The Murder of Osama Bin Laden. U S Pakistan Partners in Crime Seymour Hersh

[Spring Onion]

Well.... I am tempted to say "I told you so" long time back... when OBL was killed like that.... he was a perfect scapegoat...a perfect sacrificial lamb... and yes he made some Pakistani general a rich man.

indeed. dirty international politics wrapped in catchy phrases

 

[Sheikh Rauf]

What ever it was india has nothing to do with this.. why they are so jumping .. i am amazed how they find ways to put Pak in hole where later they find themselves.
25 million is nothing compare to Pak Generals what they cud have made.. india and indian's just trying to cash opprtunity like they always back stabber..

 

[AnnoyingOrange]

What ever it was india has nothing to do with this.. why they are so jumping .. i am amazed how they find ways to put Pak in hole where later they find themselves.
25 million is nothing compare to Pak Generals what they cud have made.. india and indian's just trying to cash opprtunity like they always back stabber..

Wow.. your Army... your Generals... they made Pakistan look like a terrorist supporting country... and you call Indians backstabbers...

What brand of dope do you prefer buddy...I want some.

 

[Kompromat]

Numerous times I stated that it was a joint op, people would rather believe Zero Dark Thirty than hard facts. We got him killed because it suited our interests, everything is now back to normal.

 

[anant_s]

dear

its a very complex story, choose what makes sense to you but you will find contradiction to whatever makes sense to you.
what ever side you pick there is a contradiction. there is a contradiction and gaps in official Pakistani version, there is contradiction and controversy in entire operation from American point of view and then there are also gaps in how different commentators across the world made their opinion due to their allegiance to their country or hostilities towards the other country.

you are raising some moral questions in your post and it sadly doesn't apply in the world of Espionage. I will quote Gen Chishti who said in his interview with a UK channel "if you can't ride two horses at once you should get out of the circus"

that all said, my belief, let me rephrase is... my recent analysis is .. our military knew about the raid, the planning was mutual, the appearance of Chinook to recover the excess troops after black hawk was down is just an evidence that Pakistanis knew (the Chinook was not cloaked / stealthy, it is just mentioned a s passing reference).

my original observation about Dr Afridi is proven, he was a false flag, and discarded by CIA (actually ISI was informed about him otherwise he would have fled as well).
I am confused about Saudi connection here and the fact that we were really holding OBL prisoner and wanted some logistic agreement to hand him over (something Gen Chistshi touched in his interview Hard talk). the latest revelation by the American investigative journalists / author also mentions a Pakistani town Terbela where according to my original sources in the area reported Pakistani Huey helicopter leading the American copters there after completing the mission. Terbela. which colludes with the story that it was in fact Terbela where the SEALS finalised their mission rehearsals.

by the way, best man to answer is Gen Kyani/ Pasha and I doubt they will say anything so lets keep cooking stories I am on the fence here and have no hardcore side.

Sir,
I never expected the truth to come out from this. My personal thoughts still are, no matter what influence US has (or had) in Pakistan, no matter how technically advanced their war fighting and intelligence machinery is, the fact remains, the operation was not possible without consent and knowledge of someone in Pakistan.
I'm not saying government knew about it nor can we claim everybody in Army knew, but someone did.
& he called the shots.
While the whole truth may never emerge (and hence the mutually contradicting accounts we hear), but the timing of episode (wrt to US Presidential elections, President Obama announced his willingness to fight for a second term in April 2011, a month before OBL episode), does raise doubts and suspicion that in this great game of political chess, OBL was just a pawn.
One of the great mysteries of our times, it shall remain.

 

[ozzy22]

Hope this isn't true or I would lose a massive amount of respect for the military/ISI. I rather it be incompetence then some people in our military dragging Pakistan through the dirt for a few dollars.

