One of the U.S.’s most wanted terrorists, Khair Mundos

Officials in Manila have nabbed a top commander of the Islamic extremist outfit Abu Sayyaf

One of the U.S.’s most wanted terrorists, Khair Mundos, was brought into custody by Philippine authorities on Wednesday morning, after he was arrested in a slum near the capital’s international airport.

Mundos is a key figure in the Philippines-based terrorist group Abu Sayyaf, believed to have been responsible for a spate of lethal attacks on U.S. troops and Filipinos since forming near the city of Zamboanga in the early 1990s. His capture brings an end to a seven-year manhunt.

After fleeing prison in February 2007, Mundos worked as a “fundraiser, bomb maker, and instructor” for Abu Sayyaf. One of his roles was arranging receipt funds for his group from al-Qaeda.

Abu Sayyaf Terrorist Khair Mundos Captured - TIME

 

That would be great if only we could keep Obama from releasing them.

 

More possible trades are rumored....

d*mn... one more thing to worry about on this forum full of dire prediction for my future world. O-| Now I will never be able to get to sleep tonight.

I really do not think Obama will make a trade for this fellow. For two reasons:

There is no Americans he wants to trade for this man, because he likes him and want kept the Christian/Muslim ratio in the US as it is

The second reason is there is a rumor that Obama is busy, highly involved in working out another trade.... all the citizens of the US for the 300+ Nigerian school girls. Personally I would endorse this trade if it was limited to the Citizens, or those claiming citizenship who worked in Washington, DC. Tell Obama you want him to limit the trade to people who are employed in of Washington, DC. My mother lives in Florida and I do not want her traded and ending end up working the last years of her life in the bush in Nigeria for some terrorist group.

Speaking of bush, President Bush never made this many trades when he was running a baseball team.

Good night

 

How about if they just trade him and his extended family in Africa, that should be enough people to make it even...

 

Obama's got to do something about the Iraq war......https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&r...8YC4CQ&usg=AFQjCNEXVFBiWeV1zkfkZo2Pfj14gsnyfA

 

It's only 69 cities including the second largest in Iraq, just an isolated incident, I'm sure.

 

Here is an account of the whole story...

"The Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 is a United States Congressional statement of policy calling for regime change in Iraq.[1][2] It was signed into law by President Bill Clinton, and states that it is the policy of the United States to support democratic movements within Iraq. The Act was cited in October 2002 to argue for the authorization of military force against the Iraqi government.

The bill was sponsored by Representative Benjamin A. Gilman (Republican, NY-20) and co-sponsored by Representative Christopher Cox (Republican, CA-47). The bill was introduced as H.R. 4655 on September 29, 1998. The House of Representatives passed the bill 360 - 38 on October 5, and the Senate passed it with unanimous consent two days later. President Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act into law on October 31, 1998.

The First Persian Gulf War, also known as the Gulf War, Jan.–Feb., 1991, was an armed conflict between Iraq and a coalition of 39 nations including the United States, Britain, Egypt, France, and Saudi Arabia; 28 nations contributed troops. It was a result of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990; Iraq then annexed Kuwait, which it had long claimed. Iraqi president Saddam Hussein declared that the invasion was a response to overproduction of oil in Kuwait, which had cost Iraq an estimated $14 billion a year when oil prices fell. Hussein also accused Kuwait of illegally pumping oil from Iraq's Rumaila oil field.

The UN Security Council called for Iraq to withdraw and subsequently embargoed most trade with Iraq. On Aug. 7, U.S. troops moved into Saudi Arabia to protect Saudi oil fields. On Nov. 29, the United Nations set Jan. 15, 1991, as the deadline for a peaceful withdrawal of Iraqi troops from Kuwait. When Saddam Hussein refused to comply, Operation Desert Storm was launched on Jan. 18, 1991, under the leadership of U.S. Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf.

