If Bin Laden's precise location can be found, then Obama would get in touch with Musharraf to take Bin Laden out. If Musharraf takes more than three minutes, President Obama would take Bin Laden out unilaterally. That is what he said.
Obama knows Musharraf will cooperate. But if he does not, which presidential candidate in her or his right mind would want the US to stand idly by respecting Pakistan's sovereignty? There will be a missile strike and that particular cave will be turned into rubble.
If you understand how autocratic organizations like the Al Qaeda work - they don't hold internal elections - you will understand how fundamentally important it is to take the top guy out. Look at what happened to the Shining Path in Peru after its top guy Gonzalo was captured: it withered away like magic.
The US intelligence agencies have been making a grave mistake in outsourcing the hunt for Bin Laden to Pakistan. Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, described as a state inside a state, is supremely infiltrated by Islamist radicals. That is why when Bill Clinton struck Bin Laden when he was in Afghanistan, Bin Laden had already shifted. Because Bill Clinton made the mistake of first telling Pakistan that he was going to hit Bin Laden because Bin Laden had been located. That information got passed onto Bin Laden. Some top dude in the ISI passed that info to Bin Laden.
Why would you want to repeat that mistake?
That is short term. But in the long term we are looking at a scenario of saying Musharraf has to go, the Saudi king has to go, Mubarak has to go, Gaddafi has to go. Hello democracy.
Image via WikipediaThe Pakistani state does not operate like the American state. You must have seen movies where the CIA engages in activities that the Congress knows nothing about. Take that up several notches, and you have the Pakistani ISI. It is so obvious to me that elements of the ISI created the safe house where Bin Laden lived for years. That is tantamount to complicity.
The cause for democracy across the Muslim world is also to do with bringing the Pakistani army, and the Pakistani ISI firmly under the Pakistani parliament.
Abbottabad is essentially a military-cantonment city in Pakistan, in the hills to the north of the capital of Islamabad, in an area where much of the land is controlled or owned by the Pakistani Army and retired Army officers....... The city is most notable for housing the Pakistan Military Academy, the Pakistani Army’s premier training college, equivalent to West Point. Looking at maps and satellite photos on the Web last night, I saw the wide expanse of the Academy not far from where the million-dollar, heavily secured mansion where bin Laden lived was constructed in 2005....... The maps I looked at had sections of land nearby marked off as “restricted areas,” indicating that they were under military control. It stretches credulity to think that a mansion of that scale could have been built and occupied by bin Laden for six years without its coming to the attention of anyone in the Pakistani Army..... bin Laden was effectively being housed under Pakistani state control...... Who owned the land on which the house was constructed? How was the land acquired, and from whom? Who designed the house, which seems to have been purpose-built to secure bin Laden? Who was the general contractor? Who installed the security systems? Who worked there? Are there witnesses who will now testify as to who visited the house, how often, and for what purpose? ...... some countries, like some investment banks, do pose systemic risks so great that they are too big to fail, and Pakistan is currently the A.I.G. of nation-states. But that should not stop American prosecutors from following the law here as they would whenever any mass killer’s hideout is discovered ...... Mullah Omar and Al Qaeda’s No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, probably also enjoy refuge in Pakistan. The location of Mullah Omar, in particular, is believed by American officials to be well known to some Pakistani military and intelligence officers; Omar, too, they believe, is effectively under Pakistani state control. ....... When I visited Yemen in 2007, to conduct research on the bin Laden family, Yemeni journalists told me that his youngest wife had returned home and was living in the region either of Tai’zz or of Ibb, significant cities to the south of Sanaa, the capital. It seems that she may have found her way to Pakistan to live with her husband. ....... Bin Laden was a gentle and strong communicator, if somewhat incoherent in his thinking. Zawahiri is dogmatic and argumentative, and has a history of alienating colleagues....... As they reset their work, the analysts studied other long-term international fugitive hunts that had ended successfully, such as the operations that led to the death of the Medellín Cartel leader Pablo Escobar, in 1993. The analysts asked, Where did the breakthroughs in these other hunts come from? What were the clues that made the difference and how were the clues discovered? They tried to identify “signatures” of Osama bin Laden’s life style that might lead to such a clue: prescription medications that he might purchase, hobbies or other habits of shopping or movement that might give him away....... the breakthrough started several years back from detainee interrogations
Keeping Bin Laden safe and alive was essential to getting billions in military aid from the United States. Follow the money. It is as if the mansion was constructed specifically for Bin Laden in 2005. Who did it? If the then military dictator of Pakistan did not know, who knew? Are they still in positions of power inside Pakistan?
