#1 Enemy of the Free World -- Baitullah Mehsud

Baitullah Mehsud

Remember that name! Why? Because it will soon become a household name.

From National Terror Alert --

Meet Baitullah Mehsud Pakistan’s biggest problem, and the man who has taken his country of 176 million to the center of the West’s war on terror. Once described by a Pakistani general as a “soldier of peace,” he now carries a 50 million rupee (about $615,300) bounty on his head from Pakistan and a $5 million one from the United States.

Mehsud is earning the ire of the Pakistani military and Western policymakers alike as his movement destabilizes Pakistan, and the United States has destroyed several of his hide-outs with drone strikes in recent months.

His now-famous 2008 press conference — which came almost exactly a decade after Osama bin Laden called for the killing of Americans in a similar announcement just across the border in Khost, Afghanistan — was an extraordinary piece of stagecraft even for a commander with a certain penchant for public flare.

By incautiously exposing his location to a big group of journalists, Mehsud should have facilitated his own capture; that he didn’t serves as ongoing testament to the incompetence (and perhaps lack of will) of those who purport to pursue him.

Mehsud’s growing influence is of particular concern to Western policymakers because Pakistan represents the gravest general security threat to the international community — the prospect of a nuclear-armed al Qaeda. Keeping Pakistan’s nuclear weapons out of the hands of Islamist extremists is contingent on a stable Pakistani state, and Mehsud is the one man perhaps most capable of destabilizing it.

I have previously posted about the dangers of Mehsud. Wanting to be bigger than Osama Bin Laden, Mehsud is much more dangerous and is hell bent on obtaining nuclear weapons... and he is much closer than what is being reported.

In these previous posts, you will see Mehsud is best of buddies with Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Father of the Pakistan nuclear bomb. Kahn, a former spy, is responsible for selling nuclear technology to North Korea & Iran and was involved with Mehsud in the assassination of Prime Minister Benizir Bhutto.