Booman City (FAP) — U.S. counterterrorism officials said Wednesday that al Qaeda’s chemical weapons expert was “in the vicinity” when CIA airstrikes last week hit a dinner gathering believed to include terrorists in a Pakistani mountain village.
They said Midhat Mursi, a 52-year-old al Qaeda bombmaker, could have been killed in the attack, but stressed they cannot confirm that he was.
A counterterrorism official said Mursi “was thought to have been in the vicinity” when the missiles struck a compound in Damadola, Pakistan, Friday. Two officials said, however, that they “absolutely cannot confirm” that he was killed.
U.S. counterterrorism officials also said they had reason to believe Boris Badenov, an evil villain that tormented Rocky and Bullwinkle for decades in syndication, was in the area when the CIA missiles struck and could have been killed.
They stress they are not sure who was killed in the strike.
U.S. officials have said that four to eight other “cartoon bad guys” were killed in the attack, including some members of the Legion of Doom. The bodies of the animated antagonists were quickly removed by accomplices and buried elsewhere, knowledgeable sources in modern mythology have said.
Pakistani officials have said that “four to six” evil doers were killed in the strike, including Bluto (anti-Popeye security officer), Dastardly & Muttley (evil transportation specialists), Dr. Doom (medical officer in the terrorist group and financier), Gargamel (Ali-Smurfana), Plankton (marine operations), along with 18 civilians, including five children and five women.
“Unfortunately, only the badly burned bodies of the the women and children were left behind,” said a high level intelligence official who insisted on anonymity.
U.S. officials have said “very solid” intelligence indicated that senior live-action villians were expected to be attending a dinner celebrating Dionysus, the Goddess of Political Theater, and that Osama bin Laden’s top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, could have been among them.
There has been no evidence so far, however, that al-Zawahiri was there.
remember how “they” would tell us how bad the Tallybanny people were because they’d kill as many as they could to hurt just one person??? Remember how it was evil when the Taliban did it but…
Didn’t someone from the WhiteHouse tell us that there’s a necessary “tool” to these strikes and it’s unfortunate but it has to be.
I thought for sure DouchebagBush was going to say “necessary evil”
Remember when the media says “60 insurgents were killed in Iraq/Afghanistan” that means 60 women and children were slaughtered needlessly. and it’s not the Tallybanny doing the killing. It’s us.
((((((((BostonJoe))))))))
Can we hire Mighty Mouse??
Good point about them stressing that “terrorists” kill innocent civilians. I am so sick of my government.
You’re not the only one! This is really an eerie thought, but here goes: I am beginning to have an idea of how the members of the resistance felt in WWII.
Only they were better organized and got to drink good wine every night.
Think Jerome can get us some good wine? (Might help!)
IMO We would be fools not to at least consider a worst case scenario regards dictatorship in the US. It’s not like the efforts in gaining some perspective on the issue from past struggles would be wasted.
Story about resistance in Denmark
Great story from Denmark. To be, or not.
I was explaining the NSA scandal to my nine-year old last night (she asked). Sure did feel like I was talking about a country that had lost its way vis a vis the rule of law. Was going to diary it. But what’s the point? As our Parisian friend might say, today.
What this country needs is an Adam von Trott!
that “the vicinity” is indeed undergoing what they referred to as “a rapid expansion” but would not confirm or deny that this expansion could by Monday include Belgium and Singapore, as well as parts of the melting polar ice cap.
Ha! Is this surreal world, or what?
One bright day in the middle of the night
Two dead boys got up to fight
Back to back they faced each other
Drew their swords and shot each other
A deaf policeman heard the noise
So he came and killed the two dead boys
And if you don’t believe it’s true
Just ask the blind man — he saw it, too.
Ramen!
Can somebody tell me besides being where we chose to bomb, exactly what the (17 or 18) victims were guilty of?
Breathing while Muslim
Guilty? Innocent? Not important distinctions. The purpose of the war is the continuation of the war. We were always at war. We will always be at war. And war is more deadly year by year. Intelligent great apes that we are, we kill one another. It is our way. I’m about ready to stop fighting it.
