Getting Bin Laden - Page 3 - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

johnjzjz · #31 12-09-2009, 04:46 PM

The intelligence i have heard / and read on this indicates he in back home in Saudi Arabia with the royal family Said be is realated to

it had been reported be had med issues and a stand by doctor, as well as he is of some royalty of one type or another to the sand jockeys

before this latest attempt at the discredit of our fighting Special services ( NAVY SEALS ) that is -- being court M - Article 15 for slapping a pal that butchered some special opps guys ----

if he was out their they NAVY SEALS would have found him of that i have no doubt -- jz

dynalow · #32 12-09-2009, 05:29 PM

A'stan is a crappy $hithole of a country. Good for absolutely nothing. Country ain't going nowhere cause it has few resources. Iraq has oil, so it has hope. A'stan has________?

The Soviet Union kept them pre-occupied and tied down for ten years (with US agitation in the mix

). They declared victory and went home with about 13,000 or so killed. After a while, trouble sprouted and eventually boiled over with 9/11. Now it's our decade to keep them tied down in their back yard. We'll leave eventually and say by 2020, there will need to be another smackdown. Maybe China will then step up and be ass kicker for a decade.

Frankly, with so little going for it, I think we need to evacuate the population, and declare it off limits....and/or lay it to waste. (Plan R.)
Thank you.
Maj. Kong

t walgamuth · #33 12-09-2009, 05:56 PM

Plan R won't work either.

10fords · #34 12-10-2009, 12:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JollyRoger

Emotion works well when you want to steal oil, I'd hardly call it pointless.

If we are "stealing" oil I'd hate to see what it would cost if we ''paid" for it.

cmac2012 · #35 12-10-2009, 02:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dynalow

A'stan is a crappy $hithole of a country. Good for absolutely nothing. Country ain't going nowhere cause it has few resources. Iraq has oil, so it has hope. A'stan has________?

The Soviet Union kept them pre-occupied and tied down for ten years (with US agitation in the mix

). They declared victory and went home with about 13,000 or so killed. After a while, trouble sprouted and eventually boiled over with 9/11. Now it's our decade to keep them tied down in their back yard. We'll leave eventually and say by 2020, there will need to be another smackdown. Maybe China will then step up and be ass kicker for a decade.

Frankly, with so little going for it, I think we need to evacuate the population, and declare it off limits....and/or lay it to waste. (Plan R.)
Thank you.
Maj. Kong

The Soviets were in Afg. because they wanted a warm water port. You portray US involvement in ousting the Soviets as some sort of useful venture. In actuality we armed a bunch of thugs to the teeth and then cut and ran when the Russkies had a finger in their eye good and hard. The remaining weapons were not used well.

Afg. has proximity to and pipeline route for the Caspian Sea oilfields. U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad was supposedly a Unocal consultant in the mid-1990s. Unocal has interests in Caspian Sea oil and a prospective Afg. pipeline. Hamid Karzai was rumored to also have a relationship with Unocal. Both have denied it though it was reported in the intl. media at some point. Who knows.

Laying waste to nations or peoples does not have a good record of outcomes in the last century As fo the OP, finally getting OBL would not change much IMO. If anything, it'd give them a martyr to avenge.

LaRondo · #36 12-10-2009, 02:59 AM

by Philip Giraldi, December 10, 2009

Monday’s revelation from Defense Secretary Robert Gates that "I think it has been years" since the US government has had any solid information about Osama bin Laden should come as no surprise to readers of Antiwar.com, which has been questioning the rationale for the global war on terrorism ever since it was a twinkle in Dick Cheney’s eye. Gates also commented that US intelligence believes that the fugitive terrorists might well be moving about in the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The "where’s Waldo" narrative provided by Gates is somewhat shocking in light of the billions of dollars that have been spent in the search for the slippery Saudi, but it is even more significant in that it completely undercuts the Barack Obama Administration’s case for increasing the number of American troops in Afghanistan.

Many analysts both inside and outside of the government have become convinced that Osama bin Laden is dead and has been so for quite some time. They base this perception on the same non-evidence that Gates cites, i.e. that there has been no solid information on bin Laden or his whereabouts since late 2001. The absence of any intelligence could be due to the likelihood that a top terrorist on the run would be extremely careful about how he moves about and how he communicates, which is what many have believed up until recently, but at a certain point it becomes too much of a stretch to believe that a man heading a major terror organization has successfully become invisible. It is widely believed that videos and recordings featuring his image and voice could well be clever composites.