The U.S.-led coalition began a massive air war to destroy Iraq's forces and military and civil infrastructure. Iraq called for terrorist attacks against the coalition and launched Scud missiles at Israel (in an unsuccessful attempt to widen the war and break up the coalition) and at Saudi Arabia. The main coalition forces invaded Kuwait and S Iraq on Feb. 24 and, over the next four days, encircled and defeated the Iraqis and liberated Kuwait. When U.S. President George H. W. Bush declared a cease-fire on Feb. 28, most of the Iraqi forces in Kuwait had either surrendered or fled.

Although the war was a decisive military victory for the coalition, Kuwait and Iraq suffered enormous property damage, and Saddam Hussein was not removed from power. In fact, Hussein was free to turn his attention to suppressing internal Shiite and Kurd revolts, which the U.S.-led coalition did not support, in part because of concerns over the possible breakup of Iraq if the revolts were successful. Coalition peace terms were agreed to by Iraq, but every effort was made by the Iraqis to frustrate implementation of the terms, particularly UN weapons inspections.

In 1993 the United States, France, and Britain launched several air and cruise-missile strikes against Iraq in response to provocations, including an alleged Iraqi plan to assassinate former President George H. W. Bush. An Iraqi troop buildup near Kuwait in 1994 led the United States to send forces to Kuwait and nearby areas. Continued resistance to weapons inspections led to bombing raids against Iraq, and trade sanctions imposed on Iraq remained in place, albeit with an emphasis on military-related goods until the second Gulf conflict. See also Gulf War Syndrome.

The Second Persian Gulf War, also known as the Iraq War, Mar.–Apr., 2003, was a largely U.S.-British invasion of Iraq. In many ways the final, delayed campaign of the First Persian Gulf War, it arose in part because the Iraqi government failed to cooperate fully with UN weapons inspections in the years following the first conflict.

The election of George W. Bush to the U.S. presidency returned to government many officials from his father's administration who had favored removing Saddam Hussein from power in the first war. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the United States moved toward a doctrine of first-strike, pre-emptive war to eliminate threats to national security. As early as Oct., 2001, U.S. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld publicly suggested that military action against Iraq was possible, and in November President Bush asked Rumsfeld to undertake a war-plan review. In Jan., 2002, President Bush accused Iraq. along with North Korea and Iran, as being part of "an axis of evil," and with the Taliban forced from power in Afghanistan in early 2002, the administration's attention turned to Iraq.

Accusing Iraq of failing to abide by the terms of the 1991 cease-fire (by developing and possessing weapons of mass destruction and by refusing to cooperate with UN weapons inspections) and of supporting terrorism, the president and other officials suggested that the "war on terrorism" might be expanded to include Iraq and became more forceful in their denunciations of Iraq for resisting UN arms inspections, called for "regime change" in Iraq, and leaked news of military planning for war. President Bush also called on the United Nations to act forcefully against Iraq or risk becoming "irrelevant." As a result, Iraq announced in Sept., 2002, that UN inspectors could return, but Iraqi slowness to agree on inspection terms and U.S. insistence on stricter conditions for Iraqi compliance stalled the inspectors' return.

In October, Congress approved the use of force against Iraq, and in November the Security Council passed a resolution offering Iraq a "final opportunity" to cooperate on arms inspections. A strict inspections timetable was established, and active Iraqi compliance insisted on. Inspections resumed in late November. A December declaration by Iraq that it had no weapons of mass destruction was generally regarded as incomplete and uninformative, but by Jan., 2003, UN inspectors had found no evidence of forbidden weapons programs. However, they also indicated that Iraq was not actively cooperating with their efforts to determine if previously known or suspected weapons had been destroyed and weapons programs had been ended.

Despite much international opposition, including increasingly rancorous objections from France, Germany, and Russia, the United States and Britain continued their military buildup in areas near Iraq, insisting that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction. Turkey, which the allies hoped to use as a base for a northern front in Iraq, refused to allow use of its territory, but most Anglo-American forces were in place in Kuwait and other locations by March. After failing to win the explicit UN Security Council approval desired by Britain (because Britons were otherwise largely opposed to war), President Bush issued an ultimatum to Iraqi president Hussein on Mar. 17, and two days later the war began with an airstrike against Hussein and the Iraqi leadership. Ground forces (almost exclusively Anglo-American and significantly smaller than the large international force assembled in the first war) began invading the following day, surging primarily toward Baghdad, the southern oil fields, and port facilities; a northern front was opened by Kurdish and airborne Anglo-American forces late in March.