Your fillings rattling again?
Yeah. And I need a couple of new ones, too.
“War is Peace!”
“Freedom is Slavery!”
“Ignorance is Strength!”
UPDATE (FAP): Exclusive photo of the intrepid leader of the strike on the evil doers:
Bonzai Bush
Stay tuned for more updates as we follow the eternally-obsessed Bonzai as he pursues yet another of his painstaking plans.
wil e coyote © Toon on the scene
Peace
Rumsfeld will be calling you!
the very least, he’ll think about it
That movie ruined Santa Claus for my kids. The story about dad caught in the chimney. Out of the blue, and the myth of Santa was destroyed. I hate that movie (and I’m calling O’Reilly, so he can do something about it for next year’s war on Christmas).
And speaking of destroying myths, why isn’t it that easy for people to stop believing that we are actually fighting a “war” against al Qaeda.
He’ll have to leave a message…dada’s not home.
Peace
Wasn’t Wile E. Coyote number 2?
Maybe he’ll use his latest Acme Turrist Fighter Kit.
(I apologize, I just needed a laugh so badly and lost it with Rocky and Bullwinkle . . .
BWM is about the same category as DWB, only the guns the “lawmen” tote are much more lethal. – my husband’s comment.
My,
How fortunate for Musharraf to find evidence that real terrorists were actually killed in this violation of Pakistani territory.
No one is this stupid? Please!
Remarkable what they find for justification, when they need it. Equally remarkable how no news item in the War on Terror is ever confirmable beyond an anonymous quote.
I just don’t trust my government, or my newspapers any more. call me a cynic.
Just keep doing what you do, Terry.
Your book is on my shelf, and I feel bad I have not read it yet. But usually, I only find time to read when I travel, so it will be 3-4 weeks before I get to it.
Makes at least two of us!
fact as they breathe a sigh of relief that the US is not a bad guy as they conveniently forget to mention the charred remains of dead children from this point on.
Makes you want to spew doesn’t it. But I’ve just gone past my personal capacity to care. All I can do is write a parody, because I just don’t give a fuck. America the beautiful, uncritical population of swill who’ll eat up any piece of crap they are fed. Fucking repulsive country I do declare.
Surely it will take nothing short of a catastrophic military defeat or a total economic collapse to shake our people into reality. I am beginning to doubt that even if every video and photo of the rape and sodomy of children in Abu Ghraib ever gets aired, it would shock the herd.
Such a video would please “the herd.”
I disagree with you on that. As repugnant as such pictures and film would be, those kinds of images are more repellent to a lot of folks who have otherwise supported Bush than you think they would be.
It’s sex, and it’s kids. That’s a combination that the rightwing in this country does not believe happened and will be revulsed to see. From my teaching about child abuse, that’s a topic that unites left, middle, right, rich, poor, and whathaveyou in a strong desire to protect the children.
Now, if the child happens to be a mature-looking teenager, that’s another thing.
IMHO, the feeling of having gone past one’s personal capacity is becoming a rather common “malignancy” amongst nearly all lefties that I am acquainted with.
I’m beginning to believe that we are all collectively making a rather huge mistake by solely focusing our efforts on battles (such as Alito), and not simultaneously working much harder at coming up with a more comprehensive plan that includes all of short-medium-long term.
With little to no comprehensive long term plan for success we leave ourselves open to these huge emotional disappointments, such as the Alito case appears to becoming.
In contrast, for example, Gandhi, over time, built up his people’s confidence in themselves as a force to be reckoned with, through achievable goals obtained by nonviolent actions.
We need to modernize the nonviolent action methods of the past for our use now in the defense of democracy. Unless we are able to do this it’s not likely we’ll make much progress.
No matter where the focus should point, it still takes people. Lots of people and those numbers are nowhere to be found yet.
I’ll never understand that. What gets me most is that Bush still has the support of people his policies are damaging.
Talk about your basically unpatriotic people. Not concerned enough about their own democracy to have ever read the Constitution, or to have read it and ignored it.