Ever since 9/11—indeed, even before—Pakistan’s military and intelligence services have played a high-stakes double game. They’ve supported American efforts to kill and capture Al Qaeda fighters, and they have been lavished with billions of American dollars in return. At the same time, elements of those same military and intelligence services, particularly those inside Inter-Service Intelligence, or the I.S.I., have provided support for America’s enemies, namely the Taliban and its lethal off-shoot, the Haqqani network. American officials are fully aware of the double-game, and to say it frustrates them would be an understatement. For a decade, Pakistan’s role has been one of the great unmovable paradoxes of America’s war...... the fact that Osama was hiding in an urban area raises many obvious questions, like who was taking care of him, and how. Abbottabad is only thirty miles from the Pakistani capital, and it is home to a Pakistani military base, a military academy, and many retired Pakistani officers. Conspiracy theories abound in Pakistan; since 9/11, the most common has been that Bin Laden was being sheltered by the I.S.I. ...... relations between the United States and Pakistan are the worst they have been in years, largely because American officials are running out of patience with the double game ....... Mullen took the unusual step of publicly accusing the Pakistani military of supporting the Haqqani network, the virulent wing of the Taliban that is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers in eastern Afghanistan. The Haqqani network, based in North Waziristan on the Afghan border, maintains the closest ties to Al Qaeda among Afghan guerrilla groups, and, until recently, was the principal place where American intelligence was looking for Osama
And the way to get him was by locating his "courier."
This is a near fatal blow to the Al Qaeda. I don't expect it to recover. Although they will try to make a few strikes. And their attempts might last a few more years. Democracies can be resilient. But not autocratic organizations. When you take out the leader, the organization ends up in disarray.
The political revolutions across the Arab world stole the Al Qaeda's thunder. That release of tension made Bin Laden more vulnerable.
I would like to read up on the details of the operation.
I suspect Pakistan's ISI might have had something to do with finding Bin Laden a safe house. If not the entire organization, then at least elements of it.
This guy insisted on keeping his beard and his appearance. He outlived his usefulness to the elements of the ISI that protected him. Dawood remains protected.
Pakistan's Army Staff, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani ...... Kayani was speaking at the "passing out parade" at the prestigious Kakul military academy in Abbottabad, the West Point of Pakistan. At that very moment, the man who had dragged Pakistan into the "War on Terror" a decade earlier was, it transpires, just a mile or two away, living in apparent comfort behind the high walls of a very private compound. Osama bin Laden, who had declared war on Pakistan, had apparently been living for months in a city that had made its name as a military garrison....... some 60 miles by winding mountainous roads north of Pakistan's capital. ..... a popular retirement place for officers in the Pakistani army ...... 4,120 feet above sea level. ...... Abbottabad sits on the Karakoram Highway, an engineering marvel that links Pakistan with China through the Himalayas ....... In January this year, Pakistani security forces stormed a modest house in the city and seized Umar Patek, an Indonesian linked to al Qaeda who had a $1 million bounty on his head under the FBI's Rewards for Justice program. He had allegedly helped build the bombs used in the 2002 bombings in Bali that killed 200 people. ....... just over 100 miles from the border with Kunar province in Afghanistan ...... even closer to the restive tribal territories. ...... To the east of Abbottabad is Pakistani Kashmir, its forested hills hosting training camps for several groups committed to "liberating" Indian Kashmir. So it is a city close to the front lines of several of South Asia's insurgencies and terror campaigns.
First intelligence of a courier, then an extraordinary house with high walls — and no telephone or Internet. ...... It started with an unnamed courier. .... Senior White House officials said Monday that the trail that led to Osama bin Laden began before 9/11, before the terror attacks that brought bin Laden to prominence. The trail warmed up last fall, when U.S. intelligence discovered an elaborate compound in Pakistan. ..... "From the time that we first recognized bin Laden as a threat, the U.S. gathered information on people in bin Laden's circle, including his personal couriers," a senior official in the Obama administration said in a background briefing from the White House. ...... After the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, "detainees gave us information on couriers. One courier in particular had our constant attention. Detainees gave us his nom de guerre, his pseudonym, and also identified this man as one of the few couriers trusted by bin Laden." ....... In 2007, the U.S. learned the man's name.
