More on an industrial giant in what has become Pakistan's #1 export: jihad. "Lashkar-e-Taiba Served as Gateway for Western Converts Turning to Jihad," by Susan Schmidt and Siobhan Gorman for the Wall Street Journal, December 4:
Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani group suspected in the Mumbai attacks, has a history of documented links to al Qaeda and has trained many of the militants who have landed in U.S. and British jails since 9/11.
The group is of particular concern to intelligence officials and terrorism experts because it has become a major gateway to jihad for some disaffected people in the West, including converts to Islam.
Lashkar has been enmeshed in Pakistan's long struggle with India over the disputed territory of Kashmir, but it has also been a training hub for militant Islamic fighters who joined conflicts in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo and Chechnya. The group has received funding from donors in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, including from an al Qaeda financier, according to U.S. government testimony and Central Intelligence Agency records.
Westerners who have passed through Lashkar-e-Taiba's training camps include Australian al Qaeda operative David Hicks, convicted "shoe bomber" Richard Reid and Dhiren Barot, the mastermind of a failed gas-cylinder bombing plot in London who prepared detailed blueprints for al Qaeda of buildings in New York's financial district, according to information that emerged in legal proceedings. Mr. Barot, a British subject and a Hindu who converted to Islam, trained with Lashkar, then became an instructor at a mujahideen camp in Afghanistan and joined al Qaeda.
High-ranking al Qaeda operative Abu Zubayda was captured in late 2002 in a Lashkar safe house in Faisalabad, Pakistan. Al Qaeda recruits from Lashkar were among those killed when the U.S. carried out missile strikes against training camps in Afghanistan in the wake of the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. [...]
Whoa, here--this is all just about Kashmir, right? And besides, Lashkar-e-Taiba is just a front for Hindu Zionists! /sarc
Bring it on.
http://freemendo.typepad.com/
And, of course, this has nothing to do with Islam, which is the Religion of Peace [for the Dead], Tolerance [of Hate and Violence], and of Love [of Carnage and Destruction]!!
[I often get HTML tags wrong, as in the above post, where I intended just to boldface the words, "nothing" and "Islam."]
"Al Qaeda recruits from Lashkar were among those killed when the U.S. carried out missile strikes against training camps in Afghanistan in the wake of the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. [...]"
There's always been two different narratives about those missile strikes...
1) hundreds of Pakistani and other Al Qaeda were killed
2) Clinton forewarned the Pakistanis of the missile strikes to avoid the possibility of an inadvertent Indo-Paki war, and the camps were empty by the time the missiles arrived
Which is it?
And let's not forget that according to his first book, B Hussein Obama travelled to Pakistan when Americans weren't able to.
And related but off topic...today is the day the Supreme Court takes up the Obama birth certificate issue. For those so inclined, please pray for truth to rule out and clarity of thought for the justices as they consider the case against BHO.
Lashkar should be taken out, surreptitiously, by subterfuge and by rodent removers.
The muslim population of Kashmir would probably be much happier in Pakistan.
(but then, one also avers that the French separatists of Quebec would be much happier in France and should be removed to there, but then those inscrutable French in France went and did something sensible and absolutely out of character and voted in Sarkozy - go figure; is this why French women are so attractive ?)