asher553 | The Middle East (Reply)

IraqPundit: Where's Moktada?

U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell insisted to reporters that, any denials notwithstanding, Al Sadr "is not in the country and all indications are in fact that he is in Iran," though Caldwell would say nothing more.

Oh, Moktada, what's become of your Theater of Martyrdom? Has it closed? What's become of your shroud, the one you used to wrap yourself in when appearing before your clever followers, to show them (and the cameras!) that you were ready to embrace death for your grand principles? Is that shroud in mothballs, along with your false bravado? Or did someone borrow the shroud to bury one of your many innocent Iraqi victims?

Via LGF: JI threatens US.

GAZA (Reuters) - The Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group on Tuesday threatened to retaliate against the United States if it tried to capture its Damascus-based leader. Washington said on Monday it would offer a $5-million reward for information leading to the capture of Ramadan Abdullah Mohammad Shallah, the Islamic Jihad leader. It offered the same amount for a member of Lebanese Hezbollah.

Belmont Club on Iranian Revolutionary Guards bombing. News sources reported that a car bomb in Iran killed eleven members of the regime's Revolutionary Gurards. Richard Fernandez (nom de guerre "Wretchard the Cat") comments:

Even if there was no US involvement in a "deniable and covert" operation in Iran, the nature of distributed terrorism means that anyone can play. Drug traffickers or an al-Qaida Sunni group may truly have been behind the bombing. After all who could have guessed that Iran would support both Sunni and Shi'ite groups against each other in Iraq? Warfare was once the province of states, but as al-Qaeda proved, probably to the cost of everyone on the planet, small extremist organizations can wage combat effectively. In discussing portable and deniable nuclear weapons, I noted that there was no reason in principle why anti-Jihadi or anti-anyone extremist groups couldn't come up with them. After all, why should a bunch of Pakistani scientists be able to come up with something that an equivalent group of Indian or Israeli private citizens couldn't.

Debka: 'The assailants, believed to be Balochi nationalists, arrived on the scene in a car and escaped on motorcycles hidden by the wayside. Zahedan is the capital of the restive, mostly Sunni Muslim Balochistan, which lies close to the Pakistani and Afghan borders.' Meanwhile, Winston at The Spirit of Man has a few thoughts: 'I'd like to say that I will be very happy if the regime begins to get what the Iraqi people and American forces experience in Iraq. That'd be great...'

OpFor has some timely thoughts about the Second Amendment.