In 2009, "we identified areas in Pakistan where the courier and his brother operated. They were very careful, reinforcing belief we were on the right track." ...... In August 2010, "we found their home in Abbottabad," not in a cave, not right along the Afghanistan border, but in an affluent suburb less than 40 miles from the capital....... "When we saw the compound, we were shocked by what we saw: an extraordinarily unique compound." ..... The plot of land was roughly eight times larger than the other homes in the area. It was built in 2005 on the outskirts of town, but now some other homes are nearby. ...... "Physical security is extraordinary: 12 to 18 foot walls, walled areas, restricted access by two security gates." The residents burn their trash, unlike their neighbors. There are no windows facing the road. One part of the compound has its own seven-foot privacy wall...... And unusual for a compound valued at more than $1 million: It had no telephone or Internet service. ...... This home, U.S. intelligence analysts concluded, was "custom built to hide someone of significance." ..... Besides the two brothers, the U.S. "soon learned that a third family lived there, whose size and makeup of family we believed to match those we believed would be with bin Laden. Our best information was that bin Laden was there with his youngest wife." ........ There was no proof, but everything seemed to fit: the security, the background of the couriers, the design of the compound. ..... "Our analysts looked at this from every angle. No other candidate fit the bill as well as bin Laden did," an official said. ....... "The bottom line of our collection and analysis was that we had high confidence that the compound held a high-value terrorist target. There was a strong probability that it was bin Laden." ...... That conclusion was reached in mid-February, officials said. Beginning in mid-March, the president led five National Security Council meetings on the plans for an operation. ....... On Friday, the president gave the order.....
This information was shared "with no other country," an official said. "Only a very small group of people inside our own government knew of this operation in advance." ......... A senior U.S. security official told Reuters that it was a "kill operation," removing the option for the team to simply capture bin Laden ...... The operation Sunday went smoothly except for a helicopter landing that was not part of the original plan. The choppers were only intended to hover over the scene, but due to a technical malfunction, one of them landed or fell — "not a crash," the official said — so the military dispatched a third "emergency" helicopter to the scene. ..... "This operation was a surgical raid by a small team designed to minimize collateral damage. Our team was on the compound for under 40 minutes and did not encounter any local authorities."
Bin Laden himself participated in the ensuing firefight, the officials suggested. ..... "Bin laden was killed in a firefight as our operators came onto the compound," an official said.
Did he fire, a reporter asked. ....... "He did resist the assault force, and he was killed in a firefight," an official said. NBC News reported that he was shot in the left eye. ...... Citing officials speaking at a White House briefing, Bloomberg News reported U.S. intelligence officers determined there was a "strong probability" the al-Qaida leader was living there, but that the special ops team carrying out the mission was not certain if it even would encounter bin Laden in the compound until forces came face-to-face with him. ..... Four adult males were killed: bin Laden, his son, and the two couriers. ..... "One woman killed when used as a shield," and other women were injured, the officials said. The women's names were not given; it's not clear whether bin Laden's wife was among them....... The team blew up the disabled chopper upon their departure with bin Laden's remains, which resulted in a "massive explosion," the official told NBC....... Pakistan officials were unaware of the operation and scrambled fighter jets after getting reports of the explosion. But the U.S. helicopters were able to leave without further incident, the official said. ........ No U.S. personnel died. The officials would not name the type of helicopter or say how many U.S. personnel participated......... A U.S. official told NBC News that Obama was able to monitor the situation in real time from the Situation Room inside the White House. ......... Applause broke out in the room around 3:55 a.m. ET, when the team on the ground reported that the attack had killed bin Laden. Obama called his predecessors, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, to inform them of the news, senior administration officials told NBC. ........ An official told Reuters that CIA Director Leon Panetta and other intelligence officials also monitored the situation in real time from a conference room at the agency's Langley, Va. headquarters........ The official who spoke to NBC News described two moments in particular as "heartstopping": the moment the choppers arrived on the scene, and when they left the country....... "Although al-Qaida will not fragment immediately," an official said, "the death of bin Laden puts al-Qaida on a path of decline that will be difficult to reverse."
Pakistan Hails Death of bin Laden (time.com) Bin Laden was killed an a luxury house in the town of Abbottabad not far from a Pakistani military academy, raising questions over whether Pakistani may have known of his whereabouts.
Bin Laden Was Mostly Disconnected From The World (outsidethebeltway.com) yes, bin Laden did spend the past half-decade holed up in a compound near Islamabad ..... the compound was completely unwired. No telephone. No internet. No satellite. The only contact that bin Laden had with the outside world was with a handful of handpicked couriers who operated under very intense security protocols. Basically, the way we found out where bin Laden was was by following the couriers around. ...... the compound was subjected to satellite surveillance ..... it’s not entirely inconceivable that, as fragmented as Pakistan’s government is, they didn’t know where he was.
