It should come as no surprise that Starr made sure to highlight all of the juicy details.  She not only revealed U.S. knowledge of a covert meeting between Hamid Karzai’s brother and Mullah Baradar (a top Taliban leader who was later arrested in Pakistan), as well as a secret audio message played to Taliban commanders from reclusive Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, but she went on to inform the entire world that the United States has a safe house in Kabul (used by members of the Haqqani terror network) currently under surveillance.  Great work Barbara!

Would anyone care to wager that within hours of Starr’s story being published on the Internet that the Haqqani network began sanitizing and abandoning all of its safe houses in Kabul?

How about a wager on whether or not Taliban operatives are now actively triangulating the information from Starr’s reporting in order to find out how the United States came by it?  What about a wager on whether or not once the Taliban discover who’s responsible on their end, that person or persons will be murdered?

For such intrepid, show-our-cards-to-the-enemy-journalism, I have to say, “Brava, Ms. Starr!”  Three cheers for you and your fellow travelers in the lamestream media.  Once again you have aligned yourselves with disgruntled, America-hating, liberal intelligence insiders, who will do anything (even once again leaking classified intelligence because they don’t like how the game is being played) in order to take America “down a few pegs.”

I have a little piece of advice for Ms. Starr and other journalists like her: just because someone leaks, excuse me, “provides” classified information to your “news” organization, it doesn’t mean you should go public with it, especially if the information will endanger the lives of Americans, the lives of American intelligence assets, and will severely cripple ongoing intelligence operations.

But of course this isn’t just limited to Ms. Starr.  The even bigger question raised by the article is who leaked the information to CNN in the first place?

According to confidential sources familiar with ongoing Department of Defense operations in the Af/Pak theater, there are several disgruntled players who are unhappy with how the D.O.D. has been gathering its intelligence and is providing force protection for our troops.

Reluctantly at the center of the fray, is a distinguished American warrior named Michael Furlong.  Suffice it to say that Furlong has been unjustly turned into a modern-day whipping boy.  Those with intimate knowledge of his operations not only resolutely stand behind him and his assertion that everything he has done is aboveboard and was conducted with the full support of his superiors, but that his efforts to secure for our troops the best force protection available has resulted in countless American lives being saved every single day.

So was it one of the aforementioned disgruntled players who leaked classified information to Barbara Starr and CNN?  Word out of D.C. and Kabul is that suspicion is now falling upon someone within Furlong’s chain-of-command itself.  The reason?  The person in question is allegedly unhappy with how he believes in-theater intelligence is being gathered.

More to the point, the group Furlong brought in to provide atmospherics and force protection for our troops was too good, too fast.  But rather than embrace the exceptional work the group was doing, petty jealousies ruled the day and, despite having done nothing wrong, Furlong was defenestrated.  (Whether the Central Intelligence Agency was on the sidewalk yelling, “Jump,” or they were in the office helping give him a push, will all come out in due time.)

For the moment, the most troubling aspect for all Americans should be that someone above Furlong, someone within the D.O.D. (who should be committed to the safety of American troops above all else) appears to not only be taking shots at his own agency’s efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but to be using the most highly-sensitive information to do it.

Much more as this story develops.

**Post updated with link to downloadable video.

With breaking news out of Palestine today that a top aide to President Mahmoud Abbas has been literally caught with his pants down, rape tapes seem to be popping up all over the pious Muslim world.  And some are
horrifically worse than others.

Last month on the FOX Business Network, Colonel Oliver North revealed a startling piece of information.  Conservative mullahs and elements within the Haqqani terror network – known as the backbone of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the Af/Pak theater – are working to take the Haqqanis down from the inside.  Their key weapon is a disturbing video that shows the serial sexual assault of several young girls.

Colonel North explained that no one in American intelligence had yet seen this video.  Here it is:

***STRONGEST POSSIBLE CONTENT WARNING.  NOT SAFE FOR WORK***

DOWNLOAD VIDEO HERE.

Transcript here.

