Taking with a heaping shovel of salt until there are other reports. However, they haven’t run one of these stories in quite a while. (Ironic that the first TM thread started with a Debka story that still remains very relevant.)
In any case, if true, it is another possible explanation for the surge in these tapes . . .
DEBKAfile Exclusive:
Pakistani forces backed by US special units are closing in on al Qaeda’s No. 2 Ayman Zawahiri and possibly also Osama bin Laden
July 15, 2007, 10:47 PM (GMT+02:00)
Our counter-terror sources report exclusively that a frantic effort by al Qaeda and Taliban to head off the pursuit set afoot the bloody battle in Islamabad’s Red Mosque, the attempts to shoot down President Pervez Musharraf’s plane and the suicide attacks on Pakistani military convoys, which cost 68 lives Saturday and Sunday, July 14-15.
Until the middle of last week, Zuwahiri sheltered with the local Pashtun tribes in Bannu, a town in the northwest Pakistan tribal federation of North Waziristan. The approach of Pakistani and US intelligence and special forces caused him to switch hiding places and move to Tank or Tang, a town 120 km south of Bannu.
On Saturday, two soldiers were injured by a bomb explosion in that town, having just missed their quarry.
Musharraf meanwhile decided last week to storm the Red Mosque on a tip-off from his own Inter-Service Intelligence that two of Zawahiri’s closest lieutenants, Majid Hassan al-Tawil and Mohammad Othman, were inside.
They were reported to be preparing a mega-attack in Islamabad and other important Pakistani towns to disrupt the combined Pakistani-US operation to capture their master.
At that point, Pakistani intelligence turned up a lead to the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden himself.
The Pakistani army imposed a blackout on the identities of the victims of the Red Mosque battle, estimated at around 100 dead, and the detainees captured there. Even the names of the women and children claimed to have been held hostage were not disclosed. DEBKAfile’s sources report that Pakistan intelligence, which had hoped to capture the two al Qaeda operatives alive, has not found them. They are still trying to establish if they were among the dead or managed to escape.
An oblique reference to the operation came from the US president’s national security adviser Stephen Hadley Sunday night, July 15, when he spoke on ABC television about the US fully backing a Pakistani military crackdown on hotbeds of al Qaeda and Taliban activity. ”It has not worked the way he wanted. It has not worked the way we wanted it,” he said.
According to our sources, the intense pursuit continues despite the setbacks which Hadley suggested.
The Pakistan military death toll climbed Sunday when pro-Taliban Islamists killed at least 31 in two attacks in North Waziristan. Two suicide bombers and a roadside device hit a 40-vehicle police-army convoy near the Afghan border killing 14 soldiers. In another incident, 17 police officers and new recruits died when a bomber detonated explosives at a police HQ in the town of Dera Ismail Khan.
DEBKAfile’s sources disclose that the US Senate’s decision to double the bounty for bin Laden’s capture, killing or information leading to his death or capture to $50 million, was recommended by President George W. Bush after he received an urgent message from Musharraf. The Pakistani president reported his people had picked up the trail of bin Laden’s trail in their pursuit of his deputy, but the tribal chiefs with knowledge of where the elusive al Qaeda leader was hiding were holding out for an exorbitant sum for their collaboration.
He said that Pakistani intelligence had also laid out a large sum for the information about Zawahiri’s two aides’ arrival in the Red Mosque.
His former sanctuary of Bannu is situated 150 km as the crow flies from the South Afghan town of Gardiz which is a hub of al Qaeda-Taliban activity. The connection between the two towns is a twisting road of 400 km through Parachinar in Pashtun tribal land. According to DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources, al Qaeda and Taliban leaders do not travel from place to place by road or vehicle but on horseback by night piloted by local guides.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresident/news-speeches/speeches/vp20011114.html
Interview of the Vice President
by CBS’s 60 Minutes II
November 14, 2001
Vice President Cheney on 60 Minutes II
. . . Gloria Borger: Has the likelihood of a new terror attack in this country increased or decreased, would you say, in the last couple of weeks?
