NBC: 2 ‘Charlie Hebdo’ Shooters In Custody, 1 Dead
NBC News seems to have a scoop on their hands:
One of the suspects in the Paris attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine has been killed and the two others are in custody, two senior U.S. counterterrorism officials told NBC News on Wednesday.
Authorities earlier had identified the three men as Said Kouachi and Cherif Kouachi, both French and in their early 30s, and Hamyd Mourad, 18, whose nationality wasn’t immediately clear.
One of the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to publicly discuss the investigation, told The Associated Press that the men were linked to a Yemeni terrorist network. Cherif Kouachi was convicted in 2008 of terrorism charges for helping funnel fighters to Iraq’s insurgency and sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Russia Today has picked up an AFP report that a site in Reims has been raided:
Dozens of police officers were reportedly dispatched to a site in the city. It follows reports that the suspects in the terror attack on the Charlie Hebdo HQ in Paris were identified, and one of them lived in Reims.
edmeyer_able January 7th, 2015 at 7:50 pm
It’s also reported that the 2 brothers had traveled to Iraq in 2005, (thank you george bush) so any talk of it being Obamas fault for not handling w’s mess correctly and giving the rise of daesh is misguided criticism.
burqa January 7th, 2015 at 11:37 pm
According to the interrogator whose humane interrogations led us to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Ghraib was a huge recruiting tool for terrorists. He said he thought terrorists thus recruited had killed more Americans in Iraq than any other.
I have the exact quote in my notes for anyone who questions my point.
bpollen January 8th, 2015 at 8:14 am
Hell, since we invaded Afghanistan, the US has been the best recruiting tool the terrorists could have hoped for.
burqa January 10th, 2015 at 5:06 pm
Do you think we should not have invaded after 9/11 to attack the enemy who attacked us?
bpollen January 10th, 2015 at 11:44 pm
Let me just admit up front that I don’t keep up with all current events. I miss stuff sometimes (it was just pointed out to me that I am not keeping close track of Louis Farrakhan.) But, and please correct me if I am wrong, I don’t think Afghanistan attacked us
burqa January 11th, 2015 at 4:19 pm
Afghanistan harbored those who attacked us and to get to that enemy we had to invade Afghanistan to do it.
I’ll ask again, do you think we should have invaded Afghanistan to attack the enemy that attacked us or not?
bpollen January 11th, 2015 at 10:03 pm
I do NOT think it appropriate to invade a country and depose its government on the pretext of going for those who sponsored or supported the 9/11 attacks. If getting the support system for the terrorists who were involved was our true focus, we shoulda invaded Saudi Arabia. And, even IF invading countries that haven’t actually attacked us is acceptable behavior for a player on the international stage, why did we topple the government, but let Bin Laden go from Tora Bora? Then, or at least thereabouts, we invade Iraq. Once again, they didn’t attack us.
To me, Afghanistan and Iraq were in furtherance of an agenda that was TOTALLY different than the bullsugar we were fed. WMDs in Iraq? None. Saddam’s connection to terrorists? No credible evidence in the last 11 years. We supposedly attack Afghanistan to get the terrorists, but pull up short when we have them trapped. Apparently we wanted it so much, we, at best, plotzed. What that adds up to for me is that we were given bogus rationales for the invasion of independent countries.
Do I think that Bin Laden and company should have been pursued. Yes. But, as history has proven, we didn’t need to invade and depose the government of a THIRD foreign country to get him.
burqa January 12th, 2015 at 6:45 pm
The Afghan government actively supported bin Laden and al Qaeda. It allowed them to set up training camps and knew of their terrorist activities. They refused to hand over bin Laden and the leaders of al Qaeda.
Iraq was a separate issue.
I agree with you that the invasion was botched. The administration was intent on not having the heavy footprint the Soviets had and Rumsfeld pushed the notion of deploying as few troops as possible to get the job done.
The raid to get bin Laden would not have been possible without the bases we had in Afghanistan.
bpollen January 13th, 2015 at 6:38 am
“Iraq was a separate issue.”
I think the invasion of BOTH countries was part of the same agenda. Bush had already requested planning for a possible invasion of Iraq even before 9-11. You could easily postulate that the invasion of both countries was in furtherance of the Project for a New American Century, what you might call a mission statement for neo-cons.
“The Afghan government actively supported bin Laden and al Qaeda.”
Special forces team took out bin Laden in Pakistan. No invasion necessary. We attack al Qaeda in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and other countries, no invasion necessary. The “we HAD to invade” position is a little threadbare in light of the fact that it hasn’t required invasion anywhere else, in spite of the chickenhawks wanting us to muscle Iran and Syria, for instance.
