For some reason, the following story (published in October of 2011) has escaped my attention until now: Report: No evidence al-Awlaki was killed in Yemen
Yemen's security agencies have no substantial evidence that al-Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki was killed in a recent airstrike in the eastern province of Mareb, an official security source said Thursday.My theory is designed to make all parties unhappy. Right-wingers who reflexively hate all Muslims will not want to contemplate the idea that someone they've been taught to detest may have aided the United States. Left-wingers infuriated by the drone killing of an American citizen will not want to contemplate the idea that this attack was pure stagecraft designed to extricate an ally. Awlaki's family will not want to contemplate the possibility that he lied to them over the course of many years. Jihadists will not want to contemplate the idea that they trusted a spy.
'The latest information available to the security agencies is that al-Awlaki was driving in a motorcade of three cars when a US drone targeted them (on September 30),' the source told the Yemeni website Mareb Press on condition of anonymity.
He added that one car had been hit, while the other two escaped.
'There is no irrefutable information that al-Awlaki was inside the hit car,' he said.
According to the source, it was hard to identify the remains left after the raid.
'There was no actual body. All that was left after the incident were mere remains mixed with wrecked pieces of the targeted car,' he said. 'These remains were collected and buried by residents in the area.'
If I have somehow managed to piss off everyone on this occasion, I have done my duty.
3 comments:
Well, even though I have railed against the government for killing an American citizen, you haven't pissed me off. In fact, this scenario makes perfect sense to me. I wouldn't put anything past our government and intelligence agencies at this point. Plus, Awlaki was pretty tight with the government before he "suddenly" became a threat.
I've been out there in Democrats' faces railing about the murder of an American citizen who had not been charged with any crime--and the murder of his son.
Since my information was based in mainstream news reports, I'm not apologetic about that. Ultimately what matters is that the bipartisan precedent is established that the President is permitted to engage in the extrajudicial murder of American children.
Early reports of the attempted capture of alleged 9/11-mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed claimed that he had been killed. Later reports said that he was waterboarded 183 times, and the 9/11 Commission relied on alleged CIA transcripts from these sessions for much of their information about al Qaeda. Since the CIA's alleged interrogation tapes were allegedly destroyed, we don't know if KSM was waterboarded or not and we don't know if he was captured or not. All we know is that the precedent was established that the USA is allowed to torture witnesses and then make undocumented claims about what those witnesses allegedly said.
This was a brilliant post, Joseph. Again I congratulate you for some superb conspiracy theorizing. You still have the gift. But I also posit that if you had been aware before you posted this theory (as indeed is the case) that some OTHER bloggers of whom you do not approve (because they reject the narratives of the NIST Report and the 9/11 Commission Report) you would have immediately, reflexively, compulsively spit the conclusions of your spot-on Anwar research out of your mouth so fast it would put you at risk of choking. And your loyal readers would have never been the wiser. Sigh.
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