BIN LADEN IS DEAD!

27 comments

• 

  Kyaemon

  May 2, 2011 at 7:48 am

  Dear Thugyi

  I wonder why this posting with pictures didn’t come up on the front page (Home Page). Please take a look. Thanks.

  Log in to Reply

• 

  Kyaemon

  May 2, 2011 at 4:19 pm

  Thank you, dear Thugyi.

  Log in to Reply

• 

  Kyaemon

  May 3, 2011 at 5:47 pm

  Copy and Paste the link below to your browser:
  The following article has a slideshow and two videos and photos.

  A Look at bin Laden’s Compound

  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703922804576300630111234592.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

  ABBOTTABAD, Pakistan—Osama bin Laden went to great lengths to shield his home here from intruding eyes, offering some indication of how the world’s most-wanted fugitive managed to hide in a city of 500,000 people.

  As authorities permitted reporters to reach the compound walls for the first time Tuesday, what appeared to be remnants of the attack by U.S. Navy Seals lay scattered in the neighboring property: mechanical parts stamped with serial numbers, coils wrapped in material and broken glass.

  A helicopter involved in the raid experienced mechanical failure and was destroyed at the site by U.S. forces. Pakistani authorities cordoned off the area immediately and later removed the bulk of the wreckage.

  Abbottabad, a military-dominated town a two-hour drive from Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, is a well-to-do place with Standard Chartered bank ATMs and Shell gas stations. It has one of Pakistan’s best golf courses, frequented by former generals, and the British-era St. Luke’s Church. Mountains ring the city: Bin Laden would have been able to look out over lightly forested hills strewn with rocky outcrops.

  A 12-year-old boy who lives near the building where Osama bin Laden was killed tells of his experiences meeting the family. Video courtesy of Reuters.

  Bin Laden’s home was in a suburb close to the elite Pakistan Military Academy. High walls topped with barbed wire and a large green gate block a clear view of the compound from most vantage points.

  The size and fortress-like nature of the compound stood out in the area, though many of the houses in Abbottabad, built by ex-servicemen and business people, also have high walls. Homes are separated by empty plots where people grow crops like potatoes and wheat.

  The top two floors of bin Laden’s three-story house are visible above the high perimeter walls. The house, built in 2005, appears run-down. Grass grows off a ledge below the roof. The outside walls are scarred with damp and mold. A hand-painted advertisement for Jamia Girls College, in Urdu and English, decorates one of the outside walls of the compound.

  One of the awnings on an outdoor window hung down at an angle, perhaps after being damaged during the attack. Otherwise, the house stood intact, with few signs a major firefight only two days earlier.

  There were no visible airconditioning units to keep residents cool through the Pakistan summer. At the back of the house was a small, private triangular garden with a towering fir tree, where bin Laden could have gotten air without being seen by outsiders…..

  Log in to Reply

• 

  Kyaemon

  May 3, 2011 at 6:39 pm

  Many Videos inside this link:

  How Bin Laden met his end

  http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-bin-laden-raid-20110503,0,7245803.story?track=rss

  By Bob Drogin, Christi Parsons and Ken Dilanian, Los Angeles Times

  May 3, 2011
  Reporting from Washington—
  The nail-biting moment, the period when absolute disaster loomed, came at the very start.

  About two dozen Navy SEALs and other U.S. commandos were supposed to rope down into a Pakistani residential compound from a pair of specially modified Black Hawk helicopters in the predawn hours Monday, race into two buildings, and capture or kill Osama bin Laden. One chopper stalled as it hovered between the compound’s high walls, unable to sustain its lift, and thudded into the dirt.

  Half a world away in the White House Situation Room, the president and his war council crowded around a table covered with briefing papers and keyboards and watched nervously as video feeds streamed in. The special forces team needed a rescue chopper. Gunfire was blazing around them. No one wanted another “Black Hawk Down” debacle.

  Photos: Osama bin Laden dead

  “A lot of people were holding their breath,” recalled John Brennan, the president’s counter-terrorism advisor.

  The extraordinary drama surrounding the killing of Bin Laden encompassed the White House, the CIA and other arms of America’s vast national security apparatus. The tale is part detective story, part spy thriller. But the decade-old manhunt for the Al Qaeda leader ultimately came down to a three-story building on a dirt road in the Pakistani army town of Abbottabad, north of Islamabad.

  If the raid went wrong, President Obama would bear the blame. He had vetoed a plan to obliterate the compound with an airstrike. Obama wanted to be certain he had Bin Laden, and there was no guarantee that a smoking crater would yield proof. He had asked for a bolder plan, one that would allow the U.S. to take custody of Bin Laden or his body. It posed far more risk.

  As reports flowed into the White House, the commando team methodically swept through the compound. Bin Laden and his family lived on the second and third floors of the largest structure, U.S. intelligence indicated. Officials said that when the commandos found him there, he was armed and “resisted.” They shot him in the head and chest.

  There were conflicting reports Monday about whether Bin Laden had fired at the Americans, or whether he had tried to use a woman as a human shield. His wife, who called out Bin Laden’s name during the fight, was wounded in the leg during the battle and may have tried to interpose herself between the troops and her husband, but Bin Laden was not hiding behind her, a senior U.S. official said.

  Within 20 minutes, the fighting had ended. In 20 more, the military had flown in a backup helicopter. The commandos questioned several people in the compound to confirm Bin Laden’s identity, detonated explosives to destroy the crippled Black Hawk and then departed. As they flew off, they carried with them the bloodied corpse of the tall man with a thick beard.

  In addition, the raiding party took “a large volume of information” from the compound, a U.S. official said, “so large that the CIA is standing up a task force” to examine it for clues. The material, which includes digital and paper files, could be a treasure trove of new intelligence about Al Qaeda, the official said. Among other things, officials hope the information will lead them to Al Qaeda’s other leaders.

  They left behind the bodies of four other people killed in the raid — a courier they had been tracking for years, his brother, one of Bin Laden’s sons and an unidentified woman.

  The Pakistani government, which had not been informed of the raid in advance, scrambled aircraft in response to the firefight, but the low-flying U.S. helicopters quickly flew out of Pakistani airspace.

  Within hours, Bin Laden’s remains had been given funeral rites designed by the military to be consistent with Muslim practices and dropped into the northern Arabian Sea from the hangar deck of the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson. The FBI quickly slapped “Deceased” on its Internet posters for the world’s most wanted terrorist.

  Bin Laden had vanished after the Sept. 11 attacks of 2001. U.S. military commanders had failed to close the noose around his Afghan stronghold in Tora Bora, and the Al Qaeda leader and his aides somehow hiked across the rugged border region into Pakistan.

  Once or twice a year, Bin Laden popped up on a new video or audio recording, mocking America’s leaders and urging his faithful to follow his path. They did so with bombings in London, Madrid, Bali and elsewhere.

  The CIA knew that Bin Laden had stopped using cellphones and other electronic or digital communications long ago to evade U.S. intelligence. He relied on human couriers instead to get his videos and other messages out to underlings and followers.

  Find the courier, the thinking went, and they’d ultimately find Bin Laden.

  Interrogators at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay were pushed to ask Al Qaeda suspects in custody about possible couriers. The information came in pieces, a U.S. official said, and it took years.

  Log in to Reply

• 

  zoe

  May 4, 2011 at 4:54 am

  Thank you for your posts and links on Bin Laden from various media. It’s a treasure for those who are interested on this subject to find them all in one site . Kudos to you and Mandalay Gazette…

  Log in to Reply

• 

  Kyaemon

  May 4, 2011 at 6:54 pm

  Zoe

  I appreciate your wise observation and nice comments.

