Here's hoping they got'em....

Like much of anything coming from Yemen, you need to take it with a grain of salt...News from there is sketchy at best but here's hoping this story is spot on.

Getting rid of this fool and his companions will mean one less source of terrorism in that troubled part of the world...Arab Spring has shown that the people in the Middle East want to be able to establish a systems of self governing like anyone else.....they have proven that trading one set of tyrants for another set is not what they want or what is best.....Freedom is universal.

YEMEN: Airstrike kills terrorist Awlaki, military says
September 30, 2011 3:27 am - LA TIMES

REPORTING FROM CAIRO -- The Yemen military has announced that an airstrike has killed Anwar Awlaki, a radical U.S.-born cleric and prominent voice in an Al Qaeda affiliate that spread Islamic extremism across the Arabian Peninsula and was behind failed attempts to blow up American airplanes.

Details of the attack on Awlaki were sparse, but news of his death came as Washington was providing intelligence and predator drones to the Yemeni army to defeat Al Qaeda operatives in the country’s rugged mountains. Yemen media reported that Awlaki was targeted in an airstrike in the Marib region of northern Yemen.

Yemen authorities in the past have falsely announced the killing of top members in the country’s Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. If the reports on Awlaki are true, his death would be a significant setback to Islamic militant networks that in recent months have exploited Yemen’s political chaos to take over villages and towns.

“The terrorist Anwar Awlaki has been killed along with some of his companions,” read a text message released to journalists by the Defense Ministry.

Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico and spoke fluent English, became an Internet phenomenon by producing video and audio recordings to lure Westerners into extremist ideologies. Awlaki was implicated in attempts to blow up U.S. airliners, including the botched plot by a Nigerian man to detonate explosives in his underwear in 2009. That same year the cleric was blamed for inspiring U.S. Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan to allegedly kill 13 people at Ft. Hood, Texas.

The White House had placed Awlaki on the CIA’s assassination list. Michael Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told a congressional hearing this year: "I actually consider Al Qaeda in the Arab peninsula with Awlaki as a leader within that organization as probably the most significant threat to the U.S."

Washington and Western countries have grown fearful that Yemen, which is engulfed in massive anti-government protests and tribal fighting, would allow Al Qaeda to strengthen its hold at the intersection of the Middle East and the Horn of Africa. Awlaki’s death would likely improve Yemen President Ali Abdullah’s standing as an American ally and help him gain international support to hang onto power.

jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com