Posted on 07/13/2005 7:07:36 PM PDT by CHARLITE
The first published interview with new CIA Director Porter Goss, which appeared last week in Time magazine, contained a bombshell that exploded with barely any notice.
To the ritual question — when will we get Osama bin Laden? — Goss gave a far from ritual answer.
"That is a question that goes far deeper than you know," Goss began. "We have some weak links" that make it impossible for now to get bin Laden, he explained, pointing to "the very difficult question of dealing with sanctuaries in sovereign states."
Sounds like you know where he is, the interviewer pressed. "I have an excellent idea of where he is," Goss responded.
The CIA boss was delivering a clear message to the "weak link" — Pakistan and its military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
Consider just these few recent events:
On June 5, the FBI arrested a young Pakistani-American man and his father in Lodi. According to their affidavits, the men purportedly lied about the son being trained during the past two years in al-Qaida-linked camps just outside Rawalpindi, home to the army's headquarters. The Pakistani government hurriedly denied that such camps existed.
The following week, a Pakistani TV network aired an interview with a senior Taliban commander in contact with Taliban leader Mullah Omar and bin Laden. Afghan officials and the outgoing U.S. ambassador in Kabul, Zalmay Khalilzad, questioned how a TV crew could find a man whom Pakistani intelligence services say they can't locate.
On June 20, Afghan authorities arrested three Pakistanis for plotting to assassinate the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, a frequent critic of Islamabad's failure to curb the Taliban. Afghan officials see the hand of the ISI behind all this, including a recent upsurge in Taliban violence.
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
Appears you neither think or read before posting.
Who said anything about bombing anyone?
Possibly, but then again I just finished writing an e-mail to a college buddy who is currently in Camp Phoenix in Afghanistan; the presence of him and 25K other American troops does not feel like a political nicety; nor do the casualties we have suffered there and in Pakistan. We cannot go to war with the entire world; we need some allies. Those 3,000 dead on 9/11 are not being forgotten by the president or our troops, for political reasons or otherwise.
However, it came out a lot harsher than it really was supposed to - a product of too much caffeine after work I think. Besides, anyone who picks a user name from one of my favorite authors doesn't really deserve to be relegated to 'ilk' status.
Or Beijing, for that matter.
It's frustrating, but we have to pick our battles, and we can't fight everyone at once. Pakistan is a rat's nest of terrorism and extremism. Musharref is keeping it relatively under control, and that's probably the best we can do while we deal with other countries.
The only plausible alternative I can see is to go in and do an extermination job, killing millions of Pakistanis and sending them back to the stone age.
Let's keep in mind that they have nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles, courtesy of bill clinton and the Chinese. So if we went in, we would really have our work cut out for us making sure those things weren't used. It's probably not possible to tackle such a demanding job while we have so many other things on our plate.
no....drunk Ted he is being abused in Grab-an-Arab Prison
Iran and Pakistan aren't large countries, but they are too large for a few teams to work in. Especially considering that not only would they have to try to find OBL, and then bring him out. Neither country would be friendlies to our men. Every man woman and child would have to be viewed as a hostile. Nothing short of full military operations on our part, or full governmental cooperation on their part would work.
Unless intel gave us clear cut evidence of where OBL was, sending teams in in vague raids would not only be potentially suicidal, but the diplomatic repercussions if ANYTHING failed could be staggering. You might think,"who cares about diplomacy with Iran", but if something happened the fallout would affect everybody we deal with.
Our SEALS are real good, but unlike Superman, they are not faster than speeding bullets,or more powerful than locomotives,or able to leap tall buildings in a single bound...
They are extremely well trained men, who will do what others wouldn't dream of doing. Go where others can't even imagine. We control Afghanistan, for the most part, and yet last week we had a SEAL team beating feet to get out, a helo with another team was sent to extract them. That helo was shot down with everybody killed. ONE team member survived because a village of Afghanies hid him. That in a country that has been turned to ourside.
What would happen in Iran or Pakistan?
The only problem I have with that conjecture is that the Iranians don't really like Arabs any more than Afghanis do, and I can't quite see Bin Laden putting himself entirely at the mercy of those non-Arab mullahs who could ostensibly turn him and his sons into bargaining chips at any convenient moment.
If he were in Iran, he would forfeit the ISI protection that he has (had) in the Taliban-supporting Pakistani military.
He may be in the same location to which he fled during that atrociously wrong-headed (really incomprehensible!) 48 hour "cease fire" at the battle for Tora Bora in early December of 2001. The part of this article which I believe to be totally true is that Porter Goss & the top brass have known all along exactly where he is, but - as the article reasons - we aren't able (or are not yet ready) to go in like "damn the torpedos, full speed ahead!"
Too much bad, possibly fatal fall out could occur, if we upset the balance by going into Pakistan. It could tip things in the direction of the overthrow (and assassination) of Musharraf by radical islamic fundamentalist factions, at which point we would have gained nothing by having thrown the Taliban out of Afghanistan, because the entire regime would reconstitute in Pakistan with NUKES! That is the reason for which we are playing it safe at this moment.
If Bin Laden is in Iran, the same holds true. Our military is already stretched very thin, and not capable of taking on Iran........unless we conduct an "October surprise" and blitz krieg Iran strategically.
Thanks for the thought provoking response, though!
Char :)
To guard OBL and protect "his civil liberties", and demand that we understand his feelings and to realize that his ways are no less important than our own. In fact, since we didn't take into account OBL's feelings or understand his ways, WE are actually the ones wrong.
AHHH, just trying to think like a lib hurts my brain.
We can only squeeze Musharref so hard. His hold on power is tenuous, and his replacement will likely be worse. Assuming we could project the combat power into Pakistan to winkle Osama out of his cave, we will have invaded an "ally", causing Musharref's downfall and stranding CFC-A AND ISAF deep in Central Asia. Does anybody remember what happened to the Kabul garrison in the First Afghan War?
Thanks for refreshing our memory two cents. Any state that harbors terrorists, forfeits it's soverenity.
What solutions would those deep thinkers and slow reactors of your particular ilk propose?
Mine are Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Miami.
That only applies to non-nuclear states. Bush can not give the Pakis an ultimatum.
Wasn't he the one appointed head of Alqaida, following the death of OBL, early in 2002?
OBL is teaching Introduction to World History at Berkeley and if we don't kill him soon he will have tenure and then he would be truly untouchable.
Have at.
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