CIA director blasts Pakistan's intelligence service

charles hercock

This triumphal vindictiveness will rebound on us all
Now is the time to nurture and support Pakistan to prevent it falling into the hands of the militants

Overt Moon

An interesting aspect of all this is the close links of the CIA and Pakistani intelligence. Further the close links of Pakistani intelligence to the Taliban. It is unbeleivable that Pakistani intelligence did not know.It is coming to beggar belief that someone at the CIA did not know. Are we beginning to examine CIA operatives bank accounts.Why does the name Klaus Fuchs keep spinning round my brain.

Baron

one’s hard to figure what is it that fuels the superbrain of the messiah, unless he’s thinking of flattening Pakistan, turning the country into a parking lot, Panetta’s remarks approximate the ranting of a permanent inmate of a high security asylum administered an overdose, the copter raid was a massive slap for Pakistan, had it happened the other way round, the Americans would close ranks, too, to jack up injury with insult ain’t going to calm things down, if pushed the same forces that kept OBL safe may go for a full Monty, take power, get hands on the nuclear button, then what?

charles hercock @ 5.59 gets the measure of what’s needed now.

Perry

I'm sure The Company has, within it's ranks, people who know far more than they are allowed to work with.

It remains breathtaking that the 9/11 attacks were allowed to go ahead, - someone must have known.

Further that, thanks to Brother Clinton, the 'person' recently deceased, was not removed many years ago.

Likewise, similar organisations in other far-away lands.

WetherspoonThree

I must admit I am still bemused by yesterday's statement by the Pakistani ambassador to London. He claimed that the operation against Osama bin Laden had been a joint enterprise between Pakistan and the Americans and it was the former who had lured bin Laden to Abbottabad as recently as last week. The question has to be was the amabassador misinformed by the Pakistani foreign ministry or was he in fact splendidly off-message, indeed, was he making it up as he went along.
Those who find this entire episode puzzling will recall it was the same High Commissioner, Mr Wajid Shamsul Hassan who put forward a spirited defence of the three Pakistan cricketers, Salman Butt, Mahammed Amir and Mohammad Asif when the were accused last year of corruption. He has claimed that they were 'set-up' by the newspapers who entrapped the innocent.

Interesting to know if he enjoys the full confidence of bosses in Islamabad. The silence suggests he does.

porkbelly

This illuminates the little commented-upon fact that most terrorist organizations owe their continued survival to some national government - whether it is Iran with Hamas and Hezbollah, Saudi Arabia with Fatah, the IRA with Libya and the USSR, or here Al Qaeda to Pakistan. Without state support they would be wiped out; as a tool for covert operations and extending spheres of influence they can bargain for their long-term viability.

TrevorsDen

I do not think it is rocket science to work out that an operation of this type would be carried out in an extremely clandestine manner.

If there IS a little commented on fact it actually is that Pakistan has basically shrugged its shoulders at a clandestine operation in their territory.
If there is a country more relieved at OBLs death than the USA it is Pakistan.

Time and tide are coming together in the middle east. The decision to put pressure on Gadaffi was clearly the right one; the groundswell to do more should encourage the UN/ NATO to tighten the (figurative) noose.

Jeremy

"It's called leverage."

Really? It sounds more like a blindfolded giant trying to stamp all over the world, to me.

Ban-Ban-Caliban...

The Americans have never learnt that some things are done best, when they are done quietly. And if they can't be done quietly, it is sometimes best not to do them at all.

Boo

I noted that when the PM spoke on Today he was suportive of democratic elements/political leadership in pakistan. Perhaps he is less enthusiastic of the pakistani military/inteligence comunity

Herbert Thornton

The tone of some of the responses indicates that they are written by people who are deeply anti-American.

We shall of course have to wait and see what the various records seized by the Seals reveal.

If those records do reveal that very powerful officials in Pakistan have been bribed by bin Laden and and have been co-operating with him - and it will be surprising if they don't reveal at least something of that sort - what are the same posters going to say then? That the papers and computer records are CIA forgeries?

David Lindsay

This week has begun with the revelation that Osama bin Laden, an extremely tall and not remotely Pakistani-looking man, had been inhabiting for some time a large compound in an affluent, non-Pashtun garrison town a mere two hours' drive from the capital city. And rather charmingly, though also tellingly, retaining its colonial name. For that town was in, wait for it, Pakistan.

