Osama Dead. Obama Confirms.
- Thread starter Thomas
- Start date
- Status
Hyde
SENIOR MODERATOR
- Joined
- Oct 20, 2008
- Messages
- 20,543
- Reaction score
- 20
- Country
- Location
Osama Gave Me Two Baby Rabbit : Local Resident Kid.......wow....lots of new interesting videos of local area residents coming in...
Source Video: Ú©Ùا٠| Osama Gave Me Two Baby Rabbit : Local Resident Kid
Source Video: Ú©Ùا٠| Osama Gave Me Two Baby Rabbit : Local Resident Kid
Ghareeb_Da_Baal
SENIOR MEMBER
- Joined
- Dec 1, 2008
- Messages
- 6,654
- Reaction score
- 4
- Country
- Location
In aftermath of bin Laden raid, new intelligence, shifting accounts
By Laura Rozen
Email
Print
Hours after a team of U.S. Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in a secret raid on his compound in Pakistan, President Barack Obama went on television to tell the nation about the triumph.
"Justice has been done," the president said.
Americans have been absorbing the world-changing news ever since, and several briefings by Obama national security officials from the White House, Defense Department, and CIA have followed. But some of the details have proven inaccurate and were later corrected, as Politico's Josh Gerstein noted.
For instance, White House spokesperson Jay Carney said Tuesday that--contrary to earlier officials' descriptions of a firefight between the Al Qaeda mastermind and U.S. forces--bin Laden didn't have a weapon during the Sunday raid. Bin Laden "was not armed," Carney said at the White House press briefing Tuesday. He was shot and killed after his wife "rushed the U.S. assaulter." You can watch Carney's exchange with the White House press corps in the video above.
Earlier, White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, in a press conference Monday, said that bin Laden's wife had been killed after she was positioned as a human shield to protect bin Laden in the confrontation. Officials are now saying, however, that bin Laden's wife was injured (shot in the leg) but not killed, and that it was a separate woman who was killed by cross-fire during the forty-minute operation.
"Bin Laden died; the two al Qaeda facilitators--the brothers, who were--the courier and his brother in the compound; bin Laden's son Hamza; and the woman, presumed to be his wife, who was shielding bin Laden," Brennan said.
Asked by a reporter if bin Laden's wife was used as a shield for bin Laden, Brennan hesitated:
"I wasn't there so I hesitate to say," he said.
"But she was in front of him?" a reporter asked.
"But it was an effort to try to shield bin Laden from the ... " Brennan said, not completing the sentence, but presumably referencing the Navy SEALs then closing in on the terrorist leader.
Later in the press conference, Brennan was asked again if the woman killed was bin Laden's wife.
"That's my understanding. It was one of them," he responded.
"And he was using her as a shield?" the reporter, ABC's Jake Tapper, asked.
"She served as a shield. Again, this is my understanding--and we're still getting the reports of exactly what happened at particular moments--that when--she fought back; when there was the opportunity to get to bin Laden, she was positioned in a way that indicated that she was being used as a shield," Brennan said. "Whether or not bin Laden or the son, or whatever, put her there, or she put herself there, but, yes, that's again, my understanding that she met her demise, and my understanding is that she was one of bin Laden's wives."
A U.S. official told The Envoy Tuesday that Bin Laden's injured wife was left at the compound by the U.S. team, along with several other women and children. Another woman, who has not been publicly identified, was killed in a shootout during the raid on the compound's first floor, the official said.
(Indeed, the New York Times reported that one of bin Laden's wives actually identified bin Laden. A former senior U.S. intelligence official told the Times it was his understanding that it was the wife shot in the leg at the scene who identified bin Laden.)
U.S. officials explained the mix-up as hardly unexpected in the early aftermath of such a high-tempo operation.
"Two women were shot here. It sounds like their fates were mixed up," a U.S. official told Politico's Gerstein. "This is hours old and the full facts are still being ascertained as those involved are debriefed."
In total, the U.S. official said Tuesday, five people were killed in the raid: Bin Laden, his adult son, the Al Qaeda courier, the courier's brother, and an adult female — "not [bin Laden's] wife."
Ambiguity still surrounds the key break in the effort to track bin Laden down--the al Qaeda courier U.S. officials monitored and followed to the Abbottabad compound. The Associated Press reported Monday the man in question was a Kuwaiti-born Pakistani who used the nom de guerre Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti; the CIA later determined that his actual name was Sheikh Abu Ahmed, the AP reported.
