SACRAMENTO BEE’S THE FRAME: Reaction to bin Laden death
Kyaemon“Sacramento Bee” is the major newspaper in Sacramento, the State Capital of California.
The Frame: Reaction to bin Laden death
http://blogs.sacbee.com/photos/2011/05/reaction-to-bin-laden-death.html
N EW YORK (AP) — Joyous at the release of a decade’s frustration, Americans streamed to the site of the World Trade Center, the gates of the White House and smaller but no less jubilant gatherings across the nation to celebrate the death of Osama bin Laden — cheering, waving flags and belting the national anthem.
The site of the Sept. 11 attacks at New York’s World Trade Center, more familiar these past 10 years for bagpipes playing “Amazing Grace” and solemn speeches and arguments over what to build to honor those killed, became, for the first time, a place of revelry. (41 images)
PLUS BBC’S WONDERFUL PRESENTATION BELOW:
Osama Bin Laden killed in top secret operation
BBC News – Osama Bin Laden killed in top secret operation
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13262963
Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden has been killed in a top secret operation ordered by US President Barack Obama.
The president hailed his death as a “good day for America,” saying the world is now a safer and a better place.
Bin Laden is believed to have ordered the attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001, as well as a number of other deadly bombings.
Mark Mardell reports.
21 comments
Kyaemon
May 4, 2011 at 8:32 pm
SEAL Team Six: Behind the Scenes of the Elite Unit 5/3/2011 7:21:17 PM
Former Navy SEAL Howard Wasdin talks with WSJ’s Lee Hawkins about his 12 years as a member of Team Six, the same elite squad credited with killing Osama bin Laden, and his new memoir chronicling the experience. Plus, his reaction to the news of bin Laden’s death.
http://online.wsj.com/video/seal-team-six-behind-the-scenes-of-the-elite-unit/D88B4BBD-F14F-438B-9E47-8AF0ECCD6650.html?mod=WSJ_article_onespot
Kyaemon
May 5, 2011 at 8:46 pm
Obama visits Ground Zero to honor 9/11 victims
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-05/06/c_13860857.htm
Kyaemon
May 6, 2011 at 8:54 am
What if Bin Laden had stood trial?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/03/osama-bin-laden-trial-al-qaida?intcmp=239
By choosing to execute the al-Qaida leader the US has denied justice to the victims of 9/11 and perpetuated the ‘war on terror’
Al-Qaida strategists, propagandists, operatives and supporters will be relieved that Osama bin Laden, their iconic figurehead, died a martyr and was not captured alive and imprisoned to stand trial. To this extent the strategists determining US counterterrorism policy have shown a disregard for effective counterterrorism and instead fostered continuity with the war on terror which has boosted, rather than diminished, global support for al-Qaida since 9/11.
When Tony Blair and George Bush stood shoulder to shoulder in the aftermath of 9/11 it was clear to both leaders that military responses would replace criminal investigations as the preferred tools of counterterrorism. Sadly, in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the globe, the war on terror resulted in the deaths of far more civilians than suspected terrorists – whether high profile like Bin Laden or lesser and unknown known figures operating in the name of al-Qaida.
As a result, the war on terror lost moral authority and became a gift to al-Qaida propagandists. The fact that the most effective counterterrorism is always closely focused on the prosecution of terrorist conspirators appeared to be of no concern in the Pentagon or Whitehall.
According to al-Qaida propagandist Saif al-Adl, 9/11 was intended to provoke the US to “lash out militarily against the ummah” in the manner if not the scale of “the war on terror”.
“The Americans took the bait,” he continues, “and fell into our trap” – no doubt using hindsight to describe al-Qaida’s ability to predict the massive scale and range of the military responses to 9/11.
The death and disregard of innocent civilians – often referred to as “collateral damage” – characterised the war on terror and provided al-Qaida strategists with effective recruitment campaigns. Bin Laden himself became adept at exploiting it:
“By what measure of kindness are your killed considered innocents while ours are considered worthless? By what school [of thought] is your blood considered blood while our blood is water? Therefore, it is [only] just to respond in kind, and the one who started it is more to blame … ”
As Karen Greenberg reminds us, due criminal process and the rule of law is not anathema to effective counterterrorism. On the contrary, history suggests, in the long run it is an aid.
That was certainly the case in 1993, when the World Trade Centre was the subject of a terrorist bomb attack the first time. On that occasion FBI investigators came to London to establish background details of Ramzi Yousef, a prime suspect in the case who had previously studied at a university in Britain. Yousef was later prosecuted and convicted for his part in the terrorist conspiracy in which a massive truck bomb exploded in the underground car park of the World Trade Centre, killing six people, injuring over a thousand and narrowly failing to destroy the landmark building – something it was clearly intended to do.
In addition the FBI arrested the blind Egyptian scholar Omar Abdel Rahman, otherwise Sheikh Omar, who was then convicted for seditious conspiracy in relation to the same bomb attack. If the war on terror had not so completely eroded US judicial authority it is wholly plausible to conceive that Bin Laden could have been tried in exactly the same way as Sheikh Omar.
Of course, it was far more practical to kill Bin Laden than attempt to bring him to trial. No doubt Barack Obama and his counterterrorism strategists ruled this option out without too much deliberation.
However, if Bin Laden had stood trial he would have faced the bereaved families and friends of those innocent civilians killed on 9/11. If found guilty he would deserve to be labelled a terrorist because it is the intentional killing of civilians that defines terrorism and distinguishes it from other forms of political violence. If he had been imprisoned for life then, like Sheikh Omar, he would also have been denied the status of martyr.
Imprisoned for life, Bin Laden would have been forced to reflect on the wicked crime of killing innocent civilians. He has been spared that fate. Bush, Blair and Obama should reflect whether they too have now killed too many innocent civilians in the name of the war on terror and revert to the rule of law – however difficult that may be.
Kyaemon
May 6, 2011 at 5:53 pm
‘Stealth helicopters’ used in Bin Laden raid
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13297846
The US forces who raided the safehouse of Osama Bin Laden appear to have caught him completely by surprise – and to have avoided detection by Pakistani radar. How did they do it?
One answer, experts believe, is that the special operations team used previously unseen stealth helicopters.
1. Silver finish makes it harder to detect on radar and by infrared sensors
2. Shape of tailboom has been altered and possibly enlarged to evade radar
3. Pan-like cover or hubcap over the rear rotor head conceals exposed machinery which is more easily picked up on radar
4. Extra blades on tail rotor reduce noise and lessen typical chopper sound
Rest of aircraft: There is speculation that the main rotor could also have had extra blades, retractable landing gear and a cover over the main rotor head
The evidence for this comes from images of the wreckage of one of the helicopters, which departing Seals destroyed after it crash landed in the compound.
The tail of the top secret aircraft survived, providing a treasure chest of clues for aviation experts.
After some detective work, these experts have concluded it was a UH-60 Blackhawk, heavily modified to make it quieter and less visible to radar.
They are confident the raid marks the first time that a stealth helicopter has been used operationally.
It wouldn’t be the first of its kind in existence, however. Sikorsky Aircraft built a number of prototype stealth helicopters, known as the RAH-66 Comanche, for the US Army. The programme was cancelled in 2004, due to escalating costs, before the helicopter become operational.
“What’s new here is this was operational use,” says Bill Sweetman, editor of Aviation Week. “We really haven’t seen stealth helicopters used in this way before.
“The bottom line is about increasing the element of surprise. The less warning that the target has the better.”
In this kind of situation an escape route for the aircraft might be needed, he adds, in which case time is of the essence.
To make a helicopter stealthy, you have to get rid of certain shapes and areas that are easily picked up on radar, says Tony Osborne, deputy editor of Rotorhub, a UK-based helicopter magazine.
Children in Pakistan Children collected parts of the wreckage
“You have to cover key parts so that the radar waves bounce in different directions or get absorbed…
“The tail rotor gearbox is covered. I’ve never seen that before in a helicopter. We know things are being played with all the time, but it is impressive to see it put into action.”
The tail fin is completely smooth and appears coated in a pearlescent material that looks silver in some lights, and black in others, says Mr Osborne.
“I’ve only ever seen that on stealth aeroplanes, and it would probably absorb radar waves. Even the rivets are covered – radars are very sensitive and small rivets could give it away.
“The tail boom remains suggest the landing gear was retractable – again, usually it could be detected by radar, so retracting it would help avoid radar detection.
Continue reading the main story
And don’t forget the dogs…
* Several reports say an unidentified canine was strapped to a human member of the Seals team as he was lowered into the compound
* It was most likely needed to check for hidden explosives
* New York Times says it was most likely a German Shepherd or Belgian Malinois, according to military sources
“It looks like the tail rotor has five or six blades. This would mean the rotor could have a slower rotation, which would mean less noise. Noise is caused by the blade tips spinning at high speed, hitting the air.”
Slipping under the radar can also be possible without stealth technology. Most of Pakistan’s radars are on the ground, and therefore angled in such a way that makes low-flying aircraft difficult to detect, Mr Osborne says.
A Pakistani intelligence official who wished to remain anonymous told the BBC’s Syed Shoaib Hasan that the helicopters were not picked up on radar and were only detected when seen entering the country from Afghanistan.
He said there were four helicopters, coming in very low.
There has been speculation that there was one more stealth helicopter, identical to the one that crashed, and that these were used as pathfinders, backed up by two larger Chinooks.
Kyaemon
May 7, 2011 at 5:57 am
New Yorkers Greet President Obama Near Ground Zero
http://www.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,932833629001_2069899,00.html
Kyaemon
May 7, 2011 at 6:33 pm
A PAKISTAN JOURNALIST’S REPORT ON THE TALIBAN AND AL-QAEDA CONNECTION. IT WAS WRITTEN BEFORE OSAMA’S DEATH.
Taliban and al-Qaeda: Friends in arms
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/ME05Df02.html
WANA, South Waziristan – In the controversial debate over who is good and who is bad, Pakistan presents the al-Qaeda-linked Nazir Ahmed as a model “good Taliban”.
Across the border in Afghanistan it is a somewhat different story: Nazir, leader of the Wazir tribe in Pakistan’s South Waziristan tribal area, is viewed by North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces as their “worst enemy” and behind all devastating attacks on NATO forces in Paktika province and the most successful recruiter of footsoldiers for the Taliban in Zabul and Helmand provinces.
All the same, NATO and the United States, as they attempt a reconciliation process with the Taliban, still see Nazir as being in the “good” Taliban camp; they could not be more wrong.
Nazir, 36, also known as Mullah Nazir or Maulvi Nazir, spoke to Asia Times Online in his first-ever interview with an independent media organization (he has only previously spoken to al-Sahab of al-Qaeda). What clearly emerged is how al-Qaeda has nurtured a new generation; Nazir now evaluates everything through al-Qaeda’s ideology and strategy.
Nazir holds exclusive sway in South Waziristan and even in parts of Paktika province across the border – his word is law. Until last year, he owned property in Kandahar province, the Taliban’s heartland in Afghanistan.
Apart from a few instances, Nazir has never opposed the army’s presence in South Waziristan. He has also never intervened with the Islamabad-backed administration in the main city of Wana, unless it tried to intervene in Nazir- or Taliban-related issues. During major military operations against the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (Pakistan Taliban) in 2009, he remained neutral.
In 2007, he orchestrated the massacre of members of the anti-Pakistan army Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan in which at least 250 Uzbeks were murdered and hundreds sent packing from the homes in South Waziristan they had established after fleeing Afghanistan during the fall of the Taliban on 2001.
From South Waziristan, his network stretches across southwestern Afghanistan including Paktika, Zabul, Helmand and up to Kandahar. Similarly, from his base in North Waziristan, Sirajuddin Haqqani runs the largest anti-coalition network in the southeastern Afghan provinces of Paktia, Khost, Ghazni and up to Kabul.
The Central Intelligence Agency’s drones have on several occasions targeted Nazir, and he was injured during a strike in 2008. He attributes his escapes so far to the low profile he keeps as he does not appear in public…..
“But that was not the only peace offer. We have received under-the-table offers from foreigners as well. Last year, British forces in Helmand province send a message to the Taliban that all major operations were carried out by the Americans, so if we did not target them, the British forces would not target the Taliban,” Nazir said.
I was on the point of asking for elaboration when Nazir said, “Why don’t you join us for lunch,” indicating in the most polite but unmistakable manner that the interview was over.
(Note: This article was written before the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden on May 2.)
Part 2: Kicking around in South Waziristan
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online’s Pakistan Bureau Chief and author of forthcoming book Inside al-Qaeda and the Taliban, beyond 9/11 to be published by Pluto Press, UK. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
Kyaemon
May 7, 2011 at 7:14 pm
New video shows Obama after assault on bin Laden
47 minutes ago – AFP 0:34 | 176846 views
The White House Friday released video of US President Barack Obama with CIA director and Vice President Joe Biden in the West Wing of the White House on Sunday, May 1, right after the assault against…
http://news.yahoo.com/video/world-15749633/25089641
Kyaemon
May 8, 2011 at 6:12 pm
YouTube – NYC reacts to Osama bin Laden’s death
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAU6S6ke36o&feature=relmfu
Across America, celebrations broke out as news spread of Osama Bin Laden’s death. In New York City, crowds chanted and cheered through the night. Randall Pinkston reports with the reactions at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan.
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Kyaemon
May 9, 2011 at 3:31 am
AL JAZEERA
YouTube – Pakistan releases Bin Laden death scene photos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5CS_VEzmks
The White House has said it did not tell Pakistan of the operation targeting Osama bin Laden as it did not want him to be tipped off. Since then, the release of photos from the scene – sold by a Pakistani security officer – has added further embarrassment to the government there. Al Jazeera’s Imtiaz Tayib reports from Abbottabad where Osama bin Laden was killed.
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Kyaemon
May 9, 2011 at 3:49 am
Videos show bin Laden watching himself on TV
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/video/2011-05/08/c_13864711.htm
BEIJING, May 8 (Xinhuanet) — US intelligence officials have released videos showing Osama bin Laden watching himself on television and rehearsing his recorded video appearances.
The videos released on Saturday were offered as further proof that Navy SEALs killed the al-Qaida leader earlier this week in a raid on his compound in a garrison town of Pakistan.
The videos were seized from Osama Bin Laden’s compound in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad.
One video shows bin Laden watching live news coverage of himself on television.
In another, he has neatly trimmed his beard before filming a propaganda video. This one was released without sound and titled “Message to the American People”.The US government said it was likely made sometime last fall.
The videos were offered as further proof of bin Laden’s death. It’s said these clips are part of the largest collection of senior terrorist materials ever collected.
US intelligence officials say the videos also indicate that the compound was an active command center from which bin Laden directed al Qaeda.
Officials hope the evidence seized during the raid will help break the back of al-Qaida behind the 9.11 attacks a decade ago.
Kyaemon
May 11, 2011 at 6:48 pm
US pushes Osama onto Afghan chessboard
By Gareth Porter
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/ME10Df01.html
WASHINGTON – United States President Barack Obama and top administration officials have taken advantage of the killing of Osama bin Laden to establish a new narrative suggesting the event will pave the way for negotiations with the Taliban for peace in Afghanistan.
That good news message, reported by Washington Post senior editor Rajiv Chandrasekaran on Tuesday, suggested that the administration would now be able to negotiate a deal that would make it possible for the United States to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan.
The Chandrasekaran article quoted a “senior administration
official” as saying that bin Laden’s death at the hands of US forces “presents an opportunity for reconciliation that didn’t exist before”. The official suggested that administration officials were seeking to “leverage the death into a spark that ignites peace talks”.
The claim of new prospects for peace conveyed to Chandrasekaran appears to be dependent mainly on the assumption that Taliban leaders in Pakistan will now fear that they will be captured or killed by US forces, as was Bin Laden.
An official familiar with administration policy discussions on Afghanistan said the fact that the United States could locate and kill Bin Laden “so deep inside Pakistan” is presumed to “have an impact on the Taliban’s thinking”.
The idea that US policy is now on the road to an “end game” in Afghanistan glosses over a central problem: the publicly expressed US determination to keep a US combat presence in Afghanistan indefinitely is not an acceptable condition to the Taliban as a basis for negotiations.
The Chandrasekaran report anticipated the announcement soon of a “strategic partnership agreement” between the United States and the government of President Hamid Karzai as “another potential catalyst for talks”.
But that agreement is likely to reduce the Taliban willingness to open negotiations with the US rather than increase it, because it is expected to include a provision for a long-term US military presence to conduct “counter-terrorism operations” as well as training.
None of the Taliban officials interviewed by Pakistani officials on behalf of the United States last year said that there could be a peace agreement in which US troops would be allowed to stay in Afghanistan.
“There is no doubt that the number one aim of the Taliban in negotiations would be getting the US military to leave,” said Michael Wahid Hanna, a program officer at the Century Foundation, who attended meetings held by a task force sponsored by the foundation with a wide range of Taliban and former Taliban officials in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Hanna said the signing of an agreement for a long-term US military presence in Afghanistan “would not be a helpful step” for starting peace negotiations.
The new narrative portrays the Obama administration as sharply divided between military and Pentagon leaders who want to maximize the number of troops in Afghanistan for as long as possible and some civilian advisers who want a much bigger and faster drawdown.
But that description of the policy debate on Afghanistan, which is accurate as far as it goes, fails to make clear that the civilians in question – including Obama himself – are not aiming at withdrawing all US forces from Afghanistan, even if there is a negotiated agreement with the Taliban.
In an interview with 60 Minutes airing Sunday night, Obama says the Bin Laden killing “reconfirms that we can focus on al-Qaeda, focus on the threats to our homeland, train Afghans in a way that allows them to stabilize their country. But we don’t need to have a perpetual footprint of the size we have now.”
Obama’s statement hints at his intention to continue to maintain a much smaller military “footprint” in Afghanistan for many years to come.
The Chandrasekaran report suggested that that the real obstacle to beginning talks has been the unwillingness of the Taliban to renounce its ties with al-Qaeda.
But there is no need for more pressure on the Taliban on the issue of its ties with al-Qaeda, according to observers who have met with Taliban officials.
Well before Bin Laden’s assassination, some senior Taliban officials with ties to the Quetta shura made statements to the Century Foundation Task Force that appeared to be open to such a commitment. “They said this can happen – something to that effect – as part of an agreement,” recalled Jeffrey Laurenti, director of foreign policy programs for the Century Foundation, who accompanied task force members in those meetings.
In early December 2009, the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” – the official name by which the Taliban identifies itself – sent out a statement to press organizations declaring it had “no agenda of meddling in the internal affairs of other countries and is ready to give legal guarantees if foreign forces are withdrawn from Afghanistan”.
Although it did not explicitly mention al-Qaeda in the statement, it was clearly a response to the Obama administration pointing to Taliban ties with al-Qaeda as central to the rationale for the US-North Atlantic Treaty Organization war.
But the Taliban are not expected to make a declaration explicitly naming al-Qaeda in advance of an agreement, much less before negotiations begin. “It makes no sense for the Taliban to concede this point on the front end – without receiving any commensurate concession from the other side,” the Century Foundation’s Hanna told the Associated Press this week.
“They portray any pre-emptive severing of ties as a type of unilateral partial disarmament,” he added.
The new narrative also suggests that the killing of Bin Laden may now reduce another obstacle to peace negotiations – Pakistani policy. US officials were said to believe that Pakistani officials had “interfered with peace efforts in the past”, but now that Pakistan is under fire for possible complicity in Bin Laden’s living near the capital for years, “have an opportunity to play a more constructive role”.
Pakistani policy has opposed peace negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan regime behind Pakistan’s back. But contrary to the new narrative, Pakistan has been more eager to begin peace negotiations than the United States.
Pakistan has long complained that it was not being informed about US negotiating aims and strategy – especially with whom the United States is willing to talk and whether it hopes to impose stiff demands on the Taliban through military force. Speaking at the New America Foundation on April 22, Pakistani Foreign Minister Salman Bashir hinted strongly that his government disagrees with the US strategy of hoping that military pressure will yield a better settlement.
“In Islamabad we have our own assessment of the situation in Afghanistan,” said the foreign minister. “The US says the momentum of the Taliban has been halted, but is fragile and reversible. Our own assessment is that the security situation has continued to deteriorate.”
The new Obama administration narrative seems to suggest that Pakistan will now display a less skeptical attitude toward US diplomatic strategy and urge the Taliban to negotiate despite the signals of US determination to keep a long-term military presence in Afghanistan.
Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing in US national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in 2006.
Kyaemon
May 11, 2011 at 8:43 pm
Bin Laden’s Great Mistake: What Osama Never Understood About the American Spirit
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2070348,00.html
When President Barack Obama announced on May 1 that U.S. forces had killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, I was among those who headed to the White House. The mood in Lafayette Square was joyous, ebullient, cathartic — though hardly the bacchanal of vengeful jingoism that some in the media have portrayed it to be, or an expression of “orgasmic euphoria in news of bloodshed” as David Sirota claimed on Salon.com. An outsider would have been struck by the crowd’s diversity, by now so familiar to Americans that we barely notice it. I’d guess that a plurality of the flag wavers were white, but I saw plenty of exuberant black, Asian, Latino and multiracial faces too. An elated young Muslim American, wearing a headscarf, enthused to a television crew about the sense of unity and belonging she felt with those around her. The whole scene would have bewildered bin Laden as much as it would have repelled him. And it goes a long way toward explaining why his war on America was doomed to fail.
Bin Laden’s goal on Sept. 11, 2001, wasn’t merely to murder as many innocent Americans as possible. To his followers, bin Laden predicted that the U.S. would overreact to the attacks and allow itself to be drawn into an endless, enervating conflict with the Muslim world. He believed al-Qaeda could bleed America into bankruptcy. Like the U.S.S.R. before it, the U.S. was a spent empire, a soft superpower, “a weak horse.” As the terrorism expert Daveed Gartenstein-Ross writes, bin Laden believed that “just as the Arab fighters and Afghan mujahidin had destroyed Russia economically, al-Qaeda was now doing the same to the United States.” (See pictures of Osama bin Laden’s Pakistan hideout.)
