Here we see the team's leader getting the bad news from the team's medical officer somewhere in Hindu Kush.
Posted on 03/16/2009 11:45:29 AM PDT by presidio9
Killing Osama may be a top priority for President Obama, but it's almost Mission Impossible - like it was for his predecessor - if the terror leader is holed up high in Pakistan's snowy peaks, experts say.
"The new people are going to face the same problems," warned a top adviser to President Bush.
The U.S. has been secretly training for years, however, in case the CIA scores that rarest prize: Bin Laden's home address. But they already know his neighborhood.
It's been a challenge, however, gaining intel on the region. Bin Laden hunters have had to turn to Lonely Planet's now out-of-print Hindu Kush trekking guide for information. The U.S. and Indian militaries snatched up boxes of them - so many that they're now almost impossible to find.
"Who else is interested in obscure passes along the Af-Pak-Indian border?" quipped one Pakistan expert.
A close look at the Hindu Kush mountains suggests the higher Bin Laden is, particularly in winter, the harder it'll be to squash him:
Terrain: He could be anywhere in thousands of square miles of mountains among the tallest on Earth and fortified by deep, avalanche-prone snow. Elevation: If he lives at 10-16,000 feet, U.S. hunters must be acclimatized or suffer altitude sickness, which can be fatal. Aircraft: The huge CH-47 Chinook is the only chopper that can lift a sizeable force using oxygen to those heights, but it's a big, loud and slow target. "With very precise information on Bin Laden's whereabouts, it would be possible to mount an operation to get him," said an ex-CIA officer in Pakistan. "The problem is getting the intel."
A "very high risk" high-altitude parachute jump or "ill-advised" chopper assault by U.S. Delta Force or Navy SEALs are both doable but arguably foolhardy, said the officer whose men last battled Bin Laden at Tora Bora in 2001 before he escaped into Pakistan.
"There is no reason to commit special ops forces" if an armed drone can simply "launch multiple Hellfire missile strikes," said former Delta Force commander and "Kill Bin Laden" author Dalton Fury - a pseudonym.
Fury devised a plan - scrapped by top brass - for his elite unit to attack Bin Laden's unguarded rear flank by traversing the Tora Bora mountains above 10,000 feet using oxygen canisters in the thinner air. But bin Laden escapedinto Pakistan.
If bin Laden lives high in the Hindu Kush, he's snowbound for winter and likely free of fear from attack.
Concern about altitude sickness - a common affliction above 9,000 feet - prompted the Army to study dozens of civilian climbers who recently scaled Tanzania's 19,340-foot Mt. Kilimanjaro to find out how to adjust soldiers to extreme heights.
"Even if you could get people acclimatized," insisted the Bush adviser, "it's hard to just drop white guys in unnoticed."
Experts point to the disaster of 19 troops killed in a secret mission in 2005 as a learning lesson.
Three SEALs died in a firefight after tribal goatherds spotted them, and 16 more troops perished in a botched Chinook rescue in the Chitral region.
The huge, lumbering twin-rotor chopper can haul troops up to 16,000 feet, but it is "not very stealthy," said a retired aviator.
jmeek@nydailynews.com
Osama could give himself up to ensure a big win for Obama.
They promised they would make this a priority, now they must deliver.
Osama could surrender after a barbeque at Camp David.
You can’t kill a dead man. But you can kill the myth.
The Pravda Media (colluding with the DNC) makes me ill.
But when are they going to get around to filling that woman’s gas tank and buying that college girl a pony (or was it a unicorn)?
bttt
This is funny, watching the PRAVDA media make pretzels of themselves.
Killing UBL is the only measure of success when Bush was president.
Here we see the team's leader getting the bad news from the team's medical officer somewhere in Hindu Kush.
Maybe John McCain should share the secret plan to capture bin Laden that he said he had during the debates.
The cry of the left throughout the Bush admin:
“Where’s Osama?”
Now we find out that it’s not such a priority.
Has anybodynotice dthat the media is no longer reporting the number(s) of American deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan? And when they do mention it, they are referred to as “NATO” troops or “Coalition” troops?...................
Most likely there is no Osama bin Laden. There has been no new video of him for many years, in which he says something NEW and the audio voice matches the video of his lips.
Most likely both Al Qaida and the USA govt find it useful to “keep him alive.” We are probably doing this out of some kind of strategy that if they know we know, some kind of reaction on their part is feared. I don’t know. But definitely nothing has proven him alive in many years.
Well we never caught Hitler, Mussolini or Hirohito during WWII ....
They're just not knocking loudly enough, that's all.
L
Dead men are awfully hard to catch when buried under a mountain of rocks.
Does anyone think that if OBL were still alive and well he wouldn’t be producing videos instead of audios...
OBL is deader than Julius Caesar!
After a year goes by without a body, I predict that the name bin Laden will vanish from the mainstream media completely. Personally, I think he's dead, but I'd sure love to see his head on a stake someday. I just wouldn't give President Obama any special credit for it. He made a clown with no intelligence experience his CIA director.
I think he’s baked pink mist at Tora Bora.
We haven’t seen a video of him since.
But, for the life of me, I can’t see why it would be necessary for the CIA to keep “authenticating” the voice only recordings sent out over the years.
Let’s airdrop Micheal Smerconish into the Pakistan-China-Afghanistan border area and tell him not to come back without Obama’s head.
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