After hearing from the brother of the latest victim of these savages, Mr Hensley was just trying to do good oversees and make a better life for his family. The question I have is are we on the right track? Is the foreign policy being conducted by this president really making us safer?

Hostage Takers latest victim

We got a little safer today. A few more of these will do the trick.


Group's Spiritual Leader Killed in Iraq

Wed Sep 22, 1:49 PM ET

By JAMAL HALABY, Associated Press Writer

AMMAN, Jordan - The spiritual leader of the group believed to have beheaded two American hostages in Iraq (news - web sites) this week has been killed in a U.S. airstrike, his family and Islamic clerics said Wednesday.


AP Photo




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The death of Sheik Abu Anas al-Shami is a blow to Iraq's most active militant group, Tawhid and Jihad, which is led by Jordanian-born militant Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, experts said. But they add that such groups manage to survive, with other militants replacing the slain ones.


Al-Shami, a Palestinian who holds Jordanian citizenship, was killed Sept. 17 when a missile hit the car in which he was traveling in a western Baghdad suburb, said the clerics, who have close ties to the family and spoke on condition of anonymity.


Al-Shami's father, Youssef Jumah, said he learned of the death Monday from his eldest son Jumah, who lives in the United Arab Emirates. He declined to say how his son was informed.


The pan-Arab satellite broadcaster Al-Jazeera reported al-Shami's death earlier this week, quoting unidentified relatives.


A Jordanian security official said he could not confirm the death.


Al-Shami, whose real name was Omar Youssef Jumah, was a top aide to al-Zarqawi, believed to be a close confidant of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden (news - web sites). Tawhid and Jihad is blamed for some of the biggest attacks in Iraq, such as last year's bombing of the U.N. headquarters and the beheadings of foreign hostages.


Al-Zarqawi is believed to have personally decapitated American hostage Eugene Armstrong on Monday. The group claimed Tuesday to have killed another American, Jack Hensley, whose decapitated body was found and identified Wednesday.


Al-Shami was believed to be the voice on several audio tapes that Tawhid and Jihad released via the Internet. On one such tape in August, a speaker identified as al-Shami said the militants planned to kill Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, as well as soldiers and police officers, in a "blessed holy war."


Ghazi Rababaa, a terrorism expert at the University of Jordan, said that while the killing dealt a blow to Tawhid and Jihad, it is "unlikely to lead to the disintegration of the group or the cessation of its activities."


At the family home in Amman's middle-class district of al-Zuhoor, a predominantly Palestinian neighborhood, al-Shami's father was busy erecting a tent for a wake Wednesday night. He said his son was buried in Fallujah, the Iraqi city known as a hotbed of anti-American militants.


"I can't describe my feelings. I'm neither sad nor happy about his death," Youssef, 64, told The Associated Press. He said he last saw his son a year ago, when he said he was going to Saudi Arabia. Two weeks later, al-Shami told his father he was in Iraq.


Inside the family home, al-Shami's 56-year-old mother, Dalal Jumah, said her son "always yearned for martyrdom, and he got what he wished for."


"I love my son, but I don't want to cry because I don't want to spoil his wish," she said in a crackling voice, suppressing tears as she was surrounded by female relatives and neighbors paying their condolences.


But in a brief photo session with the AP, she wept as she carried a small picture of her son.


Al-Shami was born in Kuwait to a middle-class Palestinian family of seven children. The family had Jordanian citizenship, like many Palestinians or descendants who fled their homes since the 1948 creation of the state of Israel.


The clerics close to the family recalled al-Shami as a calm person of moderate ideology and were surprised to hear he had joined Tawhid and Jihad. They said al-Shami was a leading member of a small Salafiyah movement in Jordan that advocates the peaceful introduction of strict Islamic law, such as veils for women and gender segregation.




Al-Shami preached at an Amman mosque, the clerics said. In the late 1990s, the government closed down an Islamic center that al-Shami had established in Amman on grounds it was propagating a fanatical interpretation of Islam, they said.

Al-Shami married a Palestinian woman who now lives in Egypt with their three children aged 5-12, said his father.

And they'll never replace a terrorist with skills like him. I mean, all the education and OTJT that guy had..........we'll probably be safe for at least days until they replace him with someone else.

DanS,

I would think the Huskies fall from being a national power would prove to you the effect of what happens when you get 3rd and 4th tier leaders and players. :p :p :p

TK,

I guess we're in good shape then..........unless the US 'Cougs' It.

TK, I'm glad to hear that on some level we are directly addressing the terrorists rather than just nation building.

Yeah, I hear the Weekly Standard and National Review figure Zarqawi is going to turn himself in since al-Shami was killed. I mean, how can they ever get along without him? :rolleyes: