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Ear to the Ground

Bin Laden Holed Up in Pakistan Since 2003?

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Posted on May 7, 2011
Flickr / DVIDSHUB

An Afghan man carries water jugs through a bazaar at the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Pakistani security officials said Saturday that Osama bin Laden may have resided in the country’s northern urban areas for almost eight years before U.S. forces killed him. That information creates new pressure for President Asif Ali Zardari to explain what Pakistan’s leaders knew and when they knew it.

One of bin Laden’s wives said he lived in a village called Chak Shah Mohammad Khan for more than two years before moving to Abbottabad in 2005.

The Obama administration has demanded the names of top agents in Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, trying to determine whether some of them were in contact with bin Laden in the last several years.

Pakistan receives billions of dollars in annual aid from the U.S., and was named a key ally in the war on terror. However, the ISI is said to operate as a “state within a state” and maintains a complicated relationship with the country’s executive branch. —KDG

The New York Times:

Obama administration officials have stopped short of accusing the Pakistani government—either privately or publicly—of complicity in the hiding of Bin Laden in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. One senior administration official privately acknowledged that the administration sees its relationship with Pakistan as too crucial to risk a wholesale break, even if it turned out that past or present Pakistani intelligence officials did know about Bin Laden’s whereabouts.

Still, this official and others expressed deep frustration with Pakistani military and intelligence officials for their refusal over the years to identify members of the agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, who were believed to have close ties to Bin Laden. In particular, American officials have demanded information on what is known as the ISI’s S directorate, which has worked closely with militants since the days of the fight against the Soviet army in Afghanistan.

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drbhelthi's avatar

By drbhelthi, May 9, 2011 at 2:50 am Link to this comment

Being an experienced, multi-engined jet cargo airplane pilot, Rico can
clarify the myth that an airliner flew into the pentagon. 

He has at least viewed videos of near-crashes, and crashes, and reviews of
how pilot error that caused them could have been prevented. He probably
had a few close-calls himself.  That is, unless he is a shill for the
USGOV.  Or, not a multi-engined jet cargo airplane pilot - - .

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drbhelthi's avatar

By drbhelthi, May 9, 2011 at 1:11 am Link to this comment

A WMD?
Would be laughable if it were not so fairy-tale-ish.
What undernourished man can carry so many waterjugs that contain
anything?  NONE.
The jugs are of course empty, with no explosive charge strapped to his
“under shorts,” if he is wearing any. Otherwise, predictably, he would have exploded upon approach of the camera-crew.

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By NZDoug, May 9, 2011 at 12:56 am Link to this comment

OBL didnt like it when Clinton sent 30 cruise missiles into Sudan to get the medias
mind off Monica Lewisnkis sausage sizzle, but the thing that put him off the most was USA/israel constant theft murder and lies.
So the sore festers…...

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By redipen, May 8, 2011 at 8:13 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

Mr. Suave - why so quick to make this fellow the butt of a joke… you can’t see him
as a budding entrepreneur, a living tribute to Milton Feedman and Adam Smith?

This fellow is more the poster-child for free enterprise than Jamie Diamond or
Lloyd Blankfein - after all they’re on the US Gov. dole - think there’s a welfare
check for this poor, hard-working chap?

Shame on you, Mr. Suave, are you trying to besmirch Free Enterprise?

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rico, suave's avatar

By rico, suave, May 8, 2011 at 7:24 pm Link to this comment

WATER JUGS!!!

The guy’s a fucking WMD!

That photo has GOT to be on SNL. Or Colbert. Or Stewart. Or Leno.

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drbhelthi's avatar

By drbhelthi, May 8, 2011 at 8:57 am Link to this comment

“But who can find joy in the murder of a man, even one as despicable as
Bin Laden?  Not me.”  DaveZx3

While many agree that Jesus Christ was “far superior to any man who has
ever lived”, added the phrase, “and who will ever live on earth”, some
of your ideas might be as inaccurate as the concept that bin Laden was
holed up in Pakistan since 2003.  All insiders who are interested know
that Osama bin Laden died, Jan-Feb 2002, and whose corpse has holed-in
inside an unmarked grave since then.  Not alive in a C.I.A. compound. 

Some of us find even less joy in “personages” such as George H.W. Bush
Sr., who have financed such men as you find despicable.  GHWBushSr hired
Osama bin Laden to conduct the activities for which he became
famous/infamous.  GHWBushSr also set-up Sadaam Hussein to aggress
against his neighbor, then misused the USMilitary to crush him in the
first “Gulf War.” 

What would Jesus Christ have to say about such men who manipulate from
behind the scenes?  Such “nice” men who are reported by their former
“underlings” to send cards and letters of condolence to remaining
families of men whom they just had assassinated?  See the video speeches
of John Stockwell, former C.I.A. station chief under GHWBushSr.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3ioJGMCr-Y
“The Chronicles of Chip Tatum”, from the period he was an assassin for
GHWBushSr, are also quite revealing.

