Top Ten Terrorist Takedowns in 2012; Part One

            In sync with the New Year, CNN listed the names of the top ten terrorist take downs that occurred during 2012. The list below names the men that were either killed or indicted in the past year:

1. Abu Yahya al-Libi

2. Fahd Mohammed Ahmed al-Quso

3. Badr Mansoor

4. Badruddin Haqqani

5. Abu Usman Adil

6. Sakhr al-Taifi

7. Zulkifli bin Hir

8. Aslam Awan

9. Adis Medunjanin

10. Sheikh Khalid bin Abdel Rehman



            All of these men were high up or commissioned by the al Qaeda terrorist organization. As I was reading about these men and the things they did and how they were killed I found a couple things interesting; mainly how most of them were killed and what they did that I didn't know about. I could probably blame my ignorance on the fact that I didn't pay much attention to world events until I started this blog for world humanities but still.

            The first man, Abu Yahya al-Libi, was second in command of al Qaeda and although he wasn't actually involved in the fighting by al Qaeda, he was the man who appeared in most of al Qaeda’s recruitment videos. He was obviously a hot commodity because The U.S. State Department offered a one million dollar reward for his capture. One million dollars is a lot in the United States, I took the time to convert the one million dollars to Iraqi dinar and came up with around 1,165,182,513 dinar. I don’t know what relevance that has to it or how much that will buy you in Iraq but I’m sure it’s enough to have a lot of people looking for this man. He was killed though on June 4,2012.

            The second man on the list is Fahd Mohammed Ahmed al-Quso, who played an important role in the bombing of the USS Cole in October of 2000. The bombing killed 17 American sailors and injured at least 40 others. The U.S. State Department offered five million dollars for his capture so he was apparently more wanted that al-Libi. For the sake of repetition, I converted five million dollars as well, which is equal to around 582,591,256 dinar. No one actually received the reward money however because he was killed on May 6, 2012. (378)