Whatever their commission reports, I do not believe that Usama bin-Laden lived for nine years in Pakistan completely undetected by the government. If we could figure out where he was, certainly people in their internal security forces could figure it out. Personally, I think he was protected by people in the Pakistani intelligence services. Whether General Musharraf or any of the civilian leadership knew what was going on, I really can’t say.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Yeah, it never made sense to me that in a country like Pakistan, he could live in such close proximity to their version of West Point, without some sort of intelligence folks knowing about it.
I doubt he lived there all 9 years. Anyway, there is a whole lot to this story that we’ll probably never know. Of course Pakistan’s intelligence service(s) knew. They also probably know where Mullah Omar is.
Agree with the comment about a lot we’ll never know. Probably the LEAST reliable info we’ve received from the US goverment over the past 20 years is everything they’ve told us about bin Laden. This guy was put up as public enemy #1 for most of that time (only on one or two occasions having to give up that title to Saddam to drum up support from some war crime or another). Why would we trust anything said about him?
Of COURSE they were protecting him. The ISI is riddled with Taliban supporters/Muslim extremists. And also there is the fact that the country is a dysfunctional disorganized nation, where the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing most of the time.
Well, for seven of those 9 years no one was seriously looking for him, if former President Bush is to be believed.
So the truth we get from Islamabad is about as reliable as the truth we got about 9/11 from Washington.
Letting OBL escape from Tora Bora, he moved through Swat region, into Kunar mountain range of Pakistan. US Marines were searching for OBL across the border in Afghanistan. OBL lived two years comfortably in Haripur before moving into a specially build compound in Abbottabad (2005) until his death in 2011. See map of region, not at all like he was living under difficult circumstances in caves or moving across mountainous area. USAID and US troops were busy ferrying by helicopter aid into mountainous region of North Pakistan after the devastating earthquake of 2005. Probably used airport and military facilities in Abbottabad.
A double-cross is always in return for forcing a policy on Pakistani leaders by Bush and Obama, an old entry of mine – Obama Policy and Af-Pak Border Fallacy – 2009
Today’s diary – Pakistan’s Abbottabad Commission: OBL Presence ‘Culpable negligence’.
In a tee vee interview Panetta said during the limited CIA surveillance, agents on the ground observed a PAK military helicopter hovering over bin Laden’s compound. That the copter didn’t hover over any other house/farm. Leon said he didn’t believe in coincidences and felt that unusual incident indicated the PAK military/ISI knew a person of interest was residing there.
So…we don’t even know if bin Laden is dead, let alone where he lived during the years when he was supposedly Public Terrorist Enemy #1 for the American media. The whole bin Laden death thing stinks of disinfo, not least that he was “buried at sea.”
Please.
Talk about something else, because this is now almost as well as
coverted…errrr, ahhhh, covered up…as was JFK’s death. We will never know unless some Snowden type outs the info, and even then we’ll not know because the cloud of unknowing that is emitted by the PermaGov over this kind if shit is absolutely impenetrable.Like this.
Please.
AG
Most of us manage to know that bin Laden’s dead, Arthur.
Unless…oh my God! His own wife is part of the conspiracy!
http://www.newstimeafrica.com/archives/19941
Wake up, America! You have no idea how high this thing goes!
Which wife? Who verified the identity of the wives and their stories?
You’re like a parody, and you don’t even know it.
What if D-O-G really spells cat? Did you ever think of that?
Yeah.
Right.
And Jackie Kennedy never smelled a rat either?
Please.
I got her rat, right here!!!
From Prince of the Universe to ratfuck hustler in one hard move.
Bet on it.
Silence is expensive.
Money talks, rich people don’t walk.
That’s how they got rich in the first place.
Bet on it.
AG
Now you’re just being silly. Ari was hardly the first extremely wealthy man that desired a trophy wife and Jackie was hardly the first woman to marry for money. (She learned that from her mother and had no illusions about it.) Although she should have driven a harder bargain.
I said nothing about “first,” Marie. Jo
ke From Lowell wrote:I was merely pointing out a truth about some wives and other relatives of famous people who die under questionable circumstances. Not even famous people, come to think of it…witness Cindy Sheehan’s courageous battle against the system that killed her son. I used to wonder what would have happened if Jackie Kennedy had come down hard on the side of the conspiracy theorists instead of acting out her little part in the assassination charade and then trolling for billions.
But she didn’t.
So it goes.
AG
And, of course, al Qaeda itself is part of this shadowy conspiracy:
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2011/05/201156203329911287.html
I blame the chem trails.
Maybe she learned from Bobby and preferred not to leave two orphans. Or maybe she wasn’t so easily obsessed with half-baked conspiracy theories as some other people.
Fewer seem to feel that the OBL escape, hiding for nine years, and Abottabad shoot-out stinks than those that felt the WMD story smelled of propaganda.
However, and apparently unlike you, I do think OBL is dead. Only long before 2011.
What makes you think he died before 2011 when Al Jazeera played one of his regular audio tapes praising the February 2011 ouster of Mubarak, which occurred only 2 months before the raid?
