The bin Laden Seal Team was prepared to fight their way out of Pakistan

In an interesting article the New York Times today wrote

WASHINGTON — President Obama insisted that the assault force hunting down Osama bin Laden last week be large enough to fight its way out of Pakistan if confronted by hostile local police officers and troops, senior administration and military officials said Monday.

In revealing additional details about planning for the mission, senior officials also said that two teams of specialists were on standby: One to bury Bin Laden if he was killed, and a second composed of lawyers, interrogators and translators in case he was captured alive. That team was set to meet aboard a Navy ship, most likely the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson in the North Arabian Sea.

Mr. Obama’s decision to increase the size of the force sent into Pakistan shows that he was willing to risk a military confrontation with a close ally in order to capture or kill the leader of Al Qaeda.

Add this to the fact that Pakistan was not trusted with the news that American troops were going into Abbotabad to get bin Laden and that someone in Pakistan has released the name of the U.S. CIA chief of station in Pakistan to the local press in retaliation for the raid on Abbotabad and it's pretty clear that Pakistan and the U.S. are not on very good terms right now.

Very probably this demonstrates that there are major elements inside Pakistan who support the Taliban and al Qaeda and oppose the U.S. The government of Pakistan does not fully control Pakistan so it does not speak consistently.

Interview with Obama on raid against bin Laden

CBS News has released the entire interview with the President on 60 Minutes about the attack on bin Laden. Here it is:



[ h/t to Steve Benen at Washington Monthly.]

Bin Laden dead! ABC News has video of the compound.

OK. The reports are that Osama bin Laden is dead, killed by a Navy Seal Team operating with the CIA as the result of years of Intelligence gathering and analysis.

Several points seem very important.

• This is a large compound, reputedly the largest building in the neighborhood.
• The compound is located abut 1000 feet from the Pakistani Military Academy and roughly 150 kilometers (about 90 miles) north and west of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.
• The Pakistani military is considered a state within a state in Pakistan. The degree to which the military follows orders from the civilian government is very questionable. Very important things to consider:
  • The Pakistani military controls the Pakistani nuclear weapons.
  • The Pakistani Interservices Intelligence organization (ISI) is essentially a military organization.
  • I am no expert in Pakistan. Take the following as speculation.
    • As a nation Pakistan was created when the British drew the borders as they withdrew from India. The name, Pakistan, is made up and the area was actually a variety of tribes whose primary similarity was that they all shared Islam. The result is a nation-state that is unified primarily by religion (Islam) and by fear of invasion from its neighbors (India, China and Afghanistan.)
    • The Pakistani military would appear to be the central national institution of Pakistan rather than the civilian government.
    • This year Pakistan has complained about the American use of armed drones to attack Taliban members who were operating across the border from Pakistan. This is somehow connected to the fact that the American CIA Chief of Station was forced to leave Pakistan early this year. It is also connected to the arrest of the CIA contractor Ray Davis.

From ABC News via Talking Points Memo:



 



While the death of bin Laden is great news, everything surrounding this event raises questions. The relationship between the United States and Pakistan is extremely uncertain. But since the Mumbai Terrorist attack was planned inside and launched from Pakistan there should be no doubt that Pakistan as a nation is a questionable ally to America, to India and to Afghanistan.

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Anyone reading this should keep in mind that I am NOT an expert on Pakistan. I have no information that I have not obtained from the news media and from personal study on how nation-states are unified. I offer my speculations primarily as questions to be further explored.

The high point of American power

Consider this:

9/11 marked the high-point of American power. Immediately following the attacks, virtually the entire world expressed its sympathy and solidarity with us. Far from being seen as holy warriors, those who attacked us were seen as monsters, utterly indifferent to the loss of innocent life. It was only after Bush responded by lashing out and killing so many more innocents in reaction that 9/11 turned into a malevolently clever attack. It was Bush, not al Qaida, that did deep and potentially irreversable damage to America. Without Bush's response, al Qaida could have been brought to justice with the whole world watching, and condemning them with one voice. It was Bush's enraged, intemperate, delusional response that transformed bin Laden from a shadowy monster into a credible world figure who millions could see as someone to be trusted and followed.

This comes form Paul Rosenberg at OpenLeft.

There's a very good reason why bin Laden made threats against America right before the 2004 Presidential election. Bin Laden understood who created him as a world power. It was George Bush. And he wanted Bush reelected.

The reaction to 9/11 was an overreaction to the wrong threat.

So, after the attack on 9/11 what went wrong? Susan Faludi nails the problem.

The enemy that hit us on September 11 was real. But our citizenry wasn’t asked to confront a real enemy. The arrest and prosecution of our antagonists seemed to be of only secondary concern. Instead, we were enlisted in a symbolic war at home, a war to repair and restore our national myth of invincibility.