And I paraphrase:
They feared tyranny when they wrote that. The Fourth Amendement has been rolled back ridiculously in the last century, starting with prohibition rulings (I’m not a scholar of pre-19th century Constitutional law, so it may have been rolled back even earlier), and on through the war and the drug war and not the war on terror. Until you are left arguing about how it is okay for the king to enter you home via a telephone wire or cable modem, and listen to everything you are saying, without telling anyone about it. And then to come and arrest you without any charge. And then to fly you somewhere where you will be held and tortured. Kept from a court. Perhaps killed. Perhaps never seen or heard again. Yup. I’m completely on board with those right-wing Patriots who insist that we lefties are un-Patriotic for asking our Congress to investigate and impeach this imperial ass wipe.
Me. A raving lunatic.
Agree with all that you’ve said. Don’t know how a movement like that will ever start here. I remember listening to Ralph Nader lecture, in the years long before he ever considered a run as a Green. Remember him talking about how complacent American society was. That it was the most stable of political system, allowing a false debate that pacified the people into thinking they lived in a truly democratic country. But it shut out any real debate of issues that people would really care about. Two corporate parties.
Then he went on to discuss American nationalism. How this was the only country in his experience where people could say things like, “That is un-American.” That there is this monolithic falsehood that the people have bought into. Something like manifest destiny. But really more like hubris.
And then about the bankrupt way that our education was dominated by corporate interests rather than human interests. How it felt to walk around my campus and see how proud the young people were who studied business, and marketing, and advertising. How they volunteered their future careers with ease and confidence. And their counterpoint. The young artists. Humanities students, arts and letters, and philosophers. How they apologized for wasting their time on their degrees.
He was like a prophet. I just don’t see this country changing. It is systematic. And without a big R revolution, as perhaps Ductape Fatwa sees in our future someday, when wealth is completely separated from the masses, then I see more of the same.
aspect. I know many here, and elsewhere, are devotees of particular politicians and groups of them, and receive a great deal of psychological comfort from activities associated with that, and in the current situation, I don’t think the value of comfort can be overstated.
At the same time, I have also seen a lot of this disappointment, as the admired ones do or say things that the devotees might wish they would not.
And there is a lot more of that disappointment coming, as the politicians gradually come on board with the invasion and occupation of Iran.
So I would give the same advice I would to a teen caught up in the interesting world of “dating.” Keep your feet on the ground. Enjoy the dates, and when the young lady turns out to be not all you hoped, remember that you still have a geography test tomorrow, and you still need to make good grades and go to college.
Enjoy your admiration of the politicians, but also keep enough of yourself reality based so that you can do what you need to do independently of them.
I got in a big argument with a relative at Christmastime when I brought up the spying scandal. She got immediately furious and insisted at the top of her lungs that our government can and should do WHATEVER THEY NEED TO to get those terrorists.
I wanted to mention melting the skin off children, and torture and rape with chemical lights, and ask her if that also fell into the WHATEVER THEY NEED TO DO category that she was okay with. But I couldn’t, because her seven year old daughter was in the room.
Maybe I should put together a book of pictures and whenever I hear that shit from now on, just whip it out.
How about this?
Is this okay?
This one? What do you think? Justified?
You are more couth than I. I don’t think I could have refrained for the sake of a seven-year old’s tender ears. Are tax dollars are burning seven-year olds. In large part due to the acquiescence of wing-nuts like your relative. (I’m sure I would have done the same — I’m just in my tough talking blogger mode right now).
Think about this the wingnuts and religous zealots (Christian,Muslim,etc.)are indoctrinating their children as soon as their able to speak even before. I have no qualms about leveling a bigmouth wingnut in front of children or on any holiday. I have frustrating family members of my own and they know this from experience.
The administration is really scrambling here to come up with an Al Qaeda terrorist that was within 100 miles of the strike. Fucking bastards, think if that had been their hometown. Probably some poor bastard came up with this latest bogus intel while being tortured.
Well, if I can do it without loudly bringing up rape in front of a seven year old, then yeah.
Makes for a helluva christmas dinner.
I’m running into this, too, furry.
WHATEVER THEY NEED TO DO followed by IF YOU’RE NOT DOING ANYTHING WRONG, YOU DON’T NEED TO WORRY.
