Islamic Terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki Is Dead: Al Qaeda Leader & Cleric, Linked to 9/11 & Fort Hood Jihad Murders, Killed in US Missile Strike in Yemen (video)
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on September 30, 2011
It's confirmed: Al Qaeda's Anwar al-Awlaki was killed in a US missile strike in Yemen
One more Islamic terrorist leader is dead. It’s been confirmed that Anwar al-Awlaki — a US citizen born in New Mexico who became an Al-Qaeda leader, and who has been linked to the bloody massacre at Fort Hood in 2009, to the failed Christmas Day “Underwear Bomber” attack on Flight 253 headed for Detroit, and to the unspeakable horrors of 9/11 — was killed in a US missile strike today in Yemen.
God bless our courageous troops.
And now I’m going to do something that I rarely ever do.
I also give kudos to Pres. Obama.
One less jihad-driven monster to threaten the world. Another really-really bad guy gets what he deserves.
Associated Press: US Gov’t: Al-Qaida’s Al-Awlaki Killed in Yemen
From New York Times, Obama Hailed After Al-Awlaki Killing, but For How Long?:
WASHINGTON – The killing of Anwar al-Awlaki in an American missile strike on Friday cements President Obama’s record as a relentless hunter of Al Qaeda terrorists. Whether that success in counterterrorism will help Mr. Obama’s overall image as a leader is less certain.
The president got a healthy bump in the polls after ordering the commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May. But that goodwill evaporated a month later, as concerns about the economy resurged. In the New York Times/CBS News poll, his approval rating shot up to 57 percent, from 46 percent, after the raid, but fell back to 48 percent in early June.
Still, the Awlaki assassination is part of a pattern of successful strikes against Al Qaeda leaders and field commanders over the last year. And with terrorism analysts arguing that the American-born cleric posed a greater threat to American citizens than Bin Laden, praise flowed in to the White House from normally critical quarters.
“The killing of al-Awlaki is a tremendous tribute to President Obama and the men and women of our intelligence community,” Representative Peter T. King of New York, the Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said in a statement Friday.
Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor running for the Republican presidential nomination, called the killing “a major victory in our fight against Islamist terrorism and proper justice for the numerous attacks and plots he inspired or planned against America.”
ABC News: Anwar al-Awlaki, U.S.-Born Terror Leader, Killed in Yemen, Terror Leader Linked to 9/11, Fort Hood
From The Telegraph, Anwar al-Awlaki:
Unlike bin Laden who, before his death, had not been seen for many years, Awlaki was loud and public, and was considered highly successful in converting many young western Muslims to global jihad. Last year the CIA put him on its hit-list of assassination targets, while Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, named him as the West’s Public Enemy No 1, observing that Awlaki’s involvement with al-Qaeda “is of particular concern given his wide circle of adherents in the West, including in the UK”.
The first time that many people heard Awlaki’s name was at the beginning of last year, when he was alleged to have recruited and advised Umar Abdulmutallab, the young African who attempted to blow up a plane carrying hundreds of passengers over Detroit on Christmas Day by detonating a device in his underpants. However, Awlaki had been known to Western intelligence for several years before that. Some of the September 11 hijackers had respected Awlaki as a religious figure. Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, two of the hijackers who flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon building, attended a mosque where he preached.
For Awlaki was not a gun-toting terrorist warlord, but a preacher, broadcasting his ideology in sermons in mosques and, more pervasively, the internet. CDs or downloads of his Constants on the Path of Jihad, a series of lectures purporting to be commentaries on Islamic texts (which were, until recently, freely available on YouTube), have been found in possession of almost every radical who has executed, or attempted to execute, attacks on Western targets over the past decade.
From Michelle Malkin, Dead again? New reports of jihadi cleric Awlaki’s demise; God bless our military:
Let’s hope it really happened this time.
In December 2009, Reuters reported that al Qaeda recruiter and Fort Hood jihadist spiritual advisor Anwar al Awlaki was killed in an airstrike in Yemen.
He counseled the 9/11 jihadists, hailed Fort Hood gunman Nidal Hasan as a “hero,” reportedly inspired both the Christmas day would-be underwear bomber and another cargo plane jihadi plot, and has been on the lam since 2002.The 2009 report turned out to be false.
[...]
Obama’s far left flank will be unhappy if the mission to kill Awlaki, an American citizen, was successful. They will again decry such drone strikes against American citizens as unprecedented and lawless.
On this, I will come to Obama’s defense.
Awlaki’s membership and leadership in al Qaeda is undisputed.
We are at war.
The Supreme Court set the precedent for Obama’s and our military’s actions in 1942.
[...]
Shall we now look for mass Code Pink demonstrations and calls to prosecute Obama for war crimes like we saw under the Bush administration? Will progs start hounding Obama officials the way they still hound Bush lawyers such as John Yoo?
I leave you with this link to Awlaki’s timeline of jihad activities and two words if the reports of his death are true:
Good riddance.
Gulf security analyst speaks to Al Jazeera about Anwar al-Awlaki killing
From Jake Tapper at ABC News, How Does the President Have the Right to Target for Killing a US Citizen?:
How does President Obama have the right to target for killing a US citizen such as Anwar al-Awlaki?
That’s a good question.
As of now, the administration’s legal justification is unclear.
In 2010, then-White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was asked about how “human rights lawyers were challenging the administration’s assertion that an American citizen can be targeted for killing overseas. Should Americans worry that if they go overseas, their own government could target them to be killed?”
Said Gibbs: “Let’s be clear about Anwar al-Awlaki, okay? The United States hasn’t decided that Anwar al-Awlaki is aligned with a terrorist group. Anwar al-Awlaki has in videos cast his lot with al Qaeda and its extremist allies. Anwar al-Awlaki is acting as a regional commander for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. So let’s not take a tourist that might visit Italy overseas and equate him to somebody who has on countless times in video pledged to uphold and support the violent and murderous theories of al Qaeda.”
Jameel Jaffer, the deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, today said that his organization believes “that the targeted killing program violates both U.S. and international law. As we’ve seen today, this is a program under which American citizens far from any battlefield can be executed by their own government without judicial process, and on the basis of standards and evidence that are kept secret not just from the public but from the courts. The government’s authority to use lethal force against its own citizens should be limited to circumstances in which the threat to life is concrete, specific, and imminent. It is a mistake to invest the President — any President — with the unreviewable power to kill any American whom he deems to present a threat to the country.”
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