Sunday, May 08, 2011

Review on War on Osama bin Laden

Tokyo Bay...


Review on War on Osama bin Laden


CHAPTER I: Timeline on "Osama Raid" Announced on May 2

Surprisingly, there was a chance that Osama bin Laden was not there in the compound at Abbottabad at the very early morning of May 2, local time.

It looks like President Mr. Obama took to the gamble, since he looked like not 100% sure about presence of Osama bin Laden at the rade time.
Timeline: Osama bin Laden operation
RAID
May 02, 2011 By the CNN Wire Staff

• Two years ago: Investigators identified areas of Pakistan where the courier and his brother lived.

• August: The residence of the courier and his brother was found in Abbottabad, 30 to 35 miles north of Islamabad, Pakistan's capital.

• September: The CIA worked with President Barack Obama "on a set of assessments that led it to believe that in fact it was possible" bin Laden may be at the compound in Abbottabad.

• February: U.S. officials concluded there was a "sound intelligence basis" for pursuing bin Laden at that location.

• March and April. Obama held a series of National Security Council meetings "to develop courses of action to bring justice to Osama bin Laden." There were at least five meetings: March 14, March 29, April 12, April 19 and Thursday.

• Friday. Obama gave the final order to pursue the operation.

• Sunday. After months of decision-making and planning, a U.S. military team conducted a small helicopter raid on the compound. The officials did not provide a breakdown of team members, but a senior U.S. defense official said U.S. Navy SEALs were involved in the operation.

The senior administration officials provided these details of the raid:

• The team was in the compound for 40 minutes. It did not encounter any local authorities during the raid.

• Bin Laden resisted the assault force and died in a firefight. Along with bin Laden, three adult males were killed.

• Two were believed to be the couriers, and one was a son of bin Laden's.

• A woman used as a human shield by a male combatant died, and two women were injured.

• A helicopter was lost because of mechanical failure.

• Intelligence on bin Laden was not shared with Pakistan and other countries.

• After the raid, U.S. officials briefed Pakistani and other world leaders.

• Bin Laden has been buried at sea and his body was handled in the Islamic tradition. The officials but did not elaborate.

http://articles.cnn.com/2011-05-02/world/bin.laden.raid.timeline_1_bin-raid-defense-official?_s=PM:WORLD

They all look like circumstantial evidence.

How can you send scores of troops 250 km over the border giving an instruction to kill whoever mails they will find in the compound without identifying them as Osama bin Laden or not?

It is a kind of gamble. And, what should have happened if Osama bin Laden had not been there by chance at the night?

Is it possible to start the operation without confirming the figure of Osama bin Laden in the compound not once before it was launched?

What is required was not a "sound intelligence basis" for pursuing bin Laden at that location but concrete and repeatedly confirmed evidence of pictures and voices of Osama bin Laden in the compound and 24-hour-base monitoring records indicating the life and the figure of Osama bin Laden there. It is so, since the U.S. must send scores of troops without permission from the Pakistani Government to a 250-km inland over the border from Afghanistan.



CHAPTER II: CIA

In 2008, Mr. George W. Bush was still in his presidency. He might have been very reluctant to take on Osama bin Laden for whatever reason. If so, CIA must have respected the mood of the then president.
CIA knew of Osama's presence in Abbottabad since 2008: WikiLeaks

ISLAMABAD - A US cable, released by WikiLeaks on many social websites including Twitter, has revealed that the US spy agency operatives knew since year 2008 that Al Qaeda chief Usama Bin Laden's family had been hiding in Abbottabad.

However, the question is why the US took three long years to apprehend Usama?

Abu Faraj al-Libi, who was also known as Mustafa Faraj Muhammad, a Libyan national, told his captors in Guantanamo Bay in year 2008 that he was the operational chief of Al Qaeda and had long-term associations with Usama Bin Laden (UBL) and Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri.

He managed Al Qaeda operations, including Al Qaeda operations in Iraq, after Khalid Shaykh Muhammad's capture.

Though the cable is very long but the relevant part of the cable is as under:
CLASSIFIED BY: MULTIPLE SOURCES REASON: E.O. 12958, AS AMENDED, SECTION 1.4(C) DECLASSIFY ON: 20330910
S E C R E T / / NOFORN / / 20330910
Detainee fled to Kandahar in late December 2001 and met his wife who was residing there. Detainee travelled to Gardez, AF to assist between 100 and 200 fighters move from Gardez to Kandahar. He spent the next nine to ten months in hiding with his family in Pakistan. 11 (S//NF) In October 2002, Nashwan Abd al-Razzaq Abd al-Baqi, aka (Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi), ISN US9IZ-010026DP (IZ-10026), contacted and asked detainee to work with him in Peshawar.

