The man who made the 'gutsiest call ever' while Obama was on the golf course
No, it wasn't Barack Obama who made the 'gutsiest call ever.' Not according to this report anyway. He wasn't even with the girls of the view when it happened. He was out on the golf course.
The decision to raid Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan and kill
him was made without President Obama – and actually was kept from him
until after the helicopters already were in Pakistani airspace –
according to a new report from a retired major general who cites a
senior intelligence source.
The raid was handled by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Director
of Central Intelligence Leon Panetta and others in this way because
Obama had vetoed multiple earlier opportunities to attack the man behind
the 9/11 terror attacks, the report said.
...
In a column published today by WND,
Vallely said a “senior and sensitive intelligence community source”
affirmed to a Stand Up America research team that Obama “did not know of
the raid in Abbottabad to kill Osama bin Laden on May 1, 2011, until
after the helicopters with SEAL Team 6 had crossed into Pakistani
airspace.”
The source said Obama was notified “at the golf course … which is why
he was sitting in the strange sitting position in the picture that
documented the White House operations room event.”
The source told Stand Up America that Panetta “was the key player who organized and supported this daring raid.”
“He signed the ‘execute orders’ with only a few people aware:
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates,
Adm. Bill Mullen and Gen. David Petraeus.”
The source explained the White House “was closed out of the decision
because the president, through Valerie Jarrett, had turned down two or
three other earlier proposals.”
Panetta, Vallely’s source reported, “and his covert planning team
were extremely frustrated at all the denials, so saw the opportunity
slipping away, as implausible as it seems.”
The report said Panetta convinced his other principals to make the
decision and received their full-fledged support but the president,
according to the official, “remained clueless on the mission.”
“This tremendously serious and sensitive information was relayed by a
source who has been very frustrated with the continued dishonesty
within the White House,” Vallely reported.
Given what we know about the President, it seems plausible that he would not have wanted to kill Bin Laden. He MIGHT have wanted to put him on trial. If that.
Just imagine what a second term (God forbid) would be like....
On the morning after the liquidation of al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari is likely not a very happy man. The chickens are coming home to roost.
Israel Radio reported on Tuesday morning that the United States has closed its embassy in Islamabad and its three consulates in Lahore, Karachi and Peshawar. All four are closed 'indefinitely' ostensibly out of fear of an al-Qaeda revenge attack, but one cannot help but wonder if they will ever reopen.
The Pakistanis find themselves in the position of having to deny both that they helped the United States to kill Bin Laden, and that they knew that Bin Laden was hiding out in Pakistan. The first denial strains credibility nearly as much as the second one, for it is nearly impossible that Bin Laden was present in a Pakistani city near their military's headquarters without the knowledge of higher ups. And despite the euphoria over suddenly having killed Bin Laden, some US lawmakers are furious.
The revelation bin Laden had been holed up in a compound in the military garrison town of Abbottabad, possibly for years, has threatened to worsen U.S. ties with nuclear-armed Pakistan.
"He was not anywhere we had anticipated he would be, but now he is gone," Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari wrote in an opinion piece in the Washington Post, without offering further defense against accusations his security services should have known where bin Laden was hiding.
"Although the events of Sunday were not a joint operation, a decade of cooperation and partnership between the United States and Pakistan led up to the elimination of Osama bin Laden as a continuing threat to the civilized world."
It was the first public comment by any Pakistani civilian or military leader on the raid by a secret U.S. assault team on bin Laden's compound on Sunday night.
Irate U.S. lawmakers wondered how it was possible for bin Laden to live in a populated area near a military training academy without anyone of authority knowing about it or sanctioning his presence.
They said it was time to review the billions in aid the United States provides Pakistan.
"Our government is in fiscal distress. To make contributions to a country that isn't going to be fully supportive is a problem for many," said Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein.
You have to wonder when, if ever, the embassy and consulates will reopen.
Indian media: Bin Laden was killed in an ISI safe house
Indian media is reporting that the hideout in which Osama Bin Laden was killed by US Navy Seals was an ISI safe house. The ISI is the Pakistani intelligence service.
Quoting Pakistani officials, a number of media reports state that Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden could not have hidden in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad (where he was killed) without the knowledge of the Pakistani military, especially its powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
The website of the leading Indian weekly magazine India Today published a report from its Pakistan correspondent titled "Osama Dead: Pak May Have Known About His Presence in Abbottabad." The report noted growing speculation that Osama bin Laden was killed at a safehouse operated by the ISI. Two more reports were published by the websites rediff.com and timesofindia.com that indicated that the ISI knew bin Laden's whereabouts.
It should be noted that the website of the Urdu-language Pakistani daily Roznama Jang reported earlier today that Pakistani army forces did not participate in the operation to kill bin Laden.[1] The report quoted a statement of the Pakistani Foreign Office as confirming that Osama bin Laden was killed in the operation but the "Pakistani security forces did not take part in the operation."
The Pakistani military's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is known to be the most powerful player in Pakistan, virtually dictating Pakistan's foreign relations with Afghanistan, India, and the United States. It has been known over the past several decades for its support to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. Last month, Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated in Islamabad that the ISI continues to support the Haqqani Network, the second largest group of militants among the Taliban in Afghanistan.
...