But there are some suggestions that the courier's name and identity may be provisional too. Earlier reports suggested that Abd al-Khaliq Jan was the identity of the courier in question. And the New York Times' Carlotta Gall reported Tuesday from Abbottabad that the two brothers were, according to neighbors, cousins, and were known locally by the names of Arshad Khan and Tareq Khan.
By Laura Rozen
Hours after a team of U.S. Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in a secret raid on his compound in Pakistan, President Barack Obama went on television to tell the nation about the triumph.
"Justice has been done," the president said.
Americans have been absorbing the world-changing news ever since, and several briefings by Obama national security officials from the White House, Defense Department, and CIA have followed. But some of the details have proven inaccurate and were later corrected, as Politico's Josh Gerstein noted.
For instance, White House spokesperson Jay Carney said Tuesday that--contrary to earlier officials' descriptions of a firefight between the Al Qaeda mastermind and U.S. forces--bin Laden didn't have a weapon during the Sunday raid. Bin Laden "was not armed," Carney said at the White House press briefing Tuesday. He was shot and killed after his wife "rushed the U.S. assaulter." You can watch Carney's exchange with the White House press corps in the video above.
Earlier, White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, in a press conference Monday, said that bin Laden's wife had been killed after she was positioned as a human shield to protect bin Laden in the confrontation. Officials are now saying, however, that bin Laden's wife was injured (shot in the leg) but not killed, and that it was a separate woman who was killed by cross-fire during the forty-minute operation.
"Bin Laden died; the two al Qaeda facilitators--the brothers, who were--the courier and his brother in the compound; bin Laden's son Hamza; and the woman, presumed to be his wife, who was shielding bin Laden," Brennan said.
Asked by a reporter if bin Laden's wife was used as a shield for bin Laden, Brennan hesitated:
"I wasn't there so I hesitate to say," he said.
"But she was in front of him?" a reporter asked.
"But it was an effort to try to shield bin Laden from the ... " Brennan said, not completing the sentence, but presumably referencing the Navy SEALs then closing in on the terrorist leader.
Later in the press conference, Brennan was asked again if the woman killed was bin Laden's wife.
"That's my understanding. It was one of them," he responded.
"And he was using her as a shield?" the reporter, ABC's Jake Tapper, asked.
"She served as a shield. Again, this is my understanding--and we're still getting the reports of exactly what happened at particular moments--that when--she fought back; when there was the opportunity to get to bin Laden, she was positioned in a way that indicated that she was being used as a shield," Brennan said. "Whether or not bin Laden or the son, or whatever, put her there, or she put herself there, but, yes, that's again, my understanding that she met her demise, and my understanding is that she was one of bin Laden's wives."
A U.S. official told The Envoy Tuesday that Bin Laden's injured wife was left at the compound by the U.S. team, along with several other women and children. Another woman, who has not been publicly identified, was killed in a shootout during the raid on the compound's first floor, the official said.
(Indeed, the New York Times reported that one of bin Laden's wives actually identified bin Laden. A former senior U.S. intelligence official told the Times it was his understanding that it was the wife shot in the leg at the scene who identified bin Laden.)
U.S. officials explained the mix-up as hardly unexpected in the early aftermath of such a high-tempo operation.
"Two women were shot here. It sounds like their fates were mixed up," a U.S. official told Politico's Gerstein. "This is hours old and the full facts are still being ascertained as those involved are debriefed."
In total, the U.S. official said Tuesday, five people were killed in the raid: Bin Laden, his adult son, the Al Qaeda courier, the courier's brother, and an adult female — "not [bin Laden's] wife."
Ambiguity still surrounds the key break in the effort to track bin Laden down--the al Qaeda courier U.S. officials monitored and followed to the Abbottabad compound. The Associated Press reported Monday the man in question was a Kuwaiti-born Pakistani who used the nom de guerre Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti; the CIA later determined that his actual name was Sheikh Abu Ahmed, the AP reported.
But there are some suggestions that the courier's name and identity may be provisional too. Earlier reports suggested that Abd al-Khaliq Jan was the identity of the courier in question. And the New York Times' Carlotta Gall reported Tuesday from Abbottabad that the two brothers were, according to neighbors, cousins, and were known locally by the names of Arshad Khan and Tareq Khan.
