. This is yet one more failure of the United Nations under Kofi Annan.

Mubarak will not be able to send any soldiers to Iraq to help safeguard the country as it would create huge turmoil in his own country, a country that will have an election for President thanks in large part to the new-found Democratic movement in the Middle East. Putin, well, I’m not sure what keeps Russia from helping out in Iraq other than it might be a conflict of interest to their arms sales in the Saddam Hussein era while Iraq was under UN sanctions or a conflict of interest in their new nuclear trading partner Iran. I take what Mubarak says at face value however I doubt Putin was the one of the two advocating such a statement.

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for a Mideast peace conference in Moscow in the autumn, and he and his Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak also ended their landmark meeting by urging the United Nations to play a larger role in Iraq.

The Russian president, leader of one of the four powers backing the “road map” plan for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, said Wednesday he would discuss the peace conference proposal with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon during his visit to Israel, which was to begin late Wednesday.

“I am suggesting that we should convene a conference for all these countries concerned (with the Mideast peace process) and the Quartet, next autumn,” Putin said in Russian during a joint press conference with Mubarak. The so-called Quartet includes Russia, the United States, the European Union and the United Nations.

Right now we’ve got a Roadmap to Peace that has been layed out for years and only a few steps have been followed, though none of them to the full extent of the accord. Why not invite Russia into the mix as well as the United Nations? Russia, historically speaking, has sided more against Israel than for Israel, however if Russia has a good idea to get the peace process rejuvenated then why not let them go for it.

The election of Abbas in Palestine should help pave the way towards peace as it already has, however if Israel continues to side-step the Roadmap to Peace then another measure must be put in place to give the Roadmap a chance to succeed. No, I’m not putting all the blame at the hands of Israel as I’ve argued many times on this site a perhaps bigger obstacle is Palestinian terrorists.

This is the type of public relations campaign that needs to be happening accross Iraq. Perhaps it is, but this is the first I’ve ever heard of it.

One caller wants to know why she can’t attend the trials of her family members. The next claims his house was robbed of 3 million dinars after a raid, and he wants it back. A third asks about Western medical attention for a critically ill child.

On the live call-in radio show, the main guest is the head of the U.S.-led occupation in Tikrit, the callers are local residents, and the questions they ask tell the story of the occupation in Iraq.

“There’s just so many ways that we can defeat the insurgency,” says Lt. Col. Todd Wood of the 3rd Infantry Division after the show last week. “One of the ways is to change perception. If we can do that, the people will change.”

Wood, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 70th Infantry Regiment, deals daily with infantry patrols, bankrolls local improvement projects and directs raids on suspected insurgents.

But he thinks one of the most powerful tools at his disposal is the live radio show on FM 96.5, on which he stars each Thursday afternoon.

He arrives early in a heavily armored convoy. Soldiers enter the radio station on the edge of Tikrit ahead of him. When he walks in, he is armored and helmeted but also cheerful. The unscripted hour that follows can be congratulatory or combative.

Wood loves it either way.

I hope this type of call-in show appears more often as the results from this single show should be dramatic. While terrorists spray paint, pass out leaflets, release videos and communiques that are quite often outright lies, brutalize Iraqis to turn fear into admiration and even participate in religious scare tactics, the U.S. military has stayed on the sidelines for much of the war in terms of public relations.

I’ve argued before and will continue to argue that it matters not what type of government is in place in Iraq long after the United States leaves or how many decisive battles have been won against terrorists, it only matters if the people living in Iraq grow up loving or hating the United States. Iraqis must have a better concept of what we symbolize and what values we have from us and not the terrorists.

A radical Islamic cleric has been found guilty for inciting violence against the United States urging his followers to join the Taliban and fight. He faces life in prison without parole.

Prosecutors said the defendant — a native U.S. citizen who has an international following in some Muslim circles — wielded enormous influence among a group of young Muslim men in northern Virginia who played paintball games in 2000 and 2001 as a means of training for holy war around the globe.

Five days after Sept. 11, al-Timimi addressed a small group of his followers in a secret meeting and warned that the attacks were a harbinger of a final apocalyptic battle between Muslims and non-believers. He said they were required as Muslims to defend the Taliban from a looming U.S. invasion, according to the government.