 

[Irfan Baloch]

Hope this isn't true or I would lose a massive amount of respect for the military/ISI. I rather it be incompetence then our military dragging Pakistan through the dirt for a few dollars.

yea ? Ok

what dollars? we got paid for this raid? we were actually conned and left out in the cold to answer the world press.

dont loose respect for ISI/ Army for this raid. instead criticise it for not taking action on Lal Masjid clergy and other opinion makers who openly praise and justify TTP and ISIS

Sir,
I never expected the truth to come out from this. My personal thoughts still are, no matter what influence US has (or had) in Pakistan, no matter how technically advanced their war fighting and intelligence machinery is, the fact remains, the operation was not possible without consent and knowledge of someone in Pakistan.
I'm not saying government knew about it nor can we claim everybody in Army knew, but someone did.
& he called the shots.
While the whole truth may never emerge (and hence the mutually contradicting accounts we hear), but the timing of episode (wrt to US Presidential elections, President Obama announced his willingness to fight for a second term in April 2011, a month before OBL episode), does raise doubts and suspicion that in this great game of political chess, OBL was just a pawn.
One of the great mysteries of our times, it shall remain.

of course they got support but they dont admit it so that they can claim all the glory and we dont say it because we want to salvage whatever relationship we are left with after lame ducks resigned and one ran off to Bahrain to bring Pakistani mercenaries to kill the local population and other is hiding in his castle and hoping he is not dragged into the lime light due to his brother's real estate adventures @MastanKhan is not alone when he spits and uses their name at the same time there are many in the military (retired and serving).

 

[graphican]

Few thoughts about the Seymour's story and in my opinion, all go in the favor of Pakistan.

Consider this;

• This attempt by Seymour Hersh is a "burring down" attempt in which objective is to create more doubts on top of doubts and create a ground from where 10s of theories would evolve and reality becomes even harder to discover.
• Seymour's story has visible flaws which everybody could spot and pick easily. Thus the story is inviting easy criticism instead of being seen as insight and even the previously assumed truth is now seen with doubts.
• The story can also be seen as a full-stop on this subject. Any following stories/revelations, even if they tend to make more sense, will fail to inspire and be naturally seen as "yet another $hit on the same $hit". Thus this book is exhausting the interest on the subject.
• By clubing US intelligence with ISI, it would be harder to pick ISI in the future for the subject.

So, thank you Seymour, your favor is making right impact

 

[MilSpec]

Hi,

The thing is that there is no way possible that a chinook can fly into abbotabad after a supposed fire fight---take off and then fly and cross over to afghanistan---leaving on the ground a massive helicopter on fire---.

This is technically impossible---. Pakistan is a poor country---but it is no banana republic---.

Would Pakistan shoot down US aircrafts???.
US RC drones have been flying day in and day out of pakistan, they are the easiest to shoot down....

 

[Areesh]

Wow.. your Army... your Generals... they made Pakistan look like a terrorist supporting country... and you call Indians backstabbers...

What brand of dope do you prefer buddy...I want some.

And this thread negates totally your bold part argument. As I said. Indians are just nobodies while US and Pakistan are partners in whatever is happening in Afghanistan and in the region.

 

[Turingsage]

Ayaz Amir
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
From Print Edition


790 82 65 5

Islamabad diary

Even when we suspected the worst but did not know all the facts, the Abbottabad raid on the Bin Laden compound was the mother of all embarrassments…for the army and the ISI, the frontline defenders of our physical, moral, spiritual and ideological frontiers. But with the Seymour Hersh story coming out – the story itself something that James Bond would find hard to equal – the tag ‘mother of all embarrassments’ seems insufficient.

The facts, according to Hersh, are much more explosive. There was no shortage of guys who said at the time that Osama bin Laden couldn’t have been hiding hardly a mile away from the Pakistan Military Academy without someone somewhere knowing about it. But the more earnest-minded amongst us pooh-poohed such suggestions. It turns out that the conspiracy theorists, for once, were not just right. They were dead on target…that is, if we are to believe Hersh who says that bin Laden was in ISI custody, the compound he lived in under ISI control.

How did the Americans get wind of this? The prize money, 25 million dollars, was just too effective an instrument. A former intelligence officer walks into the American embassy saying he has information about the most wanted of men. The Americans don’t believe him but give him a polygraph test which our smart guy passes. So planning for getting OBL begins.