Detainee accepted the offer and spent the next five to six months working under IZ-10026 organising the purchase of supplies for fighters including medicine, lights, batteries, food, and clothing. In July 2003, detainee received a letter from Osama's designated courier, Maulawi Abd al-Khaliq Jan, requesting detainee take on the responsibility of collecting donations, organising travel, and distributing funds to families in Pakistan. Osama stated detainee would be the official messenger between him and others in Pakistan.

In mid-2003, detainee moved his family to Abbottabad, PK and worked between Abbottabad and Peshawar. 13 (S//NF) Between August 2003 and February 2004, detainee travelled to Shkai, PK on three occasions.

While at Shkai, detainee met with Al Qaeda’s Shari'a Council, delivered funds to fighters, met with Hamza Rabia, and visited IZ-10026. In mid 2004, detainee moved his family from Abbottabad to Bajaur, PK. During October 2004, detainee received a letter from UBL asking about the [financial] situations in Pakistan and Waziristan. In addition to the letter, there was a video tape of UBL speeches. In December 2004, detainee met with Shawqi Marzuq Abd al-Alam Dabbas, aka (Khalid Habib), in Bajaur. They discussed possible future operations against US interests in Poland. 14 In mid-March 2005, Abu Ubaydah al-Masri 15 instructed detainee to meet with Abd al-Khaliq Jan in Mardan, PK. The meeting did not take place.

http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2011/05/cia-knew-of-osama%E2%80%99s-presence-in-abbottabad-since-2008-wikileaks-2/

Osama Bin Laden Dead: How One Phone Call Led U.S. To Bin Laden's Doorstep
...
It took years of work for intelligence agencies to identify the courier's real name, which officials are not disclosing. When they did identify him, he was nowhere to be found. The CIA's sources didn't know where he was hiding. Bin Laden was famously insistent that no phones or computers be used near him, so the eavesdroppers at the National Security Agency kept coming up cold.

Then in the middle of last year, the courier had a telephone conversation with someone who was being monitored by U.S. intelligence, according to an American official, who like others interviewed for this story spoke only on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive operation. The courier was located somewhere away from bin Laden's hideout when he had the discussion, but it was enough to help intelligence officials locate and watch him.

In August 2010, the courier unknowingly led authorities to a compound in the northeast Pakistani town of Abbottabad, where al-Libi had once lived. The walls surrounding the property were as high as 18 feet and topped with barbed wire. Intelligence officials had known about the house for years, but they always suspected that bin Laden would be surrounded by heavily armed security guards. Nobody patrolled the compound in Abbottabad.

In fact, nobody came or went. And no telephone or Internet lines ran from the compound. The CIA soon believed that bin Laden was hiding in plain sight, in a hideout especially built to go unnoticed. But since bin Laden never traveled and nobody could get onto the compound without passing through two security gates, there was no way to be sure.

Despite that uncertainty, intelligence officials realized this could represent the best chance ever to get to bin Laden. They decided not to share the information with anyone, including staunch counterterrorism allies such as Britain, Canada and Australia.

By mid-February, the officials were convinced a "high-value target" was hiding in the compound. President Barack Obama wanted to take action.
...
Thanks to sophisticated satellite monitoring, U.S. forces knew they'd likely find bin Laden's family on the second and third floors of one of the buildings on the property, officials said.
...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/02/osama-bin-laden-dead-one-phone-call_n_856674.html

CIA watched bin Laden from Abbottabad safehouse
06-May-11, 2:55 PM

ABBOTTABAD/NEW YORK - Extensive surveillance of Osama bin Laden's hideout from a nearby CIA safe house in Abbottabad led to his killing in a Navy SEALs operation, U.S. officials said, a revelation likely to further embarrass Pakistan's spy agency and strain ties.

The U.S. officials, quoted by the Washington Post on Friday, said the safe house was the base for an intelligence-gathering operation that began after bin Laden's compound was discovered last August, and which was so exhaustive that the CIA asked Congress to reallocate tens of millions of dollars to fund it.

"The CIA's job was to find and fix," the Post quoted one U.S. official as saying. "The intelligence work was as complete as it was going to be, and it was the military's turn to finish the target."
...
CIA SURVEILLANCE

The CIA had spent several months monitoring bin Laden's hideout, watching and photographing residents and visitors from a rented house nearby, according to U.S. officials quoted in the New York Times and Washington Post.