While nobody ever joined the Taliban, four of the defendant’s followers subsequently traveled to Pakistan in late September 2001 and trained with a militant group called Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Three of them testified that their intention had been to use the training they received from the group to join the Taliban and fight in Afghanistan, and that it was al-Timimi’s speech that inspired them to do so.

While I’m not going to argue whether or not al-Timini should have been prosecuted in the first place, I do find it odd that the United States has chosen to go after al-Timini for inciting violence yet leaves several other Islamic clerics who urge much of the same unchecked. The seven men who were found guilty of belogning to a “Virginia Jihad” group have stated sermons and urgings from al-Timini played a major role in their decision to participate in Jihad against the United States.

An Iraqi member of parliment was killed today after terrorists stormed into her home and shot her dead.

Lamia Abed Khadouri al-Sagri, a member of the National Assembly and of outgoing premier Ayad Allawi’s Iraqi List party, was killed in her house in the Hay Aour neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, police Capt. Ali al-Obeidi said.

One must wonder why these terrorists decided to execute a female lawmaker instead of a male lawmaker, though if the people responsible for the murder are connected to Al Qaida in Iraq it probably has more to do with Sharia Law and the forbidding of women to make anything of their lives.

Correction:
Reuters reports al-Sagri was gunned down outside her home rather than inside of her home. The original post and title will remain based on two different accounts.

Following the news of yet another close call for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the news that U.S. authorities confiscated Zarqawi’s computer that is believed to have contained pictures of the terrorist, I find it fitting to post the following pictures of Zarqawi. Many of these pictures are new in terms of ones that I had never seen before.

I do not know if these pictures were found on the hard drive of Zarqawi’s computer as these pictures were found in a Zipped file on a radical Islamic message board. If these were on the hard drive, one has to laugh at the narcissistic nature of Zarqawi who would carry around a laptop filled with his own pictures. There were many other photos including Ayman al-Zawahri, though those were simply screenshots of al-Zawahri as he appeared on Al Jazeera.

Below the fold, that’s the ‘Read more here’ link, are the photos of Abu Musab al-Zarawi.

(more…)

In a tale between two interpretations of the United States WMD report, I present both the Khaleej Times and the World Tribune as proof that the wording in the final report perhaps should have been more clear.

First from the Khaleej Times:

WASHINGTON - The US-led group that scoured Iraq for weapons of mass destruction has found no evidence Iraq hid such weapons in Syria before the US invasion in March 2003, according to a final report on the investigation.

The 1,700-member Iraq Survey Team, responsible for the weapons hunt, also said in a report released late on Monday it found no Iraqi officials with direct knowledge of a transfer of weapons of mass destruction developed by former President Saddam Hussein.

This wording is indeed in the final report, however the investigators were also unable to rule out such a transfer of WMDs to Syria. That is mentioned in the Khaleej Times article, however it is towards the bottom and presented as an after thought.

Now from the World Tribune:

WASHINGTON — The U.S. intelligence community has concluded that Iraq and Syria discussed WMD cooperation, including the transfer of WMD out of Iraq, but that “firm conclusions on actual WMD movements” may never be known.

A U.S. intelligence report called for further investigation, and did not rule out unofficial efforts to move Iraqi WMD assets into Syria.

The Iraq Survey Group stated, in a report sponsored by the CIA, that it “was unable to complete its investigation and is unable to rule out the possibility that WMD was evacuated to Syria before the war.”

Again this wording comes directly from the final report, however as you can see the two news agencies decided to focus on a different part of the same report. The problem with these two accurate yet uncomprehensive articles is that they are presented to their readers who will take only what is actually in the article as the truth.

Sure, we see this time and time again throughout almost every single news story including several different aspects of the war in Iraq, however such a report demonstrating what happened to the WMD program that the CIA as well as other intelligence agencies and Saddam’s own military believed was active in Iraq needs to be clarified in order for the actual news to be revealed.

Numerous times over the past few months the Iraqi government as well as military officials with the United States have claimed they came very close to capturing Al Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Stories concerning recieving a tip to a safehouse hours after Zarqawi left have become all too common.

There is however another story in just how close the United States was to capturing Zarqawi and this story is the closest I’ve ever heard and that does include when he was allegedly detained in Fallujah temprorarily by Iraqi soldiers. This time the U.S. military knew where he was and knew were he was going. They set up road blocks to capture him and Zarqawi turned around and ran.

