Troops ring 'top al-Qaeda figure'

[numediaman]

Pakistan says its forces have surrounded a senior leader of the al-Qaeda militant network close to the border with Afghanistan.

"We feel that there may be a high-value target," President Pervez Musharraf told US television network CNN.

Other reports quote military officials saying they believe it to be al-Qaeda's Egyptian number two, Ayman al-Zawahri.

Strange that they are finally getting around to attacking Al Qaeda following the Spanish attacks.

But what worries me is that once again U.S. troops are nowhere to be seen. Remember when they supposedly had Bin Laden trapped in the mountains of Afghanistan, but they let local troops go in. In the end, they all escaped. Better not happen this time.

[wordmunger]

But what worries me is that once again U.S. troops are nowhere to be seen. Remember when they supposedly had Bin Laden trapped in the mountains of Afghanistan, but they let local troops go in. In the end, they all escaped. Better not happen this time.
But this is Pakistan, though. Pakistan's government, in order to save face publicly, isn't admitting to getting much assistance from the U.S. I would be surprised if there weren't actually A LOT of U.S. troops nearby. Musharraf needs to get credit for this, P.R.-wise, and the U.S. government would be smart to let him take credit.

[mactastic]

Well it is springtime in Afghanistan. Conflicts sort of simmer down during the winter and re-energize once the crappy weather (and it's REALLY crappy in them there mountains in the winter) dies down. We're pretty close to that point now, so it's about time to see/hear of some action on that front.

Let's hope we nail the bastard though.

[jefhatfield]

i am happy that we are getting those al qaeda operatives one by one since they are the ones who declared war on us

but iraq never declared war on us and saddam is not a terrorist nor did he back the terrorists who attacked us on september 11th...sure saddam is a bad guy and and dictator but there are dictators and bad guys all over the globe...so should we also attack them, too? we would have to not only take on iran and north korea, but we would have to heavily deploy in small countries in asia and africa and a couple in the americas

if we had bypassed iraq, all this capturing the remaining al qaeda stuff would have already been done including killing or capturing bin laden

it's a very slow and frustrating thing in capturing non uniformed al qaeda but it seemed like bush didn't want to look like he was doing a bad job by not catching them fast enough, so imho that's why he attacked iraq...easy target and a sure victory for us