  Log in to Reply

• 

  Kyaemon

  May 5, 2011 at 10:04 am

  REUTERS BOUGHT PHOTOS OF MEN KILLED IN BIN LADEN COMPOUND.

  WARNING: THE PHOTOS ARE GRAPHIC AND DISTURBING.

  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703937104576303461876441454.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703937104576303461876441454.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

  TO SEE PICS, CLIC THE VIDEO

  6 PICTURES

  Log in to Reply

• 

  Kyaemon

  May 5, 2011 at 8:41 pm

  Account Tells of One-Sided Battle in Bin Laden Raid

  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/us/politics/05binladen.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1304625652-YuBBrXFVHV3JNr+84H9nLg

  WASHINGTON — President Obama decided Wednesday not to release graphic photographs of Osama bin Laden’s corpse, as new details emerged about the raid on Bin Laden’s fortified compound that differed from the administration’s initial account of the nearly 40-minute operation.
  Mr. Obama, after a brief but intense debate within his war council, concluded that making the images of Bin Laden public could incite violence against Americans and would do little to persuade skeptics that the founder of Al Qaeda had been killed, White House officials said.
  The new details suggested that the raid, though chaotic and bloody, was extremely one-sided, with a force of more than 20 Navy Seal members quickly dispatching the handful of men protecting Bin Laden.
  Administration officials said that the only shots fired by those in the compound came at the beginning of the operation, when Bin Laden’s trusted courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, opened fire from behind the door of the guesthouse adjacent to the house where Bin Laden was hiding.
  After the Seal members shot and killed Mr. Kuwaiti and a woman in the guesthouse, the Americans were never fired upon again.
  This account differs from an official version of events issued by the Pentagon on Tuesday, and read by the White House spokesman, Jay Carney, which said the Seal members “were engaged in a firefight throughout the operation.”
  In a television interview on PBS on Tuesday, Leon E. Panetta, the director of the C.I.A., said, “There were some firefights that were going on as these guys were making their way up the staircase of that compound.”
  Administration officials said the official account of events has changed over the course of the week because it has taken time to get thorough after-action reports from the Seal team. And, they added, because the Special Operations troops had been fired upon as soon as they touched down in the compound, they were under the assumption that everyone inside was armed.
  “They were in a threatening and hostile environment the entire time,” one American official said.
  When the commandos moved into the main house, they saw the courier’s brother, who they believed was preparing to fire a weapon. They shot and killed him. Then, as they made their way up the stairs of the house, officials said they killed Bin Laden’s son Khalid as he lunged toward the Seal team.
  When the commandos reached the top floor, they entered a room and saw Osama bin Laden with an AK-47 and a Makarov pistol in arm’s reach. They shot and killed him, as well as wounding a woman with him.
  The firefight over and Bin Laden dead, the team found a trove of information and had the time to remove much of it: about 100 thumb drives, DVDs and computer disks, along with 10 computer hard drives and 5 computers. There were also piles of paper documents in the house.
  The White House declined to release any additional details about the operation, saying that further information would jeopardize the military’s ability to conduct clandestine operations in the future. The administration’s reticence came after it was forced on Tuesday to correct parts of its initial account of the raid, including assertions that Bin Laden had used his wife as a “human shield.”
  “We’ve revealed a lot of information; we’ve been as forthcoming with facts as we can be,” Mr. Carney said.
  Mr. Carney said the president expressed doubts early on about releasing the photos, but consulted his senior advisers. All of them, Mr. Carney said, voiced concerns about the risks. Based on its monitoring of worldwide reaction to the announcement of Bin Laden’s death, Mr. Carney said, the administration also concluded that most people viewed the reports of his death as credible and that publicizing photos would do little to sway those who believed it was a hoax.
  Mr. Obama was direct in an interview with the CBS News program “60 Minutes,” to be broadcast Sunday, according to a transcript released by the network. “It is very important for us to make sure that very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence — as a propaganda tool.”
  “That’s not who we are,” Mr. Obama added. “You know, we don’t trot out this stuff as trophies.” He said, “We don’t need to spike the football.”
  “Certainly there’s no doubt among Al Qaeda members that he is dead,” he said on “60 Minutes.” “And so we don’t think that a photograph in and of itself is going to make any difference. There are going to be some folks who deny it. The fact of the matter is, you will not see Bin Laden walking on this earth again.”
  The deliberations were reminiscent of Mr. Obama’s decision in May 2009 to fight the release of photos documenting the abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan by American military personnel. The administration said originally that it would not oppose releasing the pictures, but the president decided he would fight making them public after his military commanders warned that the images could provoke a reaction against troops in those countries.
  The White House said Mr. Obama would take part in a wreath-laying ceremony at the site of the Sept. 11 memorial in Lower Manhattan on Thursday. He is also to meet with relatives of the victims of the terrorist attacks, but he will not make a speech. The next day, he is to travel to Fort Campbell in Kentucky to speak to troops returning from Afghanistan.
  Seeking to quell any legal questions about the raid, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said, “It was justified as an act of national self-defense,” citing Bin Laden’s role as the architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
  There were divided opinions on Capitol Hill about the photographs, with some lawmakers saying the United States needed to show proof that Bin Laden was dead, while others worried about the possibility of blowback against American troops.
  “The whole purpose of sending our troops into the compound, rather than an aerial bombardment, was to obtain indisputable evidence of Bin Laden’s death,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. “The best way to protect and defend our interests overseas is to prove that fact to the rest of the world.”

  Log in to Reply

• 

  Kyaemon

  May 6, 2011 at 9:02 am

  Al-Qaida inner circle: where are they now?
  Key figures in Osama bin Laden’s web of connections and their whereabouts

  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2011/may/02/al-qaida-osama-bin-laden?intcmp=239

  click the next button below the pictures

  Log in to Reply

• 

  Kyaemon

  May 6, 2011 at 5:38 pm

  Bin Laden’s wife spent 5 years in Pakistani house

  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110506/ap_on_re_as/as_pakistan_bin_laden

  ISLAMABAD – One of three wives living with Osama bin Laden told Pakistani interrogators she had been staying in the al-Qaida chief’s hideout for five years, and could be a key source of information about how he avoided capture for so long, a Pakistani intelligence official said Friday.

  In its first confirmation of bin Laden’s death, al-Qaida warned of retaliation in an Internet statement, saying Americans’ “happiness will turn to sadness.”

  Bin Laden’s wife, identified as Yemeni-born Amal Ahmed Abdullfattah, said she never left the upper floors of the house the entire time she was there.

  She and bin Laden’s other two wives are being interrogated in Pakistan after they were taken into custody following Monday’s American raid on bin Laden’s compound in the town of Abbottabad. Pakistani authorities are also holding eight or nine children who were found there after the U.S. commandos left.

  Given shifting and incomplete accounts from U.S. officials about what happened during the raid, testimony from bin Laden’s wives may be significant in unveiling details about the operation.

  Their accounts could also help show how bin Laden spent his time and managed to stay hidden, living in a large house close to a military academy in a garrison town, a two-and-a-half hours’ drive from the capital, Islamabad.

  The Pakistani official said CIA officers had not been given access to the women in custody. Already tense military and intelligence relations between the United States and Pakistan have been further strained after the helicopter-borne raid, which many Pakistanis see as a violation of their country’s sovereignty.