I think it’s kind of a cornerstone of international diplomacy that it’s BAD to invade other countries. Seems that I remember the US rushing to the aid of another (oil-producing) country that had been invaded. There was something Bushy about that one too.
burqa January 14th, 2015 at 11:52 pm
I have studied both rather extensively and am not aware of any planning Bush ordered to invade Iraq before 9-11.
During the Clinton administration while chief of Centcom, General Zinni and Tommy Franks drew up a plan to invade – they have lots of contingency plans. It was called Desert Crossing and involved about 300,000 troops, hmm, I’d want to look it up because the number 380,000 also comes to mind. That was for the initial invasion. Reserves nearby would put the total up to 500,000.
Before 9-11, Bush was certainly preoccupied with Iraq, but I know no orders went out for Iraq to the military until December 2001, and that was for potential preparations as well as to pull specops troops out of Afghanistan in January and February. The plan they used to invade Iraq was not developed until much later. See “Cobra II,” I believe by Michael Trainor.
Operation Eagle Claw – the failed attempt to rescue American held by Khomeini demonstrated the need for bases much closer than what we had then in order to get bin Laden. In Eagle Claw those ’53s were operating at the extreme end of their capabilities (I know 2 of the pilots). It was just too far to go in the time they had under darkness and the plan was necessarily too complex.
Take away our bases in Afghanistan and that bin Laden operation would not have been possible. Besides the troops actually landed in the compound, there were other heliborn troops nearby in case a big fight broke out, plus there was search and rescue assets in the air in case a helicopter went down. Flying all those from the sea over those mountains over that distance – no, sorry, ain’t happening.
burqa January 15th, 2015 at 12:07 am
In addition, to get bin Laden, we had a specific address. Clinton would have taken him out with the same info, but bin laden was moving around a lot and before 9-11 we couldn’t get a fix on him. Clinton had a team of Pashtuns and another of Uzbeks trying to get him and a third team of Pakistanis we had trained and equipped were about to go in when the coup took place in Pakistan. Clinton also had cruise missile equipped submarines stationed off Pakistan that were devoted to getting bin Laden if we could get a bead on him and know he would be there 6 hours later – the time it would take a cruise missile to get there.
In Yemen and Somalia, we have attacked specific targets with special forces that did not have to be flown hundreds of miles over mountains that helicopters have a very hard time getting over. They were based relatively closely.
The invasion of Afghanistan was not just to get bin Laden, but to take out the whole al Qaeda structure there.
The mission to get bin Laden was possible because the troops were based just across the border in Afghanistan. You’re missing that part. Check a map and see how far Abbotabad is from the Indian Ocean and keep in mind the fact they’d be flying in slow-moving helicopters over hostile airspace for many hours without being detected, would need refueling and see Operation Eagle Claw for how that worked out before (3 out of 8 helicopters failed to make it to the landing point in Iran).
bpollen January 15th, 2015 at 6:54 am
http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/new-documents-show-bush-administration-plan
burqa January 17th, 2015 at 5:05 pm
Good grief.
The article is as flawed as what we see coming out of Breitbart.
When you eschew the better journalists and historic sources and go with a site you KNOW will spin according to ideology, you’re not going to get the story straight.
In this case, the author far overstates things, fails to give proper weight to evidence involved, and demonstrates a complete ignorance of how government works and the context of the incoming administration.
Good grief, this one-named pundit makes it sound as if the Bush administration was going to send the tanks over the border a week and a half after being sworn in!
The pundit takes discussions that surely took place and weaves a web that fails to take into account facts like – uh – not having the troops there for the invasion, for one thing.
Another is the pundit omits the fact that because of the delayed election, the Bush administration came in with a skeleton crew and did not have the personnel in place to carry out the bureaucratic tasks involved in such an operation. There’s a great deal more involved than moving little plastic pieces around a game board.
Yes, the Bush administration was looking for a pretext to invade, but they were simultaneously dealing with Rummy and his plans to reduce the size of the Army and his meddling in everything.
The pundit doesn’t seem to know the importance of tasking orders or the massive logistics tail that has to be put in place behind the troops you gotta get over there with all their equipment.
There’s a big difference between having talks and making preliminary plans and forming concepts and actually sending out tasking orders and other formal orders to set things in motion.
Your clue to the overstatements of the author come with the fact that the invasion didn’t take place until March 2003.
