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Salameh Nematt

A Double Agent for the Taliban?

BS Top - Nematt CIA Bomb Reuters The suicide bomber who devastated a CIA base in Afghanistan will be a source of bragging for terrorists, but which terrorists? Salameh Nematt on why al Qaeda might not be behind the attack—and how the bomber pulled it off.

While news outlets in the United States are reporting that al Qaeda is behind the devastating Dec. 30 attack in Afghanistan that left seven CIA officers and a Jordanian intelligence officer dead, sources in the Arab world are questioning whether the terrorist organization is responsible.

Al Qaeda-affiliated Web sites have not taken credit for the assault on the CIA base and are expressing doubts about whether the suspected Jordanian suicide bomber, Humam Khalil al-Balawi, is really the jihadi celebrity and online propagandist Abu Dujana al-Khorasani, as has been reported. And now the Pakistani Taliban is claiming responsibility for the bombing and claiming Balawi as one of their own.

“In Cold War days, you would have books written about this operation,” the analyst said. “It was not easy to do at all. The jihadists now have something big to brag about.”

Jordanian intelligence apparently picked up Balawi early last year, after tracking him down electronically. The Jordanians, in close cooperation with the CIA for decades, appear to have believed at the time that he was more valuable to them as a double agent who could infiltrate al Qaeda than as a figure who could be used to condemn the terrorist organization and its tactics, providing a psychological blow to jihadists worldwide.

Arab intelligence analysts say Balawi convinced his Jordanian handlers that he would cooperate and possibly provide information that could lead to the arrest or killing of Osama bin Laden’s No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, or even the terror chief himself. Instead, the double agent contacted the Pakistani Taliban, who eventually sent him back to wreak havoc at the CIA base in Afghanistan, the analysts say. The Taliban, for their part, back up this claim, stating through the Arabic satellite channel al-Jazeera that Balawi carried out the attack on their behalf.

Howard L. Rosenberg: The CIA’s Secret Grief

Lee Siegel: America’s Terrorism Amnesia
The Taliban affiliation may explain why Web sites associated with al Qaeda have yet to claim Balawi as one of their own. Most sites, including al-Falluja Forum, are questioning whether the suicide bomber is indeed the well-known Khorasani, the most prominent al Qaeda propagandist known to the jihadi sites. (One of Khorasani’s most quoted sayings is “When will my words drink from my blood?”—which means he longed for the day he would fight and die for the jihadists’ cause, rather than just write about it.)

Balawi, aka Khorasani, 32, was flown to Afghanistan, and Jordanian intelligence officer Ali bin Zaid, a distant relative of Jordan’s King Abdullah II, was entrusted with handling him from there. Bin Zaid, who was killed in the Dec. 30 blast, was sent to Afghanistan as part of the Jordanian force serving there under the umbrella of the multinational forces led by the U.S. The king and his wife, Queen Rania, attended his funeral in Amman.

“When [bin Zaid] went to Afghanistan, he put his money where his mouth is,” Nibras Kazimi, a U.S.-based Iraqi analyst who has written extensively on al Qaeda and the jihadist movement, told The Daily Beast. “This is a very sophisticated operation…you cannot easily mislead two intelligence services for almost a year, feed them with enough information to keep them going the way he did, and successfully carry out such a spectacular attack.”

Kazimi, a visiting scholar at the Hudson Institute in Washington, has described the attack on his blog, the Talisman Gate, as “plain incredible.”

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January 6, 2010 | 7:00am
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This comment has been removed by The Daily Beast's editors.

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10:13 am, Jan 6, 2010

Morgan378

Michael, your purposes seem adroit i* not naive. Good luck with your campaign. I'm sorry to hear about such a passing on your site. Things are not so easily done as you hope/d. As the prophet says: To turn to an idea o* substance, one must *irst look at all the alternatives that are available. As clear as you see your idea - there are others who see others as more important. They may neither be right nor ethical, but may be what can be accomplished at the time.

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1:40 pm, Jan 6, 2010

oliverckerr

All the pieces in the puzzle are coming together. Here are the opening lead paragraphs in my Health Care and More magazine size essay in progress:

I am an independent candidate for president. Here is my nuts and bolts solution to our health care problem, and more, my New Year's gift to the American people. My right to televised speech, a First Amendment battle, is soon to be heard in federal court. The exercise of my unalienable right as a political candidate, to via mass media, share my programs with my countrymen, telling my vision, is a constitutional guarantee.

