October 12, 2010 - Tenth anniversary of the USS Cole Attack

Please go to The Jawa Report and read the whole thing in honor of the murdered.

The 10th Anniversary of the USS Cole Bombing

In remembrance of the 10th anniversary of the USS Cole bombing, I am reprinting my article from 2007. And little has changed since it was written. Primary plotters Al Quso and al Badawi were both released in Yemen. Al Quso, added to the FBI's most wanted list in 2009, made an al Qaeda video in 2010. Al Quso may be in Pakistan or Shabwa, but he certainly hooked up with his clansman Anwar al Awlaki along the way. Jamal Al Badawi was released upon surrender in 2007, about a week after this article was written. After US objections, he may have in and out of jail. Supposedly he's on a hunger strike now because he was supposed to have been released again during Ramadan 2010. In US custody, al Nashiri's trial was going forward but now is "on hold." Tawfiq bin Attash won't see the inside of a court room any time soon.

The thing that's new this year is the emergence of AQAP as an entity that has the ambition to strike the United States homeland. Consequently, the US is putting its security in the hands of the supposedly reformed Yemeni President Saleh, which is quite scary considering his history. Apparently Saleh's brutality toward his own people is not an issue, nor his incompetence, nor his criminality. Here in the US, the political fall-out from allying with an al Qaeda appeaser and a security apparatus seriously compromised by al Qaeda is minimal. In Yemen, Saleh's broad and bloody methods of counter-insurgency have created new civil unrest. Saleh's propensity for duplicity means that much of it is a dog and pony show targeting his domestic opposition.

And the question screaming for an answer on this day of all days is to what extent was President Saleh and the upper echelon of his administration involved in the USS Cole bombing? We know there was some mid-level facilitation both before and after the attack which killed 17 US service members, and badly injured 49 others. But current indications are that Saleh had foreknowledge. And we can all shuffle that knowledge from page to page and post to post, but if AQAP -- God forbid -- succeeds in hitting the US, then the prevailing assessment of Saleh as trustworthy, irreplaceable or mailable will seem ludicrous. Those sailors and their families have given their lives to this country, but they have more to give--truth about Yemen and Saleh, a rare commodity. By whitewashing the facts of their deaths and by forgiving Yemen's "failures" in this case, the current administration (like the prior two) is endangering not only their mates who are serving today but all American citizens.