The terror take down in Iraq

Google, in its ever finer attempt to take over all things of interest in computing, has introduced the Google Notebook. What it is, is a nice way to deposit pieces of information, images and such into nice little documents that one can collaborate with others on or just share with the whole-wide world. In theory the resident part of it on one's computer, basically a link to let a web page get captured to the notebook, should work, but doesn't on my set-up. Still, it has the basic copy and past sort of deal and I am sure that, somehow, if I used a more or less normal arrangement of software, it would work a bit better. That said the thing does have an RSS feed in it, so one can update notebooks on the fly with interesting material and others can feed those right to their web page. Not something of great interest, but fun, nonetheless.

Thus, the first chance to use that is with the Kazali Network notebook I have up on my sidebar. One can click on a piece, bring up the notebook web page and go from there! A DIY clipping service! So handy....

As seen from the MNF-I briefing, a major take down of high level individuals in the Kazali terror network in Iraq happened a couple of months ago, and has netted a very high level individual: Ali Musa Daqduq. Now, what is interesting so far, is not Mr. Daqduq, but his compatriots the Kazali brothers, Kais and Laith. Like all things from the Middle East the variant spellings are numerous, so one needs to do a wide search to pick up all the variants on names.

These two boys worked their way into a high position in Sadr's Mahdi Army way back in 2003, and have been instrumental in working together a cross-Iraq supply network from Syria and Iran. Together, these two have been in what appears to be the 'insurgent supply' concept, for keeping insurgents well supplied with goods and material. There is a bit of evidence of their working with al Qaeda for awhile, to ensure that various terror cells from the have been kept well supplied with those huge weapons caches that have been found since the Riverine Campaign of 2005-6.

The connection to a high level Hezbollah operative is further demonstration of how much Iran is now concentrating on Iraq, and that they are running out of trustworthy personnel locally. If they had good Iraqis to train other Iraqis, you would not need Mr. Daqduq from Lebanon, now, would you? Yes, put together a few clippings, see how the Kazali boys have been keeping the terror going from their perspective, and catch a nice high level operative and the underlying nature of the supply system starts to fall out. Early, pre-surge, work in places like Ramadi started to yield up this sort of thing a couple of months ago, and now we finally get to see *why* the surge is going like it does: follow the supplies to the people using them.

Still, months away from ferreting out the entire extent of the Kazali network, and there are, to be sure, some indigenous networks amongst the Kurds (an interesting market for used cars, of all things, but not late model ones as al Qaeda prefers, so no luck on hooking that into the US car theft rings), and your standard, everyday, criminal operations for gray and black market goods. Those *also* need to be addressed as a truck full of video recorders, one day, yields just about the same as a truck load of AK-47s the next. Put them in boxes and crates and they look the same from the outside, too!

As to how I am going to use the Notebook... well, mostly it will be for extensive background material. Some of my articles have yielded far and away more than I can easily cite or put into a normal article, but the material, itself, is interesting for understanding the context of how Transnational Terrorism works. Now all I need is the time.... *sigh*.