I expect to win this courtroom battle, because I am a candidate, and within the laws of political broadcasting. My voice will prevail, in spite of our broadcast networks who have other ideas about yours and my constitutional rights. They have bet their broadcast licenses on the destruction of my right to mass media speech, and yours to participate.

Upon success in this First Amendment endeavor a number of broadcasting and cable casting licenses may be revoked, then auctioned off. The law is the law. I will have defended our constitutional right to both hear and give a speech over our air waves, my planned on speech, composed with a better set of solutions, besides my Television Scripture, the Vehicle for World Peace.

I'm the best candidate for president. I bring to the table a Television Scripture, written down in design to perform, on whirled wide, all channels television, like old blind Homer, from dusk until dawn, every line a delicate sensible rhyme, running and punning through everyone's spoken tongue, for all of the world's peoples to participate in all at once.

On good ship mother urf, world peace will begin with a world vid peaceful night. I need only retell the tale of Adman and Even in the Gar Den ov Edum, and explain how God created man in His image to establish my credibility for a world wide show. But achieving a course change in human history requires I become US president, not a private citizen.

My Health Care plan, created with your loose pennies, costs half as much as Congress' bloated bill. With Congress' glom, their bureaucrats will blockade insurance companies by regulating the citizenry's complaints. Upon my plan bureaucracies are out of the mix.

Using Washington's financial projections, my health care solution will cost 400 billions of dollars, or less, every year, covering more uninsured people without an Act of Congress.

Congress' 2500 pages long, unreadable Health Care Reform Bill will take three years to enact. Before that, to bridle their Act, a regulatory Health Care agency must be in place. My plan, bell clear, could be a nationwide double oped, and start tomorrow.

Health Care is an issue that currently drains one-sixth of our economy! Unless we repair health care delivery, we sink to a 2nd rate 2nd tier borrower nation. Whatever is invented in America will be developed somewhere else, with the wealth created remaining in the producing countries.

America's CEO's are snatching millions of obscene bonus dollars every year. The CEO's smell that down a short road our dollar could implode, turning 20 million almighty dollars into a fast nine, our nation's purchasing power for all imported goods, halved.

When I was a kid, a pack of gum was a nickel. Soon a stick could cost a dollar. A loaf of fresh baked bread was less than a quarter. Today that same loaf approaches four bucks. The tenured, $170,000 per year bureaucrat is unperturbed.

Can we agree our economy needs a surge? While Washington's army of over paid regulators thrives, as does Wall Street with their billions of bonus dollars, the rest of our country, the people who do the work, whose money bailed the banks, are choked. The government's bureaucracy, self-enriched, grows wealthier, as does Wall Street, while the rest of the country is at a jobless stand still, unable to qualify, near broke.

One major prob limb on the tree of our economic life is the growing rolls of those who lost their health insurance along with their jobs, without a new job in sight.

My Loose Penny Program, unlike the billions in taxpayer's bailout dollars, is a capital injection that will instantly begin repairing our economic muscle, by repairing our health care delivery without government intervention. The public improvement of people's lives, with government side stepped, rattles bureaucracies. The failure of Congress' plan to hatch will set their bureaucrats back thousands of planned-on six figure jobs.

But to create real jobs, reestablishing the vigorous economy we once had, where health care doesn't drain production, as union contracted health care commitments drained General Motors, stealing the profit from every car, mission critical diplomacy is required.

Mr. Obama must dispense with his tele-prompted fly around Town Hall speeches, wipe down the makeup on his eyelids, (Obama wears eye shadow for outside speeches - his wife can front him some cold cream) and summon all our fast food, supermarket, Target and WalMart CEO's to Washington, to immediately ink my nonpartisan capital infusion.

In the words of Nobel Prize economist, Paul Krugman, "the U.S. government, as a whole-has become ominously dysfunctional." But this proposed "Lev" solution can roll in spite of the hypocrite Congress, theirs, a self-created corrupted culture that includes every member of both Houses. Their all-inclusive taint isn't on any table for a public discussion.

But people know. Washington, DC is universally disrespected by the whole country. To the question, "Have you ever, while serving, accepted money from any individual, Pak, or company, the answer, from every Member of Congress, is narrowed to, "yes, but . . ."

Their "yes but" is the money these elected "liars in public places" require for their reelection campaigns. Supposedly, without big time dollars they would be pushed out of office, services rendered. But the money they raise corrupts their politics, for the people fronting them money do so for a say in potential legislation, justifying their lock on our status quo with talking points for the voters and their colleagues, a prime example of this political charade, the parroted script that low priced drugs from Canada could jeopardize public safety, as though Canadians are dropping like flies from their medications.