Task Force 626 — the covert American military unit charged with finding Zarqawi — had troops in place to grab the fugitive, and mobile vehicle checkpoints had been established around the city’s perimeter. Another U.S. official said predator drones were also in flight, tracking movements in and around the city.

A source who had been inside the Zarqawi network alerted the task force to the meeting. Officials deem the source “extremely credible.”

The senior military official said that just before the meeting was scheduled, a car was pulled over as it approached a checkpoint.

“Zarqawi always has someone check the waters,” said the official.

A pickup truck about a half-mile behind the car then quickly turned around and headed in the opposite direction. Officials now believe Zarqawi was in the fleeing truck. U.S. teams began a chase, but when the truck was pulled over several miles later, Zarqawi was not inside.

It is what they found inside the truck that U.S. officials believe Zarqawi was in fact inside the truck heading towards Ramadi. Inside the truck there was a computer with a massive hard drive full of information in which authorities are now pouring over and 80,000 Euros (approx. $104,000). It is believed that when this truck went under an overpass Zarqawi jumped out of the moving truck and walked back to Ramadi, quite a hike for a peg-legged Zarqawi. Furthermore they were able to determine which house Zarqawi fled to in Ramadi though when they arrived he was no longer there.

In my view the capture of the computer that was operated by Zarqawi is worth more than Zarqawi’s life. Al Qaida in Iraq have demonstrated their use of technology and the internet for communications throughout the past. Such a computer is likely to have contact information for big wigs in Al Qaida, Al Qaida in Iraq, Islamic Army of Iraq and Ansar al-Sunnah among others. This also could reveal a dirty bomb plot in which intelligence analysts believe Zarqawi is planning to launch in Europe.

We’ve learned through the arrest of Mohhamed Kahn, Al Qaida’s computer communications guy, in Pakistan what can be ascertained from the confiscation of one’s computer. We must now mine the computer for every piece of information possible and I have no doubt U.S. authorities are already on the case.

Update:
On the computer were pictures of Zarqawi. Perhaps those are the ones that CNN released as being new? I’ve got around 20 pictures of Zarqawi and many of them I have not seen before. I’m working on creating some kind of collage for them all and will post them when I find the time and the creative energy to do so.

On the day that Syrian intelligence officials left Lebanon, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has made yet another attempt to wrestle weapons away from Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

During a news conference at his office in Gaza, Abbas welcomed Hamas’ desire to join the political process.

But he said Hamas would be expected to give up its militant activities after the vote.

“When a movement or militia is transformed into a political party, I would say there will then be no need for them to possess weapons,” Abbas said.

“There will be only one authority, one law, and one legal gun. The issue is very clear, and this has been common practice throughout history.”

However, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zohri said the group would disarm only when Israel ends its occupation of Palestinian land, adding that Abbas was in no position to preach to Hamas since the Palestinian leader has yet to disarm the military wing of his own ruling Fatah party - the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades.

“The resistance is tied to the end of the occupation and not with joining the Palestinian Parliament,” Abu Zohri said

Considering that Hamas believes the entire county of Israel is actually Palestine, don’t put too much faith into Hamas ever voluntarily handing their weapons over. Abbas however continues to do the right things in steps towards peace with Israel by demanding terrorist groups in Palestine drop their weapons and become more engaged in the political process.

Hamas though is only part of the problem. Abbas has his hands full with various terrorist groups continuing to launch attacks, though sporadic, in Israel as well as Israel delaying the planned pullout and continued expansion of settlements. At this time it appears to me that Abbas is doing everything in his power to both stay in power and promote the peace process while Sharon is sending mixed signals.

Malik Mohammad Javed, the Pakistani Diplomat to Iraq who was taken hostage two weeks ago in Baghdad, has been released.

“Yes my son, your father has been released and has safely reached the Pakistani embassy in Baghdad,” Aziz told the official’s son Bilal Malik and then conveyed the news to Javed’s wife.

Afterwards he made the announcement to a cheering audience at Islamabad’s imposing convention centre, interrupting a musical concert to honour the team.

“We have succeeded in negotiating the release of Malik Mohammad Javed; He is safely free now and it is a big news for Pakistan,” Aziz said.

Needless to say this is good news, however I do wonder if a ransom was paid thus continuing the cycle of hostage takings by random groups in Iraq.