This quote is at the core of Jane Hamsher's discussion of the problem we are facing with the Bush administration and terrorism. The so-called Global War on Terrorism has been a big bait-and-switch scheme by conservatives who recognize that America no longer has the kind of international power that it had coming out of WW II.

They see much of the rest of the world catching up (and in many ways surpassing) America economically as a real decline in American power, and they have long wanted to do something about it. They saw the stalemate in Korea and then the clear military defeat in Vietnam as being symptoms of America's decline, something they blamed on the push for Civil Rights and on the raucous counterculture which did not respect their successes demonstrated by promotions in the business hierarchy.

Conservative followers are people who innately cannot deal with ambiguity. They expect The Leader to winnow down the various possible alternatives to a single idea, problem or ideology, then direct them in how to act to resolve that one defined problem or limited and related set of problems.

When that process fails, it is because people are acting "immorally" and cannot be trusted to work with them to solve "The Problem." So part of the solution is to corral the immoral people and force then to helm resolve "The Problem" or to exclude them from much of society through imprisonment or ostracism/segregation.

The big problem of America's decline over the last six decades is not one that has a clear solution. Part of the problem is that economically it has been a problem of competing nations being more successful than America so that they have grown more rapidly. But a relative decline still feels like a real decline. Part of the problem is that the social changes over the last six decades are a direct result of improved communications. The social changes are actually solutions to much older severe problems, but they force individuals to adapt to a world very unlike the one they grew up and were successful in.

The only area in which America has not declined significantly has been the ability to project military power anywhere in the world. The loss of the USSR as a competitor made much of the existing American military power redundant, so it has begun to be cut back. The attack on 9/11 offered a way to use the still overwhelming military power that American can wield.

But 9/11 itself was a new problem. It was conducted by a non-state actor. The overwhelming American military power was designed to be used against a clearly identified state enemy. Afghanistan was to some extent an appropriate target for our military forces, if used sparingly. The Taliban did control Afghanistan, and they also were allies and supporters of bin Laden's al Qaeda. The Taliban was locally disliked and fighting a civil war, so all we had to do was help the other side in an on-going war, then watch and assist as they put their own nation back together. Our military could do much of that, and the CIA's special operations people could pick and choose appropriate targets while supporting the preferred winning side in the civil war.

But Iraq was a severe overreach. Conservatives have a large set of institutions and publicity organizations designed to create simple solutions to complex and frightening problems. Their interest in the peoples in other nations are largely defined by how much money they can make trading there. Since a free-market small-government philosophy allows them to make the most money, they assume that everyone really wants their country to be run that way, and that the reason most are not is the entrenched powers of government bureaucrats and immoral people.

9/11 allowed the conservatives in the Bush administration to break the restrictive entrenched powers of government bureaucrats and use fear to get the electorate to overcome their distaste for starting an unnecessary war. Thus the preemptive invasion of Iraq. It was supposed to create a conservative free-market small-government society in the center of the Middle East and convince the rest of the nations in the Middle East how wrong they had been before and how outstanding the future in a free-market small-government mostly Libertarian society would be.

Since education hadn't overcome the entrenched interests to create this, America's very powerful military would do so. As a side effect, the reasons for terrorism would disappear. As another side-effect, the American military would be permanently located close to the Middle East oil fields after world oil passed Peak Oil. The mechanics of these things were not explained. They were just assumed to be inevitable.

As I said, conservatives work hard to apply simple answers to very complex and generally ambiguous problems.

Very few of the conservatives who made the decisions to go to war had any experience in the military or even much military education. They thought of war as being a strategic exercise like playing chess or 'Risk.' They did not accept the idea that if we attacked Iraq, even those people who were very oppressed by Saddam would be angry at the invaders first.

Then they just assumed that governments operated because the leaders wanted to oppress the people. Police existed just to oppress the Iraqis, not to stop criminals. In the Libertarian Paradise, people do not commit crimes because their reputation is too precious to them - or something. Ownership of Property is not something government makes happen. It is a natural characteristic of society given by God.

Then they assumed that a state-run economy would easily become a free-market economy when the 'dead hand of government' was removed. Again, this is a natural characteristic of society, given to men by God. No planned mechanisms would be necessary. In a free market those magicians called 'Entrepreneurs' would make all these things happen.

Hadn't Saint Ayn Rand (and Grover Norquist, her prophet) said these things were all true?

Ask the conservatives. America had gone into decline for the last sixty years after WW II because of the dead hand of government bureaucracy and immoral people. The solution was to bring back John Wayne with his six-guns, clean up the town by killing all the bad guys and everyone would ride off happily into the sunset.