Upon the Members' elections, every single article of clothing they wear, for the duration of their whole public service careers, is purchased with lobbyist campaign donations, acceptable to their Election Commission, the assumption their duds were bought for the campaign trail, a part of their reelections, serving the public interest and all of that. Every election calls for dozens of expensive new suits, hundred dollar shirts, pricey silk ties, outfits for the spouse and hand sown, leather soled shoes, all on someone else's dime.

Today's Federal Election Commission protects the incumbents, inhibiting any outsider's campaign. A minor infraction by any outsider could invoke an astronomical fine.

The electoral solution is obvious. Remove the money required for political campaigning. Elected officials would not feel beholden to special interests. This is accomplished with a $3.00 income tax check off for our First Amendment Speech Fund. You declare your candidacy, either as write-in candidate, or your name pre-printed on the ballot and then, book your thirty or sixty minute slot on your choice of television stations in your district, or multiple stations for a state wide Senatorial race, or network, in a race for president.

The money to pay the stations for your live speech broadcasts, replacing the ad dollars lost for that slot, comes from the First Amendment Speech Fund. Only live speeches by the candidates are protected by our Speech Fund, and the candidate has to take an oath, at the outset of the speech that he or she is about to deliver, the speech is of their own making. The tag line, "I approve this message" will become, "I wrote this speech."

I can hear the fascist's reality-confusing litany: "Then anyone can run! A red commie or smooth talking socialist could get into office!" Haven't we elected our share of smooth talkers? We are three hundred million people strong in USA and we are not electing our best or brightest to serve the public good in our public offices, protecting our rights.

By a person's spoken words we can judge the contents of their character. A thirty minute speech by a candidate for federal office could be followed by the district's newspapers' editorial boards instantly discussing and interpreting the candidate's speech; on the spot, with the candidate in the studio. One could stand for office without compromise; without obsequiously groveling for money.

My "Lev" Health Care program is independent of insurance companies, bureaucracy, or an Act of Congress, excluding a one line change in our tax code, providing incentive for medical professionals to treat "charity" cases in exchange for a tax deduction, the pot of gold at the end of the medical provider's economic rainbow: Freedom of Income Tax.

The loss of tax revenue from this proposed tax deduction given to medical professionals who treat charity cases, 'charity' here defined as anyone without insurance, is offset by eliminating emergency rooms for non emergency health care. People seeking non-emergency care will be turned away with a list of available doctors in the neighborhood.

The congress' projected yearly cost, 86 billion comes from our tax wealth, withheld from our earnings. The cost of my Health Care program is half, spread nationwide, a few pennies from non-income tax-paying teenagers, a few extra pennies from retired people, along with everybody else's loose pennies, including an undocumented workers.'

The above are only the opening salvo!

michaelslevinson.com

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9:37 pm, Jan 6, 2010

drauzy

could you give me a bit more expansive version of your manifesto, levinson?

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12:05 pm, Jan 6, 2010

oliverckerr

Go to michaelslevinson.com and carefully read my mother's commentary on the homempage. Play both of the videos as they are samples from the prophetic Television Scripture I characterize a Vehicle for World Peace. To see the story of Adman and Even click on "The Book ov Lev It A Kiss" and see the script.

Man is inspired to create work of art that stems from the heart, to use as a vehicle to deliver the world (it's your world) to Peace, a course change in human history beginning with a peaceful night when all the worlds' peoples are doing the same thing at the same time.

The platform, nuts and bolts solutions for every prob limb is evolving.

michaelslevinson.com

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9:44 pm, Jan 6, 2010

opedanderson

holy fuck man.

shut the fuck up! Nobody cares about your fucking long posts.

Go away

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10:09 pm, Jan 6, 2010

oliverckerr

You should watch your language punk. Had you only run down the leg of your father's best friend, or your slutty bar fly mothers arse the world would be a better place to live in.

I see in the post below you deny the halocaust, so you are a true fascist.

michaelslevinson.com

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2:10 pm, Jan 7, 2010

cavetroll

Where did you buy that shit your smoking and how much is it???

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2:50 pm, Jan 7, 2010

cavetroll

oliverckerr I began reading your post but admittedly got no further than the first paragraph or two when it became so obviously clear you don't have a clue about the first amendment. Basically it guarantees you the right to say whatever you want. It does not compel any communications businesses to broadcast what you say nor does it compel anyone to listen to you.

