Al Qaeda Death Benefits

The AP reported:

One of al-Qaida's top figures, Abu Laith al-Libi, has been killed in Pakistan, an Islamist Web site announced Thursday. Pakistani officials and residents said a dozen people, including seven Arabs, died in a missile strike in northwestern Pakistan near the Afghan border. …

The entire story’s here.

Past reports of the “killing” of Al Qaeda “high value targets” have often proved false. But this one looks to be right.

It’s great news anytime Al Qaeda killers are taken out, especially when it’s a leader. And if a leader’s henchmen are “martyred” along with him, that’s a welcome “operational bonus.”

And there are many other benefits that go along with the killing of Al Qaeda leaders. But the AP story doesn’t mention them.

I’ll skip over the more obvious ones – disruption of command structure and operational planning, for example – and focus on an Al Qaeda leader “death benefit” that’s rarely mentioned by MSM news organizations.It has to do with sowing distrust among Al Qaeda leaders.

The top Al Qaeda guys keep their whereabouts and movements as secret as possible. But top guys tend to know when and where the others are.

Somebody knew exactly when and where, in that vast mountainous region, al-Libi would be meeting. And that somebody, and very likely others, got the word to the guys who could arrange for a missile to end the meeting ahead of schedule.

According to intelligence experts familiar with it, Al Qaeda’s top commanders, while united by certain hatreds, are extremely distrustful of each other and split by intense personal and ethnic-based rivalries.

Al-Libi’s killing will only intensify all of that, and make cooperation within Al Qaeda more difficult.

Who knows: some Al Qaeda leaders may even decide they know who it was within the organization who dropped the dime on al-Libi.

And you know what will happen then: another death benefit.