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Hunting for Bin Laden – Again
The Pentagon and the CIA are again focusing on catching Osama Bin Laden. I wonder why I have not read anything about that new effort in the mainstream news.
In a recent interview for the Real News Network Pepe Escobar and Pakistan/Afghanistan expert Barnett R. Rubin talk about the issue (5 minutes into the interview). Rubin blogs on Afghanistan at Informed Comment: Global Affairs.
When Escobar pushes the issue the well connected Rubin acknowledges that there is an intelligence and special operations ‘surge’ in an attempt to capture Bin Laden before the election. The intelligence agencies, as Rubin heard from them, are not very happy to be part of electoral campaign, but will the issue give a new try.
Earlier Rubin says he has heard that Bin Laden is suspected to be in the northern area on Pakistan’s tribal regions and probably moving back and forth between the districts Nuristan on the Afghan side and Bajaur on the Pakistan side and maybe even further north.
South-West Asia and Central Asia, administrative map (pdf)
You will remember that recently 9 U.S. soldiers were killed in Wanat
village in Kunar province slightly south of Nuristan when parts of
their outpost were overrun. It was never explained why the outpost was
positioned there at all. In Nuristan the U.S. also recently bombed and killed 47 people who were on their way to a wedding. Something undisclosed is going on there?
Catching Bin Laden, for real or pretended, would be a perfect October surprise.
But even if Bin Laden is where he is suspected to be, the physical
terrain and ‘human terrain’ of that area is so complicate that I doubt
that any ‘surged’ operation there will succeed. Consider the
fascinating tribal relations, history (recommended) and languages in that area of Nuristan and Kunar (via Registan).
There are five feuding main tribes with various feuding sub tribes
speaking a total 15 different language variants. There is also no
infrastructure to talk of and a very mountainous area to cope with.
I regard the chances for the U.S. to capture Bin Laden there as
quite low. Contrasting that the chances of ‘collateral damage’ of such
a ‘surge’, i.e. accidental or intentional killing of civilians, is
quite high.
Bigger news: Radovan Karadzic, the most wanted Bosnian Serb war crimes fugitive, was captured on Monday night, Serbia’s National Security Council announced.
Hillary must be positively giddy, bidding out cogent Clinton videoplets to the MSM, after nearly a month off camera, how she got “tough on war criminals” and all that.
Obama, for his part, has stepped in the bear trap by calling for ramp up in force strength in Afghanistan. Whether it’s right, or it’s wrong, America is a nation of quitters as Saddam taunted, and now the only reason to keep troops overseas (and grow overall troop strength by 650,000!) is because the US economy is so bad, even the bureaucratic tax welfare dole system can’t absorb all the returning veterans.
Imagine being trapped overseas for a decade, until the US economy recovers.
Couldn’t they just be put to work building wells, latrines and levees in Kabul? After all, the “other national security interests” $180B is there, the Pentagon just has to point, and shoot. Might as well get something for our tax dollars besides “clear and hold”, have them go rebuild community bazaars throughout AF,
instead of just paving military roads, bigger Bagram, and HVAC for the barracks.
Obama has much bigger fish to fry back home, planning his strategy now, before the shyte hits the fan and 20 staffers are screaming at him 20 hours a day, “now what?”
He needs to pull a Dick Cheney and go deep-cover, with occasional satellite video feeds from somewhere in the world, where he’s meeting with political and economic leaders now, before the election, making the deals, gauging the trades, setting the benchmarks and mileposts, the common talking points, the pegs.
Then in January, he’d be the first president in history to hit the ground running.
Just start at the top and read off the list of countries and partners, trades and terms, finances and markets, bada bing, the media’s pencils on fire taking notes, and that will be all, no questions, thank you for coming, see you in 30 days.
Instead, we’re much more likely to get pompousassity, management-by-collective and the greatest growth of socialist tax dole welfare bureaucracy since John McCain first wet his diaper.
Posted by: Larry Michaels | Jul 22 2008 4:46 utc | 13
Binny is deceased. He was on dialysis, very ill. He died in Dec. 2001.
this, first, top of google gathers some of the facts / non facts: whtreallyhappned
His family has not been able to announce or confirm his death, because as hyped up poster-boy ‘terrarist’ – carefully groomed by the US to take the on role of villain and adversary – as well as somewhat of a family outcast – he remains more useful to the US ‘alive’.
A death from chronic illness hardly fits the script of masterminds. No Hollywood movie would have killed him off at that point. The plot would specify that he is in hiding, sends messages, and then spectacularly resurfaces. The US has been following this script with clumsy fakes – they are intended for the sheeples only and need not be convincing – everybody else knows it’s a joke.
All let the US get away with it, through fear, but also because they have their own interests in defining some wispy common enemy – Al Q, Muslims, for obvious reasons, ‘sand niggers’ sitting on oil reserves. The family has steadfastly said – we have heard nothing from him, implied, no comment, and leave us alone.
The remaining part of AlQ (if it exists) also prefers to keep the memory of the Hero alive, as even for fake stuff everyone goes OOh and AAh; that includes sheeples in ‘arab’ countries; and keeps their position visible, permits them to go on selling Binny, even as the perp of 9/11 (they know that is false I suppose.) In this way, all parties collude.
The Repubs are upfront about it: 2004: quote: U.S. Sen. John McCain, campaigning in southwestern Connecticut on Saturday, said Osama bin Laden’s video message to Americans will likely energize President Bush’s re-election campaign. “I think it’s very helpful to President Bush,” said McCain, R-Ariz. link
Controversial figures like Kola Booth (Binny’s mistress for many months, US author of “Diary of a Lost Girl” and so on), and others who have known him are also better off with Binny hiding. Binny dead and gone, it might be time to move on, lose sympathy, status, etc.
Here is Kola’s, she lives in Calif., afaik, most succinct pol. statement (that I have been able to find):
I’m not so Pro-Israel—I’m Pro-Africa. Africa’s greatest enemy of all time is the Arab Muslim Empire—they enslaved us for one thousand years and have committed untold atrocities and genocides against the East African people. Though the white man is a kind of Satan, and though the Black man is Satan for selling his own children into bondage and assassinating the image of his own mother, because he himself wants to be white—I can assure you that Africa has known no greater Satan than the twins, Arab and Islam. I was born to an Arab father and I was born Islamic, and on behalf of the people of Sudan and as a Black African woman—that is what I have to say. By any means necessary, I am for Africa. link
London wife interviewed by the Guardian: link
Trendy terror hyped for some hope of revenue – Wafah Bin Laden, now failed pop star. link
Regular cash-in-on-the-celeb connection, Binny dead is worthless. No hagiographies will be written, no keepers of the tomb will found foundations, his posthumous sayings will find no publisher who will make money. Presumed alive, the shadow of mystery and threat is worth something.
Musharraf on OBL death: link
Posted by: Tangerine | Jul 22 2008 19:05 utc | 17
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