  The proximity of bin Laden’s hideout to the military garrison and the Pakistani capital has also raised suspicions in Washington that bin Laden may have been protected by Pakistani security forces while on the run.

  Risking more tensions, missiles fired from a U.S. drone killed 15 people, including foreign militants, in North Waziristan, an al-Qaida and Taliban hotspot close to Afghanistan, Pakistani officials said. Such attacks were routine last year, but their frequency has dropped this year amid opposition by the Pakistani security establishment.

  Pakistan’s army, a key U.S. ally in the Afghanistan war, on Thursday threatened to review cooperation with Washington if it stages anymore attacks like the one that killed bin Laden.

  The Pakistani intelligence official did not say Friday whether the Yemeni wife has said that bin Laden was also living there since 2006. “We are still getting information from them,” he said.

  Another security official said the wife was shot in the leg during the operation and did not witness her husband being killed. He also said one of bin Laden’s eldest daughters had said she witnessed the Americans killing her father.

  Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to give their names to the media.

  Meanwhile, Pakistan’s intelligence agency has concluded that bin Laden was “cash strapped” in his final days, according to a briefing given by two senior military officials. Disputes over money between the terror leader and his No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, led al-Qaida to split into two factions five or six years ago, with the larger faction controlled by al-Zawahri, they said.

  The officers spoke to a small group of Pakistani reporters late Thursday. Their comments were confirmed for The Associated Press by the same security official who spoke about the shooting of bin Laden’s wife and who was present at Thursday’s briefing.

  The officer didn’t provide details or elaborate on how his agency made the conclusions about bin Laden’s financial situation or the split with his deputy, al-Zawahri. The al-Qaida chief apparently had lived without any guards at the Abbottabad compound or loyalists nearby to take up arms in his defense.

  The image of Pakistan’s intelligence agency has been battered at home and abroad in the wake of the raid that killed bin Laden. Portraying him as isolated and weak could be aimed at trying to create an impression that a failure to spot him was not so important.

  Documents taken from the house by American commandos showed that bin Laden was planning to hit America, however, including a plan for derailing an American train on the upcoming 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The confiscated materials reveal the rail attack was planned as of February 2010.

  Late Thursday, two Pakistani officials cited bin Laden’s wives and children as saying he and his associates had not offered any “significant resistance” when the American commandos entered the compound, in part because the assailants had thrown “stun bombs” that disorientated them.

  One official said Pakistani authorities found an AK-47 and a pistol in the house belonging to those inside, with evidence that one bullet had been fired from the rifle.

  “That was the level of resistance” they put up, said the official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

  His account is roughly consistent with the most recent one given by U.S. officials, who now say only one of the five people killed in the raid was armed and fired any shots, a striking departure from the intense and prolonged firefight described earlier by the White House and others in the administration.

  U.S. officials say four men were killed alongside bin Laden, including one of his sons.

  Reflecting the anger in Pakistan, hundreds of members of radical Islamic parties protested Friday in several Pakistan cities against the American raid and in favor of bin Laden. Many of the people chanted “Osama is alive” and blasted the U.S. for violating the country’s sovereignty.

  The largest rally took place in the town of Khuchlak in southwestern Baluchistan province, where about 500 people attended.

  “America is celebrating Osama bin Laden’s killing, but it will be a temporary celebration,” said Abdullah Sittar Chishti, a member of the Jamiat Ulema Islam party who attended the rally in Khuchlak. “After the martyrdom of Osama, billions, trillions of Osamas will be born.”

  Log in to Reply

• 

  Kyaemon

  May 7, 2011 at 5:39 am

  The Real Housewife of Abbottabad: What bin Laden’s Spouse Knows

  http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2069934,00.html

  The U.S. Navy Seal team that killed Osama bin Laden and removed a bonanza of documents and flash drives may have left behind a vital source of intelligence: bin Laden’s wife Amal Ahmed Abdul Fatah. The story of how she found her way back to bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan from Yemen could well have revealed crucial clues as to whether Pakistani authorities had been aware of the al-Qaeda leader’s presence in their country. And if U.S. officials had been tracking her at the time, they might have found bin Laden sooner.

  The White House says that Amal, 24, was shot in the calf when she charged at the Seals who burst into bin Laden’s bedroom, presumably to protect her husband. Bin Laden’s body was taken away for burial in the Arabian Sea. But Amal was left behind, along with her young daughter Safiyah, who Pakistani officials say witnessed her father’s killing. It is not clear how many of the dozen other children in the compound were bin Laden’s. Pakistani officials say bin Laden’s wife and daughter are now recovering in a military hospital in Rawalpindi, and they have released Amal’s passport photograph.
  (See pictures of Osama bin Laden’s Pakistan hideout.)

  The photo shows a pale young woman with generous lips. In accordance with Islamic convention, her face is framed by a headscarf and she is wearing no lipstick or makeup. Later Pakistani press reports suggested that bin Laden may have had several other wives staying with him, but his original spouses are believed to be in Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran, possibly under house arrest.

  In 2002, Amal reportedly gave an interview to a Saudi woman’s magazine, Al Majalla, in which she explained how, after the 9/11 attacks, she made her way out of Afghanistan back to Yemen with assistance from Pakistani officials.

  Bin Laden’s widow told her Saudi interviewer at the time, “When the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan started, we moved to a mountainous area with some children and lived in one of the caves for two months until one of his sons came with a group of tribesmen and took us with them. I did not know that we were going to Pakistan until they handed us over to the Pakistani government.”

  Parts of that account were confirmed to TIME in a telephone interview with an Arab woman who prefers not to be identified but who knew bin Laden personally in Afghanistan and whose family formed part of al-Qaeda’s inner circle. After 9/11, al-Qaeda’s leadership decided to evacuate their families. “All the families had to leave Afghanistan swiftly,” the Arab woman said. “They didn’t want their women and children captured.” However, one of bin Laden’s former aides in Yemen insists that Amal never reached home.
  (See a photo album of the bin Laden family.)

  After bin Laden’s young bride — Amal was then 19 — was turned over to the Pakistani authorities, she and her daughter Safiyah were released and allowed to fly home to Ibb, a town not far from Sana’a, Yemen’s capital, where her father worked as a minor civil servant.

  But bin Laden somehow arranged for Amal to rejoin him and his kids in Pakistan. In her magazine interview, she was asked if she would return to her fugitive husband. Her enigmatic reply: “Let us see what happens.” Pakistani press quoted officials as saying that Amal claimed to have been living with bin Laden in the Abbottabad safe house for five years.
  (See photos of Navy Seals in action.)
  With the benefit of hindsight, it seems that U.S. counterterrorism experts spent years trying to decipher the name and the whereabouts of bin Laden’s elusive courier, when keeping tabs on his comely young wife might have led them to him sooner.

  Then there’s the question of whether Pakistani authorities had been aware that bin Laden’s wife had returned to their country. Robert Grenier, a former director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and a security expert, says it’s not impossible to imagine that the Pakistanis could have let Amal leave the country and failed to detect her return. “The Pakistanis would want to get her back home,” Grenier tells TIME. “There are cultural taboos that come up with women. They certainly wouldn’t facilitate her interrogation by foreigners.”……

  Log in to Reply

• 

  Kyaemon

  May 7, 2011 at 6:32 am

  Inside the Osama bin Laden Strike: How America Got Its Man

  (Initial Version)

  http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2069249,00.html

  Al-Qaeda Vows Vengeance for bin Laden

  http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2069963,00.html

  Log in to Reply

• 

  Kyaemon

  May 7, 2011 at 5:52 pm

  Pakistan seeks solace in the Kremlin
  By M K Bhadrakumar

  The Kremlin has announced a three-day “official visit” by Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari to Russia beginning next Wednesday at the invitation of President Dmitry Medvedev.

