U.S. plans Al Qaeda offensive (in Pakistan). (Capture Bin Laden?)

Chicago Tribune ^ | 1/28/04

[areafiftyone]

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration, deeply concerned about recent assassination attempts against Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and a resurgence of Taliban forces in neighboring Afghanistan, is preparing a U.S. military offensive that would reach inside Pakistan with the goal of destroying Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network, military sources said.

U.S. Central Command is assembling a team of military intelligence officers that would be posted in Pakistan ahead of the operation, according to sources familiar with details of the plan and internal military communications. The sources spoke on the condition they not be identified.

As now envisioned, the offensive would involve Special Operations forces, Army Rangers and Army ground troops, sources said. A Navy aircraft carrier would be deployed in the Arabian Sea.

[Cap Huff]

Yeah, the dynamics are complex. The snippets of info in these few stories don't come any where near to telling the whole story, even in outline.

[Sacajaweau]

If Saddam looked that bad after 8 months, just think how bad Usama is going to look. Talk about a bad hair day!!

And the turban tightens!!

[Cap Huff]

If we get him alive, I would imagine that once it was prudent to announce the catch there would be released photos like Saddam and also like KSM (who looked liked he was coming off a two week binge).

[section9]

Stratfor wrote about this in a Jan 21st piece. They peg the date as Spring 2005 for a final assault in Afghanistan and Pakistan to clean out the Al Qaeda rat holes.

Stratfor has apparently missed the mark, at least by nine months. The article makes clear that the clock has been pushed up. A poster on the Blackfive: The Paratrooper of Love blog said that someone she knows has received "planning orders'.

I'm convinced that this was leaked to get the cockroaches moving. But if we need to go in big, we'll go in big.

Something is afoot.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

[txhurl]

I honestly think we already have OBL and now just have to create the scenery to debutante his sorry a$$.

[Dog]

I would go as far as to argue we are already operating in the tribal area...just a hunch.

[finnman69]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,109753,00.html

U.S. Plans Major Offensive Against Al Qaeda

Wednesday, January 28, 2004

The U.S. military is planning a major offensive in Afghanistan along the Afghan-Pakistani border this spring, Pentagon officials have confirmed to Fox News, but officials would not divulge whether it would involve moving troops into Pakistan.

According to military sources, a small number of U.S. special forces troops have already been working with Pakistani forces in the tribal sections of Pakistan, but those have been covert operations — small teams designed to hunt Taliban and Al Qaeda figures hiding in villages throughout the area.

U.S. officials have suspected that Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters travel back and forth, over the border, shifting hiding places and seeking refuge in friendly villages in Pakistan.

Senior Defense officials still believe Usama bin Laden and top Al Qaeda leaders are in the region as well. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf (search) has been very adamant that U.S. troops cannot cross into Pakistan and that Pakistani forces will be stepping up the hunt for terrorists along the border.

But in December 2003 there were two very sophisticated assassination attempts on Musharraf, from which he narrowly escaped.

U.S. officials are very concerned about Musharraf's safety, and they believe those attacks were conducted by Al Qaeda operatives.

The Chicago Tribune reported Wednesday that the U.S. is planning to move the "spring offensive" into Pakistan with Musharraf's blessing. The paper cited internal Pentagon messages that purportedly say the offensive "would be driven by certain undisclosed events in Pakistan and across the region."

The paper quoted "a source familiar with the details of the plan" as saying the plan is "not a like a contingency plan for North Korea, something that sits on a shelf. This planning is like planning for Iraq. They want this plan to be executable now."

Pentagon officials would make no comment to Fox News about any possible U.S. military role in Pakistan, but they do not rule it out in the hunt for most-wanted terrorists.

U.S. officials are concerned about Pakistan's intelligence service, and many believe a large number of Inter-Services Intelligence (search) members are loyal or friendly to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

[Prodigal Son]

Other media sources now listing the ChiTrib article as a source for their own articles:

http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/columnists/janie_nelson/7816109.htm

http://www.myafghan.com/news2.asp?id=894170064

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0128pakistan28-ON.html

http://www.presstelegram.com/Stories/0,1413,204%257E24654%257E1920527,00.html

(NOTE: now the above lists the AP (who list the ChiTribune))

http://www.tiscali.co.uk/cgi-bin/news/newswire.cgi/news/reuters/2004/01/28/world/usplanningalqaedaoffensiveinpakistan.html&template=/news/templates/newswire/news_story_reuters.html

---

We're talking about a matter of hours here.