The dead bin Laden school of thought also points to the impotence of al-Qaeda in events unfolding in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Even the redoubtable General Stanley McChrystal, relying on the paucity of al-Qaeda sightings and the intelligence void, has estimated that there are likely fewer than 100 al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. His estimate is undoubtedly fairly rough as the CIA has no idea what is going on, but the comment itself implies that the formerly scary terrorist group is not up to much. Pakistani intelligence sources, who are almost certainly better informed than their American counterparts, believe that there is only a tiny al-Qaeda presence inside their own country. Prime Minister Sayed Yusuf Raza Gilani recently declared flatly that bin Laden is not inside Pakistan.

If bin Laden is dead and al-Qaeda is shadow of what it once was then the whole justification for maintaining 100,000 soldiers and a nearly equal number of contractors in Afghanistan at ruinous expense becomes a fiction. President Obama based his call for an escalation on the terrorist threat in the region, but it can be plausibly argued based on available evidence that al-Qaeda has essentially faded away. If that is so, and Obama almost certainly knows that to be a distinct possibility, the American soldiers are essentially being sent to prop up two extremely corrupt American allies, President Asif Zardari in Pakistan and President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan. A prolonged bout of nation building is not exactly the snake oil that was sold to the American people in Obama’s speech on December 1st and it calls into question the integrity of a president whose majority over John McCain certainly consisted of voters who believed that would end ongoing wars and bring about change in the way America conducts its foreign policy.

Most intelligence analysts who follow terrorism issues seriously would admit that the terrorism issue has been consistently overhyped and that it is also receding due to concerted action by a number of governments since 2001 combined with diminishing appeal among young Muslims. They would also likely agree that the international brand of al-Qaeda-like Salafist-style terrorism, albeit diminished, continues to be a serious problem for much of the world. But its epicenter is almost certainly not where President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appear to think it is located, somewhere north of the Khyber Pass.

There is only one part of the world where the Salafists continue to be strong. It is North Africa, in the arc of countries running from Mauretania in the West to Libya in the east, a region plagued by a loosely collected group of terrorists who call themselves al-Qaeda in the Maghreb. Because several of the countries – Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia – have large diaspora populations in Western Europe, al-Qaeda in the Maghreb has genuine international reach. It has been able to exploit its European presence to carry out terrorist acts in France, Spain, and the Netherlands.
When considering the capabilities of al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, most intelligence analysts would also note that all of the countries in North Africa with the sole exception of Mauretania have strong governments that control effective intelligence and police services. If Barack Obama were truly serious about attacking the remaining terrorist problem, he would focus the limited available resources on helping the North African countries improve their own capabilities rather than sending 100,000 soldiers to Afghanistan. That he is not doing so demonstrates that the possible disintegration of nuclear armed Pakistan, not terrorism, is really his driving concern.

That Pakistan is politically wobbling is clear to everyone and the possibility that it could become an Islamist dominated state, once remote, is increasing due to widespread corruption and the Islamabad’s government’s inability to curtail US drone strikes along its borders. There has been some serious consideration in Washington of what might happen if the current government were to fall, including suggestions that the US and Pakistani military would intervene to remove the country’s nuclear arsenal and take it to some place for safe keeping. That such an idea might even be seriously floated calls into question the sanity level of Obama Administration policy makers. Pakistan would never agree to such a scheme and the US does not have either the resources or the information needed to enable it to go around to the numerous dispersal sites where Pakistan keeps its weapons to scoop them up. So that leaves the Pakistan conundrum unresolved and 100,000 American soldiers sitting next door as some sort of guarantor of stability waiting to close the barn door after the horse escapes into the night.

