Taliban's top military commander captured!

Takeuon

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:woot: That is a nice score for our serving men & women!

:usa:

You can click here Taliban's top military commander captured - Yahoo! News or just read the copy & paste version below.

ISLAMABAD – The Taliban's top military commander has been arrested in a joint CIA-Pakistani operation in Pakistan in a major victory against the insurgents as U.S. troops push into their heartland in southern Afghanistan, officials said Tuesday.

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the group's No. 2 leader behind Afghan Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar and a close associate of Osama bin Laden, was captured in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi, two Pakistani intelligence officers and a senior U.S. official said.

They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release such sensitive information.

One Pakistani officer said Baradar was arrested 10 days ago with the assistance of the United States and "was talking" to his interrogators.

Baradar is the most senior Afghan Taliban leader arrested since the beginning of the Afghan war in 2001 following the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States.

His capture represents a significant success for the administration of President Barack Obama, which has vowed to kill or seize Taliban and al-Qaida leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It follows the ramping up of CIA missile strikes against militant targets along the border between the two countries that have reportedly killed many midlevel commanders.

It was unclear how Baradar was tracked down. Pakistan's spy agency has been accused in the past of protecting top Taliban leaders believed sheltering in the country, frustrating Washington. Moving against Baradar could signal that Islamabad increasingly views the Afghan Taliban, or at least some of its members, as fair game.

There was also speculation that the arrest could be related in some way to a new push by the United States and its NATO allies to negotiate with moderate Afghan Taliban leaders as a way to end the eight-year war in Afghanistan. Pakistan has an important role in that process because of its close links with members of the movement, which it supported before the Sept. 11 attacks.

"If Pakistani officials had wanted to arrest him, they could have done it at any time," said Sher Mohammad Akhud Zada, the former governor of Afghanistan's Helmand province and a member of the Afghan parliament. "Why did they arrest him now?"

Baradar heads the Taliban's military council and was elevated in the body after the 2006 death of military chief Mullah Akhtar Mohammed Usmani. He is known to coordinate the movement's military operations throughout the south and southwest of Afghanistan. His area of direct responsibility stretches over Kandahar, Helmand, Nimroz, Zabul and Uruzgan provinces.

According to Interpol, Baradar was the deputy defense minister in the Taliban regime that ruled Afghanistan until it was ousted in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

Karachi is Pakistan's largest city and has been increasingly cited as a possible hiding place for top Afghan Taliban commanders in recent months. It has a large population of Pashtuns, the ethnic group that makes up the Taliban, but it is on the Arabian Sea and far from the Afghan border.

A Taliban spokesman in Afghanistan told The Associated Press that Baradar was still free, though he did not provide any evidence.

"We totally deny this rumor. He has not been arrested," Zabiullah Mujahid told the AP by telephone. He said the report was Western propaganda aimed at undercutting the Taliban fighting against an offensive in the southern Afghan town of Marjah, a Taliban haven.

"The Taliban are having success with our jihad. It is to try to demoralize the Taliban who are on jihad in Marjah and all of Afghanistan," he said.

Word of Baradar's capture came as U.S. Marine and Afghan units pressed deeper into Marjah, facing sporadic rocket and mortar fire as they moved through suspected insurgent neighborhoods in the NATO offensive to reclaim the town.

U.S.-based global intelligence firm Stratfor said the reported arrest was a "major development," but cautioned it may not have a significant impact on the battlefield in Afghanistan.

"It is unlikely that a single individual would be the umbilical cord between the leadership council and the military commanders in the field, particularly a guerrilla force such as the Taliban," it said in an analysis soon after news broke of the arrest.

Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Tuesday during a visit to Islamabad that the arrest was evidence of greater cooperation between the United States and Pakistan.

"I think that is really a signal that wherever people go, wherever they are, the government of Pakistan is determined to continue to ferret out those people who engage in violent extremist acts against the people of Pakistan," Kerry told CBS' "The Early Show" from Islamabad.

In a written interview with Newsweek last year, Baradar said the group did not see the point in reconciliation talks with the Afghan government or Washington.

"Our basic problem with the Americans is that they have attacked our country," Baradar said. "They are offering talks, hoping that the mujahedeen surrender before them. We see no benefit for the country and Islam in such kind of talks."

But Taliban expert Michael Semple said Baradar was known to be a "pragmatist" who could be prepared to enter into some kind of talks with the United States.

