Bin Laden at Pakistan Compound Last 5-6 Years

[tekisui]

Source: CBS

The most wanted man in the world, who had been portrayed as hiding out in a remote cave, was actually residing in a comfortable (albeit heavily fortified) suburban home - and, said one official, he had been there for the last five or six years.

White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan said that, according to their information, Osama bin Laden had been hiding out not in the remote Afghan-Pakistan border region but in Abbottabad, a rural-suburb of the capital, Islamabad. Bin Laden was literally under the noses of the Pakistani military, with many active-duty or retired service members living in the area.

CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports that residents in the northwestern Pakistan town can't believe bin Laden was their neighbor. They said the inhabitants of the compound, which was surrounded by 15-foot-high walls topped with barbed wire, were discrete and hardly talked to anybody at all.

The Navy SEAL assault on the compound Sunday yielded not only bin Laden but a treasure trove of intelligence information retrieved from computer hard drives and other materials culled from the site.

more: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/05/03/earlyshow/main20059239.shtml

[LynneSin]

1. Gee, who was the president back then and how did the waterboarding work out?

:grr:

[OhioChick]

3. Those were my initial thoughts, as well n/t

[Renew Deal]

2. I wonder if Musharref put him there.

Judging his reaction, I suspect it.

[KharmaTrain]

6. Like Dealing With An Arab Bazzaar...

Yep, Musharaf probably knew and so did everyone else in the Pakistani military. But then back up a bit and see the double-game Pakistan has long played. The government is controlled by the military and only told what they need to know. Also the country has been torn by its own internal civil war among moderates (like a Musharaf) vs. Arab nationalists and fundmentalists (kinda like our own wingnuts) who not long ago were in control of large parts of the country (including Abbotabad). Going after bin Laden or making it appear that the government was complicit in his apprehension would have sparked more strife for the civilian government.

Also if you've seen the Google Map image of the area you'll notice a red line not far from Abbotabad. That's the disputed border with India...Pakistan's number one focus. They fear Indian influence in the region far more than Al Queda or the Taliban and this meant that they didn't see a threat from bin Laden as we did. In fact, hiding bin Laden and keeping the "war on terror" going was good business for Pakistan. The flush of money and arms beefed up the power of the military and kept the civilan government as a diversion to the US and the West from its real motives and intentions.

Sadly much of what we see, hear and read is filtered through what I can American "myopia"...how all events in the world only affect the US or its allies and not from the focus of the various groups in that region. It's sucked us deep into a civil war in Afghanistan that has little to do with "terror" anymore and also the "surprise" that Pakistan isn't really a "friend".

Many of us weren't surprised that bin Laden and many of the other top AQ leaders were or are in Pakistan...it turned out to be a very profitable game for that country.

[malaise]

8. My exact thought

It would be the perfect way to continue looting the US treasury

[niyad]

4. and here I thought he had been hanging out next to the pig farm. . .

[Myrina]

5. I don't understand everyone's amazment that he was near a military center ...

... most of our war criminals live near Washington DC/McLean VA (Cheney) and Annapolis & other military bases are in the close vicinity ...

[Angry Dragon]

9. +1000

:shrug:

[earthside]

7. Why Bush shut down the CIA Osama unit.

Bush shut down the CIA unit tasked with finding bin Laden in 2005.

Bush/Cheney knew where Osama bin Laden was and had decided to let the Pakistanis hold him.

So much for getting Osama "dead or alive".

Unbelievable (but expected) that the Repuglicans are trying to give Bush all the credit for getting bin Laden.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/04/washington/04intel.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jul/05/alqaida.usa

[malaise]

11. And anytime they needed a new tape to terrify the American

people, it emerged 'from the cave'. What a great con

[RaleighNCDUer]

13. Well, of course - they couldn't have used Goldstein, er, bin Laden

if he had actually been captured.

[hifiguy]

10. The Pakistanis, particularly the ISI, are not to be trusted

any further than they can be thrown. UBL was sitting there in his fortified compound for FIVE FREAKING YEARS and no one in Pakistan thought to tell anyone? Yeah, right....

[dynasaw]

12. Bush Co Could Have Hade Reasons

to keep Osama alive. If they had had him assassinated what would they have used to wield the "terra, terra" message over everyone.

Remember that fascism depends on keeping the populace in a perpetual state of fear as fearful people are easier to jerk around.

If Pakistan knew all this time where Osama was hiding what does it say about American "intelligence" if we didn't also know of the man's whereabouts?