Pakistan knew about Bin Laden hideout: Panetta

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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Re: Pakistan knew about Bin Laden hideout: Panetta

First of all I cant believe that the army didnt know that OBL was there, so close to Kakul military academy its equivalent to Musharraf laying the blame of Nuclear proliferation squarely on AQ Khan, although every one knows that heavy machinery was sent to the countries in question and that couldnt have been possible without the army's approval.

Anyways if we believe that the army didnt know about that, it means they are incompetent which is also not something to be proud of. As far as incompetence is concerned they have demonstrated that time and again due to their inability to preempt suicide attacks and breaking rings of terrorist groups.

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Re: Pakistan knew about Bin Laden hideout: Panetta


who said the political leadership or even musharraf knew about it? there can be a variety of plausible scenarios/theories that entail people from some corner of the security establishment (deep state) harboring him. that could mean anything from ashfaq kayani for strategic reasons to ISI s-wing officers for ideological reasons. who knows? pakistan's security establishment does all kinds of things that don't make sense to a rational observer. why is sensibility and logic suddenly a requirement for plausibility? nobody knows the details but those details are surely not required to answer the basic question: is it conceivable that he was not abetted by parties within the security establishment? obviously not. it is farcical to claim otherwise.

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Re: Pakistan knew about Bin Laden hideout: Panetta

London Olympics, a cracker can give license to the west to invade/treat Pakistan like Iraq.... no matter who does it the blame will go to Pakistan...

This is what the ground realities are and what our Spy Chief ( the most important person in these kind of wars) is doing, he is meeting Mansoor Ijaz and then he meets Mushy in Dubai just to tell him things are not OK for him in Pakistan... i guess it is Mushy who pays him salary??? and he is here to assess situation for him...

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Re: Pakistan knew about Bin Laden hideout: Panetta

Biden advised not to authorize bin Laden raid
Vice President Joe Biden said he advised President Barack Obama last spring not to immediately authorize the raid on the compound in Pakistan where Osama bin Laden was thought to be hiding.

“My suggestion is, don t go,” Biden recalled saying when Obama sought his opinion on whether to give Navy SEALs the go-ahead to raid the compound. “We have to do two more things to see if he s there.”

Biden recalled the conversation while addressing Democratic members of Congress on Friday at a retreat in Cambridge, Md. He did not specify which two things he had considered necessary for the operation against bin Laden to proceed.

Biden said Obama also sought opinions from senior advisers, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Biden did not say where the conversations took place, but he recalled that no one was willing to give a definitive answer except then-CIA Director Leon Panetta, who told Obama to move forward with the SEALs operation, Biden said.

“Everyone else said 49, 51, this,” Biden said. "It got to me. He said, Joe, what do you think? and I said, You know, I didn t know we have so many economists around the table. We owe the man a direct answer. "

Obama then left the room, saying he would come to a decision, Biden said. The next morning, as Obama was boarding the presidential helicopter, he told National Security Adviser Thomas Donilon, “Go.”

As it turned out, the information that bin Laden was hiding at the compound in Abbottabad was correct. The SEALs team killed him there on May 1.

Biden recalled the conversations to make a point about Obama s strength as a leader. He said Obama made his decision knowing that if the operation went awry, even his most loyal staffers would later say, when books were written, “I didn t tell him to do that.”

“I hope no one would ve done that,” Biden said.

Biden said Obama knew his decision put at stake not only the lives of the SEALs but also the image of the presidency.
“And he pulled the trigger,” he said. “And that s clear to American people. It says less about bin Laden than it does about character, about [Obama] leading from behind. [Obama] doesn t lead from behind, he just leads. And that s clear.”


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Re: Pakistan knew about Bin Laden hideout: Panetta

send me a cc

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Re: Pakistan knew about Bin Laden hideout: Panetta

I have heard army officers bragging a lot of things, but i am not too sure if these guys are really that good. Self trained terrorists have been able to strike with ease inside military compounds, what does it tell us about capability of our intelligence agencies. I cannot recall if they have successfully done any significant operations. Plenty of spies seem roaming around all over Pakistan with hardly anyone noticing.

