U.S. warned Pakistan it would come to get bin Laden
WASHINGTON |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States repeatedly told Pakistan that Washington would send American forces into that country if it had evidence that Osama bin Laden was hiding there, according to current and former U.S. officials.
The message that the United States would not hesitate to send American operatives into Pakistan to get bin Laden was transmitted to top Pakistani officials on multiple occasions by the administrations of Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, said a U.S. national security official who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive information.
A former senior U.S. counter-terrorism official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was an "understanding" between Washington and Islamabad that amounted to an acknowledgment by Pakistani authorities that the United States would take unilateral action on Pakistani soil if it had intelligence on the al Qaeda leader's whereabouts.
The current U.S. official said the message that the United States would dispatch forces to go after bin Laden if it found him in Pakistan was repeatedly passed on to Pakistani authorities so that, at a minimum, Islamabad should have had no illusions about the U.S. position.
The already-strained relations between Pakistan and the United States became even more tense following the U.S. commando raid this month that killed bin Laden at a compound near Pakistan's principal military academy.
On Monday, Britain's Guardian newspaper, in a report from Islamabad, said the United States and Pakistan nearly a decade ago "struck a secret deal" in which Pakistan would allow American forces to conduct a raid inside Pakistan in search of bin Laden, his deputy or al Qaeda operational commanders.
The Guardian said that as part of the agreement Pakistan would vociferously protest in public any such U.S. incursion. The newspaper said the pact was struck between Bush and General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's military leader at the time.
Dawn, a leading Pakistani newspaper, quoted a spokesman for Musharraf as saying the former leader denied striking any agreement with the United States regarding operations to capture or kill bin Laden.
Musharraf spokesman Fawad Chaudhry told the newspaper that claims of such a deal were baseless and no written or verbal agreement existed between Bush and Musharraf about what the United States would do if it found bin Laden in Pakistan.
The former U.S. official said that while he believed Pakistan was well aware of U.S. intentions, to his knowledge whatever understanding was reached between Washington and Islamabad was never put in writing.
(Editing by Will Dunham)
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There is no way the leadership of Pakistan could ever admit to their population that there was any sort of agreement.
And you can be certain that one would never exist on paper or any other distributable form.
I’m certain it was done with “a whisper and a nod”.
The only asset these higher ups exchange seems to be money without receipts. The US got self-righteous about money the UN administered for the Oil for Food Program but never accounted for 90 million it took from it for Iraq.
And destroying an economy and a lot of people can move around as much money as building one. And money is going into fewer hands no matter which option is used. But the economy being destroyed is going to die sooner and the victors are left with the burden of the corpse. They can eat some of it but a lot still remains to stink up their lives. Modern corpses are filled with deadly poisons. Modern societies are designed to kill the victor if they themselves are killed. It’s automatic.
I have always thought he and his organization were a publicized complaint. To whom that complaint was addressed (the attack says the US but the US says it is conditions in the ME) and what it wants isn’t at all clear. AQ can make the revolts in Africa and the Arabian Peninsula now its own and everyone will try. What AQ is or wants is still the subject of constant and unresolved discussion. There is no clear solution for the ME that doesn’t cost somebody something dearly. There isn’t clear definition of the problem. Even the “greatest number” who might benefit from a resolution isn’t clear. I don’t think the greatest number is somehow going to matter. So many minority interests are at stake that they are majorities. There is no stable framework to group interests.
I have no idea how OBL would have come out on the issue of financial corruption. Had he lived, or if his movement ever wins, would he or a follower have made himself a Pasha? Would he have showered himself in gold? Or was he a reformed libertine and became an ascetic? I tend to think he would have been a theocratic dictator and like an Islamic Phillip II of Spain. Life would be enslavement to God.
Few people give the villain the slightest credit for compassion. The 911 attacks could have come in the afternoon or evening and that was supposed even then. They would have killed far more people. He could have ordered the planes to dive into them, couldn’t he? I always thought so. So many people wonder why the buildings didn’t tip are not so strange. I wondered if they considered trying to topple buildings like dominos in lower Manhattan? I’m not sure the mercy makes up of the enslavement.
AQ is a movement reacting to future shock but also to legal grievances.
It uses tactics that are ruthless but ruthless tactics have put the five veto holding members of the Security Council in their seats. Nevertheless they have written some admirable laws because they know the world so well and can see better options. I take living in a peaceful neighborhood for granted. I don; like the idea that it might require that someone else’s neighborhood has to be hell on earth. The UN has many documents that state their ideals for a world that assumes peace is the norm.
If the relationship between the US and Pakistan is so murky, that what hope does it have to succeed?
RE: OBL, I can’t shake the notion that George told Martha that sonny boy is dead.
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