While I Was Away

Sorry for the hiatus, but the day job required an 80-hour work week and two straight weekends at the office.  Fortunately, it is no great loss to miss a Redskins game these days, although I did get to see the Army-Navy game.  (Btw, who the hell runs an option play on 4th and 7 with five minutes left in the game?  Coach Ellerson, your quarterback had already completed two passes -- practically an Aaron Rodgers-like performance for an Army QB -- why not let him throw it?!? Damn it, I'm sick and tired of losing to those squids!)

Anyways, while I was otherwise occupied:  

- Eli Lake, one of the best national security reporters working today, examined hidden U.S.-Pakistani counter-terrorism cooperation in the Daily Beast.  As I noted in Wanted Dead or Alive, one of the keys to targeting individuals is cooperation with indigenous forces.  Although Lake only discusses the capture of al-Qa'ida's external operations chief, Younis al-Mauritani, U.S. intelligence agencies similarly used local Pakistani agents to surveil Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti and the compound in Abbottabad where Osama bin Laden was killed.

- Speaking of Abbottabad, ABC reported that Pakistan is preparing to release Osama bin Laden's wives from custody. The article notes that "In the months after the raid, both Pakistani and U.S. officials described the wives as uncooperative and it's not clear that they knew much about bin Laden's work." This isn't surprising, as bin Laden somehow always struck me as somebody who would not have a problem telling his wives not to inquire about his business, i.e. Michael Corleone or Tony Soprano.

- Speaking of the Mafia, Michele Zagaria, head of Naples' Casalesi clan, was captured Wednesday, September 7, after Italian police drilled into his concrete bunker in his hometown of Casapesenna. Although this isn't technically a "strategic" manhunt, in that Zagaria never left Italy, he had been on the run for 16 years.  (Although what is the point of being a mob boss if you are forced to live in an underground bunker? Unless he had a really great satellite dish and, um, plenty of conjugal visitors, how different would that be from prison?)


Mafia boss Michele Zagoria, dressed frighteningly similar to my high school calculus teacher. Hmmm. . . .

- Finally, another person not going to breathe fresh air anytime soon is Manuel Noriega, who on Sunday was extradited from France to Panama.  Sunday marks the first time the deposed strongman has set foot in Panama since surrendering to U.S. forces almost 21 years ago, an event I'll be writing on in some detail over the upcoming weeks.  The 77-year old Noriega faces multiple murder charges of various political opponents in Panama from his years as dictator there.  Otherwise, Miami to Paris to Panama would sound a like a pretty nice travel itinerary.

Manuel Noriega, on the first of  his 7,600 days (and counting) as a prisoner.