By mid-April, 2003, Hussein's army and government had collapsed, he himself had disappeared, and the allies were largely in control of the major Iraqi cities. The allies gradually turned their attention to the rebuilding of Iraq and the establishment of a new Iraqi government, but progress toward that end was hampered by lawlessness, especially in Baghdad, where widespread looting initially had been tolerated by U.S. forces.

On May 1, President Bush declared victory in the war against Iraq. No weapons of mass destruction were found, leading to charges that U.S. and British leaders had exaggerated the Iraqi biological and chemical threat in order to justify the war. Much of the intelligence used to justify the war subsequently was criticized as faulty by U.S. and British investigative bodies. Hussein finally was captured in Dec., 2003. In 2004, he was transferred to Iraqi legal custody; tried and convicted of crimes against humanity, he was executed in 2006. In the aftermath of the war, U.S.-led occupation forces and, later, Iraqi security forces, struggled for several years with Iraqi and Islamic insurgencies and sectarian violence that military and civilian planners had failed to foresee (see Iraq). In Aug., 2010, U.S. combat operations in Iraq officially ended; the last U.S. troops, which had remained mainly in support and training capacities, were withdrawn in Dec., 2011.


Read more: Persian Gulf Wars | Infoplease.com

 

A reply to the above post from another forum:
"Like hell we need to send troops back in. This cycle has repeated many times over just the last century. There are soulless, brutal people in Iraq and it takes someone more soulless and brutal to maintain peace. Well, we deposed the last person with the clout to do so, so this was inevitable.

The difference between Iraq and Egypt/Libya is that there was a huge groundswell of populist support for regime change. As has been pointed out by many others - the Islamist insurgency is only able to do what they can because of populist sympathy or apathy. Mubarak and Ghadafi were doomed because the people said so, and now the Islamic Brotherhood has even been declared enemy of the state in Egypt.

Where is the parallel populist revulsion in Iraq? There isn't one. This tide of ISIS is as much the will of the populace as anyone else.

Matt Damon's character in Syriana sums it up well enough.[/URL] The only thing that's put Iraq on the map is oil. That's what it all goes back to. That's the only thing supporting the population. Once the oil dries up, what do you think is going to take over? Tribal rule will come back in a tide and 99% of the West won't give two wet shits about it.

Why do you think Afghanistan had to cede so much control over to the tribal regions? There's nothing of any value there and natural social forces are too expensive to fight. Most of Iraq is impoverished while a few people reap the benefits of the oil. So you know what? There's no money to be made by fighting tribal wars, so you know what? The population won't do it. No jobs, no money, no resources beyond oil.

Oh, and the other thing; since there IS still oil there, it's ripe grounds for a proxy war between US/Europe/Russia/China. It's the 1960's and 1970's all over again in an endless cycle until the region has no more oil.

It would be a different story if the population were as educated as, say, Israel. STEM is global. No geographic limitations there. But Afghanistan and Iraq are, by and large, poorly educated next to Israel and Iran.

You ask what the end result is? Nothing but endless human suffering. Best just to let these things run their course and focus on relocating the refugees that will inevitably come pouring out."

peace

 

There hasn't been much debate about where Syria got their chemical weapons and slight debate about how much they have. I know how much Syria has, whatever Saddam Hussein had before he moved it prior to the commencement of hostilities the second time around, less what has been used recently. Those convoys of trucks from Iraq to Syria were the chemical weapons. If you tell someone you are coming for six monts before you kick in the door, of course the evidence will be gone. At the very least I am proud of the US government for not making up evidence. You won't hear me say that often.