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Re: Pakistan knew about Bin Laden hideout: Panetta

I understand your point yazdi, but even if we start to believe that they are really competent, will it undo stigmas like GHQ siege, Bin Laden incident and Mehran Naval raid? And now 9 rockets were fired at the most prestigious military institute and we don't know who did it and how? At least we should make it clear to them that national songs and ISPR documentaries alone won't work anymore. We want performance which speaks for itself.

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Re: Pakistan knew about Bin Laden hideout: Panetta

Leon Panetta concern over Bin Laden ‘informer’ Shakil Afridi

**US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta has said he is “very concerned” about a Pakistani doctor arrested for providing intelligence for the US raid that killed Osama Bin Laden last year.
**
Dr Shikal Afridi is accused of running a CIA-run programme in Abbottabad where Bin Laden was killed. A Pakistan panel says he should be tried for treason.

Mr Panetta told the CBS TV network the arrest had been “a real mistake”.

Dr Afridi provided “very helpful” information for the raid, he added.

He was arrested shortly after the operation, carried out by US special forces in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad on 2 May last year.

Pakistan was deeply embarrassed by the raid, and condemned it as a violation of sovereignty.

**‘Phoney programme’
**
In an interview with the CBS programme 60 Minutes to be aired on Sunday, Mr Panetta said: “I’m very concerned about what the Pakistanis did with this individual.”

He added that his action “was not in any way treasonous towards Pakistan”.

**“As a matter of fact Pakistan and the United States have a common cause here against terrorism and for them to take this kind of action against somebody who was helping to go after terrorism, I just think is a real mistake on their part,” Mr Panetta said.
**
Last October, a Pakistani commission investigating the raid recommended that Dr Afridi should be tried for high treason.

In the aftermath of the operation, reports emerged that the CIA had recruited the doctor to organise a phoney vaccination programme in Abbottabad.

The aim of the programme was allegedly to confirm Bin Laden’s presence in the city by obtaining a DNA sample from residents.

It is not clear if any DNA from Bin Laden or any family members was ever obtained.

Washington has been arguing that Dr Afridi should be freed and allowed to live in the US.

**Mr Panetta also repeated US claims that someone in authority in Pakistan must have known where Bin Laden was hiding at the compound - located close to the country’s top military academy.
**
“I personally have always felt that somebody must have had some sense of what was happening at this compound,” he said. “Don’t forget, this compound had 18-foot walls. It was the largest compound in the area.”

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Re: Pakistan knew about Bin Laden hideout: Panetta

^the treatment of shakil afridi is unbelievably shameful. it looks like the pakistani military is channeling all the humiliation and emasculation of the bin laden raid towards this poor guy. this is the post-raid response of pakistan? no heads roll in the intelligence agencies or the military for incompetence...and no arrests made related to the abetment of bin laden. but a doctor who actually helped catch the terrorist should be hanged for treason!

he should be decorated with the highest civil award for helping eliminate the world's leading terrorist from pakistani soil by aiding a key ally and donor.

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Re: Pakistan knew about Bin Laden hideout: Panetta

There can be two scenarios regarding the killing of OBL:

1) Pakistan army had kept him under house arrest due to any compulsion and they were saying to the world that they didnt know where he was, but to have him killed in a military cantonment very near to the prestigious kakul academy is very humiliating for the army

2) Pakistan army did not know that he was in Abbotabad (incompetence) even in that condition they would have wanted him to let Pakistan know instead of informing Americans, because if Pakistan Army had acted on its own that might have got it some extra points from the Americans (and Western governments)

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Re: Pakistan knew about Bin Laden hideout: Panetta

But the situation is far from peachy either. Or perhaps, you want Pakistan to become some somalia before you say that we have a problem. No wonder the UN is considered a worthless pos and america wants to cut its funding.