When I travelled to Afghanistan to research my novel, The Apostle, contacts of mine introduced me to a mid-level Taliban commander in the Haqqani network.  Over tea and considerable time talking together, he provided me with some very good, inside-baseball information on the Haqqanis and how their network operates.

I soon realized that he was part a burgeoning movement of disillusioned fighters, mullahs and commanders who have lost faith in both the network’s founder, Jalaluddin Haqqani and its Chief Operating Officer, Siraj Haqqani, Jalaluddin’s son.

Jalaluddin Haqqani

Recently, this mid-level Taliban commander shared a chilling story with me.  He told me it was a scandal that would rock the Muslim world like nothing before and that it would “devastate” the Haqqani network.  “What Abu Ghraib was for you Americans,” he said, “this will be for the Haqqanis; only worse.”

A Muslim Abu Ghraib? Considering the horrific violence that the Haqqanis had perpetrated to date, I had trouble imagining what they could have done now that would suddenly have the power to enflame the Muslim world.  After all, that kind of outrage is normally reserved for terrible insults by the West, like cartoons, operas, or free speech.  Then, my contact told me his story.  It made me absolutely sick to my stomach.

As Siraj Haqqani moved from village to village, rounding up the sons of poor Muslim families to fight for the Taliban and Al Qaeda, he offered the villagers free medical care.  He even sent his physician, Dr. Hassan Duraz to conduct the clinics.  There was a horrific catch, though.  Duraz was a monster.

He arrived in each village with Siraj Haqqani’s uncle, Ibrahim, and Siraj’s cousin, Ishak, in tow.  With them, the Haqqanis brought along their own very special tools of terror – a video camera and an eye for human flesh.  You see, with Haqqani healthcare, you not only received a medical exam, if you were an attractive young girl, you also got a screen test.  And heaven forbid you passed.

For those women and girls unfortunate enough to catch the good doctor’s fancy, it was show time.  The Haqqani uncle and cousin would be brought into the exam room, they would set up their video equipment, and Duraz would drop his trousers and go to work.

The Haqqanis and Duraz sexually assaulted poor women throughout the tribal regions and captured every moment of their degradation and humiliation on video to enjoy over and over again.

Times were good for the Haqqani pornography ring.  Their enterprise thrived until someone slipped up and word leaked out.  In the blink of an eye, Siraj Haqqani was in big trouble.

And what’s a good and pious Muslim warrior to do when his moral authority and the very existence of his terror network are at stake?  There’s only one answer of course.  Kill everyone involved.  (Everyone that is, except for family.)  And that’s exactly what Siraj Haqqani did.

Haqqani not only killed the women in the video, but he also killed his own physician, Dr. Duraz.  After all, dead men (and dead women for that matter) tell no tales, right?

The only thing left to do was to visit the Haqqani home theater and destroy all the evidence.  With that task complete, Siraj Haqqani could sit back and relax.  There was just one problem.  He didn’t get all of the tapes.  My contact managed to rescue some.

With the help of a prominent Pakistani Mullah, he put together the video we have linked here, extolling all Muslims to condemn and abandon the Haqqanis.  In Islam, there is only one thing worse than the sins the Haqqanis committed – Siraj Haqqani’s sin of trying to cover it all up.

As the video is disseminated throughout the bazaars of Pakistan and Afghanistan, I can only hope that it will result in a death sentence for the Haqqanis and their entire terror network.  According to the tenets of Islam, Siraj Haqqani, his cousin, and uncle will spend an eternity roasting in hell.  Anyone who supports them, now that this video has come to light, will be subject to the same fate under Islam, which will hopefully serve as a significant disincentive to join or continue working for the Haqqani network.

Siraj Haqqani, like the uncle and cousin he protects, is a monster.  I can only hope that he witnesses the collapse of his organization as his followers tear him limb from limb and that the experience will be repeated daily in the afterlife, with two matinees on Sundays.

As you watch the video (or don’t watch it), keep in mind one thing.  None of this terrible evil would have been possible without Siraj Haqqani.

For the record, through independent sources in Afghanistan and Pakistan, I have confirmed that the women who appear herein, as well as Dr. Duraz, have all indeed been murdered.