I’ve taken to agreeing vehemently and upping the ante.
If you haven’t done anything wrong, then you shouldn’t mind being strip and cavity searched at the airport. Or your office. Or the grocery store. We want to be safe, don’t we ?
Surveillance cameras on the street are all well and good, but how many terrorists plan attacks in the JiffyLube parking lot ? No, REAL protection requires that we install cameras in your livingroom, bathroom and bedroom. If you’re not doing anything wrong, what’s the problem ?
Children should be rounded up and interrogated by all means necessary until they expose their subversive parents’ anti-Americanism. You’ll feel safer knowing that your neighbourhood has been cleansed of these unsavory elements. (And somebody will get a great bargain on their empty houses.)
This little exercise in values clarification inevitably arrives at the same conclusion: “Security Americans” are willing to trade liberty for safety, provided it’s their safety and somebody else’s liberty. That is the attitude I wish would change, but I’ll settle for a realization that “privacy” has value worth considering.
I pointed out that the president is spying on his political enemies, and that I am a political enemy of the president… and she didn’t have a problem with me being spied on. That was really rattling.
You’ve hit it on the head about their priorities.
Let’s see, you say she’s a relative ? Totalitarian governments have a track record of rounding up whole families when one of them is a suspect. Fear that a simgle family member can endanger everybody works very well, because it makes people police each other.
She probably should avoid any contact with your bad self.
I used to hear this a lot from prosecutors trying to justify warrantless searches, etc. “If you’re doing nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to fear.”
One thing to fear is that it inhibits your behavior to know you are being watched. If you ever have the thought, I might write critically about the “war on terror” in my e-mail, and then hesitate, or even change what you were going to say, the existence of the program is having a chilling effect on free expression. That is problematic in America. If you are an American.
Just as long as we got that Bluto. He’s been on the loose for way too long. I was beginning to give up hope.
It was all worth it. I’ll admit.
The villagers can tell them. Two houses belonging to the same family were bombed to smitherenes. The villagers know who is missing from the houses and the village.
Are US officials too scared to approach the locals?
Truth is relative and relatively unimportant, I’m afraid.
Your comments about college students make me know even more why I love teaching where I do (big, poor, urban city. In my current horde – call them that as there are close to 400 students in my big intro class – I asked to meet with all of the students whose first language was not /is not English; (I meet with subgroups of the horde every week or two, to help make them feel at little more attached to the class.)
I ask them for their names & places their family calls “home”, and hand out my page of Southernisms (those figures of speech that experience has told me many will not know, however fluent their English).
23 different nationalities among the students who met with me. And that doesn’t even touch on the students whose parents were born elsewhere. BJ, your favorite GreenState University is diverse, but not this varied, I think.
When I feel really down about those who run this country, as I do right now, thinking about the interaction of these students with the “regular” students here is pretty amazing and even uplifting. Although it is no panacea, working together makes it difficult for the “regular” students to insulate themselves inside a group of people just like them.
Sounds nice. There is definitely something about diversity that makes us stronger. And yeah, we are a little heavy on the white here. But the diversity in the cirriculum has grown leaps and bounds since the 80s. That is going right at least. And I think that bodes well for the U.S. in the political future (if you are progressive anyway) — though I just got done reading the 2003 Pentagon Report on Abrupt Global Climate change, and it mentions that cosmopolitan cultures may have a more difficult time adapting to the major changes to come with global warming, then global cooling. So Japan, because of its homogeneity can make rules to cope with changes easier than more diverse societies. So say those pentagon experts. And we all know how on the ball they are.
Oh, there are so many ways of taking that: 1) We need to be more homogenous! Keep out those immigrants. 2) This is our contribution to defending a policy of ignoring global warming: to try to deal with it will cause civil unrest! 3) we need a powerful executive running our country! and the ever-faithful: 4) if those little (place name of disparaged group/nation/culture here) do something about global warming, that just proves it is un-American to pay any attention to it!
Did you catch Kurt Nimmo’s snark?
Yup. Double standard for all the world. That is U.S. All of U.S.