The Americans, according to Hersh, soon realise that they have to take the Paks on board. Army chief Gen Kayani and Lt Gen Pasha, then heading our holy order of knights templars, initially play mum. But when the Americans pile on the pressure, all very subtle, they come around. There’s a bit of blackmail – we can leak out the word that you’ve got Bin Laden and that wouldn’t sound very good for you – and a lot of carrot: personal ‘incentives’, Hersh describes them, “financed by off-the books Pentagon contingency funding”. (If true, it would be fascinating to find out who got what.)

It’s a big claim but Hersh makes it: our chiefs come on board. Yes, he’s there but we had to keep OBL as a check on Al-Qaeda and the Taliban – which, incidentally, is the silliest line in this saga. Al-Qaeda and the Taliban were terrorizing the hell out of Pakistan at that time. So what exactly was being achieved by keeping the lord of terror jihad in custody?

Bin Laden was very ill, virtually on his deathbed (it had been arranged for a Dr Amir Aziz to be near him for his treatment…is this a reference to the well-known orthopaedic surgeon from Lahore?). It was agreed the Pakistani side would look the other way, ensuring that no radar or stray aircraft interfered with the raid as it was carried out. But our side insisted on one safeguard, that the raid would not be disclosed. Instead a week or ten days later it would be said that somewhere along the Pak-Afghan border, deep in the Hindu Kush mountains, Bin Laden had been ‘taken out’ in a drone strike.

This is where it went wrong for the Pakistani side. As soon as the raiding helicopters were back on base in Afghanistan, President Obama went on the airwaves with the bombshell announcement that OBL had been eliminated. The Pakistani side had simply failed to figure out that there was no way an American president up for re-election would keep his lips sealed after such a triumph.

If the raid had gone wrong, someone is quoted as saying, Obama would just have been a black Jimmy Carter. When it turned out right, Obama made the most of it and Gen Kayani and Gen Pasha were left in the lurch.

We know that General Headquarters went into deep shock. Most of us thought this was because of having been caught off guard. From Hersh’s account something else emerges: Kayani and Pasha feeling let down and betrayed.

Appearances, in any event, could not be more damning. Either Pakistan’s intelligence operatives knew of Osama’s presence in Abbottabad…in which case they were complicit; or they knew nothing and were taken unawares, which makes them look like the world’s leading dunces.

What made it worse for the Generalisssimo and his spy chief was the fact that they could do nothing about the mortification they endured. They could neither denounce the Americans for not living up to their side of the bargain, nor claim that they had aided the Americans, for that would have made them look like stooges. So they nursed their sullenness in silence.

Kayani and Pasha never really recovered from the Abbottabad debacle, looking diminished thereafter. Although I must say that when called upon to explain matters at an in camera joint session of parliament – I was there and Kayani in full regalia sat in the Speaker’s box watching the performance – Pasha had the nerve and composure to read out to the assembled parliamentarians a lecture on national honour and dignity. I thought to myself then and am more than convinced now that Pasha may have missed his true vocation – he would have made a name for himself in the performing arts.

Kayani, remember, was fond of saying that Pakistan was a Fortress of Islam. Taking his word for it, the Abbottabad episode does not cast a very flattering light on the Fortress and its extended ramparts.

But all this is to assume that Hersh is fully on the mark. I spoke to one retired general who’s also been ambassador to the US and he said that he wouldn’t buy Hersh’s story. He said that he met Kayani a few days after the OBL raid and the army chief was totally distraught by what had happened. If the Americans had told us, he quoted Kayani as saying, they could have carried out their raid in daylight. He went on to say that unless Kayani was putting on a performance, he believed him.

How well does Hersh stand as an investigative reporter? Some of his major stories – such as on the My Lai massacre – have stood the test of time. He got the Pulitzer Prize for that. Some stories he got plain wrong, such as some of his reporting way back on John F Kennedy’s sexual escapades. He has been criticised for his use of anonymous sources. The OBL story is also largely based on a single source, a US official privy to those secrets. On the whole, however, he is taken as a serious and influential reporter, with a reputation for diligently pursuing his stories.