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3:04 pm, Jan 7, 2010

oliverckerr

cavetroll

In 1972 Congress passed the access law. The law reads, "For the wilfull and repeated failure to allow access the Commission may revoke a station's license."

The law was written for speech, the "politishinz" use it exclusively for ads. Because of the law the political ads are a must carry. The stations cannot refuse to air them.

Originally, when the law was passed there were three TV networks and PBS via rabbit ears. ABC, in 1972, was brand new. So a number of strictures - promulgations fashioned by FCC were in consideration of the limited bandwidth.

In today's world bandwidth is not an issue, washed. There are whole channels, example MSNBC devoted to politics, supplemented by their self-imagined news reporting.

Well, there are thresholds, for example establishing that you are in fact a candidate, as opposed to the "publicity seeker" who, on a street corner, "claims" he or she is a candidate. They do not qualify for the priviledge congress granted to the actual candidates for federal elective office.

The First Amenment protects my "write" to speech, and the access statute compels the networks and / or stations to grant the access. The "air time" is not free, but my right to the time cannot be denied.

Originally, when there were only three channels, the must carry only applied in the 60 days before the election. That was then, 1972. In today's wor;d the campaign for election and reelection is practically a never ending proposition, proven by the non-stop fund raising which carries on within the week after the elction! Fund raising is campaigning.

PBS the air time is free.

I did not fully reveal the nature of my case against all of the networks and FCC, suffice to say, I have been working toward simply giving a speech for more than 30 years. Each and every time the voters were denied. Each and every time the laws were adjusted to screw me. Now it is soon to come to a head.

In the event I am denied again I will simply take my soon-to-be- patented generator for producing more electricity than what is required to generate, and my software for teaching the English alphabet and numbers, and my Television Scripture, written in design to perform on "whirled" wide television from dusk until dawn, a cultural event like old Blind Homer's, with every line a delicate sensible rhyme, to China, where I'm sure to be welcomed with open arms.

Of course you are not compelled to listen.

michaelslevinson.com

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5:51 pm, Jan 7, 2010

External

Mr Nematt

That's the problem when the western media depends on the false info that they keep buying from the agent Rita Katz instead of really doing investigative journalism. She keeps putting everything on AQ when she can't distinguish between AQ, the different factions of Taliban , the combatants from corrupted govt in that region . Serves the MSM well for being stupid.

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12:35 pm, Jan 6, 2010

lsquare

How can we ever trust anyone who believes even for a moment that blowing themselves and others up, even while leaving children and a wife behind, is one's ultimate goal in life? I mean, how do you even communicate with anyone with beliefs like that?

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1:34 pm, Jan 6, 2010

Johnnorth

lsquare raises the issue that has always troubled me about the Nazis operating the concentration camp gas ovens. How could they do it? The corruption of the mind of the jihadis is as terrifying as the unspeakable cruelties they inflict in the name of their perversion of their Islam. Maybe only sane but bold Islamists can talk to them? Actually I doubt anyone can.

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8:36 pm, Jan 6, 2010

oliverckerr

My plan, as a candidate for president with world class ideas, in advance of my dusk until dawn Homeric masterpiece with every line a delicate sensible rhyme, is to get my picture on bill boards all around the Middle East with one line beneath, in Arabic: "Only the innocent are called to Allah's bosom."

Find that line in the essay "Requium For The War Dead" at

michaerlslevinson.com

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9:47 pm, Jan 6, 2010

opedanderson

there was no such thing as a gas oven in any concentration camp in Nazi occupied Europe.....

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12:20 am, Jan 7, 2010

cavetroll

? is this Ahmadinijad ??

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2:46 pm, Jan 7, 2010

cavetroll

Does he work for the Taliban or al Qaeda ? What difference and who cares? Kill them all and let Allah figure it out. There's one way to stop suicide bombers that will work just fine When you learn the identity of a bomber, dead or alive, Kill his entire family. Blow up his house, kill all parents and children related to him. Kill his wives too. I be it stops real quick.

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2:45 pm, Jan 7, 2010

boredwell

Ok, but the final post mortem regarding Balawi's success rests with those FOB guards who failed to search him prior to entry! This wouldn't be quite the story had he detonated the IED and killed them rather than the 7 CIA agents.

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9:45 am, Feb 3, 2010
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A Double Agent for the Taliban?

by Salameh Nematt

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