[quote]
2) zia siding with the Americans in the mindless war in which he might have got billions of dollars but Pakistan got afghan refugees, heroin and Kalashnikov culture
[/quote]

Now, i am no way in favor of how we conducted the whole "afghan bhai" refugees, but fighting the war was a necessity in the sense that we would be in a strategic nightmare if there ever was a war with india with Soviets sitting in afghanistan. I believe the soviets had asked permission in 1965 to fly over afghanistan, but zahir shah had refused it. Ultimately, Pakistan should not want any superpower in afghanistan, but instead get its act together so afghanistan can't resist the economic might of Pakistan like how iran, syria and iraq can't resist Turkey's economic clout.

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Re: Pakistan knew about Bin Laden hideout: Panetta

Forget the fact that he was aiding and abetting a foreign power, what about him using polio shots for his mission which would be propagandized by the conspiracy theorists so polio remains in Pakistan?

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Re: Pakistan knew about Bin Laden hideout: Panetta

yes bro and we should not forget wt USA did to cuban five even though they were helping usa against terrorism..

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Re: Pakistan knew about Bin Laden hideout: Panetta

we should not forget usa support to louis posada,jundullah,mujahidin-e-khalq

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Re: Pakistan knew about Bin Laden hideout: Panetta

There are these news as well, we might call them conspirational theories but I dont think we will ever know the reality of this affair.

Osama bin Laden ‘protected by Pakistan in return for Saudi cash’

Osama bin Laden was protected by elements of Pakistan’s security apparatus in return for millions of dollars of Saudi cash, according to a controversial new account of the operation to kill the world’s most wanted man.

**Raelynn Hillhouse, an American security analyst, claims his whereabouts were finally revealed when a Pakistani intelligence officer came forward to claim the $25m (£15 million) bounty on the al-Qaeda leader’s head.

**Her version, based on evidence from sources in what she calls the “intelligence community”, contradicts the official account that bin Laden was tracked down through his trusted courier.

Pakistani officials have always denied that bin Laden was sheltered or that Islamabad had any knowledge of the secret mission that killed him.

**But Dr Hillhouse, who is known for her links to private military contractors that work extensively with the CIA, says Pakistan gave permission for a covert mission which would then be covered up by claiming bin Laden had been killed in a drone strike.

****“The [Inter-Services Intelligence] officer came forward to claim the substantial reward and to broker US citizenship for his family,” she writes on her intelligence blog, The Spy Who Billed Me.

“My sources tell me that the informant claimed that the Saudis were paying off the Pakistani military and intelligence (ISI) to essentially shelter and keep bin Laden under house arrest in Abbottabad, a city with such a high concentration of military that I’m told there’s no equivalent in the US.”
**
**After confirming bin Laden’s presence in the military town, the US approached Pakistan’s military leaders securing their co-operation in return for cash and a chance to avoid public humiliation.

The theory, if true, would explain how American black hawk helicopters were then able to fly deep into Pakistan territory in May without encountering resistance.

The plan only unravelled when one of the helicopters crash-landed, blowing the cover story.**

“The co-operation was why there were no troops in Abottabad,” writes Dr Hillhouse.** “It had always seemed very far-fetched to me that a helicopter could crash and later be destroyed in an area with such high military concentration without the Pakistanis noticing.” In the immediate aftermath of the raid, some residents of Abbottabad, where bin Laden had lived for five years, said they had received mysterious visits a night earlier warning them to stay inside with their lights off.
**
However, a senior Pakistani security official denied that the ISI had sheltered bin Laden.

“We don’t use toilet paper – we wash,” he said. “But toilet paper is all this theory is good for.”

A spokesman for the US department of defense said: “We have no additional operational details, or comments on operational details, to make at this time.”

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Re: Pakistan knew about Bin Laden hideout: Panetta

That was the strategic calculation that our military planners made (which are never correct by the way) at that time. If instead of going to war inside Afghanistan they had tried to mend their relationship with Russia that would have been much better. They had enemies in the East (India) and West (Afghanistan) and with Russia sitting inside Afghanistan they might be feeling more insecure.