Vice President Cheney: The threat level has clearly gone up in recent weeks because of reporting we’ve received that led us to believe that in fact there was the likelihood of an additional attack. You never can be certain. If nothing then happens after the threat level’s gone up, it may be that your original reporting was inaccurate. It may also be that as you raise the threat level and everybody went up on sort of all-alert kind of status that we discouraged the attack or that we did something to disrupt it or to throw off the timing and they had to back off and regroup. That happens sometimes, too. But there’s no question that the threat level is still pretty significant, especially if we come to the end of the road here for bin Laden and Afghanistan and we’re successful in wrapping him up.
That, in and of itself, could be a signal that would trigger some kind of a revenge attack, if you will, by people loyal to bin Laden. So it doesn’t end, necessarily with him. In the end, we can’t wrap it up unless we do get him. The best defense against a terrorist attack is to go destroy the terrorist. And then we’re doing that.
But there’s still going to be some period of time here, even after we complete operations in Afghanistan. And the terrorist threat is worldwide. He’s got cells all over the world. And even if we sort of chop off the head, if you will, we may still find that the al Qaeda organization is there. It’s in place. Somebody else rises to lead it and that we continue to have to deal with that threat.
Gloria Borger: So a couple of things, you’re saying that if we kill Osama bin Laden, we have to expect retaliation?
Vice President Cheney: It could happen. I don’t know. I can’t predict. But that’s certainly a possibility. . .
*Red* Mosque . . . *Red* flashing banner . . . *Red* ink
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22080495-2703,00.html
Al-Qa’ida ‘directed mosque siege’
Bruce Loudon, South Asia correspondent | July 16, 2007 (excerpted)
AL-QA’IDA was behind last week’s uprising at Islamabad’s Red Mosque, according to secret Pakistani government documents revealed as thousands of troops were deployed across the country yesterday.
The troop reinforcements came after a series of deadly suicide bomb attacks left scores of soldiers dead and maimed in revenge attacks by Islamic militants for last week’s mosque bloodbath.
In the latest attack, at least 16 Pakistani security officers were killed yesterday in a series of bomb blasts and an exchange of fire with Islamist militants, officials said, adding that the death toll could go higher.
The blasts hit as a convoy of police and paramilitary troops passed through the town of Matta near the hilly Swat area, a well-known Taliban stronghold.
The attacks accompanied heightening outrage among militants over the storming of the mosque and intensifying speculation about the number of women and children who died.
They coincided with leaked reports from the Government claiming that documents recovered from the mosque and the neighbouring madrassas prove conclusively that al-Qa’ida - and specifically Osama bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri - directed the uprising, maintaining close contact with Abdul Rashid Ghazi, who died in the battle.
Intelligence officials also claimed al-Qa’ida had sent foreign fighters to assist in the rebellion, with Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Cheema saying yesterday the bodies of at least 10 such Chechens and Arabs had been recovered. But as the Government counted the cost of the suicide attacks and anti-government protests swept several cities over the storming of the mosque, it was the controversy over the real death toll that spelled trouble ahead for President Pervez Musharraf.
General Hamid Gul, a powerful former head of the ISI spying agency who is now one of the President’s most trenchant critics, said yesterday the emerging accounts of women and children who were killed could lead to the military ruler’s downfall. “The Government is trying to hide the number of young girls killed,” he said. “As the truth comes out that young girls were gassed and burnt, riddled with bullets and killed, it’ll be bad for Musharraf.” . . .
Debka has frequently been “pooh-poohed” on FR. Their record has been a bit dubious. But, they have often beaten the MSM on many, many reports.
I pray this is true, and that the “Z” man and UBL are quickly found. So many dots to connect
Sometimes Debka has the correct info. Hopefully this is one of those times.
Yes, isn't that something?
I appreciate all your pings, callmejoe. I am behind on TM right now, but I am catching up.