Gitmo Released Taliban's Second in Command

According to this AP story today, America's human rights activists are saying, "Ooops, my bad. Go on with what you were doing. Don't mind me."

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan – A man freed from Guantanamo more than two years ago after he claimed he only wanted to go home and help his family is now a senior commander running Taliban resistance to the U.S.-led offensive in southern Afghanistan, two senior Afghan intelligence officials say.

Abdul Qayyum is also seen as a leading candidate to be the next No. 2 in the Afghan Taliban hierarchy, said the officials, interviewed last week by The Associated Press.

So now we can spend hundreds of millions of dollars in technology and manpower, not to mention the collateral damage of all his fine work, to find him somewhere in a cave or village in Afghanistan. But we could have just kept him in Gitmo. But he seemed so nice

And Qayyum is not nearly the only one who managed to slip through Gitmo's fingers, "U.S. intelligence asserts that 20 percent of suspects released from the Guantanamo Bay prison have returned to the fight and the number has been steadily increasing."

This guy could be the next #2 in the Taliban hierarchy and "From his houses in Quetta he appoints the (Taliban) governors, the district governors," Sharifuddin said. "Nothing happens in these provinces without his approval." Yet we thought he was just a nice rural boy who wanted to go home and help his family.

Oops.

al-Qaida Has Too Many Irons in Fire

al-Qaida's signature suicide car bomb made another appearance today, this time in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. That makes three al-Qaida bombings in three countries in the last two weeks. One might think they were spreading themselves too thin if one didn't already know they were the disposable pawn of Iran's great mastermind.