We are still feeling the long term consequences of siding with the Americans in 1979. At that time the cold war between US and USSR was going on, and Afghanistan was one of the theatres in which Pakistan willingly became their pawn to the detriment of the whole country. If you see our downfall (economic and society) started after 1979.

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Re: Pakistan knew about Bin Laden hideout: Panetta

ussr was not there to occupy afghanistan....

they wanted access to pakistani warm waters.....

so afghan war was inevitable....

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Re: Pakistan knew about Bin Laden hideout: Panetta


that is unfortunate but that's the fault of the idiotic mullah propagandists. your outrage should be directed solely at them. they were spreading anti-vaccine propaganda long before shakil afridi did anything.

further, it's not like the fake drive validated their conspiracy theories about sterilization. it's just a coincidence that happened to involve the idea of vaccinations. it was merely a ruse employed towards a great and desirable outcome.

to somehow blame shakil afridi for pakistan's polio problem is beyond ridiculous. that is squarely the fault of the government and leaders of pakistani society.

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Re: Pakistan knew about Bin Laden hideout: Panetta

With regards to the previous article that I posted regarding an intelligence officer claiming the prize money a rebuttal has come from the White House.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20061159-503544.html

White House: No one receiving reward money for finding Osama bin Laden

**White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said on Monday that no one would receive the federal government’s $25 million reward money for finding Osama bin Laden because no one intentionally directed U.S. intelligence officials to the al Qaeda leader.

****In a press briefing on Monday, Carney said “as far as I’m aware, no one knowledgeably said, ‘Oh, Osama bin Laden’s over here in Abbottabad at 5703, you know, Green Avenue.’”****Carney said that the reward isn’t given if someone “accidentally” provides the necessary information through the intelligence gathering process.
**
In 2001, the State Department offered a $25 million reward for information about bin Laden’s whereabouts. In 2004, then-Sen. Hillary Clinton pushed for the passage of a bill that would allow the Secretary of State - the position she now holds - to authorize as much as $50 million as a prize.
**
At least one man has already begun angling for the prize money: Gary Brooks Faulkner, a 51-year-old American who was detained last year in Pakistan while setting out on a “lone wolf” mission to hunt down Osama bin Laden.**"

“I got off my a**. I got the son of a b**** out. He’s dead now,” Faulkner said in a recent interviewwith WLS Radio. “Whether it was by my hands or something else…You still realize that we lost total contact after he left Tora Bora. Nobody knew anything. He’s in Pakistan, he’s in Africa, he’s in Somalia…he’s everywhere else. People did nothing, absolutely nothing until I came on the scene, and that’s a fact.”

New York lawmakers have suggested that the money instead go to survivors of 9/11, as well as the families of victims.

Reps. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) and Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) introduced legislation on Sunday proposing to direct the bounty to those directly affected by the attacks.“If the bounty isn’t paid, Osama bin Laden’s victims should get it,” Weiner said, according toPolitico.The money, Nadler added, “was allocated for 9/11 victims in effect, and this is simply, saying use it more effectively for the purpose that it was set up in the first place.”

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Re: Pakistan knew about Bin Laden hideout: Panetta

Yes this is what I have been hearing all along, I am not really sure whether they would really have attacked Pakistan after Afghanistan or it was only a hype.

http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2011/10/the-ways-of-a-superpower/

More than Russia it was Afghanistan which was fanning sentiments of pashtunistan and they wanted access to the warm waters of Pakistan. With Russia sitting in Afghanistan maybe our policy makers got frightened and sided with the Americans. It was in 1981 when the Russians threatened Pakistan that they will detach Balochistan from Pakistan if they did not stop supporting mujahideen. Another interesting thing I was reading somewhere was that in Balochistan there were left wing parties (more prone to communism) as Zia ul Haq had banned the right wing ones.