AAtish
FULL MEMBER
- Joined
- Mar 24, 2011
- Messages
- 1,134
- Reaction score
- 0
Last edited by a moderator:
Solomon2
BANNED
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2008
- Messages
- 19,475
- Reaction score
- -37
- Country
- Location
No, it was much shorter than that. The history Pakistanis have been taught was corrupted long before Zia came to power. Jinnah had a very dark side. Pakistan's path was set on the path of Islamic extremist intolerance almost from the moment he took power:
Fine-sounding words, are they not? But you have to look at the context: while he was saying them, Muslims were rioting against religious minorities in the streets.
What was Jinnah doing, endorsing religious liberty or merely pretending to do so, signaling to Pakistani Muslims that by not acknowledging their actions they could engage in sectarian murder with impunity without the State seeking justice? Time has provided the answer: most Hindus fled, the Jews are gone, the remaining Christians live in perpetual fear of attack, and various sects were eventually declared "non-Muslim" due to the lack of sufficient infidels to hate.
The promise that minority cultures would be permitted to thrive and grow has been revealed as a mockery long since. As near as I can tell (admittedly, my knowledge may be lacking here) there is nothing in Jinnah's record sufficient to convince that that wasn't his plan all along.
So can you really start Pakistan's story with the line, "Once upon a time, we were good, literate, angelic, and honorable - ?" Don't these things belong to new future you must create, rather than to a past you would erroneously seek to regain?
muse
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2006
- Messages
- 13,006
- Reaction score
- 0
Jinnah lived for one year after the creation of Pakistan and so an attack on him, as it's not just incorrect, it's in bad taste -- there can be little doubt that millions of persons, among them Jews and Christians from Goa (my personal acquaintances) choose Pakistan because they believed in Jinnah and the promise of Jinnah's Pakistan --- but there is no denying that the Jamaatis quickly agitated as in the anti-Ahmadi riots of 55 long after Jinnah was dead
Salman Rushdie: Pakistan's Deadly Game
Are we really supposed to believe that Pakistan didn’t know Osama bin Laden was living there for five years?
Osama bin Laden died on Walpurgisnacht, the night of black sabbaths and bonfires. Not an inappropriate night for the Chief Witch to fall off his broomstick and perish in a fierce firefight. One of the most common status updates on Facebook after the news broke was “Ding, Dong, the witch is dead,” and that spirit of Munchkin celebration was apparent in the faces of the crowds chanting “U-S-A!” last night outside the White House and at ground zero and elsewhere. Almost a decade after the horror of 9/11, the long manhunt had found its quarry, and Americans will be feeling less helpless this morning, and pleased at the message that his death sends: “Attack us and we will hunt you down, and you will not escape.”
Many of us didn’t believe in the image of bin Laden as a wandering Old Man of the Mountains, living on plants and insects in an inhospitable cave somewhere on the porous Pakistan-Afghan border. An extremely big man, 6-foot 4-inches tall in a country where the average male height is around 5-foot 8, wandering around unnoticed for ten years while half the satellites above the earth were looking for him? It didn’t make sense. Bin Laden was born rich and died in a rich man’s house, which he had painstakingly built to the highest specifications. The U.S. administration confesses it was “shocked” by the elaborate nature of the compound.
We had heard—I certainly had, from more than one Pakistani journalist—that Mullah Omar was (is) being protected in a safe house run by the powerful and feared Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) somewhere in the vicinity of the city of Quetta in Baluchistan, and it seemed likely that bin Laden, too, would acquire a home of his own.
In the aftermath of the raid on Abbottabad, all the big questions need to be answered by Pakistan. The old flim-flam (“Who, us? We knew nothing!”
just isn’t going to wash, must not be allowed to wash by countries such as the United States that have persisted in treating Pakistan as an ally even though they have long known about the Pakistani double game—its support, for example, for the Haqqani network that has killed hundreds of Americans in Afghanistan.
This time the facts speak too loudly to be hushed up. Osama bin Laden, the world’s most wanted man, was found living at the end of a dirt road 800 yards from the Abbottabad military academy, Pakistan’s equivalent of West Point or Sandhurst, in a military cantonment where soldiers are on every street corner, just about 80 miles from the Pakistani capital Islamabad. This extremely large house had neither a telephone nor an Internet connection. And in spite of this we are supposed to believe that Pakistan didn’t know he was there, and that the Pakistani intelligence, and/or military, and/or civilian authorities did nothing to facilitate his presence in Abbottabad, while he ran al Qaeda, with couriers coming and going, for five years?