Observing from behind mirrored glass, CIA officers used cameras with telephoto lenses and infrared imaging equipment to study the compound, and they used sensitive eavesdropping equipment to try to pick up voices from inside the house and to intercept cellphone calls, the New York Times said. A satellite used radar to search for possible escape tunnels.
...

http://interaksyon.net/article/3082/cia-watched-bin-laden-from-abbottabad-safehouse


CHAPTER III: Former President George W. Bush

As I wrote yesterday, the Bush family had strong business relationship with the bin Laden family; so, it has been naturally suspected that Former President Mr. George W. Bush was reluctant to take on Osama bin Laden.
The Bush Administration, and the Killing of Osama bin Laden
by PEJMAN YOUSEFZADEH on MAY 5, 2011
...
but as Paul Miller notes, a considerable amount of credit should in fact go to the 43rd President and his team, as well as other predecessors of President Obama:

Abbottabad was not the first widely-reported Navy SEAL incursion into Pakistan. Bush authorized a raid on the town of Angor Adda in September 2008 in pursuit of al-Qaida targets. The raid went poorly — it was undertaken during Ramadan, when civilians were awake and feasting at night-Pakistani officials lashed out, and ground incursions were halted. But the precedent was set.

http://www.chequerboard.org/2011/05/the-bush-administration-and-the-killing-of-osama-bin-laden/

The Curious Bush/Bin Laden Symbiosis
By Robert Parry (A Special Report)
May 7, 2011
...
Although Bush talked tough about getting bin Laden "dead or alive," he consistently failed to follow through. In November 2001, when bin Laden and his top lieutenants were cornered at the Tora Bora mountain range in eastern Afghanistan, Bush ordered the U.S. military to prematurely pivot toward planning the next war with Iraq.

According to a later Senate Foreign Relations Committee report, Bush's order to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to freshen up the plans for an Iraq invasion literally pulled Gen. Tommy Franks, head of the Central Command, away from planning the assault on Tora Bora.

The White House also rebuffed CIA appeals for the dispatch of 1,000 Marines to cut off bin Laden's escape routes, the report said. Denied the extra troops to catch bin Laden, U.S. Special Forces couldn’t nab the terrorist leader before he made his getaway to Pakistan. [See Consortiumnews.com’s "Finishing a Job: Obama Gets Osama."]

The hunt for bin Laden was soon put on the back burner. As the Washington Post reported on Friday, "A few months after Tora Bora, as part of the preparation for war in Iraq, the Bush administration pulled out many of the Special Operations and CIA forces that had been searching for bin Laden in Afghanistan, according to several U.S officials who served at the time."

Just six months after 9/11 and three months after bin Laden evaded capture at Tora Bora, Bush personally began downplaying the importance of capturing al-Qaeda's leader. "I don't know where he is," Bush told a news conference. "I really just don't spend that much time on him, to be honest with you."
...
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2011/050711.html

The Osama Bin Laden Operation: Credit Where Credit's Due
Posted on May 3, 2011

Now take a look at George W. Bush's pursuit of Bin Laden. From the article "Obama Succeeded Where Bush Failed: Osama Bin Laden Rhetoric And Reality" by Dan Froomkin:
- BUSH RANCH (AUGUST/2001): The unsuccessful attempts to engage Bush culminated in a briefing he got while vacationing on his Texas ranch. As investigative reporter Ron Suskind reported in his book, "The One Percent Doctrine," an unnamed CIA operative flew to Crawford to call the president's attention personally to the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo titled Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S. "All right," Suskind reported Bush saying after hearing out the operative. "You've covered your ass, now."

- TORA BORA (DEC/2001): After the invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban government quickly fell and al Qaeda retreated into the hills. But in December 2001, when bin Laden was unquestionably within reach of U.S. troops in the mountains of Tora Bora, Bush didn't pull the trigger.

- (2001 – 2004): Then for more than three years, Bush treated bin Laden a lot like the wizards in the Harry Potter books treat He Who Must Not Be Named (Dan Froomkin | WaPo): Since the beginning of 2003, in fact, Bush has mentioned bin Laden's name on only 10 occasions. And on six of those occasions it was because he was asked a direct question. In addition, there were four times when Bush was asked about bin Laden directly but was able to answer without mentioning bin Laden's name himself. Not once during that period has he talked about bin Laden at any length, or said anything substantive. During the same period, for comparison purposes, Bush has mentioned former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein on approximately 300 occasions.

- (SUMMER/2005): Bush started invoking bin Laden again — but this time, to win support for his Iraq policy, which was very much on the ropes. "Hear the words of Osama bin Laden,” Bush said, "‘This Third World War is raging' in Iraq."

- (2006): on the stump for his fellow Republicans, Bush was citing bin Laden extensively. The president cast bin Laden as the oracular leader of a global movement, and warned of the possibility of an Islamic caliphate "stretching from Europe to North Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia" — an unsubstantiated fantasy with only one thing going for it: It served the political agendas of both men. Meanwhile, in an Oval Office session that same month, Bush told to a group of conservative columnists that focusing on bin Laden didn't fit with his military plans. Putting "100,000 of our special forces stomping through Pakistan in order to find bin Laden is just simply not the strategy that will work," he explained.