Following are excerpts from the India Today report:[2]
"A senior Pakistan military official has told India Today that it was impossible for the army to have not known that Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was in Abbottabad. This has further fuelled speculation that Osama was killed in an ISI safehouse. Bin Laden was killed in the operation late on Sunday night at a mansion in Abbottabad, 80 kilometers north of Islamabad.
A report titled "More Shame and Retribution Heading ISI's Way" and published on the Indian website rediff.com also noted that Osama bin Laden could not have lived in Abbottabad without the knowledge of the Pakistani military. Following are excerpts from the report:[3]
...
"Nothing in the Af-Pak region goes unnoticed by the ISI, and if bin Laden managed to play hide-and-seek with the world all this while, it was only thanks to ISI's patronage. Although the U.S. has claimed that Pakistan was not in the know of this operation, terror groups would not believe so.
"They are aware that nothing is possible unless there has been a certain degree of support from the establishment. Moreover, Osama was living in a place close to the army headquarters in Abbottabad, about 70 kilometers northeast of Pakistan's capital Islamabad. This is not a fact that would have gone unnoticed by the ISI.
...
In a report, a correspondent of The Times of India newspaper filed a report from Washington under the title "Hiding bin Laden: Finger of Suspicion at ISI." Following are excerpts from the report:[4]
...
"The finger of suspicion is now pointing squarely at the Pakistani military and intelligence for sheltering and protecting Osama bin Laden before U.S. forces hunted him down and put a bullet in his head in the wee hours of Sunday. The coordinates of the action and sequence of events indicate that the Al-Qaeda fugitive may have been killed in an ISI safehouse.
"U.S. analysts uniformly suggested that the Pakistani security establishment's claim of a role in the operation is clearly aimed at ducking charges of its military's possible role in hiding bin Laden…
"In fact, top U.S. officials have openly suggested for months that the Pakistani military establishment was hiding bin Laden. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton came closest to publicly exposing Pakistan's role last May [in 2010] when she accused some government officials there of harboring Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar. 'I am not saying they are at the highest level...but I believe somewhere in this government are people who know where Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda and where Mullah Omar and the leadership of the Taliban are,' Clinton said on May 10 last year, adding, 'We expect more cooperation (from Pakistan) to help us bring to justice capture or kill those who brought us 9/11.'
"Taken together with President Obama's pointed reference to President Zardari and leaving out any mention of Pakistani forces' involvement, it would seem that Washington believes that Pakistan's military intelligence establishment, including the ISI, was sheltering bin Laden. The ISI was accused as recently as last week by top U.S. military official Admiral Mike Mullen of having terrorist links, and named as a terrorist support entity by U.S. officials, according to the Guantanamo cables.
Hmmm. Yes, I believe the ISI would have sheltered Bin Laden. I doubt that the ISI was in on the operation, because the US would have feared that they would tip Bin Laden off.
For more on the Headley case (Headley was one of the planners of the Mumbai massacre; Indian media have accused the ISI of being involved in that too), go here and here and here and here and here.
The guy who broadcast Bin Laden's death live on Twitter (and didn't even know it)
I'm so glad they didn't get Osama Bin Laden in 2001, because we didn't yet have the technology to do this kind of stuff. The picture above is from Twitpic and it's Abbottabad in Pakistan on Monday morning. You can find more of them here.
The picture was taken by Sohaib Athar, a Pakistani who moved from Lahore to Abbottabad for peace and quiet. Mr. Athar, who tweets as ReallyVirtual, accidentally broadcast the entire US operation to liquidate Bin Laden live on Twitter (from a safe distance). Athar's Twitter feed is here and he is now overwhelmed with 'follows.' You can read the liveblog (without following him) by going to that last link and starting from 1:00 am Pakistani time (GMT +4), which is pretty easy to do because it's his first tweet since April 28. Here's a teaser of what you'll find there:
Yes, that's a Google map of Bin Laden's hideout location.
The funniest thing is that the guy goes offline for several hours, and then comes back and realizes what he had done. I hope he's enjoying his 15 hours of fame, and his 15,000 newfound Twitter followers (no, I'm not kidding).
P.S. Abbottabad is now trending worldwide on Twitter along with Osama and OBL. Heh.
P.P.S. As I queue this, he has stopped posting. In the half hour or so I was working on this post, he gained 1,500 followers. So far, I am not following him.
Video of US Navy Seal operation that killed Bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan; UPDATED
I cannot vouch for the authenticity of this video, but it looks real. It claims to be about two minutes of the 40-minute gun battle in which US Navy Seals killed Osama Bin Laden. At the end, you will see another picture of the dead body.
Let's go to the videotape.
UPDATE 9:39 PM
This post has gotten thousands of hits today. It has also gotten comments from some vocal cynics - both on the blog and on Twitter - questioning its authenticity (which I said at the outset that I had no way of verifying). One commenter was so dismissive as to say that I should take it down. Well, as many of you know already, I don't take posts down (although I may revise them to remove content over which I am threatened).
The main objection has been along the lines of "this operation used helicopters, not humvees, so this video could not possibly have come from this operation."
The following came from a retired officer in the US Armed Forces (I won't say anymore about this person's identity).
CH-47 Chinook helicopters carry humvees into mission zones. The SEALs use specially outfitted Chinooks, so there would be nothing odd here. I understood it was a 4-helo assault group, with one suffering a mechanical breakdown.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