  Such visits are scheduled in advance while formal announcements are kept until a later date. Nonetheless, Zardari’s talks within inscrutable Kremlin walls will attract huge attention regionally and internationally as they will be taking place within a fortnight of the la affaire Abbottabad, which has prompted speculation regarding the United States-Pakistan relationship following the killing on Monday of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in that Pakistani town.

  Also, the Russians (and Pakistanis) have chosen to schedule the trip ahead of Zardari’s visit to Washington, which has already been postponed once and now seems quite unlikely to take place in the near future.

  At the very least, Moscow is indicating that the imperatives of the Kremlin constructively engaging Russia with regard to regional security (which has been evident for the past two to three years) remain very much in place and the sensational killing of Bin Laden doesn’t come into that matrix.

  In world perceptions (especially in America), Pakistan is blithely called nowadays the “epicenter” of international terrorism, but Moscow doesn’t seem perturbed on that score. Indeed, the Russian approach is implicitly that the proper way of addressing the challenge lies in engaging Pakistan rather than branding it as a “state sponsoring terrorism” and ostracizing it, as some influential sections in the US Congress have lately demanded.

  Interestingly, Russian media coverage of the killing of Bin Laden has been factual and balanced and has been devoid of any sensationalism or undue flights of over-interpretations – the overall impression being that there are many ambiguities in the American version (or versions) of what really took place and the final version is yet to appear and, therefore, it is premature to conclude anything beyond the domain of speculation.

  Russian official media prominently reported observations by former Cuban leader Fidel Castro on Thursday in his weekly column that there was likely to be a backlash in the Muslim world to the manner in which the US went about “assassinating” Bin Laden – an “abhorrent act” – and then hastily burying him at sea and that even in American opinion, criticism may mount once the initial fervor dies down and cool stocktaking begins. (Castro also appeared sympathetic toward Pakistan). …..

  Log in to Reply

• 

  Kyaemon

  May 7, 2011 at 6:05 pm

  CONTINUATION – EXCELLENT ANALYSIS BY EMINENT AUTHOR AND FORMER INDIAN DIPLOMAT WITH MIDEAST AND PAKISTAN EXPERTISE.

  Pakistan seeks solace in the Kremlin
  By M K Bhadrakumar

  http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/ME07Df03.html

  Be that as it may, what does Moscow look for in Zardari’s visit? Three things come to mind.

  One, Moscow would like to get as close as possible to the inner track of the ongoing US-Pakistan discourse regarding the end game in Afghanistan. Russia will factor in that Bin Laden’s killing will hasten the Afghan peace process and give US President Barack Obama a somewhat free hand with regard to the drawdown of US troops in Afghanistan commencing in July.

  Evidently, Russia is concerned about security implications for the Central Asian region. Reuters quoted “security sources and analysts” to the effect that Russia was in talks with Tajikistan to send up to 3,000 Russian border guards to the Tajik-Afghan border region:
  Russia fears the planned withdrawal of NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] troops from Afghanistan by 2014 will create a power vacuum allowing Islamist militants fighting US forces there to move into Central Asia. Twenty years after the fall of the Soviet Union, Moscow sees Central Asia as part of its sphere of interest and worries that an upsurge in Islamist violence or heroin trafficking could upset the predominantly Muslim, oil- and gas-producing region.
  However, Russian concerns are also geopolitical. Moscow is watching with unease the strong American diplomatic and political pressure on Afghan President Hamid Karzai to agree to a Status of Forces agreement that legitimizes a long-term US military presence in the region. A spate of Russian commentaries has appeared in the recent period about the imperative need of revamping and strengthening the capabilities – political as well as military – of the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization as a counter-alliance to NATO.

  Moscow is also not ruling out that as an adjunct to the new security paradigm emerging in Afghanistan in the end game underway, there could be renewed attempts by Washington to expand US and NATO influence into Central Asia. Moscow circles have openly speculated that Washington may deliberately contrive an atmosphere of the Arab Spring to appear on the Central Asian steppes sometime in the near future. It would thereupon seize on social and political convulsions to manipulate “regime changes” in the region favorable to American geopolitical strategies in the Great Game. One website close to security circles in Moscow even predicted an American thrust in this direction as early as the coming autumn.

  Indeed, according to a White House statement, Obama made a telephone call to his counterpart in Astana, Nurusultan Nazarbayev (who was recently “re-elected” with a 95% majority) stressing the need for democratic reforms in Kazakhstan (which borders China). American commentators have also lately focused on the potential of a Middle East-like upheaval in Central Asia that could blow away existing authoritarian regimes.

  Significantly, amid all this, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi arrived in Moscow on Thursday on an official visit and was scheduled to meet Medvedev on Friday.

  Sino-Russian political consultations come close on the heels of a two-day China-Pakistan “strategic dialogue” in Beijing at the end of April. It is pertinent to note that the Chinese stance on the Abbottabad episode is unequivocally sympathetic toward Pakistan. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson extravagantly praised Pakistan’s record in the struggle against international terrorism and expressed Beijing’s solidarity with Islamabad in these difficult times.

  Commentaries by the state-run Xinhua news agency have brought out that the US-Pakistan relationship is currently under great stress. Conceivably, Yang will share his perceptions with the Kremlin leadership and that will form valuable input for Moscow in structuring its talks with Zardari.

  Moscow (or Beijing) has little to complain about Pakistan’s interest in counter-terrorism cooperation. Besides, the genuineness of the Pakistani interest in forging a strategic partnership with Russia is also not in doubt. Moscow will most certainly have taken note that Pakistan shares the apprehensions of other regional powers regarding the prospect of a long-term American military presence in Afghanistan.

  Most important, Moscow has of late distinctly mellowed its traditional antipathy toward the Taliban. In other words, an Afghan settlement that provides for the reconciliation and reintegration of the Taliban is, in principle, something that Moscow could learn to live with if certain aspects of the “al-Qaeda factor” could be properly addressed.

  Russian leaders will certainly like to hear from Zardari how Russian concerns in this regard could be addressed with the help and understanding of Pakistani security agencies.

  The timing of Zardari’s visit underscores that Moscow recognizes the central role that Pakistan plays in the Afghan situation. Both Moscow and Islamabad also share the view that any Afghan peace process should be “Afghan-led”.

  However, at this point, any Russian-Pakistani consultations are destined to be broad-ranging, bringing in, in particular, the uncertainties of the security situation in the Persian Gulf region where again Pakistan may figure as a “provider” of security for some regimes there.

  Finally, the Russian-Pakistani talks are taking place at a rather delicate moment in the US-Russia “reset”. The crisis in Libya has alerted Russia to the stunning reality that the more things seemed to change in the US approach to world politics under Obama, the more they came to resemble the George W Bush era in terms of the ideology of “unilateralist interventions”, the use of military power in the settlement of disputes and the marginalization of the United Nations.

  With all the talk of the US adopting a culture of “smart power”, the evidence points toward the preponderance of “hard power” as the principal instrument of global strategies.

  If anything, in Russian perceptions, Abbottabad will stick out like a sore thumb – meaning, in the ultimate analysis, the US has only one way, its own unilateralist way, to handle issues, namely, the John Wayne way.

