The backstory on this will be fascinating. The event already sounds strange--killed outside a compound "deep inside" Pakistan, which doesn't look too good for the Pakistanis. It's hard to believe they acted alone, although that weird Raymond Davis incident comes to mind. Was he on the trail? We also haven't heard much about Mullah Baradar, Taliban Two, lately either. Must have been some deal struck to get this done. Hopefully it helps start a turning point in Afghanistan.
Anyway....this makes a tri-fecta of AQ/terrorists taken down in Pakistan, from Ramzi Yousef to KSM, and now bin Laden. Gun battles in safe houses. Very weird allies, these people. Now, what about the body? What do we do with it? Who will take it?
MORE 5/2/11
This raid seems to bring up a lot more questions about Pakistan than existed before, the main one being this--how does bin Laden manage to move into a fortress right down the street from Pakistan's version of West Point without the Paki's help or knowledge?
It might help to first determine their complicity in this raid. On the one hand we are being told they were involved:
Speaking to reporters at the State Department on Monday, Clinton thanked Pakistan for its cooperation and said the country "has contributed greatly to our efforts to dismantle al-Qaida." She said that "in fact, cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound in which he was hiding."While on the other we are being told they weren't:
The raid by elite US troops was kept secret from the government of Pakistan. Only a tight circle within the Obama Administration knew of the operation.Former president Musharraf also seemed to indicate there was no coordination, for what that's worth. So UBL is dead but we're back to square one as to information, with the Paki's denying and the administration contradicting itself.
Among the speculative possibilities: the chaos is by design in order to allow Pakistan to keep getting their payoff and fool their militant population into believing they are so incompetent as to not know we were coming, while in reality they led us to the compound for some kind of trade. Another is that they were really taken by surprise and are now quaking in their boots over what comes next. If they harbored UBL (after allowing A.Q. Khan to roam around the Islamic world passing out nuke secrets) that sorta puts them squarely into the Axis of Evil category, doesn't it?
2 comments:
The house where Osama bin Laden was staying was a former Pakistani ISI safe house, built by the Paks. They had to know Osama was there, no doubt.
Debbie
Right Truth
http://www.righttruth.typepad.com
No, there's no doubt, at least in my mind. Believing otherwise would mean Bin Laden is the gutsiest terrorist ever and/or the Pakistanis are the stupidest country, ever. Since UBL never put himself in the firing line (had others do it) and Pakistan has consistently eaten our lunch in the great chess game, I feel good about my feeling.
So if he WAS there as a guest, or maybe like his son and wife in Iran, under 'house arrest', that means they had him as a chip. What good is a chip if nobody knows you have one? Guess number two--this was arranged as part of a deal to get us the hell out of Afghanistan.
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