In some respects, he was right. The war on terror has cost the U.S. upwards of $3 trillion, saddled the country with deficits as far as the eye can see and constrained our ability to invest in the future. In the past decade, economic rivals in the developing world have taken advantage of our fixation on terrorism to erase the U.S.’s competitive lead. As Ezra Klein of the Washington Post noted, America’s troubles have been largely of its own design: we didn’t have to invade Iraq, pass tax cuts we couldn’t afford or turn a blind eye while investment bankers played roulette with the housing market. From his bunker in Abbottabad, Pakistan, bin Laden no doubt delighted in our economic travails. But we brought them on ourselves.
And yet for all that — and despite all the hand-wringing about American decline — the U.S. remains the world’s most powerful, prosperous nation, while bin Laden swims with sharks. Why? The bravery, persistence and ingenuity of the American military are the most obvious reasons. But the scene outside the White House that night also revealed something about the sources of American strength. (See pictures of people celebrating bin Laden’s death.)
Bin Laden’s fateful error was to assume that American society in the wake of 9/11 looked anything like that of the U.S.S.R. during its last decade of existence. By the time the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, the Russian standard of living was in decline and population growth had stagnated, eroding the Soviet economic base. The population of the U.S., on the other hand, grew by 13.2% in the decade before 2001. The U.S. added more people during that time than in any period since World War II. In the past 10 years, the rate of growth slowed to 9.7% — in part because of security-driven immigration restrictions. And yet compared with every other Western industrialized country, where populations are shrinking, the U.S. is a picture of vitality. And unlike, say, that of China, the American fertility rate remains high enough to sustain economic expansion for at least another generation.
The secret of American resilience is not just that the U.S. attracts newcomers; it’s also what they do when they arrive in the country. In his book The Future of Power, the Harvard political scientist Joseph S. Nye Jr. points out that in 1998, Chinese- or Indian-born engineers ran one-quarter of all high-tech companies in Silicon Valley. By 2005, 1 in 4 technology start-ups had been launched by immigrants. A 2009 Brookings Institution study found that among people with advanced degrees, immigrants are three times more likely to file for patents than native-born Americans. The U.S.’s greatest long-term strategic asset, Nye writes, lies in its ability to “attract the best and brightest from the rest of the world and meld them into a diverse culture of creativity.” (See stunning aerial photos of the Sept. 11 destruction.)
That was the culture — the country — on display that night in Lafayette Square. It was a young, college-age crowd. Many were children of immigrants who arrived during the wave of the ’90s, members of “the generation that has borne the heaviest share of the burden” since 9/11, in Obama’s words. What bin Laden never understood is that, whatever the body blows suffered over the past decade, American society retained its capacity to renew itself. The U.S. was able not only to sustain the long war but also to produce innovations that have changed the world: Google Earth, the iPhone, Facebook, Twitter. America today is probably a less open and less confident nation than it was on 9/11. But it has become a more youthful, more diverse and more dynamic one as well.
That isn’t a prescription for complacency. Our infrastructure and public-education system are in dreadful shape, Washington’s political class appears hopelessly inept, and we are drowning in debt. The benefits we have reaped from immigration could still be squandered if politicians continue to pander to the xenophobic fringe. The defeat of bin Laden presents the U.S. with an opportunity to rebuild its strength at home. Doing so will mean learning from our mistakes. But there are lessons in success too.
Ratnesar, a TIME contributing editor-at-large, is a Bernard L. Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of Tear Down This Wall: A City, a President, and the Speech That Ended the Cold War. His column on global affairs usually appears on Mondays on TIME.com.
See TIME’s complete archive of the bin Laden coverage.
See the world’s most influential people in the 2011 TIME 100.
Kyaemon
May 11, 2011 at 10:09 pm
A chosen few see bin Laden photos as the rest wait
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110511/ap_on_re_us/us_bin_laden_photos
WASHINGTON – Some members of Congress are making appointments at CIA headquarters to view graphic photos of Osama bin Laden’s corpse. But the American people might have to wait decades to see images of the al-Qaida leader who was killed in Pakistan by Navy SEALs during a daring middle-of-the-night raid.
The CIA is allowing members of the House and Senate Intelligence and Armed Services committees to see the photos in a secure room at the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Va., a CIA spokeswoman said Wednesday. Lawmakers cannot take copies of the photos with them.
Access on Capitol Hill to privileged information, whether it’s a classified military secret, campaign strategy or the identity of a political nominee, is the coin of the realm in Washington. Knowing what so many others don’t can raise public profiles and spice careers in ways that methodically toiling over legislation and casting floor votes cannot.
The CIA invitations went out to the lawmakers who oversee spy missions and military operations.
GOP Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, was a largely unknown Michigan lawmaker when he was appointed to the post in December after Republicans won House control. Bin Laden’s death has catapulted him into a different league as an expert and insider, a familiar face now on television news shows.
Sen. James Inhofe, who’s on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he would be the first lawmaker to view the photos. Inhofe, R-Okla., said he suggested that CIA Director Leon Panetta make them available to the committees, and Panetta agreed.
“By viewing these photos, I can help dispel conspiracy theorists who doubt that bin Laden is in fact dead,” Inhofe said in a statement.
Technically, Inhofe isn’t the first. Rogers saw a photo of bin Laden’s body during a May 2 visit to the CIA, just hours after the raid.
The disclosure that the Obama administration was keeping the photos at CIA headquarters could have important legal implications.
The Associated Press and others have requested copies of the photos and other materials under the Freedom of Information Act, which applies to the CIA but not to the White House. Legal experts initially wondered whether the White House would act as custodian of the photos and other records to keep the information from becoming public through the open records law.
The decision to send lawmakers to the CIA to see the images indicates that the agency controls the photos, said Daniel Metcalfe, executive director of the Collaboration on Government Secrecy at American University’s Washington College of Law. It also could mean that anyone who wants the photos could be in for a long wait and lengthy legal battle.
The 1984 CIA Information Act allows the agency to exempt highly sensitive “operational files” from searches reviews or disclosures under the open records law. Operational files include foreign intelligence or counterintelligence operations.
“If the CIA is the sole custodian of the photos in all forms, and it treats them as operational files, then that’s an enormous barrier to access,” said Metcalfe, former head of the Justice Department’s Office of Information and Privacy. “That can be challenged in court, of course.” But he noted that there is no end date in the law for the special protection for such material.
Rogers supports President Barack Obama’s decision not to release the photos to the public. Obama has said that doing so could inflame anti-American sentiment overseas and put U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq at risk. “Osama bin Laden is not a trophy,” Rogers said.
Most Americans agree. An AP-GfK poll shows 64 percent of those questioned don’t think the U.S. should make public the photos of bin Laden’s body public. Also, 34 percent favored release and 2 percent said they didn’t know, according to the poll results.
Government officials who have seen the photos say there are gruesome. One shows part of bin Laden’s skull blown off.
Democratic Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee who plans to look over the photos, believes that having people from two branches of government look at the images is “due diligence,” spokeswoman Tara Trujillo said.
Other lawmakers had no interest in seeing them.