  Significantly, Russia’s envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, said on Thursday following a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council in Brussels that the US was already deploying its missile defense system in Europe without bothering to reach an agreement with Russia. He referred to US deployments in Romania.

  While it is too early to say that the “fizz” has gone out of the US-Russia reset, Moscow has been compelled into a reality check. If (or when) Western ground troops appear on the bleak Libyan landscape (where after 40 days of NATO operations Muammar Gaddafi is still looking good), the “reset” may take a serious beating. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in a lengthy television interview in Moscow last week that Moscow would not accept such an escalation of Western military intervention without the specific, unambiguous mandate of the United Nations Security Council.

  As for the “reset” with the US, Lavrov, in typical Russian humor, added that Moscow continued to figure out whether the reset was indeed a reset (perezagruzka) or a peregruzka (overcharge). The difference might seem marginal – the mere absence of a consonant and a vowel – but appearances can be deceptively simple.

  Lavrov made a fair judgment: “I think the reset is working, after all. We, though, do not seek to call it the reset, as we had always been ready for equal partnership and mutually beneficial projects, but the US Republican administration had tried to act a little differently. So when Barack Obama and [Vice President] Joe Biden announced the reset, we welcomed it. They have reset the American attitude toward the Russian Federation, and we are trying, of course, to reciprocate.”

  On his part, Zardari will use the opportunity of his visit to Moscow to probe what there is in this nebulous business of the so-called US-Russia reset, for Pakistan. Indeed, there could be a lot – especially if the Americans allow the current adrenalin flow to assume a torrential nature and conclude it could take Pakistan for granted in any Afghan settlement.

  But that isn’t all. The Kremlin knows that the alchemy of the US-Pakistan relationship has changed following Abbottabad. Pakistan faces grave insecurities in the period ahead and is looking for regional support systems. Russia can offer a lot – membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, to begin with, at the alliance’s summit meeting in June in Astana.

  Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

  Log in to Reply

• 

  Kyaemon

  May 7, 2011 at 6:59 pm

  U.S. Unveils Found Videos of bin Laden

  http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2070272,00.html

  (WASHINGTON) — Newly released videos show Osama bin Laden watching himself on television and rehearsing for terrorist videos, revealing that even from the walled confines of his Pakistani hideout, he remained a media maestro who was eager to craft his own image for the cameras.

  The videos, released by U.S. intelligence officials Saturday, were offered as further proof that Navy SEALs killed the world’s most wanted terrorist this week. But they also served to show bin Laden as vain, someone obsessed with his portrayal by the world’s media.
  (See pictures of Osama bin Laden’s Pakistan hideout.)

  One of the movies shows bin Laden, his unkempt beard streaked in gray, sitting on the floor, wrapped in a brown blanket and holding a remote control. He flipped back and forth between what appears to be live news coverage of himself. The old, small television was perched on top of a desk with a large tangle of electrical wires running to a nearby control box.

  In another, he has apparently dyed and neatly trimmed his beard for the filming of a propaganda video. The video, which the U.S. released without sound, was titled “”Message to the American People” and was believed to be filed sometime last fall, a senior intelligence official said during a briefing for reporters, on condition that his name not be used.

  The videos were seized from bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Officials said the clips shown to reporters were just part of the largest collection of senior terrorist materials ever collected. The evidence seized during the raid also includes phone numbers and documents that officials hope will help break the back of the organization behind the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
  (See stunning aerial photos of the Sept. 11 destruction.)

  Intelligence officials have known that bin Laden and al-Qaida monitored the news. But for years, when it was assumed that he was living in Pakistan’s rugged, mountainous tribal region, some believed he might not be able to get real-time news.

  After the CIA discovered bin Laden’s suburban compound, they realized that a satellite dish provided a television feed to bin Laden’s compound. The video also reveals that bin Laden had a computer in his home, though officials say there were no Internet or phone lines running from the house.

  Bin Laden and four others were killed in a daring pre-dawn raid Monday after U.S. helicopters lowered a team of SEALs behind the compound’s high walls. The terrorist leader’s death leaves al-Qaida with an uncertain future and represents America’s most successful counterterrorism mission.

  See TIME’s complete archive of Osama bin Laden coverage.
  See the world’s most influential people in the 2011 TIME 100.

  Log in to Reply

• 

  Kyaemon

  May 8, 2011 at 6:24 pm

  Pentagon Releases Videos of Osama bin Laden

  YouTube – Pentagon Releases Videos of Osama bin Laden

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DB0ftf53JYs

  Newly released videos show Osama bin Laden inside his hideout, watching himself on television and rehearsing for propaganda videos. The clips were selected by the Pentagon from what it says it seized from bin Laden’s compound. (May 7)
  167,243 

  YouTube – Pentagon releases Osama’s home videos

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhB2VPpLIjc&feature=related

  The Pentagon releases home videos of Osama Bin Laden, seized at the secret compound in Pakistan where he was shot dead by US special forces last week. The tapes show him watching himself on television, and preparing a video message addressed to the US. In total, five videos were seized during last week’s US commando raid.

  57,285

  Log in to Reply

• 

  Kyaemon

  May 9, 2011 at 4:00 am

  TWO DIFFERENT VERSIONS FROM ANALYSTS:

  FIRST VERSION

  Debunking 4 myths around bin Laden killing: torture, cowering, CIA, and Pakistan’s involvement – CSMonitor.com

  http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Backchannels/2011/0505/Debunking-4-myths-around-bin-Laden-killing-torture-cowering-CIA-and-Pakistan-s-involvement

  1. Pakistan raided bin Laden’s house before.

  2. Bin Laden cowered behind his wife.

  3. The CIA trained Al Qaeda

  4. Torture saved the day

  Dan Murphy
  Dan Murphy, who has reported from Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, and more than a dozen other countries, writes and edits Backchannels. The focus? War and international relations, leaning toward things Middle East.

  (CLICK LINK FOR DETAILS)

  ===============================

  SECOND VERSION

  YouTube – ‘US can’t accept it created Bin Laden & Al Qaeda’

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMM-kqngHc8

  The U.S. says the operation against Bin Laden was a ‘kill-or-capture mission’. But journalist Afshin Rattansi says taking him alive would have opened a floodgate to a past, the U.S. would rather keep shut.

  Log in to Reply

• 

  Kyaemon

  May 11, 2011 at 7:58 pm

  In death, Osama bin Laden causes another war

  His death comes as our economy is in shambles and America could use a renewed sense of patriotism. Will the threat of counter-attacks push the US into war?

  http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/The-Daily-Reckoning/2011/0509/In-death-Osama-bin-Laden-causes-another-war

  y Gary D. Barnett, Guest blogger / May 9, 2011

  There has never been such an opportunity for the US government to stage a false flag event in order to start yet another war as there is today. The set up is obvious to libertarians and some sane others, but it eludes most all Americans who are busy dancing in the street after the so-called killing of Osama bin Laden
  Skip to next paragraph
  Recent posts

  * 05.09.11
  In death, Osama bin Laden causes another war
  * 05.06.11
  Are markets selling off in anticipation of more QE?
  * 05.06.11
  Gold is up, but still not near peak
  * 05.05.11
  Every boom will bust. Even China’s.
  * 05.03.11
  Coal use points to growth

  Consider the timing of this attack by US Navy SEALs, and then consider recent events. First, the economy is in shambles, unemployment is sky high, price inflation is excessive, and the US military has been bombing civilians in an attempt to assassinate Gaddafi, including murdering innocent little children. Our money is being destroyed before our eyes. The wars are not going well for the ruling elite, and Obama’s ratings are horribly low at the beginning of his presidential crusade. One very important factor is that criticism of these wars has been growing at an accelerated pace. Hatred of the insidious TSA is also becoming much more evident. While civil liberty destruction is still rampant, it is being questioned more often, and with increased intensity.