The bit about someone walking into the American embassy with information on Bin Laden sounds true. Ramzi Yousef was caught on the basis of human intelligence. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was caught from the house of a Jamaat-e-Islami sympathiser after someone informed the Americans. Money is a great incentive and the Americans have put out huge sums on the heads of their most wanted men.

I have a shrewd suspicion who the informant in this case could be. Years ago in Islamabad I used to come across a colourful character then commanding the MI battalion in GHQ. He would be accompanied by a girlfriend, an air stewardess rather easy on the eyes (as can be guessed, I envied envy him for that). Soon after Abbottabad I heard his name being whispered. If he’s our man I hope he is living it up wherever he is.

In the end, however, Allah knoweth best. But there’s no getting around the central awkward fact that Sheikh Osama was in Abbottabad for full five years, living in a house almost calculated to look like a sore thumb. How did he keep his head below the radar for so long?

The grandmother of all embarrassments - Ayaz Amir

 

[ozzy22]

yea ? Ok

what dollars? we got paid for this raid? we were actually conned and left out in the cold to answer the world press.

dont loose respect for ISI/ Army for this raid. instead criticise it for not taking action on Lal Masjid clergy and other opinion makers who openly praise and justify TTP and ISIS


of course they got support but they dont admit it so that they can claim all the glory and we dont say it because we want to salvage whatever relationship we are left with after lame ducks resigned and one ran off to Bahrain to bring Pakistani mercenaries to kill the local population and other is hiding in his castle and hoping he is not dragged into the lime light due to his brother's real estate adventures @MastanKhan is not alone when he spits and uses their name at the same time there are many in the military (retired and serving).

Again I hope it’s not true and Pakistan wasn't in cahoots with the US with this raid that only harmed our image around the world. If it was, then that’s upsetting and really disheartening.

 

[Immanuel]

ISI was always hiding OBL, they sold him out to keep the flow of dollars coming in. Only goes on further to prove that ISI continues to harbor plenty of such people. ISI is also hiding, Haqqani/ TTP top leaders/ Zawahiri. ISI and the uniformed jihadis of Pak have one purpose and that is to rule the land in fear. There is a reason why Pak's greatest export will always be terrorism.

 

[Meengla]

Even if the American public is gullible enough to elect another Democrat, this one is not going play nice like the current one. But if the American public elect a Republican, those sticks are not going to stay behind our backs but on the table for all to see.

Maybe.. but some how the last President to Pakistan was GWB at the height of the bad press Pakistan was having, and Pakistan was made Major Non-Nato Ally under Bush, and supposedly 'given' $$ billions by Bush. It was B. Clinton who avoided Pakistan in 2000 over a flimsy (Musharraf=President of Pak) and Obama has managed to avoid Pakistan for years. It was GWB who feted Musharraf to the coveted Camp David...

Now, you could say that J. Kerry is relatively pro Pakistan but historically the Pentagon (and by extension) Republicans are relatively not too bad for Pakistan.

PS. I hate the Republicans!

 

[CENTCOM]

The Seymour Hersh story in The London Review is riddled with inaccuracies and outright falsehoods, said Press Secretary Josh Earnest at the White House daily briefing yesterday. He added, "...no one here is particularly concerned about it." Additionally he stated, "The former Deputy Director of the CIA, Mike Morell, has said that every sentence was wrong." He also added a quip that he said was from CNN's Peter Bergen: "...what's true in the story isn't new, and what's new in the story isn't true."

Former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell also dismissed the report that claims Pakistani officials were harboring Osama bin Laden before his death at the hands of U.S. Navy SEALs. "It's all wrong," Mr. Morell told CBS. "I started reading the article last night. I got a third of the way through and I stopped, because every sentence I was reading was wrong. The source that Hersh talked to has no idea what he's talking about."

Above all Seymour Hersh has not given any sold proof of what he claims in his story. Even General Asad Durrani of Pakistani military has refuted Mr. Hersh's claim in a CNN article. The retired General said there was "no evidence of any kind" that Pakistani intelligence officials knew that bin Laden was in Abbottabad.


Abdul Quddus
DET - U.S. Central Command
www.facebook.com/centcomurdu