No Olbermann, But CENTCOM Tracks What Some Extremists Are Saying

CENTCOM is one of the five geographically-defined unified commands within the Department of Defense. With responsibility for 27 countries including Iraq, CENTCOM is commanded by Gen. John Abizaid.

Perusing CENTCOM's weekly online newsletter today, I noticed a tab labelled "What Extremists Say." I clicked on it, hoping to catch up on the latest pronouncements by Keith Olbermann, George Soros, perhaps Michael Moore.

But no, it turns out that CENTCOM had another kind of extremist in mind, folks like the al-Fajr Information Center, who have put out their first issue of a new magazine “Technical Mujahid,” electronically distributed to password-protected jihadist forums. No word if MoveOn.org has taken out any advertising space.

Then there's the declaration from the Al-Nasser Salah Al-Din Brigade, the military wing of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) in Palestine, calling for attacks on America.

We also learn of a 56-page book titled: “Guidance for Uncertain People Regarding the Legitimacy of Killing the Christians (In the Arabian Peninsula).” This is the re-release by the Global Islamic Media Front of its 2001-2002 hit by Hafid Abu Basir, providing Koranic and Islamic scholarly justifications for attacking Americans, Christians and Jews and their interests in Saudi Arabia.

The newsletter didn't afford me the chance to catch up on the 'Countdown' episodes I missed while in Iraq. Still, I found the information available at the page interesting, as was CENTCOM's not-so-subtle message to the extremists that we are keeping tabs, so to speak, on what the they are up to.

Finkelstein recently returned from a CENTCOM-organized trip to Iraq. Contact him at mark@gunhill.net.