Awlaki, once considered a moderate imam, became radicalized

[EFerrari]

during the Bush wars in Muslim countries. In this interview DN! yesterday, Greenwald recounts how Alwaki was tapped as a moderate by the Pentagon and by the media after 911.

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/9/30/with_death_of_anwar_al_awlaki

[canoeist52]

1. Anti- facts, history, truth and stuff un-reccing this.

Always. Must. Look. Forward.(avert eyes)

[EFerrari]

2. Who wants to look back and remember this?

Seymour Hersh, the legendary investigative reporter who exposed My Lai and Abu Ghraib, exploded another bombshell at the University of Minnesota on Tuesday: Dick Cheney had his own Death Squad (h/t Alternet).

"Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command -- JSOC it’s called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him ...

"Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths.

"Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us.

http://www.democrats.com/dick-cheney-had-a-death-squad

[msanthrope]

7. He was the imam for 2 of the 9/11 hijackers--so your theory that Iraq radicalized him is sort of

blown. nt

[EFerrari]

9. The Pentagon didn't think so when they invited him in.

Try to at least pretend that you're dealing with the OP.

[CJCRANE]

12. There must've been some other agenda

because that connection should have been absolutely toxic.

[EFerrari]

21. The Washington Post had him do a video explaining Ramadan.

I guess anything is possible. But what it looks like is that this guy flirted with jihad as a teen, became disinterested as kids do and tried engineering, went back to his interest in Islam, this time of a moderate sort and then began a slide into radicalization that sped up after September 11 and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

[snagglepuss]

36. How come so many of these jihadists are engineers? It's effing bizarre

that this guy also studied engineering.

[EFerrari]

39. Yeah, I don't get that part, either.

Most of the engineers I know don't do elaborate religious stuff. On the other hand, in Yemen it's built in to the culture and not optional as it is here.

[msanthrope]

18. Well, then I'm just glad Obama cleaned up Bush's fuckup. nt

[EFerrari]

42. Obama's heavy reliance on JSOC is an extension of Cheney's.

It's not clear he's cleaning up anything.

[bluestate10]

11. Doesn't matter. Another route for making the bastard al-Awlaki human

will be spun up by the usual suspects of DU. And if anyone the fight the lack of both moral compass and commonsense will be called a Freeper, DLC, Third Way democrat, whatever comes to the minds of the apologizers for an inhuman killer that finally got what he deserved.

[EFerrari]

23. Duzy for dehumanizing someone and claiming a moral compass in the same post.

LOL

[bluestate10]

30. One less bastard on earth, one step forward for humanity. nt

[msanthrope]

3. Or maybe he was just a sleeper. Of course his arrests for soliciting prostitutes

in the 90s is indicative of what?

[EFerrari]

4. There is zero evidence that he was being handled by anyone.

As Scahill said yesterday, he wasn't even mid-level management. And there's no evidence he was connected to anyone who was.

[msanthrope]

6. Poor Al-awlaki--I guess those emails he sent about blowing up a BA airliner were just misunderstood?

These are email he and his convicted co-conspirator sent....outlining both the BA bomb plot and the PETN bombs.

"Our highest priority is the US. Anything there, even if on a smaller scale compared to what we may do in the UK, would be our choice. So the question is: with the people you have, is it possible to get a package or a person with a package on board a flight heading to the US? If that is not possible, then what ideas do you have that could be set up for the uk?

...You should definitely take the opportunity, the information you could get would be very useful.

SNIP
As Awlaki's emails with Rajib Karim show, the al Qaeda cleric played a direct role in the airliner plot. Awlaki encouraged Karim to attack the US, settling for an attack on the UK only as a backup.

Awlaki explored Karim's ability to get a "package" (that is, bomb) on board a US-bound plane. This possibly foreshadowed AQAP's late 2010 cargo plane bomb plot. In that foiled attack, AQAP attempted to detonate two bombs shipped via cargo jetliners."

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2011/03/anwar_al_awlakis_ema.php#ixzz1ZTd3Fo5N


I guess he was just a guy in Al-Q, devoted to peace, misunderstood....

ETA--you and Scahill have absolutely no idea what evidence there was of him being handled. But that he was the imam for two 9/11 hijackers and then runs off to a cave in Yemen??? Suggests he might have been radicalized far before 9/11.

[EFerrari]

10. Evidence:

NOUN:

1. A thing or things helpful in forming a conclusion or judgment: The broken window was evidence that a burglary had taken place. Scientists weigh the evidence for and against a hypothesis.
2. Something indicative; an outward sign: evidence of grief on a mourner's face.
3. Law The documentary or oral statements and the material objects admissible as testimony in a court of law.

[msanthrope]

15. Are you suggesting that Rajib Karim was wrongly convicted on this evidence?

Because this was part of what was presented at his trial--emails taken from his encrypted hard drive between him an Al-awlaki.