From al Jazeera:
Probably as real as all the other fakes that intermittently surfaced over the years.
The video of bin Laden watching Obama on tee vee is also fake?
If it’s all fake, then why hasn’t Al Qaeda released another fake tape since the raid? Wouldn’t Al Qaeda want to cultivate their cause and recruitment, and at the same time make the US look bad by saying bin Laden is still alive?
What makes you think al Qaeda released any of those fake recordings?
How difficult to you think it would be to concoct a low-rent video like the one you’re referencing? btw – as a leftie, it wouldn’t be usual for me to hold a clicker in my right hand.
In case you haven’t noticed, our government lies to us. Sometimes small lies — and there were obvious numerous lies in the initial reports of the attack at Abbottabad – and sometimes really big ones such as WMD.
If the bin Laden tapes were faked by the US (or whomever) why didn’t Ayman al-Zawahiri and Anwar al-Awlaki ever say, “hey, those tapes are fake, that’s not Sheik Usama!”?
If the commando raid was fake why did Ayman al-Zawahiri post a 28 minute video on the raid? Is that 28 minute video also fake? And if so, why doesn’t al-Zawahiri say, “hey, that’s not me, that’s fake”?
Does that mean the al-Zawahiri and al-Awlaki tapes are also fake?
If the killing of bin Laden in a commando raid was fake, why didn’t Obama wait until October 2012 instead of May of 2011? Why didn’t Cheney simply fake a raid and claim credit himself, instead of letting Obama get all the glory?
Yes, the government does lie. But Al Qaeda can instantly debunk every fake video and raid through their access to the foreign media.
Again: I have no idea what the real story is. But when confronted with video or audio “evidence” I recall this story bragging about the Pentagon’s capabilities of creating fake videos and audios that can even fool the people being spoofed.
This article is from 1999. Consider how fast this area of technology advanced in subsequent years.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/dotmil/arkin020199.htm
I too don’t know what the real story is — whether it’s heavily embellished and/or distorted but very broadly accurate enough for government work or mostly invented out of whole cloth. But apparently smelling a rat and questioning the official narrative gives others permission to denigrate me.
So much for the vaunted reality-based blogosphere.
This is a combination of racism in it’s softest form mixed with Alex Jones False-Flag anti-government sophistry.
Here is a perfect example of the so called, soft bigotry of low expectations. Osama bin Laden is ugly. He wears a ratty beard and a towel on his head and prays to Allah. He’s not hip and cool, with a trendy twitter account and an IPhone app. It’s easy to discount him.
Forgotten are the facts that he came from a wealthy construction family, that he was well education. Additionally, he survived the long, brutal war by Soviets. He had intelligence and survival skills.
Al Qaeda is a sophisticated, experience, well layered organization with more than enough skills, assets, and connections with the arab media and with the ISI to debunk any fake audio and video tape. It would have been very easy to do so. Moreover, they had every interest and incentive to debunk fake tapes.
The US is not a lone player working in a vacuum and Al Qaeda is not a paper tiger.
That they never debunked a single tape should tell the rational person that they’re real.
But of course, X-Files types aren’t rational, they’re overwhelmed by emotions.
Marie is a world grand master in the internet “You Can’t Make Me Say It” game.
In case you haven’t noticed, our government lies to us.
As a connoisseur of internet crankery, I love this little game.
How can you be so naive, man, not to realize that the lizard people are running the world from Buckingham Palace?
Sure, just go ahead and believe whatever the government tells you. Whatever. I’m so awesome and worldly!
Hey asshole, how much grief in your real life in 2002-2003 were you subjected to for asserting that there were no WMD in Iraq and that that the BushCo propaganda wasn’t even slick enough to convince a sentient twelve year old? How weird that all those that labeled me delusional or nuts in those years were the fruitcakes and I was the only one sane enough to see through the bs.
Never seen any lizard people — only dumbshits and sociopaths.
Using your example, didn’t Iraq deny having WMDs? Didn’t Iraq let UN weapons inspectors examine their country? Of course they did. You had one side making allegations and the other side completely denying them.
But here Al Qaeda has never once debunked/denied the authenticity of the audio and video tapes.
Al Qaeda actions are completely different than those of Iraq. So your analogy fails.
–Follow the conversations —
Then you won’t so foolishly see analogies that weren’t made. Will also spare you the time it took to knock down the non-existent analogy.
The failure is yours not mine.
There was actual evidence that the WMD story was bull. I didn’t just reflexively reject the claim because someone in the government made it.
You don’t even understand the difference, do you?
.
Dr Shakeel Afridi, from CIA asset to solitary cell
Osama Bin Laden was killed by a “CIA” hit squad on May 2, 2011 in Abbottabad!
…and, of course, al Qaeda itself is helping to sustain this conspiracy of silence:
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2011/05/201156203329911287.html
Wake up, Sheeple! Only internet cranks know the real truth!
I always thought the burial at sea was a SEAL booting him out of the chopper somewhere far out at sea ala the Salvadoran Army.