What mission in 2005?
Yesterday Obama said what I thought was a realistic goal of getting the terrorists where ever they are. If there are in Florida. Get them there. If they are in London, get them there. If they are in Pakistan, get them there.
The other thing that he said that was very interesting was that he mentioned an aborted opportunity to get top Al Qaeda leadership in 2005. I hadn’t heard of this. Here’s the deal - Osama and his gang were meeting in Pakistan and Bush administration officials didn’t go after him. Where are the hawks now? I would love to hear the pack of manure that William Krystol will lay on us over this one.
One thing is clear, Bush isn’t about protecting us.
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From NYT:
A secret military operation in early 2005 to capture senior members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas was aborted at the last minute after top Bush administration officials decided it was too risky and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan, according to intelligence and military officials.
The target was a meeting of Qaeda leaders that intelligence officials thought included Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy and the man believed to run the terrorist group’s operations. (more…)
Just happened across this. To answer your questions on Pakistan: if we were to invade, it would be, in case you forgot, the first nuclear power we’ve ever invaded. And Obama has just pledged to never, ever use nuclear weapons. And Musharraf, probably the only ally we have in Pakistan, would probably be deposed and replaced by Islamic radicals. All so Obama could look big and tough getting a decrepit dialysis patient hiding in the mountains.
Just sayin’.
Tom -
Thanks for your comments.
First, I think that Osama probably isn’t as sick as we were led to believe. I know that it is hard to keep a patient alive on dialysis more than 10 years. We have been hearing about Bin Laden and this machine for over 10 years. Doubt that bit of intelligence was correct.
Secondly, we have plenty of allies in Pakistan. Masharraf isn’t the only one. The ousted prime minister was a friend of the US.
Now, think outside of the box. We don’t need a huge invasion force. We aren’t trying to wreck the country. We are trying to take out Al Qaeda. If we thoughtfully use special forces to strike at Bin Laden and his gang. At the same time we work to strengthen the existing government of Pakistan. That may work. We might be able to use cruise missiles and follow with special forces. The deal is we don’t need to invade in order to take out Al Qaeda.
Everybody wanted to be in on it. Which is why it grew to “hundreds” of people instead of the just the special ops. Do you think that they would have let just a small squad of troops capture Saddam if they had really know he was there. We missed an opportunity big time. The Special Ops work so effectiently they could have gone in taken them down and gotten out. But too many people wanted the credit.