Timeline: Osama bin Laden operation (cnn.com) detainees identified a trusted bin Laden courier as someone who may have been living with and protecting the militant leader ...... That courier became a key lead in locating bin Laden ..... Four years ago: Officials uncovered the courier's identity. ...... Two years ago: Investigators identified areas of Pakistan where the courier and his brother lived. ...... August 2010: The residence of the courier and his brother was found in Abbottabad, 30 to 35 miles north of Islamabad, Pakistan's capital. ...... March and April 2011. President Barack Obama held a series of National Security Council meetings "to develop courses of action to bring justice to Osama bin Laden." There were at least five NSC meetings -- March 14, March 29, April 12, April 19, and April 28. ...... April 29, 2011. President Obama gave the final order to pursue the operation. ...... Intelligence on bin Laden was not shared with Pakistan and other countries.
There were cheers outside the White House, and tears outside the Pentagon. ..... As news spread through Washington that Osama bin Laden had been killed, many people gravitated to the two locales, as if the enormous emotions inside them were too great to experience in the privacy of their own living rooms. ...... In the dormitories of George Washington University, where students were cramming for finals, a student screamed: “Bin Laden is dead!” ...... Seconds later, dozens of students, many in shorts and flip-flops, became the first wave of the celebration outside the White House. A much larger crowd congregated at ground zero in New York ...... Around midnight, the crowd outside the White House had mushroomed to at least a few thousand people. By 5 a.m., the group had dispersed.
Image via WikipediaI got the news from a friend earlier today. I skimmed the headlines at a nearby store. I read one or two articles in the New York Post. I have yet to read on the details of the actual operation, something I am very interested in.
This confirms my hunch. I never thought he was in a cave. I thought he was either in Iran or, if he is in Pakistan, he is in Karachi. Ends up he was near Islamabad. In a safe house. I knew he was in some kind of an urban safe house.
The Shining Path dude in Peru was similarly in a "safe house" in the capital city. What ends up happening with people like Bin Laden and that Shining Path dude is they end up with ridiculous amounts of money, and they end up with expensive habits. They end up needing what they call a "safe house."
Prachanda of Nepal was in a safe house in Delhi when they were looking for him in the jungles of Nepal.
This looks really good on my guy Barack Obama. He delivered. My man.
Image via WikipediaThere are those who say Tunisia is one thing, Egypt is big, but Egypt is one thing, Gaddafi is a dictator, but he is one thing, but Russia is too big, Putin is too powerful. You can't be talking in terms of a democracy movement for Russia.
I would argue otherwise.
Precisely because Russia is so big, it deserves to have a bigger and better democracy movement than we have seen so far in the Arab world. It might happen in Russia before it happens in China.
Military action is out of question. It is not realistic to think you can bomb Russia. I never wanted to bomb Libya in the first place. But what I do prescribe for Russia is massive, massive street action. A people have to pay that price if they want liberty, if they want free speech, if they want democracy. Massive street Image via Wikipediaaction is like everyone decided to go to school, the school of political consciousness.
A democracy that comes from massive street action will necessarily have a better, smoother transition period that follows the success of a revolution.
Saudi Arabia and Iran before Russia, and Russia before China. I think that is what we might be looking at.
Hundreds of thousands mass on May Day in pre-election Russia (windsorstar.com) Hundreds of thousands took to the streets in May Day demonstrations across Russia on Sunday, most showing support for the Kremlin while others held Arab-style opposition rallies. ...... Anti-Kremlin protesters were greatly outnumbered by pro-government demonstrators mobilised by the ruling United Russia party and Kremlin-friendly trade unions, which claimed a turnout of two million people. ..... Russia is gearing up to hold parliamentary elections in December followed by presidential polls next March in which both President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin are considering running...... there are signs of growing discontent with the authorities. ...... Several thousand opposition supporters of all hues gathered separately to protest against Kremlin policies. ...... In central Moscow, the Left Front leftist activists urged Russians to follow the example of the Arab world and turn against their leaders. ...... The activists chanted: "Whether Cairo or Moscow, only through fighting will you obtain rights!" and "Tandem to the scrapyard of history" — referring to the duo of president and prime minister. ...... The protesters also sported a banner reading: "Throw down the tandem" and depicting Putin as the Madonna holding his "child" Medvedev. ..... On the same square in central Moscow around 30 Syrians gathered to express solidarity with pro-democracy demonstrators back at home, holding banners in Russian and Arabic that read: "Freedom to Syria from despotism" and "Stop the siege of Syrian cities." ..... Opposition supporter Ivan Petrenko said he was glad scores of people came to support the opposition in Saint Petersburg, the ruling duo's hometown. ..... "It means we are waking up," he told AFP. "It means Putin and Medvedev's government is on its last legs."
Image by Getty Images via @daylifeAug 08, 2007: What Obama Said On Pakistan