So Secretary Gates has inadvertently let the cat out of the bag even though the mainstream media apparently has not yet figured it out. He has revealed that the war on terror is dead, or at least it should be. But rather than breathe a sigh of relief, rest assured that the word "terrorism" will be trotted out periodically to scare the public and keep the long war going. Nobody is coming home. America is in for a prolonged, bloody, and expensive experience in AfPak in spite of Obama Administration insistence that there is some kind of end game. America under President Barack Obama will be nation-building big time and for years to come, until the supply of money and soldiers run out.

http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2009/12/09/no-sama-bin-laden/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+antiwar-original+%28Antiwar.com+Original+Articles%29

t walgamuth · #37 12-10-2009, 06:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LaRondo

by Philip Giraldi, December 10, 2009

Monday’s revelation from Defense Secretary Robert Gates that "I think it has been years" since the US government has had any solid information about Osama bin Laden should come as no surprise to readers of Antiwar.com, which has been questioning the rationale for the global war on terrorism ever since it was a twinkle in Dick Cheney’s eye. Gates also commented that US intelligence believes that the fugitive terrorists might well be moving about in the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The "where’s Waldo" narrative provided by Gates is somewhat shocking in light of the billions of dollars that have been spent in the search for the slippery Saudi, but it is even more significant in that it completely undercuts the Barack Obama Administration’s case for increasing the number of American troops in Afghanistan.

Many analysts both inside and outside of the government have become convinced that Osama bin Laden is dead and has been so for quite some time. They base this perception on the same non-evidence that Gates cites, i.e. that there has been no solid information on bin Laden or his whereabouts since late 2001. The absence of any intelligence could be due to the likelihood that a top terrorist on the run would be extremely careful about how he moves about and how he communicates, which is what many have believed up until recently, but at a certain point it becomes too much of a stretch to believe that a man heading a major terror organization has successfully become invisible. It is widely believed that videos and recordings featuring his image and voice could well be clever composites.

The dead bin Laden school of thought also points to the impotence of al-Qaeda in events unfolding in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Even the redoubtable General Stanley McChrystal, relying on the paucity of al-Qaeda sightings and the intelligence void, has estimated that there are likely fewer than 100 al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. His estimate is undoubtedly fairly rough as the CIA has no idea what is going on, but the comment itself implies that the formerly scary terrorist group is not up to much. Pakistani intelligence sources, who are almost certainly better informed than their American counterparts, believe that there is only a tiny al-Qaeda presence inside their own country. Prime Minister Sayed Yusuf Raza Gilani recently declared flatly that bin Laden is not inside Pakistan.

If bin Laden is dead and al-Qaeda is shadow of what it once was then the whole justification for maintaining 100,000 soldiers and a nearly equal number of contractors in Afghanistan at ruinous expense becomes a fiction. President Obama based his call for an escalation on the terrorist threat in the region, but it can be plausibly argued based on available evidence that al-Qaeda has essentially faded away. If that is so, and Obama almost certainly knows that to be a distinct possibility, the American soldiers are essentially being sent to prop up two extremely corrupt American allies, President Asif Zardari in Pakistan and President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan. A prolonged bout of nation building is not exactly the snake oil that was sold to the American people in Obama’s speech on December 1st and it calls into question the integrity of a president whose majority over John McCain certainly consisted of voters who believed that would end ongoing wars and bring about change in the way America conducts its foreign policy.

Most intelligence analysts who follow terrorism issues seriously would admit that the terrorism issue has been consistently overhyped and that it is also receding due to concerted action by a number of governments since 2001 combined with diminishing appeal among young Muslims. They would also likely agree that the international brand of al-Qaeda-like Salafist-style terrorism, albeit diminished, continues to be a serious problem for much of the world. But its epicenter is almost certainly not where President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appear to think it is located, somewhere north of the Khyber Pass.

There is only one part of the world where the Salafists continue to be strong. It is North Africa, in the arc of countries running from Mauretania in the West to Libya in the east, a region plagued by a loosely collected group of terrorists who call themselves al-Qaeda in the Maghreb. Because several of the countries – Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia – have large diaspora populations in Western Europe, al-Qaeda in the Maghreb has genuine international reach. It has been able to exploit its European presence to carry out terrorist acts in France, Spain, and the Netherlands.
When considering the capabilities of al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, most intelligence analysts would also note that all of the countries in North Africa with the sole exception of Mauretania have strong governments that control effective intelligence and police services. If Barack Obama were truly serious about attacking the remaining terrorist problem, he would focus the limited available resources on helping the North African countries improve their own capabilities rather than sending 100,000 soldiers to Afghanistan. That he is not doing so demonstrates that the possible disintegration of nuclear armed Pakistan, not terrorism, is really his driving concern.

