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Thursday, March 18, 2004
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BREAKING NEWS
CNN is reporting that the Pakistani military has Ayman al-Zawahiri, the ideological head of al-Qaeda and deputy of Osama bin Laden, surrounded in northeastern Pakistan. The reports suggests that al-Zawahiri is being guarded by 200 heavily armed and trained al-Qaeda fighters. According to sources in the Pakistani military, arial bombing will be used to soften up their position before a ground assault is launched.
Under no circumstances should al-Zawahiri be taken alive. If he attempts to surrender, the Pakistanis should immediately shoot him. His bullet-riddled corpse should be handed to the Americans, his fingers sent to Al Jazeera and his body dumped somewhere in the Indian Ocean. Does this sound harsh? Absolutely. Is it necessary? Absolutely. al-Zawahiri is a tough, tenacious little bastard. He founded Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the pre-cursor organization of al-Qaeda. Zawahiri was jailed for years for his involvement in the 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat. You think American jails are bad? The Egytians have never even heard of prisoner rights. Every means of torture imaginable is implemented in their interrogations. Zawahiri was released from prison stronger than he went in. He'll be useless as an intelligence asset.
If the Pakistanis don't kill him, what do you do with him? Anyone who thinks he'll see the inside of a Lower Manhattan courtroom is hallucinating. He's far too high a security risk to bring into the United States. Given the Islamacist sympathies of many at high levels of the Pakistani military, to say nothing of the population, he can't be kept in Pakistan.
So that leaves trial as an enemy combatant. Does anyone have any doubt how such a trial would end? I didn't think so. The only reason to keep him alive for such a trial would be to see what pops out of him during interrogation, which we've seen will be nothing. If Zawahiri can stand up to the brutality of the Egyptians, he'll view American captivity as Club Med. I recently worked with a Canadian citizen of Egyptian descent. He was born here and raised in Egypt. When he was in college, he took part in an anti-government demonstration and was detained by the security forces in Cairo. Because he held a Canadian passport, he treatment was somewhat restrained, but still very, very nasty. The Americans are far too polite to get anything of value from Zawahiri. He should be killed as soon as humanly possible.
In any event, the fun should begin around 9PM EDT. Stay tuned.
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