Anwar al-Awlaki
Regardless of how you may feel or may have been praying for Anwar al-Awlaki, he's now dead and has met Jesus. A missile from an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in a remote part of Yemen took him out. It also took out Samir Khan. It reportedly just missed the bomb maker, Ibrahim Hassan Tali al-Asiri.
Airport Body Screening Connection
These men are the threat that started airport body screening. Asiri makes the bombs. Khan and Awlaki charm the recruits that place them.
The Bomb Maker: al-Asiri
Al-Asiri reportedly made the underwear bomb and the toner cartridge bombs. Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab tried to detonate the underwear bomb on a plane bound for Detroit on Christmas Day, 2009. The toner cartridge bombs were supposed to explode on US bound cargo planes late last year. Al-Asiri also made an anal cavity bomb that was used in an assassination attempt on a Saudi Prince in February 2009.
The Pied Pipers: Khan and al-Awlaki
Awlaki and Khan were two of the most successful propagandists in the world when it came to advocating violent jihad against the United States.
Khan promoted bombing women and children in the on-line English-language magazine called Inspire that he edited and published.
Awlaki was a gifted and influential writer and preacher. He is linked to inspiring more terror plots against America in the last five years than Osama bin-Laden over his whole life-time.
US Citizenship Connection
Both Khan and Awlaki were American citizens.
Awlaki was a citizen by birth in America on April 22, 1971. His parents were here temporarily from Yemen. His father was a Fulbright scholar studying at New Mexico State University.
Khan was born in Saudi Arabia on Christmas Day in 1985 to parents from Pakistan. He was raised in Queens, New York. His family moved to Charlotte, NC in 2004 where his father works as an executive in information technology. Khan turned his back on his family and left to join al-Qaeda in Yemen in 2009.
Links
prayer page for Ibrahim Hassan Tali al-Asiriprayer page for Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab
exploration of Anwar al-Awlaki's journey to radicalism
State Department press release on Ibrahim Hassan Tali al-Asiri
Long War Journal report of Ibrahim Hassan Tali al-Asiri's close call
LA Times Report on Samir Khan
AP Report on Secret Authorization Memo
Comments
4 Comments
Thank you for posting
All Comments are moderated for spam and abusive language.
Your Comment should appear on the site soon.
• "Regardless of how you may feel or may have been praying for Anwar al-Awlaki, he's now dead and has met Jesus." He either met Jesus as Lord and Savior while still among the living, or faced Him as the Righteous Judge. So it is with all of us.We know Jesus as Lord and Savior if we have repented of our sin and believed in Him, or we stand condemned already in our unbelief. (John 3:18)
Dan on Oct. 04, 2011 12:36 p.m.• I cannot rejoice in these deaths even though in the world's way of thinking, they may be deserved.To stop the evil they intended may be a relief to the rest of us. Yet we serve a Father who created each one of them and who is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to salvation. Jesus was glad to take one thief to Paradise with Him, but He also would have been glad to take the other to join them as well, if he would have been willing. I want to consider whether they might have had different lives with different outcomes if they had had opportunities to see who Jesus is through seeing the people of Jesus. I wonder if I prayed as I might have, loved as I might have, spoke as I might have, if some other outcome would have occurred. Lord, change me.
Meg on Oct. 04, 2011 7:20 p.m.• I think it is sad that the army has become the judge and the jury. These american citizens rights were stripped from them and they were not even given a trial prior to their assassinations in a country that we did not permission to attack in. The body scans seem to be something that are a almost a joke that would be found in a corrupt country in former USSR. The maker is the former leader of homeland security and is selling to his former job. He has made a lot of money off of this. Somehow, I would highly doubt George Washington or any of the first leaders would subject to allow themselves to be viewed nude by someone in another room. Background checks and common sense seem they would work a lot better.
johnny on Oct. 05, 2011 2:15 p.m.• Here is the link to a story on the legal justifications for the drone strike. http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_19073449 Here are some excerpts. The secret document was narrowly drawn to the specifics of al-Awlaki's case and did not establish a broad new legal doctrine to permit the targeted killing of Americans in other circumstances. . . . The memo provided the justification for acting despite an executive order banning assassinations, a federal law against murder, protections of the Bill of Rights and various strictures of the international laws of war, according to people familiar with the analysis. . . . the Justice Department concluded that al-Awlaki was covered by the authorization to use military force against al-Qaeda that Congress enacted shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 — meaning that he was a lawful target in the armed conflict, unless some other legal prohibition trumped that authority.
TB on Oct. 09, 2011 2:58 p.m.