That Pakistan is politically wobbling is clear to everyone and the possibility that it could become an Islamist dominated state, once remote, is increasing due to widespread corruption and the Islamabad’s government’s inability to curtail US drone strikes along its borders. There has been some serious consideration in Washington of what might happen if the current government were to fall, including suggestions that the US and Pakistani military would intervene to remove the country’s nuclear arsenal and take it to some place for safe keeping. That such an idea might even be seriously floated calls into question the sanity level of Obama Administration policy makers. Pakistan would never agree to such a scheme and the US does not have either the resources or the information needed to enable it to go around to the numerous dispersal sites where Pakistan keeps its weapons to scoop them up. So that leaves the Pakistan conundrum unresolved and 100,000 American soldiers sitting next door as some sort of guarantor of stability waiting to close the barn door after the horse escapes into the night.

So Secretary Gates has inadvertently let the cat out of the bag even though the mainstream media apparently has not yet figured it out. He has revealed that the war on terror is dead, or at least it should be. But rather than breathe a sigh of relief, rest assured that the word "terrorism" will be trotted out periodically to scare the public and keep the long war going. Nobody is coming home. America is in for a prolonged, bloody, and expensive experience in AfPak in spite of Obama Administration insistence that there is some kind of end game. America under President Barack Obama will be nation-building big time and for years to come, until the supply of money and soldiers run out.

http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2009/12/09/no-sama-bin-laden/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+antiwar-original+%28Antiwar.com+Original+Articles%29

La Rondo, welcome back. Were you on voluntary vacation?

LaRondo · #38 12-10-2009, 07:38 AM

Thanks for the Welcome. Yeah, voluntary. Been pirating a few other forums. Other than that, change is in the air, right?

dynalow · #39 12-10-2009, 09:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cmac2012

1. The Soviets were in Afg. because they wanted a warm water port.

2. You portray US involvement in ousting the Soviets as some sort of useful venture. In actuality we armed a bunch of thugs to the teeth and then cut and ran when the Russkies had a finger in their eye good and hard. The remaining weapons were not used well.

3. Afg. has proximity to and pipeline route for the Caspian Sea oilfields. U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad was supposedly a Unocal consultant in the mid-1990s. Unocal has interests in Caspian Sea oil and a prospective Afg. pipeline. Hamid Karzai was rumored to also have a relationship with Unocal. Both have denied it though it was reported in the intl. media at some point. Who knows.

4. Laying waste to nations or peoples does not have a good record of outcomes in the last century As fo the OP, finally getting OBL would not change much IMO. If anything, it'd give them a martyr to avenge.

1.I don't understand. How would conquering Astan give the Soviets access to a warm water port? Wouldn't they still need to troop through another nation, say Pakistan or Iran to gain a seaport.?

2. I don't portray US involvement as anything. Some however, thought it was a useful adventure.
Wiki:
The Afghan government, having secured a treaty in December 1978 that allowed them to call on Soviet forces, repeatedly requested the introduction of troops in Afghanistan in the spring and summer of 1979. They requested Soviet troops to provide security and to assist in the fight against the mujahideen rebels. On April 14, 1979, the Afghan government requested that the USSR send 15 to 20 helicopters with their crews to Afghanistan, and on June 16, the Soviet government responded and sent a detachment of tanks, BMPs, and crews to guard the government in Kabul and to secure the Bagram and Shindand airfields. In response to this request, an airborne battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel A. Lomakin, arrived at the Bagram Air Base on July 7. They arrived without their combat gear, disguised as technical specialists. They were the personal bodyguards for President Taraki. The paratroopers were directly subordinate to the senior Soviet military advisor and did not interfere in Afghan politics.

After a month, the Afghan requests were no longer for individual crews and subunits, but for regiments and larger units. In July, the Afghan government requested that two motorized rifle divisions be sent to Afghanistan. The following day, they requested an airborne division in addition to the earlier requests. They repeated these requests and variants to these requests over the following months right up to December 1979. However, the Soviet government was in no hurry to grant them.

The anti-communist rebels garnered support from the United States. As stated by the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and current US Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, in his memoirs From the Shadows, the US intelligence services began to aid the rebel factions in Afghanistan six months before the Soviet deployment. On July 3, 1979, US President Jimmy Carter signed an executive order authorizing the CIA to conduct covert propaganda operations against the communist regime.

