Remember back in March when I stated my belief that the Al Nusrah Front in Syria was likely just Al Qaida in Iraq?
Yeeeeaah, about that. It looks like I was correct for a change. Even a broke clock is right twice a day.
Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the leader/emir of Al Qaida in Iraq just announced that he is merging AQI, aka the Islamic State of Iraq, and the Al Nusrah Front. The new organizational name is al-Dawla al-Islamiyya fi al-’Iraq wa-l-Sham. Say that 10 times fast. Roughly translated it means "Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant." ISIL? Works for me.
The good news about this merger? We can blow them up. Al Nusrah/ISIL now falls under the Authorization to Use Military Force or AUMF that governs military action in the "War On Terror"©; the 2002 Congressional authorization for the Iraq war is also still in place which would allow for targeting Al Nusrah/ISIL; and to add icing to the cake, the State Department added Al Nusrah as a terrorist organization back in December.
Enjoy your hellfires gentlemen.
UPDATE: That didn't last long. Apparently Abu Muhammad al Julani, the leader of the Al Nusrah Front, has rejected this merger and is swearing allegiance directly to Ayman al Zawahiri, the emir of Al Qaida. Infighting amongst Al Qaida leaders? How awful.
No comments:
Post a Comment