Pakistan’s neighbor India, badly wounded by the November 26, 2008, terrorist attacks on Mumbai, is already demanding answers. As far as the anti-Indian jihadist groups are concerned—Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Muhammad—Pakistan’s support for such groups, its willingness to provide them with safe havens, its encouragement of such groups as a means of waging a proxy war in Kashmir and, of course, in Mumbai—is established beyond all argument. In recent years these groups have been reaching out to the so-called Pakistani Taliban to form new networks of violence, and it is worth noting that the first threats of retaliation for bin Laden’s death have been made by the Pakistani Taliban, not by any al Qaeda spokesman.
India, as always Pakistan’s unhealthy obsession, is the reason for the double game. Pakistan is alarmed by the rising Indian influence in Afghanistan, and fears that an Afghanistan cleansed of the Taliban would be an Indian client state, thus sandwiching Pakistan between two hostile countries. The paranoia of Pakistan about India’s supposed dark machinations should never be underestimated.
For a long time now America has been tolerating the Pakistani double game in the knowledge that it needs Pakistani support in its Afghan enterprise, and in the hope that Pakistan’s leaders will understand that they are miscalculating badly, that the jihadists want their jobs. Pakistan, with its nuclear weapons, is a far greater prize than poor Afghanistan, and the generals and spymasters who are playing al Qaeda’s game today may, if the worst were to happen, become the extremists’ victims tomorrow.
There is not very much evidence that the Pakistani power elite is likely to come to its senses any time soon. Osama bin Laden’s compound provides further proof of Pakistan’s dangerous folly.
As the world braces for the terrorists’ response to the death of their leader, it should also demand that Pakistan give satisfactory answers to the very tough questions it must now be asked. If it does not provide those answers, perhaps the time has come to declare it a terrorist state and expel it from the comity of nations.
Salman Rushdie: Osama Bin Laden
Are we really supposed to believe that Pakistan didn’t know Osama bin Laden was living there for five years?
Osama bin Laden died on Walpurgisnacht, the night of black sabbaths and bonfires. Not an inappropriate night for the Chief Witch to fall off his broomstick and perish in a fierce firefight. One of the most common status updates on Facebook after the news broke was “Ding, Dong, the witch is dead,” and that spirit of Munchkin celebration was apparent in the faces of the crowds chanting “U-S-A!” last night outside the White House and at ground zero and elsewhere. Almost a decade after the horror of 9/11, the long manhunt had found its quarry, and Americans will be feeling less helpless this morning, and pleased at the message that his death sends: “Attack us and we will hunt you down, and you will not escape.”
Many of us didn’t believe in the image of bin Laden as a wandering Old Man of the Mountains, living on plants and insects in an inhospitable cave somewhere on the porous Pakistan-Afghan border. An extremely big man, 6-foot 4-inches tall in a country where the average male height is around 5-foot 8, wandering around unnoticed for ten years while half the satellites above the earth were looking for him? It didn’t make sense. Bin Laden was born rich and died in a rich man’s house, which he had painstakingly built to the highest specifications. The U.S. administration confesses it was “shocked” by the elaborate nature of the compound.
We had heard—I certainly had, from more than one Pakistani journalist—that Mullah Omar was (is) being protected in a safe house run by the powerful and feared Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) somewhere in the vicinity of the city of Quetta in Baluchistan, and it seemed likely that bin Laden, too, would acquire a home of his own.
In the aftermath of the raid on Abbottabad, all the big questions need to be answered by Pakistan. The old flim-flam (“Who, us? We knew nothing!”
just isn’t going to wash, must not be allowed to wash by countries such as the United States that have persisted in treating Pakistan as an ally even though they have long known about the Pakistani double game—its support, for example, for the Haqqani network that has killed hundreds of Americans in Afghanistan.This time the facts speak too loudly to be hushed up. Osama bin Laden, the world’s most wanted man, was found living at the end of a dirt road 800 yards from the Abbottabad military academy, Pakistan’s equivalent of West Point or Sandhurst, in a military cantonment where soldiers are on every street corner, just about 80 miles from the Pakistani capital Islamabad. This extremely large house had neither a telephone nor an Internet connection. And in spite of this we are supposed to believe that Pakistan didn’t know he was there, and that the Pakistani intelligence, and/or military, and/or civilian authorities did nothing to facilitate his presence in Abbottabad, while he ran al Qaeda, with couriers coming and going, for five years?
