cnn breaking news: senior al qaeda official dies of natural causes

[spanone]

no kidding...U.S. official confirms death from natural causes of senior al Qaeda official Abu Ubaida al-Masri.

www.cnn.com

edit: it now appears that any reference to this al qaeda guy has been scrubbed from the cnn site. it's posted on faux noise, but i ain't goin there

[datasuspect]

1. thank god for U.S. officials

i guess God is truly on our side.

[spanone]

7. as in the bob dylan song

Oh, my name it ain't nothin',
My age it means less.
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest.
I's taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
That the land that I live in
Has God on its side.
Oh, the history books tell it,
They tell it so well:
The cavalries charged,
The Indians fell.
The cavalries charged,
The Indians died --
Oh, the country was young,
With God on its side.

The Spanish-American
War had its day,
And the Civil War, too, was
Soon laid away.
And the names of the heroes
I was made to memorize,
With guns in their hands
And God on their side.

The First World War, boys,
It came and it went;
The reason for fighting
I never did get.
But I learned to accept it,
Accept it with pride;
For you don't count the dead
When God's on your side.

The Second World War, boys,
It came to an end.
We forgave the Germans,
And then we were friends.
Though they murdered six million,
In the ovens they fried,
The Germans now, too, have
God on their side.

In the 1960s, came the Viet-Nam War;
Can somebody tell me
What we're fightin' for?
Too many young men died,
Too many young mothers cried;
So I ask the question,
Was God on our side?

I've learned to hate Russians
All through my whole life.
If another war comes,
It's them we must fight.
To hate them and fear them,
To run and to hide,
You never ask questions
When God's on your side.

[thereismore]

2. Well if we wait long enough they'll die. nt

[madokie]

3. well I guess they won't have to be paying him any more retirement, huh

surely he was retired :rofl:

[TechBear_Seattle]

4. What is this, a late April Fool's joke?

Everyone knows that evil such as al-Qaeda can only be destroyed by a True American Christian. There is no such thing as "natural causes" for al-Qaeda. :eyes:

[datasuspect]

5. God killed him

for us.

[BlooInBloo]

6. Riiiiight.

[stellanoir]

8. Gee. . . I guess the surge IS working.

[LynneSin]

9. Was it the #3 Al-Qaeda? We seem to lose the #3 about every 3 months

:shrug:

[Muttocracy]

12. I noticed that too - we're an internal promotion machine for them.

[muriel_volestrangler]

19. That's about the size of it

The external operations chief, the senior British official said, has "the job with the lowest life expectancy in international politics."

LA Times, April 2, 2008

6 days, it would seem.

I have no idea what is real, and what is a PR smokescreen, in all this.

[LynneSin]

21. Can you imagine being promoted to #4 Al-Qaeda

:scared:

[Cassandra]

10. He got tired...

waiting for us to come get him.

[cliffordu]

11. MCCAINE: I TOLD YOU THE SURGE IS WORKING!!!!!

I'M SERIAL!!!!


:rofl:

[sabra]

13. FoxNews: al-Masri has probably been dead for several months

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,348668,00.html

U.S. officials say al-Masri has probably been dead for several months, with no explanation as to why news of his death was not released sooner.

[spanone]

14. how about this: the timing is good because petreaus and crocker are lying to congress now

[NNN0LHI]

15. This boy has been in an Egyptian prison for nearly a deacade

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5153364.stm

Last Updated: Thursday, 6 July 2006, 09:57 GMT 10:57 UK

Iraq al-Qaeda chief jail mystery

A prominent Cairo lawyer says the Egyptian man identified by the US as the new al-Qaeda leader in Iraq has been in jail in Egypt for seven years.

The lawyer, Mamdouh Ismail, who has represented Egyptian Islamists for many years, says he met the man days ago in a jail on the edge of Cairo.

He says the apparent contradictions in information may be part of a disinformation campaign by both sides.

However, independent verification is virtually impossible. snip


Following the killing of Zarqawi in Iraq last month, the US military there released the picture of an Egyptian man they said was the successor.

Maj Gen William Caldwell, the US military spokesman in Iraq, said at the time: "This is Ayyub al-Masri, probably the person who's going to be responsible for al-Qaeda in Iraq.

"Ayyub al-Masri is a senior al-Qaeda in Iraq operative. We know he is responsible for facilitating the movement of foreign fighters from Syria into Baghdad itself. We know al-Masri has been a terrorist since 1982, beginning with his involvement in the Egyptian Islamic Jihad."

The mystery militant

But according to Mamdouh Ismail, a security source within the Egyptian interior ministry has disclosed that al-Masri is in fact the nom de guerre of an Egyptian militant by the name of Sharif Haza.

Mr Ismail says that the American assertion could not possibly be true.

[sabra]

17. different guy - al masri just means from Egypt - though all these stories don't pass the smell tests

[spanone]

16. it was breaking news....now it's gone from the website

[lpbk2713]

18. So the BushCo Brain Trust has come up with a new strategery for victory.

Wait till they all die of old age.

It figures.

:rofl: :patriot: :rofl:

[Javaman]

20. See? that's the master iraq plan all along!!! We will just out live them to death!

that's why mclame wants to be in iraq for 100+ years!!! what a brilliant mind!!!

do I really need to at the sarcasm thingy at this point?

[tabasco]

22. The surge is working! n/t