“I’m quite satisfied Osama bin Laden is dead,” said Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif., a member of House Armed Services Committee.
Republican Rep. Mike Coffman of Colorado, a member of the House Armed Services Committee and a Marine combat veteran, said Obama made the right call. “I don’t have any fascination with looking at gunshot wounds to the face,” Coffman said. “I take their word for it.”
___
Associated Press writers Donna Cassata, Kimberly Dozier, Sam Hananel, and Colleen Slevin in Denver contributed to this report.
__
Kyaemon
May 13, 2011 at 12:58 am
Special report: The bin Laden kill plan
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110512/wl_nm/us_binladen_kill;_ylt=AtV3HYa.twrPHMuNsglpshNH2ocA;_ylu=X3oDMTMxdmVmazc3BGFzc2V0A25tLzIwMTEwNTEyL3VzX2JpbmxhZGVuX2tpbGwEY2NvZGUDdG9wZ21wZQRjcG9zAzYEcG9zAzYEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yaWVzBHNsawNzcGVjaWFscmVwb3I-
By Caren Bohan, Mark Hosenball, Tabassum Zakaria and Missy Ryan Caren Bohan, Mark Hosenball, Tabassum Zakaria And Missy Ryan – 40 mins ago
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A pivotal moment in the long, tortuous quest to find Osama bin Laden came years before U.S. spy agencies discovered his hermetic compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
In July 2007, then Senator Barack Obama’s top foreign policy advisers met in the modest two-room Massachusetts Avenue offices that served as his campaign’s Washington headquarters. There, they debated the incendiary language Obama would use in an upcoming speech on national security, according to a senior White House official.
Pakistan was a growing worry. A new, highly classified intelligence analysis, called a National Intelligence Estimate, had just identified militant safe havens in Pakistan’s border areas as a major threat to U.S. security. The country’s military leader, Pervez Musharraf, had recently cut a deal with local tribes that effectively eased pressure on al Qaeda and related groups.
Days after the Washington meeting, candidate Obama told an audience at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars: “If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.”
It was the most carefully crafted sentence in the speech, a statement no U.S. leader had ever made. (Text of Obama’s speech: http://link.reuters.com/weg59r)
In the two weeks since President Obama made good on that threat — in fact, bested it by declining to give Pakistan a chance to act first — reams have been written about the painstaking detective hunt that led to bin Laden.
But Reuters interviews with two dozen current and former senior intelligence, White House and State Department officials reveal another side of the story.
The 13-year quest to find and eliminate bin Laden, from the November 1998 day he was indicted by a federal grand jury for his role in the East Africa embassy bombings, was filled with missteps, course adjustments and radical new departures for U.S. security policy. It ultimately led to a fortified compound in a little known Pakistani city named after a long-dead British major.
Even with bin Laden buried at sea, the changes to U.S. security policy could linger for years, or decades.
The mission to destroy bin Laden, and his network, sparked the creation of a chillingly bureaucratic process for deciding who would be on “kill lists,” authorized for death at the hands of the CIA. It revolutionized the use of pilotless drones to find and attack militants; drove the controversially brutal treatment of detainees in U.S. custody; and brought the United States and Pakistan closer together, then wrenched them apart.
(Even in ordering the risky Navy SEAL raid on May 1, Obama made allowances for Pakistan’s sensitivities. The raid was carried out by the U.S. military but under CIA legal authorities and command, partly for deniability if something went wrong and partly because the United States is not at war with Pakistan, a U.S. official said.)
But there was one constant in the search for bin Laden. On September 17, 2001, six days after the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush issued a still-classified “finding” that gave the CIA “lethal authorities” to deal with the al Qaeda leader and his top lieutenants. Ever since, there was an expectation — even a preference — that bin Laden would be killed, not captured, Bush and Obama administration officials said.
The same day that Bush signed the directive, he publicly declared bin Laden was wanted “dead or alive.”
Numerous officials said they knew of no explicit command that bin Laden was not to be taken alive. When he ordered the SEAL raid, Obama had on his desk a written protocol for what would happen if the al Qaeda chief were captured and removed from Pakistan to an unnamed U.S. military installation, the senior White House official said.
But it was vaguer than the rest of the operational plan, and the expectation among most of the people who planned and executed the mission was that bin Laden would be killed. If bin Laden had surrendered, Obama’s senior advisers “would have to reconvene and make a decision about what to do with him,” said one official, who like many requested anonymity to discuss sensitive national security matters. “It was intentionally left to be decided after the fact.”
Richard Armitage, who was deputy secretary of state in Bush’s first term, voiced the view that prevailed through two presidencies. “I think we took Osama bin Laden at his word, that he wanted to be a martyr,” Armitage told Reuters.
The U.S. government, he said, would do all it could to help bin Laden realize that goal.
RABBIT HOLES AND WRONG TURNS
The hunt for bin Laden turned out to be riddled with dead ends, wrong turns and long, desolate periods of frustration.
The 9/11 attacks would push the Bush administration into a war in Iraq that critics — including candidate Obama — denounced as a dangerous diversion from al Qaeda and its Afghanistan/Pakistan nexus. Interrogation techniques such as “waterboarding,” a form of simulated drowning, were used on a handful of suspects deemed most dangerous, sparking a debate — it erupted again on May 2 — over the best way to fight terrorism.
In Afghanistan’s Tora Bora mountains in December 2001, U.S. special forces came close to bin Laden — perhaps within 2,000 meters, according to the published recollections of a former U.S. Army special forces commander who uses the pseudonym “Dalton Fury.”
Opting to rely on local Afghan allies, the United States declined to send in the 1,500 U.S. Army Rangers needed to block bin Laden’s escape route.
It would be more than nine years before U.S. special forces would get that close again.
In the intervening years, “there were a lot of empty rabbit holes down which we pursued and ultimately didn’t find any results. It was very frustrating,” said Juan Zarate, a top White House counter-terrorism aide from 2005-2009. “I always had a mantra that I used for myself, both not to get too discouraged and also with the counter-terrorism community, which is: these guys are not ghosts. They are flesh and blood and can be found and we’ll find them.”
With virtually no hard knowledge, U.S. counter-terrorism officials said they assumed bin Laden was hiding in the mountainous, lawless Afghan-Pakistan border region. But it’s now believed that after Tora Bora, he spent some time in Afghanistan’s eastern Kunar province, crossed the border into Pakistan in late summer or fall 2002, moved to a Pakistani village in 2003 for a couple of years, and hid in plain sight in Abbottabad beginning in 2005 or 2006.
Yet even in deadly U.S. failures, there were small breakthroughs.
On February 4, 2002, a Predator drone struck a group of men in Arab dress in the Zawar Kili area of eastern Afghanistan. Among them was a tall man to whom others were acting deferentially, U.S. officials said at the time.
It turned out not to be bin Laden. Reports quoted local residents saying it was a group of villagers collecting scrap metal. But before the episode was over, U.S. intelligence agencies had received, with help from the Saudi government, a DNA sample from bin Laden’s extended family that would clinch identification if he were ever found.
FROM CAPTURE TO KILL
It was President Bill Clinton who launched the hunt for bin Laden. After the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Clinton signed what some former U.S. officials called a “covert action finding” authorizing CIA operations against al Qaeda, then regarded as a marginal Islamic militant faction with an eccentric, Saudi-born leader.
