Posted on 05/02/2011 1:10:15 AM PDT by James C. Bennett
WASHINGTON: The finger of suspicion is pointing squarely at the Pakistani military and intelligence for sheltering and protecting Osama bin Laden before US forces hunted him down and put a bullet in his head on Sunday. The coordinates of the action and sequence of events suggest that the al-Qaida fugitive may have been killed in an ISI safehouse.
Within hours of the news of bin Laden's killing, speculation raged about Pakistan and its spy agency's role in the momentous episode. President Obama made it clear that the operation to hunt down bin Laden was conducted exclusively by US forces -- ''a small team of Americans,'' he said -- at his direction. While he thanked Pakistan's civilian government for its help, naming President Zardari in particular, he made no mention of any other active Pakistani role, especially in the operation. It was "all-American" and "Made in USA," he seemed to say.
But in a glaring counter-narrative, Pakistani security officials claimed bin Laden was nailed in a joint operation between CIA and Pakistani forces. "It was carried out on a very precise info that some high-value target is there," one Pakistani official was quoted as saying.
US analysts uniformly suggested this was clearly aimed at ducking charges of the Pakistani military's possible role in hiding bin Laden. ''This is hugely embarrassing for Pakistan,'' was a common refrain on US TV channels throughout the night.
In fact, top US officials have openly suggested for months that the Pakistani military establishment was hiding bin Laden. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton came closest to publicly exposing Pakistan's role last May when she accused some government officials there of harboring Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar.
''I am not saying they are at the highest level...but I believe somewhere in this government are people who know where Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida and where Mullah Omar and the leadership of the Taliban are,'' Clinton said on May 10 last year, adding, ''We expect more cooperation (from Pakistan) to help us bring to justice capture or kill those who brought us 9/11.''
Taken together with President Obama's pointed 'thank you' to President Zardari and leaving out any mention of Pakistani forces' involvement, it would seem that Washington believes that Pakistan's military intelligence establishment, including the ISI, was sheltering bin Laden. The ISI was accused as recently as last week by the top US military official Admiral Mike Mullen of having terrorist links, and named as a terrorist support entity by US officials, according to the Guantanamo cables.
Lending credence to the charges is the fact that US forces homed in on bin Laden in Abbottabad, which is a cantonment just 50 kms from Islamabad, where the Pakistani military has a strong presence. The place where bin Laden was killed is only kilometers from the Kakul military academy, where many Pakistani military elites, including some of its ISI cadres, graduate from.
While US officials are tightlipped about precise details, analysts are trying to figure out whether the compound that sheltered bin Laden was an ISI safehouse. There is also speculation as to whether Hillary Clinton was referring to this when she made her pointed remarks last May.
US officials have said for years that they believed bin Laden escaped to Pakistan after the American bombing campaign in Afghanistan. But Pakistani officials, including its former military ruler Pervez Musharraf, insisted that he was in Afghanistan, even as Afghan officials would angrily refute it and say he is in Pakistan. In the end, the Americans and Afghans were right on the money.
Kind of a weird story. “Nearly”. We all have nearly stories. I nearly hit a car this morning on my way to work. I nearly got married ten years ago. I nearly ate at the Arby’s down the street. It is hilarious how the media is stretching stories now a days.
Proof positive, IMHO, that the ISI and/or high level Paki Military knew where he was all along. Of course we all knew that all along...
Saw something abotu how we’d gotten a suspicion about the compound in 2007 but waited for confirmation, which we got in August last year.
In other words, he got sniffed while Dubya was still in office and the fruits of that labor were brought forth now.
And Skippy the Echolocating Wonderbat is on an ego trip about it with his “I.I.I.me.me.me” claims when in reality he had to be bullied into signing a nondisclosure agreement.
[Otherwise he’d state the names of all the operators who were involved, either to get them murdered OR sell them out to the international criminal court.]
Anyone reading Wikileaks knew that Pakistan had folks in their military who were hiding Ben Laden.
Anyone with two brain cells to rub together kneew that the Pakistani military is full of AQ sympathizers. It’s only a very small stretch to believe that some also knewe where he was hiding.
In the speech Hillary gave a few minutes ago, she had the audacity to mention the USS Cole, etc. — events which, if the Clinton administration had handled when they occurred, may well have neutralized bin Ladin more than a decade ago. Talk about the ability to “compartmentalize”!
A guest on Fox Business this morning said that Clinton had been offered bin Ladin on 10 separate occasions (IIRC, 2 via CIA, and 8 via Army), and Clinton passed on taking any action.
Did they rule out Costellobad?
Why is Hillary getting bashed? Saturday night the ‘Donald’ got the ridiculing of his life and NOW Hillary is getting it in the media? I thought Hillary served the great ‘one’?
I went to the link fully expecting the heading to be what you posted... NOW I am NOT a Hillary supporter and think she got exactly what she deserved by losing to this turkey... that said why would you take a sentence out of this story and make it as part of the headline.
WHO is bashing Hillary? WHO wants this bashing of Hillary in the papers?
As well, the HuffPost heaps praises onto Barry. One might say Barry didn't have the ***** (chutzpah) to stop orders and operations that W had long in place, but I think this one was simply propitious for Zero personally, in that ...
...Barry didn't want any competition for Caliph.
HF
Dunno, but Abbottabad turned out to be Aboutasbad as possible for Bin Laden.
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