Bin Laden had been accompanied by at least two wives, one another obvious foreigner from the Arabian Peninsula, the other actually drawn from the local population, together with a number of other relatives. He had even been noted for giving pet rabbits to local children. Is it conceivable that the Pakistani authorities were unaware of his whereabouts? No, of course not. Is it conceivable that the governments sending, in some cases, boys still in their teens to die in ostensible pursuit of him in Afghanistan were unaware of his whereabouts? No, of course not. The Pakistanis have questions to answer. But they are not the only ones.

So, following first that and then today's verdict of unlawful death in the case of Ian Tomlinson, this week would be rounded off perfectly by another statement of the blatantly obvious, namely that Tony Blair and those informing him knew all about the impending 7/7 attacks, but at the very least permitted them to happen, the better to take down the old Michael Howard Play Book from the shelf, as well as, bizarrely, to justify both the ongoing wars that the bombers frankly blamed for their actions, and yet further such misadventures in the future. If the verdict fails to say that, then file it with, in that case, the equally preposterous Hutton "Report". Now, how about a Coroner's Inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly? Who could possibly object to that...?

Dear old David Aaronovitch, once the Soviet Union's place man at the top of the NUS, was on PM, still blathering on that Blair had not lied about Iraq, and even suggesting that it is an Arab thing to doubt the word of politicians and their media courtiers, whom the British way is to trust without question. Not for the first time, I was confronted with the fact that the fiercely secular Ashkenazi Marxist-nationalists that were so important in taking both the United Kingdom and the United States to war in Iraq, against the wishes of almost every other person in at least one of those aggressor states, are in fact as separatist as their distant cousins among the Hasidim, and know, if anything, even less about the British culture of which they are in no sense a part. Thank goodness for Ed Miliband and Maurice Glasman.

As for Aaronovitch's view on Blair, just as the former's book on conspiracy theories took no account of the fact that Robert Runcie had urbanely conceded the whole of Gareth Bennett's case in Humphrey Carpenter's devastating authorised biography, so he now takes no account of the fact that Blair, wholly unaccustomed to any proper questioning, has admitted on television to Fern Britton that he never believed in the existence of Iraqi WMD but would have invaded Iraq anyway. Britton is this country's greatest living interviewer. Is Aaronovitch our worst ever commentator?

Maddy1

@David Lindsay
You are a closet racist, like me, Bin Laden, would have happily fitted into a lot of Pakistani racial niches. You do realize they have blue eyed blondes there?

Vulture

Do you think that Trevor's Den and David Lindsay could be persuaded to set up home together - perhaps in one of those charming 1930s semi-detached houses that line the inner London ring road?

I'm sure they would find plenty to talk about.

Baron

David Lindsay @ 12.54:

pardon?

John Montague

Who knew what, and when? I doubt we'll ever be told .. this sort of stuff is way above Private Manning's pay-grade, that's for sure, despite the Pakistani claims about the contents of recent Wikileaks cables.

Jez

Asda are now selling Osama Bin Laden toilet paper - you can colour him in yourself, then bury him to sea.

Andrew Fletcher

Pakistan knew he was there. But they couldn't capture him themselves or be seen to be handing him over to the Americans because that would cause a backlash amongst Pakistan based extremists. So, they struck a deal with the Americans. They told them where he was and agreed not to get in the way of an American hit. They also go the Americans to agree to make it look like they (Pakistan) didn't know anything about it. A bit of short term embarrassment in the eyes of the "rest of the world" which frankly doesn't matter too much compared to America's (secret) approval and local extremist ignorance of what had really gone on. Clever eh?

Herbert Thornton

Andrew Fletcher -

That's an interesting theory and I hope you are right.

On the other hand when considering the depth of ex-President Musharraf's hatred of India, demonstrated by his enthusiastic planning and execution of the Kargil war, and his military connections cemented during that war, it seems to me that there is strong evidence that not just the ISI, but the highest levels of the army include many who hate Hindus and Hinduism so much that they naturally lean towards extremist Islam and consequently feel common cause with bin Laden and Al Qaeda.

And then there's the pervasion of corruption in Pakistan. The entire government setup is like a simmering witches' cauldron - with a great many dollars floating round in the mix.

Frank P (May 2nd, 2011 9:16pm) in the thread headed 'What-obama-said-about-bin-laden-and-pakistan-before-he-became-president' has made some interesting suggestions about where some of the dollars have ended up.....