PrairiePundit

 Daily Mail; One in five young Americans has a POSITIVE view of Osama Bin Laden: Disturbing Daily Mail poll results also reveal three in 10 Gen-Zers think the views of the 9/11 mastermind were a 'force for good' ... Another DailyMail.com poll in October found one in 10 voters under the age of 30 had a positive view of Hamas , despite the group's murderous attack on Israel that killed more than 1,300 men, women and children. ... The results of this polling are hard to believe.  See also: Anti-Israel rally at JFK Airport causes New Year’s Day nightmare on one of the busiest travel days of the year ... “NYPD, KKK, IDF you’re all the same,” protesters inside an SUV screeched through a megaphone, according to video posted to X. Other footage posted to social media showed more than a dozen cars waving Palestinian flags and honking car horns on the gridlocked parkway shortly before the planned rally at 2 p.m. A box truck displayed images of Israeli troops with Palestinian children...

  Red States: Osama Bin Laden Banned Al Qaeda From Killing Biden; He Thought He Would Lead US Into Crisis Bin Laden was not wrong about Biden.  All of those super-smart guys running Big Tech companies that supported Biden were dead wrong. See, also: Osama bin Laden's prophetic statements about Joe Biden

 Bryan Preston: Former Vice President Joe Biden may well become president next month. The advice he gave President Barack Obama ahead of the 2011 Pakistan raid that ended the life and reign of terror of Osama bin Laden will gain new relevance if he does, for the simple reason that it will be Biden, not anyone else (we know of) who will be rendering final judgements on calls of similar weight when they arise. Joe Biden’s choices will matter in ways they never have during the prior 47 years he has spent in office. We can be assured that such issues will arise. On January 3, 2020, President Trump made the decision to kill Iranian terror mastermind Qassem Soleimani, who had been destabilizing Iraq and orchestrating attacks on local and American forces there. Most Americans had never heard of Soleimani despite the fact that he had American blood on his hands. His killing, in a drone strike in Baghdad, inspired warnings that it could start World War III, from no less than Joe Biden himse...

Biden is accused of putting a target on their back resulting in 16 of them being killed in an operation when their chopper was targetted by the Taliban.

Jamie McIntyre: Legendary military commander retired Marine Corps Gen. Jim Mattis is on a whirlwind publicity tour promoting his book  Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead , which he co-authored with Bing West.  Washington Examiner  senior writer Jamie McIntyre covered Mattis both when he was in uniform and during his stint as President Trump’s first defense secretary. The two spoke by phone last week, after McIntyre promised in an email that he wouldn’t ask the same dumb questions as everyone else, but instead would ask entirely new dumb questions. That apparently appealed to Mattis, who immediately called. The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and space. Washington Examiner:  I'm wondering about some of your judgments. You seem pretty confident after you've made a decision that you've made the right one. For instance, the account you give of how you were certain that you could've captured or killed Osama bin Laden in the mountains of Tora ...

NY Times: Hamza bin Laden, Son of Qaeda Founder, Is Dead The United States had a role in the operation that killed the younger Mr. bin Laden, officials said. But other details, including where he died, remained unknown. Good riddance to another terrorist.  He was a victim of the family business.  He sought to continue his fathers legacy and met the same fate. In another blow to al Qaeda: Bin Laden Family ‘Henchman’ Is Arrested in Philippines Mahmoud Afif Abdeljalil was once considered a close associate of Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law and a financier for Al Qaeda.

Washington Examiner: Joe Biden has offered two starkly different and contradictory accounts of his role in the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden. After initially saying that he opposed the operation and told President Barack Obama not to do it, the 2020 Democratic front-runner changed his account to say he hedged in front of other official but privately told Obama to go ahead. Every other account of the decision-making process indicates that the former vice president's first version was true and his later accounts were not. In 2012, he said his advice was, 'Don’t go.' By 2015, he had settled on saying he'd privately told Obama to 'go.' The former vice president’s most recent descriptions of his stance — when he morphed from vocal opponent of the raid, to private supporter of it — contradicts the public accounts of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of Defense Bob Gates, former CIA Director Leon Panetta, and Obama himself. .....

Washington Post: Trump risks alienating military community with attacks on revered admiral President Trump’s deriding remarks about retired Adm. William H. McRaven came amid broader questions about the commander in chief’s relationship with the military. I do not think Adm. Raven was responsible for the long time it took to get bin Laden.  I think he and his team did a great job in the operation that finally got him. But since leaving the service McRaven has injected himself in politics, first becoming a chancellor of the UT System and defending some liberals programs at the institutions.  He then began criticizing President Trump, something that he would never have done while in the military.   His criticism of Trump's pulling the security clearance of John Brennan was a mistake. If there is anything anyone in this country, regardless of past performance and service can expect it is that if they are critical of the President and he thinks it unfai...

NY Times: As an Investor, Osama bin Laden Was Bullish on Gold An order to buy gold bars and coins with ransom money was in a letter that was part of the trove seized by Navy SEALs at Bin Laden’s hide-out in Pakistan. With the Bush administration attempting to shut off his paper assets it is not surprising that bin Laden look to investments that seemed less vulnerable.  It is possible that the purchase of the gold could be traced to him which would have made an interesting story.

Washington Post: Bin Laden almost sounds like a presidential candidate in secret letter In a letter apparently written by the late al-Qaeda leader, he denounced the corporate interests supposedly driving politics in the United States. He might have had a tough time choosing between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.  In his world view, the caliphate would own everything  I guess.  It probably never crossed his mind that corporations and freedom are why the US is so much stronger than Muslim countries.