9/11 was the trigger that fired off this fantasy crossbow. The constant, perhaps even growing fear of America's decline among conservatives has been the tension in that crossbow, a tension strengthened as each indicator of America's economic and moral decline was reported. Gays? Parading and demanding marriage rights? That's what happens when Blacks and Whites are allowed to marry (1967 Supreme Court decision.)

And Iraq? An easy target that our military could easily deal with, as they had proven in 1991. Oh, and they conveniently sit on top of the second largest known pool of oil in the world, so there was a reason why conservatives might even know they existed.

Simple solutions to complex problems. Terrorism isn't the threat. Big government and social immorality is. And a free-market small-government demonstration project in the Middle East was to be the solution.

So Osama bin Laden attacked the World Trade Center for the second time in 2001, and the conservatives invaded Iraq. Bin Laden wasn't the problem. America's decline because of bloated government, restrictions on business and immorality was.

Ask your frightened neighborhood conservative.

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See also Scarecrow's What Should Have Followed 9/11 at Firedoglake.

Bush cries "Wolf" again - tries to hype bin Laden threat

According to the Associate Press bush has declassified some bin Laden related Intelligence the day before he is to give a big speech on Terrorism at the Coast Guard Academy.

WASHINGTON - President Bush, trying to defend his war strategy, declassified intelligence Tuesday asserting that Osama bin Laden ordered a top lieutenant in early 2005 to form a terrorist cell that would conduct attacks outside Iraq — and that the United States should be the top target.

The information mirrored a classified bulletin from the Homeland Security Department in March 2005, reporting that bin Laden had enlisted Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, his senior operative in Iraq, to plan potential strikes in the U.S. The warning was described at the time as credible but not specific and did not prompt the administration to raise its national terror alert level.

The declassification of the intelligence came a day before Bush was scheduled to speak about terrorism at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.

There is no reason to believe that this, if true, was anything more than contingency planning on bin Laden's part. Two years ago al Qaeda was scrapping around for funds, and al Zarqawi would have been looking to al Qaeda for funding for efforts outside Iraq if he had any hot proposals.

Besides, bin Laden and al Zarqawi had a very prickly relationship, and al Zarqawi did not take orders from bin Laden. At times they agreed to work in association, but neither trusted the other much, as I understand the situation from news reports.

In short, I strongly suspect that this is simply more Bush/Cheney disinformation caused primarily by the fact that Bush's latest poll ratings are lower than a snake's belly and dropping. It's the old "Get into low poll ratings, selectively declassify some Intelligence that makes Bush look good (while keeping the rest classified) game."

How many times does the little boy have to cry "Wolf" before everyone realizes he is doing it for attention, not because he sees a wolf?

U.S.Occupation of Iraq is financially strengthening al Qaeda

The world wide effort to battle terrorist organizations had, until about a year ago, been putting great pressure al Qaeda. It was believed that al Qaeda was quite strapped for funds. According to Greg Miller at the L.A. times that ended about a year ago when Pakistan withdrew troops from the northeastern area abutting Afghanistan.

In one of the most troubling trends, U.S. officials said that Al Qaeda's command base in Pakistan is increasingly being funded by cash coming out of Iraq, where the terrorist network's operatives are raising substantial sums from donations to the anti-American insurgency as well as kidnappings of wealthy Iraqis and other criminal activity.

The influx of money has bolstered Al Qaeda's leadership ranks at a time when the core command is regrouping and reasserting influence over its far-flung network. The trend also signals a reversal in the traditional flow of Al Qaeda funds, with the network's leadership surviving to a large extent on money coming in from its most profitable franchise, rather than distributing funds from headquarters to distant cells.

The key point to look at is this:

"Iraq is a big moneymaker for them," said a senior U.S. counter-terrorism official.

This information comes from a renewal of effort by the CIA in Pakistan to target bin Laden and his deputy, al Zawahiri.

The evolving picture of Al Qaeda's finances is based in part on intelligence from an aggressive effort launched last year to intensify the pressure on Bin Laden and his senior deputies.

As part of a so-called surge in personnel, the CIA deployed as many as 50 clandestine operatives to Pakistan and Afghanistan — a dramatic increase over the number of CIA case officers permanently stationed in those countries. All of the new arrivals were given the primary objective of finding what counter-terrorism officials call "HVT1" and "HVT2." Those "high value target" designations refer to Bin Laden and Zawahiri.

The surge was part of a broader shake-up at the CIA designed to refocus on the hunt for Bin Laden, officials said. One former high-ranking agency official said the CIA had formed a task force that involved officials from all four directorates at the agency, including analysts, scientists and technical experts, as well as covert operators.

The officials were charged with reinvigorating a search that had atrophied when some U.S. intelligence assets and special forces teams were pulled out of Afghanistan in 2002 to prepare for the war with Iraq.