  What better reason then for an event to solidify the masses, and put them on guard for the now coming “terrorist” attacks due to the death of bin Laden. This stone kills a lot of birds it seems, and in my opinion this is no coincidence. In a matter of a few hours, the serfs were in the streets carrying flags, and screaming “God bless the USA.” All the media was abuzz with fervent displays of renewed patriotism.

  But what came next should have been expected. We were told that the scourge of the east was dead. One would think that the head of the monster had been forever severed, and that the war would end, but that would not be the case. The politicians and talking heads in the media immediately went on the offensive, and stated that we should be even more vigilant in the war on terror because there will be more attacks due to bin Laden’s death.

  Hillary Clinton began her talk by praising the troops for their “courage and commitment.” Yes, the troops had once again become our saviors, literally pulling us from the mouth of the beast. In her next statement she strongly exclaimed “we will continue taking the fight to al Qaeda and their Taliban allies.” She next talked about even more massive interference and imperialistic goals. “All over the world we will press forward, bolstering our partnerships, strengthening our networks, investing in a positive vision of peace and progress, and relentlessly pursuing the murderers who target innocent people.” (Emphasis added) Really! The US killing machine is going after all those who target innocent people, and all over the planet? That is hypocrisy beyond understanding.

  These events are shaping future foreign policy, and the window of opportunity in my opinion is short. All that is necessary is to rally the sheep around the flag, and that was accomplished by the charade in Pakistan.

  Police in some areas have already increased security measures, and intelligence gathering has intensified. In New York, more police have been sent to patrol subways, airports, and bridges. This is just the beginning. More fear has been instilled in the minds of Americans once again, and conditions are ripe for a false flag event staged by those who would gain power and money with more war. Certainly, Obama has an obvious incentive to be the protector of the country given his current presidential run. But many others stand to gain from such an event as well…….

  Log in to Reply

• 

  Kyaemon

  May 11, 2011 at 8:06 pm

  (Note: Natural for a son to defend his father. However, Bin Laden is a mass killer, a worldwide terrorist with no end in sight).

  Bin Laden’s Son Says ‘Arbitrary’ Killing of His Father Was Illegal

  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703864204576315691199048226.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

  By EVAN PEREZ

  WASHINGTON—A son of Osama bin Laden released a letter Tuesday accusing the U.S. of violating international law in the military operation that killed the al Qaeda leader.

  The letter from Omar bin Laden, purporting to be on behalf of other family members, was reported by the New York Times. It cites the U.S. government’s reports that bin Laden was unarmed but was killed by a team of Navy SEALs during a May 2 raid at a compound in Pakistan. The letter said the U.S. should have arrested bin Laden and put him on trial as was done with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic.

  “If he has been summarily executed then we question the propriety of such assassination where not only international law has been blatantly violated” but also U.S. laws guaranteeing presumption of innocence anda fair trial, the letter says. “We maintain that arbitrary killing is not a solution to political problems.”

  Suspicions in Afghanistan over Pakistan’s involvement with Al Qaeda are peaking following the discovery of Osama bin Laden just two hours’ drive from the capital Islamabad. Video courtesy of AFP.

  The younger bin Laden couldn’t be reached. The Times said it was provided a copy by Jean Sasson, a U.S. author who wrote a 2009 book with Omar bin Laden. Ms. Sasson didn’t immediately comment.

  Omar bin Laden describes himself as the fourth eldest son of the al Qaeda leader and has said in news interviews that he spent time at al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. In the interviews, he has distanced himself from terror attacks carried out against civilians.

  The White House has said the military raid was conducted legally. U.S. officials said Osama bin Laden didn’t try to surrender.

  Benjamin Wittes, senior fellow and legal expert at the Brookings Institution, said the U.S.’s explanation of events indicates the killing was carried out legally.

  “It is lawful to target the enemy in a war. It is lawful to target the enemy even if he is unarmed,” Mr. Wittes said. “Your only obligation is to protect that person if he completes a surrender. There’s no suggestion that Osama bin Laden even tried to surrender, much less complete a surrender.”

  Log in to Reply

• 

  Kyaemon

  May 11, 2011 at 9:33 pm

  Muslim Americans still find acceptance elusive in the wake of bin Laden’s death

  http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110511/us_yblog_thelookout/muslim-americans-still-find-acceptance-elusive-in-the-wake-of-bin-ladens-death

  On Friday morning, Masudur Rahman boarded a plane to attend a conference in North Carolina on Americans’ distrust of Islam. Agents with the Transportation Security Administration had twice screed both Massud and his traveling companion Mohamed Zaghloul and determined that the two men were not a threat, and they were cleared to join all the other similarly screened passengers on the Delta regional flight operated by Atlantic Southeast Airlines.

  That’s why it came as a shock to the pair when the staff ordered them to deplane, reportedly because the pilot didn’t want them on board. An Atlantic Southeast  spokesman says the airline is investigating the incident, and that the company takes “all allegations of discrimination very seriously.”

  Rahman and Zaghloul didn’t arrive at the conference until the evening, and Rahman said he was too stressed by the experience to concentrate on the weekend’s topic of “Islamophobia,” or the fear of Islam.

  “I was humiliated. I was not feeling good,” he told The Lookout. “I thought maybe my children will think in the future, ‘My dad was singled out and forced to get off on the plane.’ It was an emotional shock.” (Rahman has two children under six years old.)

  Delta agents apologized profusely for the incident and emphasized that the airline’s staff works separately from the personnel at the regional airline, according to Rahman. Rahman says several Delta pilots personally apologized to them for the other pilot’s action. Also heartening to the imam, who came to the United States eight years ago from India and owns a jewelry business in Memphis, are the dozens of emails he’s received from correspondents across the globe offering him support.

  “America is a land of justice and a land of law and that’s why people like to live over here,” he says. “If somebody is facing some injustice, American law and American people stand behind him or her.”

  Another imam from New York on his way to the North Carolina conference with his son was removed from an American Airlines plane, and the company has only said it was over an unspecified security issue. He ended up driving to the conference.

  The incidents happened less than a week after President Obama announced that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had been killed by a U.S. special forces raid. Homeland Security officials warned law enforcement agencies around the country to be on the alert for a possible revenge attack, which they fear may come from a loner type already living in the United States.

  And U.S. Airways Captain James Ray defended the Atlantic Southeast Airlines pilot, saying there may be another explanation for why he wouldn’t fly with the two men. He told WSOCTV that every single pilot in the country received warning emails from their companies telling them to be on high alert after the death of bin Laden.

  It’s possible that this tension is partially responsible for some of the anti-Muslim incidents of the past few weeks, says Ibrahim Hooper, the head of Muslim civil rights organization CAIR.

  “I do not think these cases would have occurred had it not been for the killing of Osama bin Laden,” Hooper says. He mentioned that a mosque in Maine had been vandalized with bin Laden’s name after his death, and that someone had smeared the doors of a Louisiana mosque with pork. Many Muslims don’t eat pork for religious reasons.

  But vandal attacks on American mosques have actually been on the rise for several years, according to the work of American University Professor Akbar Ahmed–and protests have increased against proposed mosques in some towns and cities where Muslim residents are constructing new mosques.