But some Clinton aides, led by attorney general Janet Reno, were concerned about the legality of killing bin Laden, former top intelligence and counter-terrorism officials said. Clinton’s orders permitted U.S. forces to kill bin Laden in self-defense, but the prime directive was to capture him and bring him to justice in the United States.
The September 11, 2001, attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania instantly made such scruples seem anachronistic.
Bush’s September 17, 2001, order, which is still highly classified, authorized the CIA to use all methods at its disposal — explicitly including deadly force — to wipe out al Qaeda and its leaders.
Presidential covert action findings never expire unless a president issues a new written order suspending or revoking them, current and former U.S. national security officials told Reuters. So Bush’s nine-and-a-half-year-old order remained a key legal authority under which Obama launched the commando raid that led to bin Laden’s death.
It was perhaps inevitable, then, that partisans of both men and their political parties would claim the lion’s share of credit for bin Laden’s demise.
Bush’s order was both sweeping and general in the powers it granted to the CIA to launch operations against al Qaeda.
As Armitage and others recalled, 9/11 rapidly accelerated a program that had progressed only fitfully in the Clinton administration thanks to CIA-Pentagon turf battles: a scheme to arm increasingly sophisticated remote-controlled drone aircraft with missiles that could launch precision strikes.
In Bush’s last months in office, and even more under Obama, the drone strikes expanded dramatically, rattling relations with Pakistan. But when it came time to attack the Abbottabad compound, Obama rejected an option for using drones, fearing civilian casualties and that proof of bin Laden’s demise would never be found in the wreckage. (For similar reasons, the president also rejected an option which would have sent B-2 “Stealth” bombers to destroy bin Laden’s lair.)
In the months after 9/11, the CIA forged ahead with three other major initiatives to eradicate bin Laden and company:
* A program in which militants captured by U.S. or allied forces were detained and interrogated either in special U.S. military facilities or in a network of secret CIA prisons, where some were subjected to harsh physical interrogation tactics dreamed up by agency contractors.
* Another program where captured militants were subjected to what the agency called “extraordinary rendition” and delivered without judicial proceedings into the custody of often-brutal security agencies in their native countries.
* A troubled effort to create a secret U.S. capability that would be similar to the “hit squads” deployed by Israel’s Mossad and other spy agencies.
To guide the CIA’s new activities, the Bush administration began drawing up a list of “high value targets,” who were the top priority for intelligence gathering and who could be captured or killed depending upon the circumstances in which they were found.
There had been nothing quite like it before in U.S. history. Initially, according to former officials familiar with the process, the lists were compiled and approved by an interagency committee of lawyers and bureaucrats based on recommendations from the CIA and other intelligence agencies.
The U.S. spy agencies would propose a name for the high-value target list and prepare a dossier explaining who the suspect was and why he ought to be on the list, they said. This dossier would then be circulated to the interagency committee, whose members, including lawyers from the Justice Department, Pentagon and CIA, would review it. If the lawyers deemed the dossier adequate, the committee would then approve the individual’s name for inclusion on the “high-value target” list — subject to capture or death by American spies or soldiers.
The Obama White House approved adding American-born Anwar al-Awlaki, based in Yemen, to the target list in 2010 because officials believed the English-speaking Muslim cleric had gone beyond inspirational rhetoric and become involved in terrorism operations.
At any one time, the list would contain between 10 and 30 names, the most obvious ones being bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the former officials said. At one point, Bush’s advisers prepared for him a rogues’ gallery of about 20 top suspects on the list, which was laminated in plastic. Bush kept it in his Oval Office desk. When militants on the chart were captured or killed, Bush would take it out of his desk and mark them off.
But bin Laden’s name stayed on the list while the young orphans of 9/11 grew into teenagers.
THE TRAIL BACK
The plan to create CIA hit-squads proved another dead end. The original concept was to create surveillance and “lethal” teams under the agency’s paramilitary wing, staffed by former military commandos and coyly named the Special Activities Division, according to two former officials familiar with internal government debates at the time.
That plan was put into cold storage by CIA director George Tenet, then revived by his successor Porter Goss with a twist: the agency would use outside contractors for the hit teams, to give it more deniability. Erik Prince, founder-owner of the controversial private military contractor then known as Blackwater and a former Navy SEAL, was invited to participate in brainstorming sessions. At some point, a former senior official said, the agency conducted training exercises in the field.
As one of his first acts, Obama’s CIA chief Leon Panetta killed the hit squad idea for good, and informed congressional oversight committees, which had never been told of it.
The trail back to bin Laden began with the militants detained and interrogated by the CIA. That’s the crucible of the debate over whether the United States veered badly off track in its war with al Qaeda, or was on the right course all along.
Did waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other “enhanced interrogation techniques,” a phrase critics call a euphemism for torture, ultimately work? Or did such tactics muddy the search for bin Laden? Did old-fashioned, persistent investigation prevail in the end?
The debate is unlikely ever to be settled. But multiple U.S. intelligence officials told Reuters the real breakthrough that led to bin Laden came from a mysterious CIA detainee named Hassan Ghul. Ghul, who was not captured until 2004 at the earliest, was not subjected to waterboarding, the CIA’s roughest and most controversial interrogation technique. It had already been phased out by the time he was captured. But two U.S. officials acknowledged he may well have been subjected to other coercive CIA tactics, possibly including stress positions, sleep deprivation and being slammed into a wall.
It was Ghul, the officials said, who after years of tantalizing hints from other detainees finally provided the information that prompted the CIA to focus intensely on finding Abu Ahmed al Kuwaiti, pseudonym for the courier who would lead them to bin Laden.
Much about Ghul remains obscure, including his nationality. Two U.S. officials told Reuters, however, that at some point the CIA turned him over to authorities in Pakistan. The officials said their understanding is that in 2007, Pakistani authorities released him from custody. The officials said the U.S. government now believes Ghul has once again become a frontline militant fighter.
Leaving Ghul aside, it remains unclear whether the brutal interrogations — which Obama banned upon taking office — were effective or not.
The available facts, bolstered by evidence from secret Guantanamo detainee files made public by the WikiLeaks organization, suggest that some of the first information U.S. intelligence received about Abu Ahmed al Kuwaiti surfaced in 2002, when the harshest elements of the CIA interrogation program were still in force.
Two high-ranking al Qaeda operatives, alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (who was waterboarded repeatedly) and Abu Faraj al-Libbi (who was not), were questioned about the courier, current U.S. officials familiar with the intelligence said. Both tried to steer interrogators onto a different track, which only piqued the CIA’s interest further, the officials said.
While Ghul’s information brought tighter focus to the hunt for bin Laden’s most important courier in 2004, it would be another two to three years before the agency discovered his true identity and more about his activities. A new president would take office before the Abbottabad hideout that Abu Ahmed and his brother are believed to have built for bin Laden was discovered.
RENEWED FOCUS ON PAKISTAN
………
ENDGAME
Obama was brought the lead about the Abbottabad compound in August 2010. Fewer than 10 people within the White House, and only a handful at the CIA, knew about it. By last month, that number had grown, as the CIA operators and military commandos who would execute a raid were read into developing operational plans.
At what would be a crucial, two-hour meeting on April 28, Obama, as is his custom, went around the room, asking each of his principal advisers for their views. At one point, laughter permeated the tension as each adviser prefaced his or her comments by saying, “This is a really hard call,” the senior White House official said.