NY Times: Bin Laden Feared Wife’s Tooth Held a Tracking Device Newly released documents seized by Navy SEALs during the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in 2011 suggest that as the U.S. turned up the pressure, the leader of Al Qaeda grew increasingly concerned about security breaches. While that would have been a cool feature for spies, it is not how he was found and killed.  I suspect there are more interesting things to find in the data seized by the SEALs when they took down his compound.

Washington Post: Biden seems to change account of his role in bin Laden raid He now says he advised President Obama to send in the SEALs, but in the past, he has said he was hesitant about the mission. After the raid Biden was praising Obama for what he said was a " gutsy call " and said he advised against it.   I disputed that assessment at the time since I thought it was probably wne of the easier decisions a President could make following the 9-11 attacks.

Telegraph: Revealed: the British Pakistani general at the centre of new Bin Laden death conspiracy British citizen Usman Khalid who died a year ago, accused of being supergrass who sold the secret location of Osama bin Laden to the CIA. I don't know if this story is true, but it makes more sense than recent stories that Pakistan intelligence revealed bin Laden's location.  That story makes little sense when you consider the reaction in Pakistan to bin Laden's death when they had an over the top reaction to a doctor who was accused of helping the CIA verify bin Laden's presence.  Throwing an innocent doctor in jail is not the action you would expect from a country that was supposedly cooperating with the US in running down bin Laden..

Daily Beast: Bin Laden Aides Plotted Attack on Vatican from Old U.S. Navy Base Italian police have busted what they claim is a major al Qaeda cell in Sardinia smuggling migrants and planning attacks in the mainland. Police arrested 18 including two who had been part of bin Laden's security detail in Pakistan.  It is more evidence that the Islamic religious bigots are targeting not only Christians, but Christianity.

BBC: A former lawyer for the Pakistani doctor who helped the US find Osama Bin Laden has been killed by gunmen in the north-western city of Peshawar. Samiullah Afridi was on his way home on Tuesday when unidentified assailants fired at his car. He later died. In 2013 he fled Pakistan following threats by militants. After returning last year he told the BBC that he had stopped working on the doctor's case. At least two Taliban splinter groups have claimed the killing. Dr Shakil Afridi, who is no relation to Samiullah, is appealing against a 33-year sentence after being found guilty of collaborating with the Lashkar-e-Islam militant group in his native Khyber tribal region. But many saw his sentence as punishment for aiding the CIA in their hunt for Bin Laden. ... Pakistan should release the doctor immediately.  He never should have been arrested to begin with.  It is a miscarriage of justice to jail him for helping to find the most wanted mass murderer in the world.  P...

Wall Street Journal: How America Was Misled on al Qaeda's Demise It is a stunning story of dereliction of duty by an administration during a time of war.  They so wanted to quit the fight that they closed the eyes to abundant evidence that the enemy was growing in strength and they cut off access to the information gained in the raid on bin Laden to the military and intelligence operatives.

Rowan Scarborough: CIA’s harsh interrogation tactics crucial in bin Laden capture, Republicans say Senate Democrats’ ‘torture report’ claims tactics played no role in finding al Qaeda leader This is a long story, but it points out how the CIA used some enhanced interrogation techniques to get information that led to finding bin Laden.  The most effective techniques were sleep deprivation, forced nudity and forced standing,

Stephen Hayes: ... The intelligence trove was immense. At a Pentagon briefing one day after the raid, a senior official described the haul as a “robust collection of materials.” It included 10 hard drives, nearly 100 thumb drives, and a dozen cell phones—along with data cards, DVDs, audiotapes, magazines, newspapers, paper files. In an interview on Meet the Press just days after the raid, Barack Obama’s national security adviser, Thomas Donilon, told David Gregory that the material could fill “a small college library.” A senior military intelligence official who briefed reporters at the Pentagon on May 7 said: “As a result of the raid, we’ve acquired the single largest collection of senior terrorist materials ever.” In all, the U.S. government would have access to more than a million documents detailing al Qaeda’s funding, training, personnel, and future plans. The raid promised to be a turning point in America’s war on terror, not only because it eliminated al Qaeda’s leader, but a...

Eli Lake: Some intelligence analysts believe that Osama bin Laden provided everything from seed money to strategic direction to the now-infamous Nigerian terror group. In 2002, Osama bin Laden dispatched an aide to Nigeria to hand out $3 million in local currency to a wide array of Salafist political organizations there that shared al Qaeda’s goal of imposing Islamic rule. According to an overlooked report from a well-respected international watchdog, one of those organizations was Boko Haram, the terrorist outfit that’s become globally infamous for its threat to sell girls into slavery. In other words, bin Laden helped provide Boko Haram’s seed money, this report maintains. Officially, the U.S. intelligence community assesses that the group has only tangential links to al Qaeda’s north African affiliate, and that reports of bin Laden backing the Nigerian outfit are off-base. But inside the secret state, many analysts believe that the ties between Boko Haram and al Qaeda global leade...

Times of India: Former ISI chief Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha knew of Osama bin Laden's hideout in Pakistan and LeT founder Hafiz Saeed was in regular contact with the slain al-Qaida chief, a media report said. Soon after the US Navy SEAL raid on bin Laden's house, "a Pakistani official told me the US had direct evidence that the ISI chief, Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, knew of Bin Laden's presence in Abbottabad," the New York Times reported in an article by senior journalist Carlotta Gall. "The information came from a senior US official, and I guessed that the Americans had intercepted a phone call of Pasha's or one about him in the days after the raid," Gall wrote in the article titled 'What Pakistan Knew About Bin Laden', adapted from the book "The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014', to be published next month. ... The report added that the haul of handwritten notes, letters, computer files and other information coll...