Does everyone see how the news gets made here? Here we have it right in front of our eyes.

And all this comes on the heels of a report by an American commander that we will catch bin Laden by the end of the year.

This is how it gets done.

[Prodigal Son]

And they all refer to the same un-named sources again and again and again.

Reality manufactured right in front of you. And you can walk on it. Indeed, foreign policy will be shaped by it.

[Prodigal Son]

http://www.nj.com/newsflash/washington/index.ssf?/cgi-free/getstory_ssf.cgi?a0521_BC_US-Afghan

Now, PAULINE JELINEK, of the AP being used as a source for the story yet she is sourcing here story on the ChiTrib article which is sourced on unknown sources. Other articles are now using the Jelinek article as their source.

This is how much of the hysteria around Operation Iraqi Freedom was propagated.

I find this instructive on many different levels. We saw it happen right in front of our eyes. In a few hours an unsourced article becomes headline news around the world. It becomes sourced so many times that it has the same force as the truth- which makes it the perfect form of propaganda. It makes no difference now whether there is an actual mission or not. All the relevent parties must react as if there were. Think about that. For the price of a few hundred keystrokes and phonecalls, you force the enemy to react to something you never even intended to do.

It's amazing and scary too.

[justshutupandtakeit]

AND some of their opposite numbers.

[Boot Hill]

hedgie sez:   "This leak is to get everybody ready for an aboveboard commitment. Welcome to act three of the war on terror."

You nailed it with that post, hedgie.

While everyone's attention has been directed elsewhere; at Iraq, Syria, elections and WMD, the most dangerous phase of this war has been building to a crescendo in Pakistan. The radical Islamists there (i.e., al Qa'ida and the Taliban) are on the verge of overthrowing Musharraf and taking direct control of Pakistan's nuclear stockpile.

There were two assassination attempts on Musharraf's life in December that were nearly successful. The sophistication of those attempts clearly implicate Musharraf's Islamist-ridden army command, intelligence service, and even his personal staff. Al Qa'ida's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri issued a fatwa on Musharraf this past September. Musharraf is fighting back and has publicly voiced his plans to purge the Islamists from the Army and the intelligence service and has begun a massive campaign to bust all al Qa'ida and Taliban forces in Pakistan. The large success of this latter effort is probably due to U.S. intelligence cooperation.

Anyone who blows this off as a meaningless sideshow is in for a very big surprise. Expect this to play out early this year.

--Boot Hill

[Dog]

I agree......this is Phase III of the war on terror. Bin Laden will be captured or killed by the end of October....IMHO.

BTW I have a feeling we are already operating inside the tribal areas.

[Prodigal Son]

Good comments.

[Boot Hill]

"I have a feeling we are already operating inside the tribal areas."

I think you have to be right on that, but what an a$$hole puckering assignment it must be, to be posted to operate in those areas!

--Boot Hill

[Dog]

Aneglus Errare mentioned once that our forces posed as Pakistani troops once to capture an AQ guy.

With all these recent captures we must know the general location Bin Laden and his sidekick are hiding in.

This strike would make sense.....we will be going bird hunting in the border region to flush big game.

[Preech1]

[Boot Hill]

"With all these recent captures we must know the general location Bin Laden and his sidekick are hiding in."

Which implies that OBL is alive. I suspect you're right.

But more than that, this whole scenario suggests a strategic explanation for why OBL, and company, was able to "escape" our forces in Afghanistan in the first place. It could be that we essentially "sent" him/them to Pakistan to destabilize Musharraf's regime so badly that he would be forced to ask for our help in cleaning up Pakistan's own nest of Islamic terrorists. Without OBL's unwitting participation, we'd never have been able to justify open offensive ops in Pakistan.

The question I'd like to see an answer to is this: If this was the plan, how did we secure the Paki's nukes in the event that the plan failed and the Islamists succeeded in overthrowing Musharraf?

--Boot Hill

[mystery-ak]

I think we are real close..:)

[Dog]

The Pentagon has plans for everything....... and besides I think India would have never allowed those nukes to fall into the islamists hands.

I heard something on Fox a little while ago ....it seems the military has confirmed this "spring offensive".....know ask yourself why would they telegraph our next move.....unless this is being staged flush Bin Laden and his cronies out into the open.

We need to keep our eyes on news coming from Pakistan.