A Taliban Takedown

[Onkel Neal]

Pakistan has been an early Obama foreign-policy success.

If true, the news that a CIA drone killed Pakistan Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud last week is a notable victory in the war on terror, both for Pakistan and the U.S. Previous reports of Mehsud’s demise were greatly exaggerated, but this time Pakistan and U.S. officials are speaking with higher confidence that they’ve got him. White House National Security Adviser Jim Jones said on Fox News Sunday that “all evidence that we have” suggests he is dead.

The fashionable view in anti-antiterror precincts is that terror leaders are like daisies—mow one down and another will pop up to take his place. But not all leaders are easily replaced, and the charismatic and daring Mehsud is probably one of them. He was by most accounts a key figure in uniting the dozen or so factions of the Taliban under his umbrella group Tehreek-e-Taliban.

He is believed to have masterminded a string of bomb attacks that killed hundreds of Pakistanis, including the 2007 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. His activities contributed significantly to the broader instability along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and put pressure on Pakistan’s democratically elected President Asif Ali Zardari. There’s a reason the U.S. had a $5 million bounty on his head.

1 point for Obama's administration.

[SteamWake]

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=154611

[Onkel Neal]

D'OH!