  A Pew poll from last August found that only 30 percent of Americans had a favorable view of Islam, down 10 percentage points from 2005. However, a more recent March CNN poll found that 70 percent of Americans would be fine with a mosque existing in their community–a much higher percentage than the proportion of Americans professing a favorable view of Islam. That suggests that even if a majority of Americans disapprove of the religion, they are OK with their neighbors’ choice to follow it.

  Meanwhile, young Muslim Americans are hoping that bin Laden’s death can be a positive turning point in the relationship between Muslim and non-Muslim Americans. They hope that, with bin Laden out the picture, they will no longer be saddled the widespread public suspicion they’ve encountered since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

  Bin Laden “hijacked our identity” New Yorker Linda Sarsour told the AP, making Muslims “synonymous with a man who was a murderer.”

  “His death brings an opportunity for understanding between Americans and Muslims,” college student Umar Issa told the AP. He added that the popular uprisings in Egypt and other Arab countries have rejected radical Islam and may help show Americans that Muslims also seek democracy.

  (A prayer service at the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, Michigan: Paul Sancya/AP)

  Log in to Reply

• 

  Kyaemon

  May 13, 2011 at 1:37 am

  Laden’s hand-written journal seized in US raid

  http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/video/2011-05/12/c_13871466.htm

  BEIJING, May 12 (Xinhuanet) –US officials said on Wednesday that Osama bin Laden’s hand-written journal which was filled with planning ideas and details of operations, was seized in the dramatic US raid that killed him.

  The journal was part of a huge cache of intelligence that included about 100 flash drives and five computers taken by a US Navy Seals assault team after they swept through bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad. US officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about what was found in bin Laden’s hideout.

  Bin Laden has long been known to record his thoughts and had been thought to keep a diary. His son, in a memoir, stated that his father was very dedicated to recording his thoughts and plans.

  (Source: CNTV.cn)

  Log in to Reply

• 

  Kyaemon

  May 13, 2011 at 7:36 pm

  John McCain: Abusive interrogation didn’t yield trail to Osama bin Laden

  http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-mccain-bin-laden-20110512,0,2388028.story

  None of the crucial information that led the Central Intelligence Agency down the trail to Osama bin Laden came from coercive interrogation techniques, Sen. John McCain said on the Senate floor Thursday morning, contradicting the accounts of current and former U.S. officials.

  McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, has always opposed the U.S. use of waterboarding and other abusive techniques employed after the 9/11 attacks—banned by President Obama when he took office–to elicit information from detainees.

  CIA Director Leon Panetta has said that some of the information helpful in tracking down the courier who was sheltering Bin Laden came from detainees in CIA custody who had been subject to the techniques. Some former senior officials, including former Atty. Gen. Michael Mukasey and Jose Rodriguez, a former top CIA official, have said flatly that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times, provided the name of the courier. U.S. officials have disputed that, and McCain called it “false.”

  McCain, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he asked Panetta “for the facts. And I received the following information:

  “The trail to Bin Laden did not begin with a disclosure from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times. We did not first learn from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed the real name of Bin Laden’s courier, or his alias, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti – the man who ultimately enabled us to find Bin Laden. The first mention of the name Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, as well as a description of him as an important member of Al Qaeda, came from a detainee held in another country.”

  McCain added: “We did not learn Abu Ahmed’s real name or alias as a result of waterboarding or any ‘enhanced interrogation technique’ used on a detainee in U.S. custody. None of the three detainees who were waterboarded provided Abu Ahmed’s real name, his whereabouts, or an accurate description of his role in Al Qaeda.”

  The senator continued: “In fact, not only did the use of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ on Khalid Shaikh Mohammed not provide us with key leads on Bin Laden’s courier, Abu Ahmed; it actually produced false and misleading information. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed specifically told his interrogators that Abu Ahmed had moved to Peshawar, got married, and ceased his role as an Al Qaeda facilitator – which was not true, as we now know. All we learned about Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti through the use of waterboarding and other ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was the confirmation of the already known fact that the courier existed and used an alias.

  The staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee told McCain, the senator said, “that, in fact, the best intelligence gained from a CIA detainee – information describing Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti’s real role in Al Qaeda and his true relationship to Osama bin Laden – was obtained through standard, noncoercive means, not through any ‘enhanced interrogation technique.’

  “In short, it was not torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of detainees that got us the major leads that ultimately enabled our intelligence community to find Osama bin Laden.”

  What McCain did not mention, though, is that in his letter to the senator, Panetta reiterated his assertion that some information about the courier came from detainees who were subject to “enhanced interrogation techniques,” a U.S. official said. Panetta said, as he has told interviewers, that it’s an open question whether the information could have been gleaned through standard questioning.

  “Some of the detainees who provided useful information about the facilitator/courier’s role had been subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques,” Panetta wrote. “Whether those techniques were the ‘only timely and effective way’ to obtain such information is a matter of debate and cannot be established definitively.”

  ken.dilanian@latimes.com

  Log in to Reply

• 

  Kyaemon

  May 13, 2011 at 8:05 pm

  Pentagon: US has questioned bin Laden widows

  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110513/ap_on_re_us/us_bin_laden;_ylt=AiTR0Hi8M6s.Kn_4Cty4rbRn.3QA;_ylu=X3oDMTJ0YnR0ZGNxBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTEwNTEzL3VzX2Jpbl9sYWRlbgRjY29kZQN0b3BnbXBlBGNwb3MDOQRwb3MDOQRzZWMDeW5fdG9wX3N0b3JpZXMEc2xrA3BlbnRhZ29udXNoYQ–

  WASHINGTON – U.S. authorities are using interviews with Osama bin Laden’s wives and video of the assault on his Pakistan compound to piece together details of the raid that killed the terrorist leader.

  After days of wrangling with Pakistani leaders, U.S. intelligence officials were finally given access to bin Laden’s three wives and were allowed to question them in an effort to gather more information about life in the compound, Pentagon officials said.

  U.S. defense officials, meanwhile, are considering measures to ensure the security of the Navy SEAL team that stormed the walled fortress in Abbottabad on May 2 and killed world’s most wanted terrorist.

  The three bin Laden widows who survived the raid were taken into Pakistani custody. The White House has said it was important that the U.S. be allowed to interview them as they could provide information about bin Laden’s life in his compound.

  But the Islamic practice of segregating women from men means the wives probably would not have been present for meetings or discussions about al-Qaida operations.

  Still, with bin Laden’s trusted couriers dead, the women could offer rare details about bin Laden, particularly his life over the past few years as the manhunt for him wore on.

  U.S. intelligence and military analysts have also been examining footage from cameras mounted in the helmets of the Navy SEALs, capturing a minute-by-minute account of the operation.

  The video will provide a more detailed and accurate picture of the raid, compared to early information that relied on the first reports from members of the elite team, both during the operation and interviews with them afterward.

  U.S. military officials have cautioned that the initial reports can often be wrong, blurred by the fog of battle and conclusions based on split second sighting or sounds.

  That proved true in this case as details pouring out in the first 48 hours after the raid — including who was in the compound, who was killed, and how much resistance the commandos met — were repeatedly refined and corrected.

  Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan and White House press secretary Jay Carney would not discuss what the wives said during the questioning. It was not clear whether the interviews will continue.

  The sparse details about those interviews reflect a growing concern by military officials about the flood of information that has come out about the raid and the secretive Navy SEALs who made it all possible.

  Defense Secretary Robert Gates said during a meeting with Marines at Camp Lejeune, N.C., that when he met with the team last week they expressed concerns about the security of their families.

