http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/09/15/africa/AF-Mauritania.phpAs soon as Al Quaeda was named as the party responsible for 9/11, I said Mauritania was a likely problem after Afghanistan.
Friends of mine, who were missionaries in nearby Mali, had knowledge of Al Quaeda's popularity in Mauritania -- both with citizens and the government. A lot of burkha nonsense going on there, too. And I believe our State Department or perhaps the British foreign service had information on AQ training camps in Mauritania.
Now don't misudnerstand me -- if there was hard evidence of AQ cells in the Philippines, Georgia, Yemen and Somalia (and I think there was) -- President Bush did the right thing in taking them out. If you'll remember, not long after the first operations in Afghanistan, we hit targets in all those countries.
But I am really concerned that we overlooked Mauritania. I agreed 100% with Bush (perhaps the first and only time) that we need to hunt down and kill AQ wherever they are. Of course, they were not in Iraq in any substantive way and he really dropped the ball magnificently by getting distracted there.
As soon as McCain OR Obama gets us out of Iraq, I hope we are able to refocus our efforts on AQ around the globe. I'm also hoping we don't take any crap from Pakistan. We shouldn't have to cross their border. But if we have no other choice, then "it's on".
I'm no dove, contrary to what some people think.