Obama was presented with four scenarios, some of which evoked the 1993 “Black Hawk Down” fiasco in Somalia: The team gets cleanly in and out with bin Laden. The team gets cleanly in and out, but bin Laden is not there. There’s a messy situation on the ground, with fighting and casualties, and bin Laden is there. Worst of all was scenario four: the same as scenario three, but with no bin Laden in sight.
“There was discussion of catastrophic — that was the word we used — catastrophic outcomes where you had dead or injured U.S. personnel or a hostage-taking,” the senior official said.
Obama left the room saying he had not yet made a decision, but a close aide knew that he had. “I knew with 100 percent certainty that he was going to decide to do this because I’ve worked for him for four years. I just knew. He said he’d do this.”
Three days later, the group gathered in the White House Situation Room to monitor the raid as it unfolded. A mood of “tense silence” filled the room as Obama and the advisers waited for the next pieces of information. Then Panetta spoke the words U.S. officials had hoped to hear for years: “Geronimo” — a code phrase meaning bin Laden had been found — “EKIA.” Enemy killed in action.
Amid a scramble to inform counterparts abroad, especially the Pakistanis, and to prepare for the release of the blockbuster news to the public, pizza and chips were brought in for fortification.
There would be tough questions ahead. Could U.S.-Pakistan relations be salvaged? Successful once, would Obama authorize similar raids against other leading militants? (Another top Obama aide would not “take that off the table.”)
But now, there were at least a few moments for reflection. After years in the wilderness, literally and figuratively, the United States had got its man.
Obama walked along the White House colonnade to the East Room to deliver the news that many in the United States had by now guessed. He could hear the chants of “USA, USA” from a rally in Lafayette Park.
As Obama spoke, adviser and speechwriter Ben Rhodes turned to John Brennan, the president’s top counter-terrorism adviser, and whispered: “How long have you been going after this guy?” Brennan immediately replied: “Fifteen years.”
(This story was corrected to show proper date of indictment for embassy bombings.)
(Additional reporting by Zeeshan Haider in Pakistan; Writing by Warren Strobel; Editing by Kristin Roberts and Claudia Parsons)
Kyaemon
May 13, 2011 at 8:26 am
Pakistan Wasn’t bin Laden’s Only Hideout, Says Prime Minister
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2071033,00.html
Osama bin Laden may have been found and killed in Pakistan, but that country’s leaders believe it wasn’t the only place where the al-Qaeda leader had traveled after fleeing Afghanistan in late 2001. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, in an exclusive interview with TIME on Wednesday — one of the first he has given since the raid on Abbottabad — thinks bin Laden may have visited his ancestral homeland, Yemen, in search of a new bride.
Just this past Tuesday, Gilani said, he received a cable from Pakistan’s embassy in Syria reporting that the sister of bin Laden’s fifth wife, a Yemeni national, was in Damascus and had made contact with Pakistani diplomats there. According to the cable, the sister-in-law claimed that bin Laden had married Amal Ahmed al-Sadah, currently 29, in Yemen in 2002. “That was after 9/11,” said Gilani. “And they say that they’ve got the proof.” If the information in the cable is correct, he continued, that would put bin Laden in Yemen in 2002.
(See pictures of Osama bin Laden’s Pakistan hideout.)
Al-Sadah was in a bedroom with bin Laden when U.S. Navy SEALs stormed the three-story compound in Abbottabad, and was shot in the leg after allegedly attempting to protect her husband. She is being treated at a Pakistani hospital, and the Pakistan government says it will soon repatriate her to Yemen. (The U.S. has demanded access to al-Sadah in order to question her and others present in the compound when bin Laden was killed. The response from the Pakistani authorities, thus far, has been lukewarm.)
The claim that bin Laden was in Yemen mere months after the 9/11 attacks could, of course, simply be an attempt to spread the blame that Pakistan is currently attracting. Bin Laden’s discovery less than a three hours’ drive away from Gilani’s office has amplified allegations of either complicity or ignorance on the part of Pakistan’s much-vaunted intelligence agencies.
(See why Pakistan feels the heat of U.S. mistrust.)
But Gilani isn’t buying it. The Prime Minister says he isn’t even sure that bin Laden had been hiding in the Abbottabad compound for the past six years. The claim, Gilani said, “is not authentic,” adding that “terrorists don’t normally stay in one place for more than 15 days.”
Gilani accepts that there was an “intelligence failure,” but insists that it wasn’t only Pakistan’s. “He was not confined to Pakistan alone,” the Prime Minister said. “He was everywhere.” And ultimately, Gilani added, bin Laden was not his responsibility.
(Watch President Obama’s announcement of Osama bin Laden’s death.)
“If they are concerned about bin Laden, they should be,” Gilani said of his U.S. allies. “That’s their issue. Bin Laden is not my citizen. When my citizens are being martyred, I’m responsible for that.”
See pictures of 13 years of terrorist attack
Kyaemon
May 13, 2011 at 7:42 pm
Senate passes resolution honoring military, intelligence community for Osama bin Laden operation
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-senate-bin-laden-resolution-20110503,0,3797770.story
The United States Senate unanimously approved a resolution congratulating the U.S. military and intelligence communities for locating and killing Osama bin Laden.
Before the vote, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called the mission “historically significant and tactically stunning.”
“This is the newest proud page in the long story of the American hero,” the Nevada senator said. “Today the Senate stands in awe of the countless men and women who have toiled in obscurity in the field in every corner of the world. … These heroes confronted fear with brilliance and bravery. They met the worst of humanity with the best of America.”
“I want to commend the President on his decision to go through with this mission. Above all, I want to thank the remarkable group of men who carried it out,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) added.
Unlike the usual chaotic gaggle in the well of the chamber for votes, senators signaled their support one-by-one from their desks as the roll was called.
Kyaemon
May 13, 2011 at 8:17 pm
Joe Courtney: ‘No Question’ Bin Laden is Dead
2 hours ago – ABC News 4:32 | 97 views
Rep. Joe Courtney, D-CT., also says Medicare debate will help Democrats.
http://news.yahoo.com/video/politics-15749652/25221208
Kyaemon
May 13, 2011 at 9:40 pm
Taliban mean it, more attacks could follow in Pakistan
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-05/13/c_13873325.htm
By Zhang Qi, Misbah Saba Malik
ISLAMABAD, May 13 (Xinhua) — Following the killing of Osama bin Laden by the U.S. special task forces in Pakistan’s northwestern city Abbottabad earlier this month, both al-Qaida and Pakistan Taliban have vowed to avenge the death of their common leader by threatening to launch attacks in Pakistan and the United States as well as in the other places of the world.
Partially due to the tightened security measures taken by many countries following the death of bin Laden and partially due to the lack of time for preparation, no major retaliatory actions have been taken by al-Qaida and Pakistan Taliban for a roughly two- week time though some minor terrorist attacks did occur time and again in Pakistan and a few terrorist attempts were foiled in other parts of the world.
However, this doesn’t mean that they will not do it, said Talat Masood, a senior local defense analyst.
Indeed, Taliban have meant their words when the news coming in early Friday morning from Pakistan that a twin suicide blast at an armed police training center in the country’s northwestern city of Charsadda have so far reportedly killed 87 security personnel, more than ten civilians and injured over 100 others.
The attack, which Pakistan Taliban have shouldered the responsibility, took place at about 6:00 a.m. local time when a motorcycle and a horse cart each laden with an estimated 10 kg of explosives attacked a training center of the Frontier Constabulary (FC), an armed force under the leadership of the Interior Ministry of the country, in the Shabqadar area of the city.