[EFerrari]

33. And yet Obama did not try to get an indictment. Go figure. n/t

[bluestate10]

13. Don't you know?

al-Awlaki was a true human. He loved his children from twenty wives. He loved baby pet rabbits. He was an environmentalist. Don't let the fact that he was a blood thirsty loser deter you, he was grossly misunderstood because the MSM distorted who he was. And Obama had to kill that good man, bad Obama. Dripping with :sarcasm:

[msanthrope]

16. He was a fucking humanitarian, weaving baskets peacefully from his cave in Yemen....

and then we bombed him...

[EFerrari]

19. That's right, in this new transformational normal

if you try to track facts down, you're with the terrorists.

[leveymg]

24. You may want to re-examine the evidence, my friend.

Al-Awlaki was connected to too many nodes in the AQ support network inside the US prior to 9/11, and was a key recruiter in too many al-Qaeda attacks afterwards to have survived in the wild this long unless someone thought there was a good reason to keep him in place. It really doesn't matter whether he was simply a tagged patsy or a full-blown agent provocateur. They would have taken him out, in some fashion, a long time ago unless he had served some perceived purpose.

In my opinion, Al-Awlaki had been the center of attention by US and "allied" intel for a long time, and he was either useful bait for AQ wannabes or an agent provocateur. In any case, in my opinion, he had long outlived his usefulness until the day before yesterday.

The fact that he and the other US Citizen were killed in an open and acknowledged fashion by the Agency tells me that there has been an overt change in the rules of engagement. That is extremely troubling, as the targeting criteria of these missions tends to "creep", expand over time. There was a really scary justification offered yesterday that expresses the mindset of some in the IC that anyone who produces what is viewed as propaganda is also a targetable combatant - a slippery slope there.

[EFerrari]

26. There was something going on in San Diego, I agree with that,

that hasn't been unpacked yet. And his usefulness for AQ after 9/11 was his ability to speak idiomatic English. For us, he was someone who might be pumped and mostly an embarrassment because even he had access to two of the highjackers in some capacity.

What he wasn't was an important AQ figure in Yemen or an operational mastermind or likely an immediate threat to the United States. If he was, it hasn't been shown.

[leveymg]

41. Agree that the charges we hear that he was a military commander are overblown. He's a propagandist

In fact, his main role appears to have been to attract and attach himself to potential AQ recruits and operatives, who were in many cases identified by US and intelligence agencies. In at least three cases, such as the Flt. 77 hijackers and Ft. Hood shooter (who was IDed), the follow-up was either botched or worse, depending upon the conclusions you want to draw.

What worries me is the apparent conflation of the roles of operational terrorists and propagandists in the minds of some US policymakers, particularly Counter-terrorism officials we've heard in the last 24 hours to justify the killing of the second US citizen, who was more clearly merely the author of AQ websites. Not sure that written or spoken expression earns one a place along with Goebbels and the Rwandan radio genocide agitators at the gallows (so to speak) under international law. I would say that what these guys were doing was well outside First Amendment Protections, but summary execution was not the only available option. Again, this is another messy cleanup that raises a lot of questions about the means used as well as the purposes.

The real danger of this episode, as I see it, is the further smudging of lines between dissent, criticism of policies with support for terrorism. This problem is only going to get worse, as US foreign policy and interests become more chaotic and unfocused.

[EFerrari]

43. That is a real dangar, I agree.

That and the cul de sac we arrive in, via Bush's and now Obama's assertion that the world is a battlefield, and the president becomes judge, jury and executioner. We know that there will be no political challenge to that assertion. Our Supreme Court is corrupt as hell and we don't brook foreign intervention. Dangerous times.

[leveymg]

44. Dangerous times for everyone. There's a reason for Due Process.

I understand the rationale that's applied to operations like this. These guys are clearly part of an organization that is at war with the United States. That makes them a fair target, regardless of their nationality while hostilities continue. The same thing would apply to the US Citizens who fought for Axis forces, and there were a number of them. But, it's interesting to look at the fate of the World War Two Axis propagandists, and compare how they were treated compared to the GWOT. Adapted from the Wiki:

Ida "Toko Rose" Toguri was detained for a year by the U.S. military before being released for lack of evidence. Department of Justice officials agreed that her broadcasts were "innocuous". But when Toguri tried to return to the US, a popular uproar ensued, prompting the Federal Bureau of Investigation to renew its investigation of Toguri's wartime activities. Her 1949 trial resulted in a conviction on one of eight counts of treason. In 1974, investigative journalists found that key witnesses claimed they were forced to lie during testimony. Toguri was pardoned by U.S. President Gerald Ford in 1977.

Mildred "Axis Sally" Gillars - A German-American, was arrested and held by the Counterintelligence Corps at Camp King, Oberursel, along with fellow-collaborators Herbert John Burgman and Donald S. Day until she was conditionally released from custody on December 24, 1946. However, she declined to leave military detention.<10>

She was formally re-arrested on January 22, 1947<11> at the request of the Justice Department and was eventually flown to the United States to await trial on August 21, 1948.

Gillars was indicted on September 10, 1948, and charged with 10 counts of treason but only eight were proceeded with at her trial which began on January 25, 1949. The prosecution relied on the large number of her programs recorded by the Federal Communications Commission stationed in Silver Hill, Maryland, to show her active participation in propaganda activities against the United States. It was also shown that she had made an oath of allegiance to Hitler.<13>

The defense argued that her broadcasts stated unpopular opinions but did not amount to treasonable conduct. It was also argued that she was under the hypnotic influence of Koischwitz and therefore not fully responsible for her actions until after his death.<14>
On March 10, 1949, the jury convicted Gillars<15> on just one count of treason, that of making the ‘Vision Of Invasion’ broadcast. For this count alone she was sentenced to 10-to-30 years in prison.<16> and a $10,000 fine.

In 1950, a federal appeals court upheld the sentence. Gillars served her sentence at the Federal Reformatory for Women in Alderson, West Virginia. She became eligible for parole in 1959 but did not apply until 1961.<18> She was released on June 10, 1961.

[CJCRANE]

5. Despite the fact

that he was the imam and religious advisor of two of the 9/11 hijackers.

Something doesn't add up.

[bluestate10]

14. Something doesn't add up.

Doesn't matter, al_Awlaki's apologists will keep trying to find a way to make 2+3 equal 8.

[EFerrari]

17. I don't think the FBI came to a consensus.

A product both of Yemen's deeply conservative religious culture and freewheeling American ways, Mr. Awlaki hesitated to shake hands with women but patronized prostitutes. He was first enthralled with jihad as a teenager — but the cause he embraced, the defeat of Soviet troops in Afghanistan, was then America's cause too. After a summer visit to the land of the victorious mujahedeen, he brought back an Afghan hat and wore it proudly around the Colorado State University campus in Fort Collins, where he studied engineering.

Later, Mr. Awlaki seems to have tried out multiple personas: the representative of a tolerant Islam in a multicultural United States (starring in a WashingtonPost.com video explaining Ramadan); the fiery American activist talking about Muslims' constitutional rights (and citing both Malcolm X and H. Rap Brown); the conspiracy theorist who publicly doubted the Muslim role in the Sept. 11 attacks. (The F.B.I., he wrote a few days afterward, simply blamed passengers with Muslim names.)

snip

"The F.B.I., whose agents interviewed Mr. Awlaki four times in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks, concluded that his contacts with the hijackers and other radicals were random, the inevitable consequence of living in the small world of Islam in America. But records of the 9/11 commission at the National Archives make clear that not all investigators agreed."

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/anwar_al_awlaki/index.html

[CJCRANE]

20. Bin Laden's taxi driver ended up in Gitmo.

I don't understand the lenient treatment of Awlaki, unless he was covertly useful in some way.

[EFerrari]

22. Bakers, sheep herders and tourists ended up at Gitmo, too.

It's really not a measure of culpability or even usefulness.

[CJCRANE]

25. Exactly. But someone with zero degrees of separation

from the hijackers was allowed to wander around freely. It just doesn't make sense at face value.

The sympathetic explanation is that it was to keep track of his followers.

[Harmony Blue]

29. This disturbs me as well

Any logical person connecting the dots can see this is peculiar.

[EFerrari]

32. Except it probably looks different to us now, ten years and Ft. Hood later.

In the first days after 9/11, the feds were picking up all kinds of people here, remember? It wasn't just dumb rednecks that went after anyone with a beard.

And after a very short period, it seems as though all the attention went to Afghanistan.

[EFerrari]

31. This is why I usually avoid 9/11 like the plague

because so many things don't make any sense at face value.

Like the FBI "investigating" the Ft. Hood shooter and deciding he wasn't a problem, for example.

[bluestate10]

8. A wolf in sheep's clothing. A way to do a sleeper role.

Well, al-Awlaki is found out now and very dead.

[Robb]

27. Poor little guy. It's all our fault, really.

[EFerrari]

34. Sorry if I interrupted your cartoon, Robb. n/t

[Robb]

37. Everyone makes their own choices. (nt)

[EFerrari]

40. But not in a vacuum.

[malaise]

28. We face a complete inversion of reality

these days.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

35. BBC had a similar story on "The News Hour" yestterday. K&R

[EFerrari]

38. And for all the John Yoo fans out there, lol, he'll be on BookTV

in about ten minutes. :crazy:

[Kurovski]

45. K&R.

K&R