I think what we have here is a bit of disinformation on our part to get the bad guys to show their hand...
Then again, DoD never calls me. :-)
"Coop you ever been bird hunting? I think what we have here is a bit of disinformation on our part..."You may be correct that part of the plan behind these stories is directed at flushing the prey, but for at least a couple of reasons, I don't think that's the main purpose behind the recent series of stories about joint Paki/U.S. operations.
First, the President is not only the Commander in Chief of the armed forces, he's also the political leader of this country, and in that capacity there is a practical necessity to keep the "troops" (us) up to speed on major developments that have significant upsides and downsides and not spring them on us after the fact with a "oops, did I forget to mention..."!
One of those upsides is, if this Pakistan operation turns out OK, we could well end up capturing bin Laden, Zawahiri and Omar. However the big downside is that, if it goes wrong, al Qa'ida could well end up in possession of Pakistan's nukes (and that would be the mother of all "aw shucks").
In other words, I think these stories were directed primarily as a heads up to the American people (albeit, a low key heads up).
The second reason I don't think that this is primarily directed at flushing the prey, is that al Qa'ida, et al, already know we are involved in operations inside Pakistan because we've been doing that for over two years now. The only thing changing is the tempo and the stakes. But al Qa'ida already know this (heck, is was al Qa'ida that raised the stakes by going after the bait (the nukes)), hence this story is no surprise to them.
I will post more below about some info I found about our past two years of operations inside Pakistan.
--Boot Hill