This is a reversal of priority for the Bush administration. Late in 2005 the CIA disbanded the special unit which had the mission of hunting Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants.

More from the LA Times Article:

In a written response to questions from The Times, the CIA said it "does not as a rule discuss publicly the details of clandestine operations," but acknowledged it had stepped up operations against Bin Laden and defended their effectiveness.

"The surge has been modest in size, here and overseas, but has added new skills and fresh thinking to the fight against a resilient and adaptive foe," CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said in the statement. "It has paid off, generating more information about Al Qaeda and helping take terrorists off the street."

The CIA spies are part of a broader espionage arsenal aimed at Bin Laden and Zawahiri that includes satellites, electronic eavesdropping stations and the unmanned airplanes.

This kind of effort is what the attack on al Qaeda after 9/11 should have looked like. Instead, for some reason the Bush administration used the opportunity to redirect American efforts in the a fruitless preemptive attack on Iraq which has reduced American security rather than increased it.

The results of the misguided decision to attack Iraq instead of al Qaeda are surprisingly expressed by President Jimmy Carter recently and published in the International Herald Tribune:

"I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history," the Nobel Peace Prize winner told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in a story that appeared in the newspaper's Saturday editions. "The overt reversal of America's basic values as expressed by previous administrations, including those of George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the most disturbing to me."

Think about that. America's values as seen to be applied around the world were one of the strongest elements that led to America's success over the Soviet Union in the Cold War. By reversing those values the Bush administration has made America a much less powerful nation in moral terms. The occupation of Iraq on no real security grounds is seen as the reversal of American moral values among other things.

The U.S. occupation of Iraq is a major element in strengthening al Qaeda, and contributes greatly to the violence in that country. Cheney, Bush and the Bush administration argues that the U.S. cannot pull out of Iraq without strengthening al Qaeda and leaving behind even greater violence and chaos than is there right now, but all fact-based indicators suggest that it is the presence of our troops which motivates much of the trouble in that country.

A good analogy might be that the U.S, troops in Iraq are the equivalent of a stick in a wasps nest being shaken around, and the wasps will continue to attack anything close to the nest until the stick is removed, at which time they will calm down.

The funds flowing from Iraq to al Qaeda is just another example of excited wasps reacting to the presence of the stick (the American troops) in Iraq. We will greatly help the iraqi people and ourselves when we remove our troops from Iraqi soil. The sooner the better. The arguments against our pull-out have little left to support them if our presence there is strengthening al Qaeda and its affiliates while it motivates Iraqis themselves to attack our troops.

Bush and Cheney have been bin Laden's greatest supporters.

Josh Marshall points out that bin Laden was trapped at Tora Bora and surrounded. But Bush was so focused on attacking Iraq that there were not enough troops available to capture or kill bin Laden when we had him.

The CIA commander, Gary Berntsen, in charge of CIA operations at Tora Bora wrote his book, Jawbreaker and clearly explained that we had bin Laden, we knew he was there, but let him go free. This is Bush's fault. Whether it was intentional, for political purposes or simply incompetence really doesn't matter much. Any or all of those motivations are possible, but it will never be known which was most important. The motivation doesn't matter. The action makes it Bush's fault.

Josh Marshall refers to the shorter Newsweek article that explains what "Jawbreaker" said.

This failure at Tora Bora was, of course, the failure that Gen. Tommy Franks got his Medal of Freedom for keeping quiet about. George Tenet (CIA Director) got his for not telling that the CIA had carefully and repeatedly told Bush, Cheney and the White House staff that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11, did not have WMDs and was no major threat to the U.S.

Franks and Bremer were two of three. At the same presentation, Jerry Bremer, who was the man in charge of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), got his Medal of Freedom for not telling who instructed him to disband the Iraqi Army and conduct the deBaathification of Iraq which worsened the occupation quite rapidly, as well as so many other screw-ups that were conducted by the CPA.

It's hard not to just keep going when describing the myriad failures and even treasons conducted by this administration. But letting bin Laden go free when he was in our grasp is one of the very largest screw-ups or treasons.

Rumor - has bin Laden died?

I have no reason the believe that this story is reliable or it is not, but some journal called "The First Post" out of the UK claims that bin Laden recently died of thypoid in a hospital in Pakistan.

The story is written by someone calling himself "Robert Fox". A quick Google Search revealed that there is a well-known journalist and broadcaster of that name who is defence correspondent for the Evening Standard as well as a senior associate fellow at the Centre for Defence Studies in King's College, London.

Here is what "the First Post" says about itself.

Read the article. See what you think. If you find any independent support for the death of bin Laden, leave me a comment or send me an email with your source and what they said. This is not yet news. It amounts to a suspicion, placed in type, without known sources.