Posted on 05/07/2011 1:24:01 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON (Reuters) The compound in Pakistan where U.S. forces killed Osama bin Laden was an active command center from which he directed al Qaeda, a senior intelligence official said on Saturday as he released videos showing bin Laden watching himself on tape and rehearsing speeches.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said information carted away from the compound by U.S. forces following Monday's raid represented the largest trove of intelligence ever obtained from a single terrorism suspect.
"This compound in Abbottabad was an active command and control center for al Qaeda's top leader and it's clear ... that he was not just a strategic thinker for the group," the official said. "He was active in operational planning and in driving tactical decisions."
The official released five video clips of bin Laden taken from the compound, most of them showing the al Qaeda leader, his beard dyed black, evidently rehearsing the videotaped speeches he occasionally distributed to his followers.
One video segment, however, showed a gray-bearded bin Laden in a more casual setting wrapped in a blanket and apparently wearing a ski cap while watching videotapes of himself. The official said the personal nature of the videos was further evidence that the man killed in the raid was bin Laden.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Having a courier take letters back and forth, that takes days and bring back a response in another few days, then another instruction back in several days again... Sure, that makes a lot of sense for an active command and control center...
In a setting where attacks on soft (i.e. undefended) targets take months to years to be planned, practiced, and finally implemented it is not at all incongruous that the highest command level, responsible for target selection and financing, could have slow communications. Especially if it lead to very good security.
Look at the 9/11 attacks. OBL did not have day-to-day command responsibility, that rested with disposable underlings. He selected the targets, and periodically released money to the operational organization. If the status reports he read were a week old, so what? These were not modern military operations where speed is required.
Suppose he decides to attack a rail system. The date will be a year or more in the future. Why does he need daily reports? A monthly report is all he needs, if that. All he needs in the way of feedback is funding requests and some idea of when the plot will mature, so he doesn't launch a conflicting operation.
The danger lies in the sick mind that thinks this stuff up, the ability to finance it, and the group of followers who take his orders with religious fervor.
Might of been a command center but it was definately a pig sty.
Not saying it was a command center or not, but having phones or using email to contact would the dumbest move. We own that field through NSA.
I read that his courier even traveled 90 minutes to make phone calls to lose the location.
Does anyone doubt anymore that our government actively lies to us? I don’t mean they keep secrets. They deliberately and routinely lie to us. Not sure how long this has been going on. But the Dems sure started accusing Bush of it, “lied us into war”, etc. Maybe they stuck to that because they knew that it was common for Bubba and possibly other Presidents to lie, lie, lie. Of course the media thinks it is cute. Call it “spin”. Media lies are also evident and obvious. “Command center” my a$$!
They live like teenagers. The leader of the Muslim Ummah lives like a teenager. Mwhahaha.
Pathetic loser with his goodwill furniture. Beats a cave, I guess.
That's the difference between Obama and common sense.
Obama shows the intelligence and hides the body.
Common sense says to show the body and hide the intelligence.
Good analysis. I find it fascinating that just because Obama is president most here seem to have lost all confidence in our military and intelligence professionals. Their leadership sucks. The true professionals know what they are doing.
That was then, this is now. Things have changed a lot in 40+ years, and he knew it.
Supposedly his minions used to drive 90 minutes before even making a phone call from a “disposable” phone. None of this technology was around back in the 60s and 70s.
That said, I think he was essentially sick, useless and under a sort of house arrest by the Pakis. Other than releasing the occasional hallucinatory video supporting Dem candidates, he had done nothing for the last few years. His time was up.
That explanation doesn’t fit the timeline. We know it was about 4 pm east coast time when the helicopters arrived at the compound in Abbottabad, based on the coffee shop guy who live blogged the sound of a helicopter overhead.
Allow four hours to clear the compound and return to Bagram AB, and you’re at 8 pm east coast time. The first thing the guys would do when they got back is carefully inventory the loot and debrief, before even starting to work on the contents of any information databases retrieved.
Yet Obama had already decided he was going to speak sometime before 10 pm east coast time. So they would not have even known what they had, in order to know for certain that they had squat and therefore to go ahead with a bluff strategy to try to flush the bad guys out.
Give me six more hours in the timeline and I MIGHT buy your explanation.
With the facts we have, this can only be incompetence or worse on the part of Obama. He wanted so much to dance in the end zone and spike the ball in the face of the Bush administration, when what he should have done is run a few running plays to take some time off the clock before holding a press conference to announce the touchdown.
Indeed. What’s the bandwidth of a kid in sneakers with a backpack full of thumbdrives?
LOL - Where’s his other hand?
Bumping all of your posts, Krankor.
Bush said he wasn’t worried about OBL. I thnk that, now, we know why he wasn’t worried.
Anybody who feels the need to dye his beard...
I’m not convinced he was even alive .... well, alive after he was dead from when he was originally alive .... or something like that.
I’ll have to check back with Alex Jones, he seems to know that chain of events </sarc>
Also, if we wanted to kill Bin Laden for 9/11 then why when we elected a far left loon did “we” not kill Bush/Cheney since, according to left wing loons, it was an inside job. BHO might want to enlist the help of someone with experience in finding “real killers” to sort out whether it was OBL or Bush
(did OJ ever find the real killer? he promised ...)
</sarc - again>(it’s early and I haven’t finished my coffee yet, so, pardon me)
Like Robinson Carusoe, it was primitive as could be...
ooooh, the irony...
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