BILL ROGGIO REPORTS:

Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, one of Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-laws with deep roots in al-Qaeda as a financier and facilitator, has been reported to have been murdered in his bedroom in Madagascar. Khalifa, “who mined and traded precious stones in Madagascar,” was reported to have been murdered by “a gang of 20 to 30 gunmen broke into his brother’s bedroom, shot him dead ‘in cold blood’ and stole his belongings.”

It’s hard to see this as bad news.

UPDATE: An angry lefty reader thinks that this is bad news because — if Bush weren’t an inept boob — we would have captured Khalifa and reaped an intelligence bonanza.

I’m sure we’d rather have captured him alive and interrogated him, but that’s not always possible. And at any rate, I doubt Khalifa would have produced much useful intelligence in the absence of now-banned interrogation techniques. I’d rather have him pushing up daisies than either operating out in the world, or filing a civil rights suit from Guantanamo. Of course, such a ban does tend to make people like Khalifa worth more dead than alive, but I can live with that consequence, and am surprised that lefty Bush critics feel otherwise, given all the complaints about Guantanamo, etc.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Meryl Yourish emails:

From the article:

“They stole everything — his computer, all of his things,” said Khalifa’s brother.

Uh-huh. His computer. Your lefty reader isn’t reading between the lines in the news article.

I doubt it was just someone desperate for an early release of Windows Vista. And another reader emails:

Your blurb contains an update that says:

“UPDATE: An angry lefty reader thinks that this is bad news because — if Bush weren’t an inept boob — we would have captured Khalifa and reaped an intelligence bonanza.”

If you read Bill’s article, you will see that he had been captured three times in the past and let go in each case. Basically it is a case for showing why we can’t use conventional law enforcement techniques against these maniacs.

He was arrested in the US in 1994 … let’s see … which administration was that again?

I blame Bush.