Cat in the Bag

It's interesting that the ISI raided the Hotel bin Laden in 2003 looking for KSM's replacement, al Libi. Earlier this year, the ISI raided another house in Abbottobad to grab a notorious Southeast Asian AQ terrorist:

The run of good luck had ended for Umar Patek, an Al Qaeda-linked Indonesian militant who for 10 years had been on the run from a $1 million American bounty on his head, for allegedly helping build the bombs used in the 2002 bombings of nightclubs in Bali that killed 202 people.

Pakistani officials had kept Patek's detention on Jan. 25 secret until two weeks ago, when the Associated Press first revealed word of it. But until now, where or how one of the biggest terror arrests under the Obama administration went down was not publicly known.

Add to that the Wiki Leak document mentioning Abbottobad and it's clearly evident the place was about to get noticed and Obama's decision time was running out. Whether it required blowing off the last nine holes to do so is anyone's guess (accusatory stories without known sources are often slanderous, such as ones mentioning plastic turkeys and GD pieces of paper, so grain of salt warning).

The more interesting thing about the Hotel bin Laden raid might be the treasure trove of intelligence garnered in the sweep. What would happen if something on those files pointed the wrong way, say towards the 1998 indictment the feds now want to quietly retire?

Turning to a trusted source--Wiki Leaks--(presumably unfiltered), how about this nugget from one of the recent Gitmo leaks:

A former Guantanamo detainee “was identified as an Iraqi intelligence officer who relocated to Afghanistan (AF) in 1998 where he served as a senior Taliban Intelligence Directorate officer in Mazar-E-Sharif,” according to a recently leaked assessment written by American intelligence analysts. The former detainee, an Iraqi named Jawad Jabber Sadkhan, “admittedly forged official documents and reportedly provided liaison between the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq.” Sadkhan’s al Qaeda ties reached all the way to Osama bin Laden, according to the intelligence assessment. He reportedly received money from Osama bin Laden both before and after the September 11 attacks.

Similar to other ex Iraqi military officers working with AQ this guy could have dumped Saddam for the cause. Then again maybe not:

An Uzbek named Oybek Jamoldinivich Jabbarov, told authorities that Sadkhan “admitted working as a liaison between [the] Taliban Intelligence Directorate and Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein.” Jabbarov explained that Sadkhan and another Iraqi once held at Guantanamo, Hassan Abdul Said, “traveled between Iraq and Afghanistan ferrying unidentified supplies from Iraq through Iran on multiple occasions.” Sadkhan “would receive money from the Taliban in exchange for these supplies.”

The 9/11 Commission surely couldn't find any of these ties but surely all involved would have gone to great lengths to hide any if they existed. Including a few commissioners, perhaps.

They also couldn't find any overt ties to Iran but hinted that some might have existed. Apparently that 1998 indictment mentioning an arrangement with Tehran wasn't enough to dispose them of their "rootless, stateless" description of AQ. Wonder what they think about bin Laden spending the past 6 years a hop-skip-and an RPG round away from the Pakistani West Point? Does rootless and stateless also include proxy for hire?

Just imagine some sort of state-sponsor ties getting revealed in the UBL trove, especially to Iraq. Wouldn't it spell big trouble for the One going into 2012? Such a cat would be very hard to walk back, seeing as how the same man rose to power largely on the premise that Iraq was a dumb war and later doubled down on that to beat Hillary. He is of course the man in charge of the classification. But he's not in charge of Wiki Leaks. A certain cat might enjoy watching that.