Pakistan’s neighbor India, badly wounded by the November 26, 2008, terrorist attacks on Mumbai, is already demanding answers. As far as the anti-Indian jihadist groups are concerned—Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Muhammad—Pakistan’s support for such groups, its willingness to provide them with safe havens, its encouragement of such groups as a means of waging a proxy war in Kashmir and, of course, in Mumbai—is established beyond all argument. In recent years these groups have been reaching out to the so-called Pakistani Taliban to form new networks of violence, and it is worth noting that the first threats of retaliation for bin Laden’s death have been made by the Pakistani Taliban, not by any al Qaeda spokesman.
India, as always Pakistan’s unhealthy obsession, is the reason for the double game. Pakistan is alarmed by the rising Indian influence in Afghanistan, and fears that an Afghanistan cleansed of the Taliban would be an Indian client state, thus sandwiching Pakistan between two hostile countries. The paranoia of Pakistan about India’s supposed dark machinations should never be underestimated.
For a long time now America has been tolerating the Pakistani double game in the knowledge that it needs Pakistani support in its Afghan enterprise, and in the hope that Pakistan’s leaders will understand that they are miscalculating badly, that the jihadists want their jobs. Pakistan, with its nuclear weapons, is a far greater prize than poor Afghanistan, and the generals and spymasters who are playing al Qaeda’s game today may, if the worst were to happen, become the extremists’ victims tomorrow.
There is not very much evidence that the Pakistani power elite is likely to come to its senses any time soon. Osama bin Laden’s compound provides further proof of Pakistan’s dangerous folly.
As the world braces for the terrorists’ response to the death of their leader, it should also demand that Pakistan give satisfactory answers to the very tough questions it must now be asked. If it does not provide those answers, perhaps the time has come to declare it a terrorist state and expel it from the comity of nations.
Salman Rushdie: Osama Bin Laden
Chinese-Dragon
RETIRED TTA
- Joined
- Jul 9, 2010
- Messages
- 33,932
- Reaction score
- 52
- Country
- Location
Water Car Engineer
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2010
- Messages
- 13,313
- Reaction score
- 8
- Country
- Location
edit
edit
Last edited by a moderator:
Water Car Engineer
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2010
- Messages
- 13,313
- Reaction score
- 8
- Country
- Location
badass
Last edited by a moderator:
Solomon2
BANNED
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2008
- Messages
- 19,475
- Reaction score
- -37
- Country
- Location
STOP RIGHT THERE! Just because some humans or groups of humans don't give up doesn't mean that you (or your group) have the same attributes. They aren't innate nor are they necessarily part of your heritage. For we all have freedom of will and few men are truly disconnected from the families that reared them or the cultures that shaped them.
My judgment is otherwise for the record shows that Pakistanis do give up! They give up on themselves, they give up seeking good governance, they give up on Pakistan itself. Jinnah died of overwork; republican governance died in useless arguments; and multiple military and civilian/military regimes saw Pakistan not as a nation but as the core of a new Islamic Empire in the making. East Pakistan broke away because it couldn't take being ruled as a colony by its Western "brethren" any more.
Small wonder, then, that ordinary Pakistanis end up suffering and being abused. But you've got to overcome it if you are to progress. You need a new paradigm. I don't quite know what it should be but is it really my place to make such a choice? Yet rot is rot, it continues to grow, and the salve provided by U.S. aid and military action is no substitute for reconstructive surgery. That is up to you.
senselesstalk
FULL MEMBER
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2011
- Messages
- 181
- Reaction score
- 0
If as everyone is suspecting that ISI & PA army might be harbouring OBL, then they might have know where Zawahiri, Mullah Omar etc other might be also in their possession, and as per some's suspicion PA & ISI may have turned up OBL to US. If that is the case ...
1) Did AQ know that pakistan is protecting OBL and have now left him to die, what will be there reactions.
2) How will Mullah Omar, Zawahiri will be responding and anlayzing their safety, whether to trust, whom to trust, where to hide ...
People are only seeing from Pakistan, America, ISI, CIA, PA angle.. not from AQ & taliban perspective ...
1) Did AQ know that pakistan is protecting OBL and have now left him to die, what will be there reactions.
2) How will Mullah Omar, Zawahiri will be responding and anlayzing their safety, whether to trust, whom to trust, where to hide ...
People are only seeing from Pakistan, America, ISI, CIA, PA angle.. not from AQ & taliban perspective ...
- Status
Similar threads