If you have adopted a Christian mentality, how can you be less happy
than before you became “aware” of the political situations we live in? 
It would behove the veracity of your blogs to become better acquainted
with the Christian message and also the string-pullers behind the scenes
of current politics.  Your comments constitute a subtle suggestion that
Christians should “give in” to the string-pullers.  This may be a bit
off-base from the message of Jesus Christ, but exactly what the NAZI-
types want to hear.

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By eugene, May 8, 2011 at 7:22 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

Personally, I don’t buy “we didn’t know where he was”.  If we didn’t, we need to fire the entire “intelligence” agency and start over. 

For one thing, it kept us in Afghanistan all these years and we want to be there.  For another, the public could, periodically, be hyped with a “bin Laden scare” and that is so necessary.  And I do love the “heroic” Navy Seals executing a sick old man in an undefended compound.  I do wonder what it’s like to walk up to an unarmed man and shoot him in the head.  Takes something I don’t have and glad I don’t.  Either it’s the blind obedience the Nazi’s had or more hate/anger than I want to carry.  But so is the state of the nation.

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By DaveZx3, May 8, 2011 at 12:17 am Link to this comment

By Napolean DoneHisPart, May 7 at 10:01 pm

“folks just want to be left alone”
———————————————————————————

I agree totally.  I was saying just the other day, how much happier I was before I became “aware” of the political situations we live in. 

I went from being totally oblivious to politics for about 40 years, to being totally involved from mid-Bush I to present, and now I find myself drifting back out, trying to separate myself from the influence of ideological fanatics of the left, right and center as well.

I became painfully aware that my participation had virtually no impact, but only high levels of personal frustration between infrequent minor temporary pseudo-victories.  Exactly the nature of the Bin Laden assasination.  Empty, hollow victories. 

Looney-Tune, politicians, being totally wrapped up in their partisan ideological struggles, spend their whole lives plotting the demise of enemies, real and imaginary. 

It is a flawed concept, that one must have enemies to motivate them, but it is apparent that this is what it is all about.  As though there is some natural binarial law that everything has to have its equal and opposite force which must be constantly fought but never overcome.  No purpose, no plan, no real victory, just constant struggle and minor pseudo-victories.

I am giving it up.  I refuse to have enemies.  I have adopted a Christian mentality, “love your enemies, do good to them who use and abuse you” (I can’t remember the actual words)  If anyone continues to nurture conflicts against me, it is their problem.  If they hate me enough to kill me, I would have to care for them as they commited the act. (theoretically)

It would be definitely “losing your life in an act of peace,” and it would be the ultimate sacrifice for those who believe murder and war and even violence in the course of personal defense are not an option. 

Had Christ resisted and won, he would not have been who he became.  Had he resisted and lost, he would not have been who he became.  Christ did not resist, and said, “forgive them, for they know not what they do” and in that act, he showed himself to be far superior to any man who has ever lived, ever.  And in the opinion of many, he became the most significant being ever to breath the air of planet Earth.  I have no problem saying that he was God incarnate. 

Yet Christ has enemies still.  Perhaps up to half of the population of the earth could be considered his enemies in their own minds, not his.  His so-called followers somehow are not capable of following his lead regarding these enemies, and in doing so, represent him shamefully.

But who can find joy in the murder of a man, even one as despicable as Bin Laden?  Not me. 

To all who must struggle constantly against their enemies, I say, it is your personal problem.  But please leave me out of it.  I have given it up.
And like most real folks, “I just want to be left alone”.

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Napolean DoneHisPart's avatar

By Napolean DoneHisPart, May 7, 2011 at 10:01 pm Link to this comment

Osama, Obama… what’s the difference?

The double-speak is getting so ridiculous and convoluted, and the revision of history of just last week’s escapade is making so many heads spin, folks just want to be left alone to worship their sports, their wealth, their material possessions and each other…

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By TDoff, May 7, 2011 at 12:24 pm Link to this comment

Maybe we should have been demanding to see Osama’s birth certificate instead of Obama’s. Are we sure he was a Saudi? Maybe he was really a Pakistani. Maybe he was ‘hiding out’ in his childhood home. Our ‘intelligence’ services do screw-up, you know.

For all we know he might have been a US citizen, born in Salt Lake City, and that’s where he picked up the habit of serial-marrying all his wives.

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By SoTexGuy, May 7, 2011 at 11:43 am Link to this comment

“... the ISI is said to operate as a “state within a state” and maintains a complicated
relationship with the country’s executive branch”.

Substitute CIA fir ISI..

‘nuff said.

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