  “Frankly, a week ago Sunday, in the Situation Room, we all agreed that we would not release any operational details from the effort to take out bin Laden,” Gates told Marines at Camp Lejeune. “That all fell apart on Monday — the next day.”

  Gates added, “We are looking at what measures can be taken to pump up the security.”

  He said there has been a consistent effort to protect the identities of those who participated in the raid — which also included elite Army pilots who flew the daring mission. They are members of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, known as the Night Stalkers.

  ___

  Associated Press writer Matt Apuzzo contributed to this report.

  Log in to Reply

• 

  Kyaemon

  May 13, 2011 at 9:43 pm

  Pakistan on high alert after twin blasts in NW Pakistan

  http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-05/13/c_13873871.htm

  ISLAMABAD, May 13 (Xinhua) — Pakistan tightened security precaution after 80 people were killed in twin suicide bomb attacks on Friday morning.

  Pakistani Taliban claimed to carry out the attacks on a military training center in Pakistan’s northwestern city of Charsadda to avenge the killing of al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden in a U.S. raid on his hideout in Pakistan’s Abbotabad on May 2.

  Police and soldiers increased patrols in all big cities to avoid any further terrorist attack.

  “Security forces were already put on high alert after the death of Osama,” an official told Xinhua.

  Snap check at police checkpoints on different entry points into cities and on roads have been installed.

  In the one kilometer radius of the parliament house in the Pakistani capital Islamabad, army soldiers took the security charge and only parliamentarians were allowed to enter on Friday afternoon when the chief of army staff General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani and the country’s top intelligence agency Inter services intelligence (ISI) head Ahmad Shuja Pasha were giving in-camera briefing to the joint session of parliament on the U.S. operation to kill Osama bin Laden.

  Log in to Reply

• 

  Kyaemon

  May 14, 2011 at 7:11 pm

  Pakistan criticizes US on information sharing

  http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/video/2011-05/14/c_13874814.htm

  BEIJING, May 14 (Xinhuanet) — Pakistan’s former intelligence chief has criticized the US for not sharing information about Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts prior to its unilateral raid. General Ehsan ul Haq also challenged American intelligence officials to name one time when cooperating led to a botched operation.

  General Ehsan ul Haq said, “And I am aware that there was never any such agreement between and in fact, that is one of the reasons why the people in Pakistan are extremely agitated that our sovereignty, our territorial integrity has been grossly violated by a friendly country who happens to be our strategic partner.”
  He added that Pakistan has handed over senior al-Qaeda operatives, such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the masterminds of the 9/11 terror attacks. Information obtained from these detainees had helped develop a wealth of data about al-Qaeda, which ultimately led the US to find bin Laden.
  Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said the country’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency has cut its cooperation with the CIA to protest its snub in the bin Laden raid. Despite straining ties, some Pakistani media outlets insist relations between the two countries won’t be broken.

  Log in to Reply

• 

  Kyaemon

  May 18, 2011 at 1:21 am

  ‘Small group’ knew about Bin Laden compound, ex-official says
  Former national security advisor James L. Jones recounts being told about the ‘potential target’ in Abbottabad, Pakistan, during a briefing last year.

  http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/la-fg-us-security-jones-20110517,0,2370930.story

  Log in to Reply

• 

  Kyaemon

  May 18, 2011 at 2:11 am

  THE PEN – ANOTHER AMERICAN AUTHOR’S VIEW

  Ben Laden meets the new American lynch mob by The Pen

  05/15/11

  http://zirzameen.com/blog2/blog1.php/2011/05/15/new-american-justice

  Ben Laden meets the new American lynch mob by The Pen
  Permalink 09:24:54 pm by zirzamee, Categories: Background

  Link: http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1078.php

  It turns out after all these years all they had to do to find Bin
  Laden was check the roster of the Islamabad Jihadists basketball team
  where he was the starting center. Of course, nobody for a thousand
  miles would breathe a word of it, that is just how much they hate
  America in that part of the world. In any case, all these Middle East
  occupations and wars have always been and remain destructive and
  counterproductive even to our own interests. So we start with the
  action page.

  End The Wars In Afghanistan And Iraq:
  http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1078.php

  If nothing else, the demise of Osama bin Laden again raises the
  question of what exactly we think we are doing occupying so many
  countries in the Middle East. Surely not to fight terrorism. Instead,
  terrorism is driven precisely by these same kinds of operations.
  There is nothing at the end of this road but utter ruin for our own
  country, unless we somehow find the political courage to change
  course. So we speak out again, and will continue to do so.

  The only thing good the right wing has had to say about the Bin Laden
  operation is that this action by Obama was just a continuation of the
  policies of George Bush. In one respect that is completely false. It
  was the policy of Bush NOT to pursue Bin Laden, but rather to use him
  as an excuse and justification for all the wars they had on their
  pre-existing agenda. The last thing the right wing wanted to do was
  to actually catch Bin Laden.

  But in a larger sense, and sadly, they are correct in that Obama has
  done absolutely nothing to change anything of substance whatsoever
  about American foreign policy. The wars and occupations continue and
  have even been enlarged, run by exactly the same people who started
  them in the first place, with all Bush holdovers otherwise still in
  actual charge. And nothing about that will change until so-called
  liberals and so-called progressives stop giving Obama a pass when he
  just acts like a smarter version of George Bush.

  By way of a disclaimer, our position is that we do not support the
  death penalty, and in particular we do not support the institution of
  war as the mutually preferred cultural institution for settling
  differences among nations. So we can only be appalled by the raucous
  celebration of what now appears to be the summary execution of a man
  already in custody.

  It is perfectly obvious that there was never any intention of
  bringing Bin Laden back alive under any circumstances. If we have
  learned nothing else from recent history, it should have been
  anticipated that all we were told night one about the Bin Laden raid
  were just made up lies and fairy tales. What was portrayed initially
  as a “fire fight” might have consisted of one person firing back. And
  once that person was taken down, what proceeded after that can only
  be described as a precision “execution” operation of every adult male
  present.

  None of this should surprise anyone. We have had people in custody
  now for upwards of 10 years already who will NEVER have an actual
  trial. So why would anyone think we would bring Bin Laden back for a
  trial? The clear order was to kill him on the spot regardless. Is
  there really any doubt of that? Bin Laden was an important long term
  CIA asset who turned on his handlers. A talking Bin Laden in custody
  was the last thing they could afford.

  The word used most often night one in the corporate media about the
  Bin Laden killing was “justice”. “Justice had been done,” they said.
  There may be some primitive, ultimate “justice” in it. But the most
  appropriate choice of word, if our language has not been completely
  corrupted already, would be “revenge”. Justice would be to put the
  man on trial before the world. But there is no law, even of war, that
  would permit the summary killing of a man already subdued and in
  custody, regardless of his crimes. Isn’t that what the bad guys do?

  “We don’t need a trial!” Where have you heard those words shouted
  before, outside of the scene of lynch mob in a movie? The lynch mob
  is a grand old American tradition, and unfortunately not one to be
  proud of. The fact that historically those lynched were most likely
  innocent, whereas Bin Laden proudly professed to his own guilt,
  changes nothing about the process. What value is a justice system if
  it could not convict someone like Bin Laden?

  And anyone celebrating the manner in which Bin Laden was killed may
  in fact be celebrating the demise of that justice system MORE than
  the demise of Bin Laden himself. Meet the New American Lynch Mob.

  And here is the Facebook link for the End The Wars In Afghanistan
  action page further above.

  Log in to Reply