Carter advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski stated: "According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, December 24, 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise." Brzezinski himself played a fundamental role in crafting US policy, which, unbeknownst even to the mujahideen, was part of a larger strategy "to induce a Soviet military intervention." In a 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Brzezinski recalled: "We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would...That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Soviets into the Afghan trap ... The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War."[20]
Additionally, on July 3, 1979, Carter signed a presidential finding authorizing funding for anticommunist guerrillas in Afghanistan.[21] As a part of the Central Intelligence Agency program Operation Cyclone, the massive arming of Afghanistan's mujahideen was started.[22].........

3. Astan is roughly 300 miles at its closest point by my calc from the Caspian Sea. I don't know anything else to comment on the feasability of an oil pipeline from the CS oil fields to or thru Astan. I agree. Who knows?

4. Laying waste to nations (Germany) and cities (Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Tokyo) solved urgent problems in the last century.....and the outcomes (freedom and democratic institutions) to those peoples, viewed with the hindsight of 60 years, were indeed positive. My opinion, that's all.

As far as OBL is concerned, put his head on a pike. Gates' comments? Maybe honest and open remarks . Maaybe, just maaybe, dezinformation. He is, after all, a CIA guy. I don't buy the martyrdom theory. There is no upside in keeping him alive if captured. As if giving him a lifetime sentence will have any effect at all on terrorism? Dealing with that goes on unchanged in any way shape or form whether OBL lives or dies. Sadly.

cmac2012 · #40 12-10-2009, 12:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dynalow

1.I don't understand. How would conquering Astan give the Soviets access to a warm water port? Wouldn't they still need to troop through another nation, say Pakistan or Iran to gain a seaport.?

2. Astan is roughly 300 miles at its closest point by my calc from the Caspian Sea. I don't know anything else to comment on the feasability of an oil pipeline from the CS oil fields to or thru Astan. I agree. Who knows?

3. Laying waste to nations (Germany) and cities (Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Tokyo) solved urgent problems in the last century.....and the outcomes (freedom and democratic institutions) to those peoples, viewed with the hindsight of 60 years, were indeed positive. My opinion, that's all.

1. First step.

2. The pipeline through Afg. was not my idea but it has been reported many times to be something of much interest to various powerful interests. Other routes are also under consideration.

3. We did not directly initiate hostilities with G and J. We resonded to them. They, OTOH, did a considerable amount of laying waste to subsantial portions of nations and it didn't turn out well for them. Pol Pot and boys laid waste to their own nation and did not long endure. We laid some serious waste to Vietnam and that did not turn out well. Some say we should have gone much further and done the large parking lot routine. Oh yeah, that would have covered us in glory.

aklim · #41 12-10-2009, 12:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cmac2012

We laid some serious waste to Vietnam and that did not turn out well. Some say we should have gone much further and done the large parking lot routine.

You go into an enterprise, any enterprise, be it carpentry, landscaping, setting up a store, etc, etc and do it half hearted, what is the usual result? Can anything be extrapolated from that result?

I am 200# overweight. I commit to losing weight. I buy a treadmill and eat my 3 squares that have been planned out by the world's best dietitian. In the meantime, I chow down on 3 Big Mac Meals and shakes all day long. WTF? I didn't lose any weight in spite of the exercise and diet meals. Well, I guess we can conclude that diet and exercise are not worth it since they don't work.

okyoureabeast · #42 12-10-2009, 12:49 PM

He'll never get caught. Easy as that. He himself has too many connections to too many people that make him very valuable alive and free.

t walgamuth · #43 12-10-2009, 01:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LaRondo

Thanks for the Welcome. Yeah, voluntary. Been pirating a few other forums. Other than that, change is in the air, right?

I'm hopeful.

aklim · #44 12-10-2009, 01:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by t walgamuth

I'm hopeful.

We did have a change in fortunes from say 06 to current. How does that change grab you? Unlike the implication, change is NOT ALWAYS good. Change can take you from a bad place to a worse place too so be careful in the change you applaud today because you don't know what happens tomorrow.

tonkovich · #45 12-10-2009, 01:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aklim

We did have a change in fortunes from say 06 to current. How does that change grab you? Unlike the implication, change is NOT ALWAYS good. Change can take you from a bad place to a worse place too so be careful in the change you applaud today because you don't know what happens tomorrow.

????