Look, on this subject begin with the best sources. Trainor’s “Cobra II,” reporting by real journalists like Rick Atkinson, Steve Coll, Walter Pincus and a couple guys I can’t recall at the NY Times. Shoot, I have another good book on the runup, but can’t recall it. “A Pretext For War” by James Bamford is excellent. Tommy Franks’ book is not helpful. Nor is Tenet’s very revealing, as I recall.
Don’t mess about with pundits like this, they’ll just embarrass you.
bpollen January 17th, 2015 at 6:43 pm
The reason I posted THAT article, as opposed to any other on topic, was because it came up FIRST in a google search… one of over 15 MILLION results. My point being that, while you may have done research, you didn’t research this subject. If you want better journalists, feel free to avail yourself of the google machine and see if you can find one that comes up to your standards. That part is not my job.
Look, obviously you think that invading other countries is an acceptable way of dealing with “problems.” According to international law, and the UN Charter, it is not. If a STATE attacks you, you can most definitely reply in force. But Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, and Iraq did NOT attack us. The UN Charter does NOT state that it’s OK to attack other countries because of the acts of individuals, nor for failure to extradite criminals (you are aware, I’m guessing, that we didn’t have an extradition treaty with Afghanistan.)
You may find the rationale for extra-legal action by the state to be wonderful and becoming raiment, but I think the emperor is buck-ass naked.
burqa January 17th, 2015 at 5:21 pm
to go with my posts below, I reviewed my notes to take a look at the assets bin Laden had in Afghanistan and the targets for your proposed long range commando raid to take them all out.
Al Qaeda had offices, facilities and compounds in over 10 cities scattered about the country.
Al Qaeda had a dozen training camps I could name, scattered about.
Al Qaeda had a military force known as the 055 Brigade that was integrated into the Taliban military.
Al Qaeda’s leadership was likewise integrated with the Taliban leadership. Al Qaeda hands were in one pot after the other. It was they who convinced the Taliban to resist international pressure and destroy the priceless massive statues of Buddha at Bamiyan.
40 Taliban clerics had joined with al Qaeda in issuing a fatwa against the U.S.
The principal failure of the Bush administration was to go in too light, not too heavy. They did have a few battalions of troops there but failed to get maximum use of them. They had a reinforced battalion of marines under Mattis, they had over a battalion of the 10th Mountain division and 82nd and 101 Airborne Division troops. They had more than needed to cut off the retreat from Tora Bora.
But your long-range SpecOps mission would not have even those kinds of troops in those numbers, believe me.
Too many targets, too many enemy, too far to go to a place we knew little about.
bpollen January 17th, 2015 at 7:13 pm
Yeah,m-hmm. That’s why we aren’t going after Al Qaeda anymore, because they are just too decentralized, too diffuse. Except we are, in fact, going after that decentralized and diffuse organization. The Al Qaeda infiltrated the Taliban, so we had to depose the Taliban is bull sugar too. Al Qaeda infiltrated and was provided direct support by people in the Pakistani government, they were funded by Saudi Arabia, but we didn’t have to invade them. Instead, we gave them billions and billions of dollars in “aid.” And, to boot, the destruction of priceless relics were CAUSED by our invasion of Iraq, So, the Buddha destruction is hardly a reason to invade.
Similarly, their issuance of a fatwa in agreement with Al Qaeda, is that so massively worse than the Republican agenda being written by the Koch brothers, or opening the door to allowing foreign governments to contribute anonymously to American political campaigns? A fatwa is a religious pronouncement that is supposed to be issued by an expert in religious law. Not too dissimilar from defrocking a pastor for the horrible act of presiding over his son’s marriage – to another man.
And then, you seem to be under the misapprehension that I somewhere, somehow, stated that a commando raid could or would take out the totality of Al Qaeda. I said that there were other ways that we could attack them. History proves me right, because we ARE attacking them without invasion in most cases, and it didn’t take an invasion of Pakistan to take out bin Laden. You stated that we HAD to invade to take out bin Laden and Al Qaeda. How’d that work out? We got ’em all, right?
edmeyer_able January 7th, 2015 at 8:07 pm
8:05 pm EST MSNBC says that they don”t know if anyone is in custody or dead IDK
Suzanne McFly January 7th, 2015 at 8:55 pm
I was watching MSNBC around 6 pm and they were saying one was dead and two were captured at that time.
edmeyer_able January 7th, 2015 at 9:13 pm
I give up LL has about 6 threads going on this, Maddow just said at 9 pmEST that the youngest has surrendered and wanted posters out on the other 2, She also said they’re not sure how many gun men there were. Gotta love the French…lol
Suzanne McFly January 8th, 2015 at 8:26 am
I seen the same thing last night, I just shrugged my shoulders. It seems like anything is being said and nothing is being backed up.