"If he could get guarantees, he would be willing to negotiate," said Semple, who was expelled from Afghanistan in 2007 by President Hamid Karzai for negotiating with midlevel Taliban commanders when he worked for the European Union.

After denying for years that Afghan Taliban were based in the country, the Pakistani government and security agencies had little reason to publicize the arrest of Baradar, which was first reported by The New York Times.

Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik said only that authorities had arrested a "number of people who are running away from Afghanistan and coming to Pakistan" but would not confirm the arrest.

The Times said it learned of the operation against Baradar last Thursday but delayed reporting it at the request of White House officials who argued that publicizing it would end a valuable intelligence-gathering effort by making Baradar's associates aware of his capture. The newspaper said it decided to publish the news after White House officials acknowledged Baradar's capture was becoming widely known in the region.
 
Its a good day for us but unfortunately we know someone has probably already taken his place...
 
i hope they mirandized him already

rope-noose.jpg
 
how much did we pay for him?

are combat soldiers issued miranda cards, so the suspect can be properly informed of his rights?
 
I heard about this story, Great job!

Sad to see these righties trying to make a political issue out of this. The double standards is sickening. What else is new though.
 
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no issue what-so-ever,

it is not a secret that our alliances in that part of the world are based on money changing hands....i do not care how much we paid for him, just curious what it cost. GWB used this practice years ago, so its not a right vs. left thing.

secondly: since the decision has been made to try terroists as civilians and not "enemy combatants" they will need to be marandized. this should be done by reading from a card, as simply recitin from memory can be a problem in a courtroom.

do not let your politics cloud your vision.....and make something out of nothing.
 
He was caught fleein the scene and was carrying some sort of new secret weapons able to be seen careful hid under blanket....
three-pigs.jpg

Helmet was no disguise...
:rofl:
 
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no issue what-so-ever,

it is not a secret that our alliances in that part of the world are based on money changing hands....i do not care how much we paid for him, just curious what it cost. GWB used this practice years ago, so its not a right vs. left thing.

secondly: since the decision has been made to try terroists as civilians and not "enemy combatants" they will need to be marandized. this should be done by reading from a card, as simply recitin from memory can be a problem in a courtroom.

do not let your politics cloud your vision.....and make something out of nothing.

While I agree with everything you said above, I can't help but wonder why one would make a point about being mirandized especially since its the hot topic of the right. Its foolish to believe it wasn't suppose to be a jab. Cheets anyways :beerchug:
 
The world is a LARGE AND WONDROUS PLACE...!

This pic is prolly from somewhere in Tennessee.....








I used that state cuz I am from TN so as to not cause any offense...
 
While I agree with everything you said above, I can't help but wonder why one would make a point about being mirandized especially since its the hot topic of the right. Its foolish to believe it wasn't suppose to be a jab. Cheets anyways :beerchug:

it really should be a hot topic of both the right and left....

isn't the left supposed to be about "civil rights".
 
While I agree with everything you said above, I can't help but wonder why one would make a point about being mirandized especially since its the hot topic of the right. Its foolish to believe it wasn't suppose to be a jab. Cheets anyways :beerchug:

Just to be perfectly clear: It's not foolish to believe it wasn't supposed to be a jab, I sure as heck WAS supposed to be a jab....If that makes me a "righty" then THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR THE COMPLIMENT.

And no Blanca, us Tennesseans do have the ability to laugh at ourselves now and then so I'm not offended
 
There were 10 more guys to take his place the next morning...I value the life's of our young men and women in the military...This is just my moronic view...but I don't know when we will "understand" that we can not take the western mind set and put it into a middle eastern person. It is a war, imo, that can not be won. We are blowing the lives of thousands of young people...they will never be us...and we will never be them...Russians learned this the hard way...and I thought we learned it through Vietnam...why must we be the international police force...who entitled us into this position???2hip
 
actually, if it was not in our interest.....we would not have american boots on the ground. there are any number of places on the map that need help. there has been war and genocide in africa since 1996, there has even been a few hollywood movies about it....

we never invaded Haiti, or Cuba and that not even getting into Mexico or Central America.

yet we are not there.

so yes it is PC to claim we are the worlds policeman.....but we are not, we are very self serving when we decide where we are going to establish/protect democracy..
 
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