Local media reports said that the second suicide blast did not occur until rescue people arrived at the blast site of the first blast which took place in front of the main gate of the training center and this indicated a well-calculated step taken by Taliban to cause a bigger casualty out of this.
Hospital sources said that the death toll could further rise as many of the injured are still in critical condition and hospitals both in Charsadda and its neighboring city Peshawar lack enough medical facilities including sufficient blood for the wounded people.
Shortly after the twin suicide blasts were reported, the local media quoted Pakistan Taliban as saying that the actions taken by them were meant to avenge the death of Osama bin Laden.
Local watchers believe more serious terrorist attacks could follow and the targets of these retaliatory actions taken by Pakistan Taliban or al-Qaida could shift to other areas instead of focusing on military, police, government organizations and political leaders.
Over the last year or so, infrastructure like railways and gas pipelines in Pakistan has repeatedly been attacked by terrorists and at least four bomb threats have been issued to local airlines.
In order to show their existence, Pakistan Taliban and al-Qaida will almost inevitably launch more attacks either in Pakistan or in other parts of the world and this will exert a even greater pressure on the Pakistani government and the other countries in the fight against terrorism, said local watchers.
Kyaemon
May 14, 2011 at 6:58 pm
Pornography Is Found on Bin Laden’s Computers – NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/14/world/asia/14binladen.html?src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB
WASHINGTON — The enormous cache of computer files taken from Osama bin Laden’s compound contained a considerable quantity of pornographic videos, American officials said on Friday, adding a discordant note to the public image of the Islamist militant who long denounced the West for its lax sexual mores.
Related
Week in Review: Bin Laden as Patriarch (May 15, 2011)
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity about classified material, would not say whether there was evidence that Bin Laden or the other men living in the house had acquired or viewed the material.
The discovery of the pornography, first reported by Reuters, may not be surprising in a collection of five computers, 10 hard drives and dozens of thumb drives and CDs whose age and past ownership is not known.
But the disclosure could fuel accusations of hypocrisy against the founder of Al Qaeda, who was 54 and lived with three wives at the time of his death, and will be welcomed by counterterrorism officials because it could tarnish his legacy and erode the appeal of his brand of religious extremism.
In a 2002 “letter to the American people,” Bin Laden denounced American culture for its exploitation of women’s bodies in dress, advertising and popular culture.
“Your nation exploits women like consumer products or advertising tools, calling upon customers to purchase them,” he wrote. “You plaster your naked daughters across billboards in order to sell a product without any shame. You have brainwashed your daughters into believing they are liberated by wearing revealing clothes, yet in reality all they have liberated is your sexual desire.”
A team of intelligence analysts under the C.I.A.’s direction has been working to review the material seized from Bin Laden’s house in Abbottabad, Pakistan, by the Navy Seal team that killed him. Officials have said the material shows that Bin Laden was making notes about new ways to attack the United States and sending instructions by courier to subordinates and Qaeda affiliates.
Asked about the contents in an interview with Bloomberg Television, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said, “I’m not sure we have any plot” that the intelligence review had found.
“On the other hand, he did seem to have a goal around the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11,” Mr. Holder said. “Certainly, he wanted to harm and was in the advanced operational stage of pulling the levers in the Al Qaeda organization.”
But the Obama administration also released unflattering video footage of a gray-bearded Bin Laden, wearing a cloak and a ski cap and clutching a remote control while watching his own statements on television. The suggestion that he must have dyed his beard for video recordings and was intensely concerned with his image could erode his reputation in the Muslim world as a charismatic and selfless leader.
Also on Friday, Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, confirmed that American interrogators had questioned Bin Laden’s three wives for the first time on Thursday, 10 days after they were taken from the compound by Pakistani security forces. He declined to give more details, saying, “I can’t characterize the interaction.”
The three widows, Khairiah Sabar, Siham Sabar and Amal Ahmed Abdulfattah, who is also known as Amal Ahmed al-Sadah, had been held and questioned for days by Pakistani officials before the C.I.A. interrogators spoke to them. Ms. Abdulfattah, who is Yemeni, was shot in the leg during the assault on Bin Laden’s compound by Navy Seal commandos.
American officials have many urgent questions for them: where other top Qaeda operatives are, where Bin Laden lived before moving to Abbottabad and whether any Pakistani military or intelligence officers visited the compound. But the wives are believed to have lived cloistered lives, and it is unclear what they may know or be willing to tell.
Kyaemon
May 14, 2011 at 7:15 pm
Pakistan gov’t urged to review terms of engagement with U.S.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-05/14/c_13874695.htm
ISLAMABAD, May 14 (Xinhua) — Pakistani parliament passed a unanimous resolution early Saturday and called upon the government to review its terms of engagement with the United States, with a view to ensuring that the country’s national interests are fully respected and accommodated in pursuit of policies for countering terrorism and achieving reconciliation and peace in Afghanistan.
The special session of the parliament was summoned on Friday for one-point agenda to discuss the raid by the U.S. special forces on a compound in northwest Pakistani city of Abbotabad to kill the al-Qaida chief.
The parliament passed a 12-point unanimous resolution in the wee hours of Saturday after a long debate and briefings by the head of the intelligence agencies and air chief about the U.S. May 2 action, which has evoked strong resentment across Pakistan.
It called upon the government to appoint an independent commission on the Abbottabad operation, fix responsibility and recommend necessary measures to ensure that such an incident does not recur.
The resolution strongly condemned the U.S. unilateral raid on a compound to kill Osama bin Laden and said such action is amount to violation of the country’s sovereignty.
The resolution condemned U.S. drone strikes in the country’s tribal regions and warned that Pakistan could stop supplies for the U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan if strikes from the U.S. spy planes were not stopped.
“Such drone attacks must be stopped forthwith, failing which the Government will be constrained to consider taking necessary steps including withdrawal of transit facility allowed to NATO/ ISAF forces,” the resolution said.
The resolution determined that unilateral actions cannot advance the global cause of elimination of terrorism, and the people of Pakistan will no longer tolerate such actions and repeat of unilateral measures could have dire consequences for peace and security in the region and the world.
It called upon the government to ensure that the principles of an independent foreign policy must be grounded in strict adherence to the principles of policy, as stated in Article 40 of the Constitution, the UN Charter, observance of international law and respect for the free will and aspirations of sovereign states and their peoples.
Kyaemon
May 18, 2011 at 1:41 am
Pakistan has four bin Laden probes: Kerry
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/17/us-pakistan-usa-idUSTRE74G7M520110517
WASHINGTON | Tue May 17, 2011 6:28pm EDT
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Pakistan has launched four separate probes into Osama bin Laden’s life and death on Pakistani soil, Senator John Kerry said on Tuesday, adding that Pakistan’s intelligence chief has promised to tell him if it turns out someone in his agency knew bin Laden was there.
Pakistan, in what some officials said was a gesture to show it cared about helping the United States fight militants, arrested what it claimed was a “senior” al Qaeda operative. But U.S. officials were skeptical.
Kerry, just back from a trip to Pakistan, said there were four Pakistani investigations into the circumstances of the death of bin Laden, who was living in a compound in the garrison town of Abbottabad before U.S. forces killed him on May 2.
Kerry did not know when the probes might produce results, and noted that the United States was also sifting through evidence that could indicate whether Pakistan knew of bin Laden’s whereabouts before his death……