Some day we are going to read about the CIA's war with the ISI 2008-2011

[JCMach1]

There is no way that bin Laden could have been hidden where he was for a number of years without the non-civilian parts of the Pakistani government knowing exactly where he was.

Thank you President Obama for having the guts to do what Bush did not.

[The Magistrate]

1. Very True, Sir

There is no doubt leading elements in the I.S.I. have known precisely where he was for the last decade, at all times.

[joshcryer]

2. The books that come out about it are going to be pretty amazing.

[leftstreet]

3. I still wanna know what happened to those pallets of cash in Iraq

:shrug:

[Old and In the Way]

8. That cash found its way back into the election of 2004.

No direct evidence, but just a hunch....remember, only Republicans were in on the money laundering (I mean Iraqi pay-offs) scheme the CPA cooked up. No audit trail and the auditing company was run out of some apartment in the States.

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. Gotta wonder how the CIA guy who shot the government agents

figures into this.

[Old and In the Way]

5. I agree....I think the operation was sucessful because they cut them out.

No way the ISI didn't know OBL was in Abottabad....that town on Google Maps looks pretty upscale...has lots of medical hospitals/clinics (perhaps treatment for his kidney problems?) and is an educational center. I think they had to cut out the ISI from the intel loop, otherwise word would have gotten out to OBL and we'd have missed him again. The ISI was complicit in 9/11 - we know they were funneling money to the hijackers...so it's not a surprise that they'd have been protecting him.

[JCMach1]

7. Gov. hospital within a km

for the military...

If the dialysis stories were true...

[EFerrari]

19. There is no reporter familiar with Pakistan, ISI or that town

that believes they were cut out.

What happened is they cut a deal with McChrystal a while ago that he could enter Pakistan in "hot pursuit" of Bin Laden or others IF the Pakistani government could deny any knowledge.

That's why our government said they did not notify anyone. It gave Pakistan cover.

This was run down very well today on Amy's show.

[JCMach1]

6. It is easier to see some of the pieces of the game now

-Destroyed NATO convoys (ISI)
-Endless drone attacks (US)
-Ratcheting up the Taliban in Afghanistan (ISI and Co.)
-CIA operative Davis affair (still wonder what that was all about).

These are only the things we have bead on and can guess at...

It is clear now that Obama gave the green light to get Obama by any means even if that meant going through and starting an undeclared war with the ISI in order to get bin Laden. What a difference leadership makes. Bush was never willing to risk such an operation.

[Old and In the Way]

9. I think Bush was compromised with the ISI/bin Ladens.

Within 6 months of 9/11 he was past OBL....getting him didn't matter. Who knows what the ISI might have had on the Bush family and their dealings with Saudi Arabia and the bin Ladens? After the Tora Bora fiasco and Bush flying the bin Laden family out of the US, I think there are real questions about Bush's actions against terrorism. Within 9 months of 9/11 they were planning their Iraqi War...and we know that advance planning (Cheney's secret energy meetings) happened in the Spring of 2001. There was no global war on terrorism, but there was an elective war against Iraq....a country with no ties to AQ and no 9/11 hijackers. I'm convinced that the ISI was the real force behind AQ and the 9/11 planning....yet Bush never seemed interested in pursuing them. I suspect they had some pretty incriminating evidence on Bush and/or the BFEE that neutralized any action that could have been initiated.

[JCMach1]

11. Bush's people also did not want to directly address the Pakistan issue as related to OBL

As they saw it as critical to their key objective in the War on Terror (which was Iraq and Afghanistan secondarily).

They needed Pakistan to play ball so they could fight their wars.

Obama, apparently, was not afraid.

[loudsue]

14. I think the bush mafia and the saudis were more than willing to let 9/11 happen

It was in the PNAC agreement for the USA, but the Saudis benefitted beautifully from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The saudi sheiks own stocks in all of the American military companies.

[crickets]

15. No. Doubt.

Nice job of laying out some of the dots. :thumbsup:

[janet118]

16. This fact always struck me as key . . .

(Autumn 2001) Just two days prior to the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001 Arab terrorists with Belgian passports, posing as journalists, killed one of Afghanistan's most effective leaders, Commander Ahmed Shah Massoud.

I remember reading at the time that the suicide bombers who murdered Northern Alliance leader Massoud were closely connected to the ISI.

[Ikonoklast]

10. I see a power struggle coming in Pakistan.

Soon.

[napoleon_in_rags]

12. +1

[JCMach1]

13. It has been going on for some time...

[Ikonoklast]

20. It will get hot.

The radicals that provided cover in the ISI and military for OBL will be pissed.

Assassinations of Pakistani political leaders on the horizon.

[Odin2005]

18. Me, too.

[Odin2005]

17. I suspected the ISI was protecting Osama all along.

The slimy bastards.