- (POST ELECTION/2008): Yet, in his attempts to persuade the voting public of the dangers it faced, Bush gave bin Laden exactly the attention he seemed to crave. After the 2008 presidential election, during which politicians from both parties publicly renounced him, Bush finally admitted some regret in an ABC News interview. "Do I wish we had brought Osama bin Laden to justice? Sure,"Bush said. "But he's not leading a lot of parades these days."

http://underthemountainbunker.com/2011/05/03/the-osama-bin-laden-operation-credit-where-credits-due/


CHAPTER IV: Pakistani Authorities

As I wrote a few days ago, Pakistan was in a war on terror while competing militarily with India.

A higher rate of illiteracy adds another burden on the crippled nation while Saudi Arabia has supplied big aid for promotion of its version of Islam in Pakistan.
Bin Laden's stay at Abbottabad facilitated by ISI's "willful blindness": Ex-CIA officer
By ANI – Sat, May 7, 2011
...
Ex- CIA officer Art Keller, who worked on the hunt for Bin Laden from a compound in Pakistan's Waziristan region in 2006, said that the most wanted terrorist's choice of the garrison town of Abbottabad as a refuge in 2005 raised serious questions, The New York Times reports.
Keller said that Bin Laden certainly knew of the concentration of military institutions, officers and retirees in the town- including some from the ISI directorate.

And because the military has also been a target of militant attacks in recent years, the town has a higher level of security awareness, checkpoints and street surveillance than others.
If Bin Laden wanted to relocate in a populated area of Pakistan to avoid US drone attacks, he had many choices, said Keller, raising the question as to why the Al Qaeda chief would choose to live in Abbottabad, unless he had some assurance of protection or patronage from military or intelligence officers.

"At best, it was willful blindness on the part of the ISI," Keller said. "Willful blindness is a survival mechanism in Pakistan."

The trove of information taken by US commandos from Bin Laden's compound following the raid may answer some of these questions, and perhaps even solve the puzzle of where he has been in recent years, the report said.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/bin-ladens-stay-abbottabad-facilitated-isis-willful-blindness-074615709.html


CHAPTER V: Saudi Arabia

What are they protecting in Saudi Arabia? Their version of Islam? Or their own wealth yet to be distributed among poor Muslims in the whole world?
THE COMPLETE 9/11 TIMELINE: INTRODUCTION, CREDITS AND LINKS
By Paul Thompson
...
September 20, 2001 (B): President Bush states: "From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." Shortly thereafter, Bush says: "As far as the Saudi Arabians go, they've been nothing but cooperative," and "[Am] I pleased with the actions of Saudi Arabia? I am." However, several experts continue to claim Saudi Arabia is being "completely unsupportive" and is giving "zero cooperation" to the 9/11 investigation. Saudi Arabia refuses to help the US trace the names and other background information on the 15 Saudi hijackers. One former US official says, "They knew that once we started asking for a few traces the list would grow... It's better to shut it down right away." [Los Angeles Times, 10/13/01, New Yorker, 10/16/01]

The Saudi government continues to be uncooperative, and the US government continues to downplay this (see Early December 2001 (B), November 2002 and November 26, 2002).
...
November 22, 2002 (B): 9/11 victims' relatives add 50 defendants to the 100 defendants previously named in their $1 trillion lawsuit against Saudi citizens and organizations (see August 15, 2002). New defendants include Saudi Interior Minister Prince Naif and the Saudi American Bank, that nation's second largest financial institution. Also named is Mohammed Hussein al-Amoudi, a billionaire Saudi businessman (see August 13, 1996 and Early December 2001 (B)). He is alleged to have directed the Kenya branch of al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, which was banned in Kenya after the bombing of the US embassy there in 1998 (see August 7, 1998). The Bosnia and Somalia branches of the charity have been designated terrorist entities by the US. [Wall Street Journal, 11/22/02] Al-Amoudi is also on a secret United Nations list of al-Qaeda financiers (see November 26, 2002).

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/timeline/AAsaudi.html


*** *** *** ***


Now it is time to think who has been behind Osama bin Laden?

Is it CIA, Former President Mr. George W. Bush, Pakistani Authorities, or Saudi Arabia?

I think we have still time needed for our deliberation, though the year 2012 is coming step by step closer.



(However, this war on the enemy of Allah looks like wanting a beauty of the Arabic or American sort, since it has been so stupid and as dry as dust.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4a_1UhwgFU&feature=related)