Pak dithering cost US shot at bin Laden

Sunday Telegraph via Washington Times:

Demurral by the Pakistani government cost the United States the chance to kill Osama bin Laden in an air strike near the Afghan border two years ago, the Sunday Telegraph has learned.
A CIA lead that the al Qaeda leader was hiding in a remote province was squandered because the Pakistani government delayed giving permission for the attack on its soil, according to a senior Western diplomat.
By the time U.S. officials got the go-ahead, bin Laden had left the suspected hide-out in Zhob, in the Baluchistan province of southwest Pakistan.
The near-miss was cited by the diplomat as the reason why the United States chose not to consult Islamabad before the U.S. missile strike in Pakistan's Bajaur region two weeks ago. The Jan. 13 attack, prompted by a tip that bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, was hiding in a local village, killed 13 civilians.
Speaking of the Zhob attack, the diplomat, who asked not to be named, said: "For unknown reasons, Pakistani officials delayed in giving permission ... which ultimately gave these militants time to move to an unknown location."
According to his account, which was backed by sources within Pakistani intelligence, the CIA picked up electronic traffic suggesting that bin Laden and his bodyguards had sought temporary shelter in Zhob, which is dominated by Pathan and Baloch tribesmen sympathetic to al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Fearing that a commando raid would cause massive casualties to both sides, with no guarantee of success, the United States decided to launch a strike by laser-guided missiles, fired from Predator drones.

...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more