US air strike in Syria 'kills Khorasan leader Muhsin al-Fadhli'

[muriel_volestrangler]

Source: BBC

A US air strike has reportedly killed Muhsin al-Fadhli, the Kuwaiti leader of the Khorasan Group, a shadowy al-Qaeda offshoot operating in Syria.

Al-Fadhli was targeted on 8 July while travelling in a vehicle near Sarmada in Syria, a Pentagon spokesman said.

A statement by US Navy Capt Jeff Davis said al-Fadhli was one of the few al-Qaeda leaders to have known in advance of the 9/11 attacks.

Al-Fadhli was also said to have been targeted in a US strike last September.


Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-33617316

[msanthrope]

1. If we actually got him, then that's amazing news. nt

[geek tragedy]

2. Glenn Greenwald told us Obama lied about this group's existence

There are serious questions about whether the Khorasan Group even exists in any meaningful or identifiable manner. Aki Peritz, a CIA counterterrorism official until 2009, told Time: “I’d certainly never heard of this group while working at the agency,” while Obama’s former U.S. ambassador to Syria Robert Ford said: “We used the term [Khorasan] inside the government, we don’t know where it came from….All I know is that they don’t call themselves that.” As The Intercept was finalizing this article, former terrorism federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy wrote in National Review that the group was a scam: “You haven’t heard of the Khorosan Group because there isn’t one. It is a name the administration came up with, calculating that Khorosan … had sufficient connection to jihadist lore that no one would call the president on it.”

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/28/u-s-officials-invented-terror-group-justify-bombing-syria/

And, yes, he pretended that rightwing impeachnik archloon Andrew McCarthy was a credible source when discussing Obama.

[ChiefJusticeIV]

3. ...and it means very little

The person who is second in command will take over.

[cosmicone]

4. We'll need thousands of such strikes

to get Al Quaeda's different flavors under control.