The big terror threat that caused American embassies across the Muslim world to shut down for a week appears to have focused in Yemen, which is where the French, British, and Germans have been most skittish all along. Now both the United States and United Kingdom have evacuated their embassies in Yemen. The threat apparently rose to white-hot levels after an American drone strike blew up a car carrying four alleged al-Qaeda members, one of whom was thought to be a senior officer in the terror organization. According to CNN, the Air Force provided transport planes to evacuate Americans from the capital city of Sana'a.
Four of their guys die, so we and our allies have to evacuate the country? Not to question the prudence of the precaution, but once again, after five years of Obama foreign policy, we see that we're on the run, not al-Qaeda.
The mainstream media have noticed this gap between Obama rhetoric and unpleasant reality. From the Associated Press:
For puzzled Americans who've been told that al-Qaida is on the decline, the latest warnings raise questions about how successful America's war on terror has been and whether the terror group has been able to reorganize and reconstitute itself since bin Laden's death in May 2011.
And, although U.S. officials agreed a year ago to restart military aid to Yemen, it's unclear how much of the new aircraft and weapons have arrived. After aid to Yemen was frozen for some time, the U.S. military is once again on the ground there training Yemeni special operations forces and has delivered more than a dozen helicopters to the Yemeni military and provided training for them, U.S. defense officials said.
But other weapons and equipment are still in the pipeline, according to a Mideast official.
The latest terror alert was triggered in part when the secret message between al-Zawahri and al-Wahishi was intercepted several weeks ago.
There long has been movement of fighters between Pakistan and Yemen, and discussions between the two groups, but the latest communication triggered worries and prompted the U.S. to take steps to boost security. The embassy closures came one day after a meeting between President Barack Obama and Yemeni President Abdo Rabu Mansour Hadi.
Maybe Obama can fix all this by giving a speech where he blames everyone else for taking their eye off the ball.
Speaking of that "movement of fighters between Pakistan and Yemen," there will be about 250 more seasoned fighters moving across that border, because there was a big jailbreak in Pakistan last week. It appears to have been a joint effort between al-Qaeda and our "partners in peace," the Taliban. Fox News offers an update on the investigation:
Dozens of heavily-armed militants last week stormed a prison in Dera Ismail Khan, close to Pakistan's lawless tribal areas on the Afghan border, in a well-coordinated assault that left 13 dead.
The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility. But on Saturday global police agency Interpol said it suspected Al-Qaeda was involved in the raid and in other prison breaks in eight countries, including Iraq and Libya.
Al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban have close ties - extremists from the global terror network have hideouts in Pakistan's tribal areas - and a senior security official told AFP the link was under scrutiny in the jailbreak probe.
"Involvement of Al-Qaeda is one the factors that we cannot rule out at the moment," the official said on condition of anonymity.
He said "such attacks are always carried out with involvement of two type of groups, one which plans and the other which executes"
The Taliban thanked "well-wishes in the police force and prison employees" for their invaluable assistance in the operation, which only involved two casualties on the terrorist side. NBC News also relays Taliban claims that the strike team was trained by a former employee of the Pakistani air force. Thank heavens we have Barack Obama's global prestige now, instead of George Bush's unilateral cowboy foreign policy!
There have been a string of such jailbreaks across terrorist country over the past few weeks, including a big one in Iraq that sprung a few senior al-Qaeda leaders, and a really huge one in... Benghazi. Somewhere between 1,000 and 1,200 prisoners flew the coop in that little caper, with a few later recaptured by police and military forces. I'm sure this can all be handled by dragging our hideously incompetent former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, out of retirement to shriek "What difference does it make?" and select a YouTube video to blame for the assault.
As a matter of fact, there were big protests in Benghazi on the night of the jailbreak, but they weren't angry about any YouTube videos. They were protesting the weakness of the government Barack Obama installed. More specifically, they were angry about the murder of a prominent critic of the Muslim Brotherhood, who was killed in a drive-by shooting. Militia groups control as much of the country as the government does. CBS News gives us a snapshot of the cesspool that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton thought a U.S. ambassador could visit on the anniversary of 9/11, with minimal security and absolutely no contingency rescue plans:
Security forces in Libya have been unable to impose their authority on the country since Qaddafi's ouster. Militias, many made up of former rebels who fought in the civil war that toppled Qaddafi, have grown in strength and in many areas rival the security forces in their firepower and reach. The armed forces also rely on militias for help securing the country in some cases.
On Saturday, a colonel was killed by gunmen in Benghazi. Another three security members were killed a day earlier when gunmen opened fire on them.
Security members are frequently targets in the country.
So we've got al-Qaeda replenishing its strength with jailbreaks, as their pals in the Taliban get ready to retake Afghanistan, and their affiliates in Syria await delivery of the weapons Barack Obama promised them, while the regime Obama demanded in Egypt has been ousted in a combo military coup/popular uprising (whose military leader seethes with contempt for Obama, snarling "You turned your back on Egyptians, and the won't forget that!") and the regime Obama installed in Libya is teetering on the brink. America's posture in the Middle East resembles a "duck and cover" nuclear attack safety video from the Fifties. As Charlie Sheen would say: "Winning!"
