Samizdata

It seems that British Special Air Service (SAS) commandos came very close to nailing the biggest hunting trophy in recent history! There is a fascinating article in The Advertiser about how Osama bin Laden came extremely close to getting caught and (probably) killed.

The conflict featured the largest deployment of SAS troops in one battle since the war in Oman in the mid-1970s, the paper said.

“We were within a whisker of getting him. It was a hard battle and will have put the fear of God into his people,” a source close to the regiment was quoted as saying.

“When prisoners were questioned it came out we had just missed him by about two hours,” the source added. Intelligence sources, also contacted by the paper, believed bin Laden fled as the battle began.

“The enemy were facing highly-trained and disciplined troops who, although outnumbered, had the tenacity, professionalism and firepower to terrorise them.

“Bin Laden knows the SAS are not far behind,” one said.

It was during this action that the four British casualties that were recently reported received their injuries. Other accounts have said that the SAS, which usually operates in four man teams, had deployed two entire sabres (the idiosyncratic SAS equivalent of a platoon, or aprox. 60 men per sabre) for the operation.

Let us hope it is only a matter of time before the SAS or their American Delta comrades personally deliver the civilised world’s definitive response for September 11 directly to its author.

Godspeed and good hunting gentlemen.

Instapundit is reporting an interesting Gulf News article about the disillusionment with the fundamentalists in Pakistan

A groundswell of resentment has emerged in Pakistani tribal territories against a fundamentalist leader who took thousands to Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban and left them stranded, residents said yesterday.

Soofi Mohammad, head of Tehrik Nifaz Shariah Mohammadi (TNSM), was arrested and jailed when he returned from Afghanistan after the rout of the Taliban militia, leaving his men behind. Scores of the tribesmen were reportedly killed inside Afghanistan and more than 2,000 were still missing.

Now far be it for me to say ‘I told you so’ but back on November 16th I predicted exactly this coming to pass in the article The depth of the disaster for the Islamists starts to become clear:

So as the Islamic politicians of Pakistan survey how in the matter of eight days the entire situation in Afghanistan has turned upside down, the families and friends of the dead Pakistani boys who listened and then marched to their deaths across the Khyber pass are going to start asking ‘why?’ When people start to figure out the answer, I don’t think the forces of Islamo-fascism are going to like what happens next. It must be slowly dawning on the more secular forces in Pakistan that their Islamist political enemies are starting to look very exposed indeed

This is probably not quite the result Osama had in mind on September 11.

I told you so.