These are my links for May 2nd from 11:17 to 11:41:
Tough US question for Pakistan: How did Osama bin Laden hide in plain sight? – But only the days and months ahead will tell if the mutual praise was simply a temporary glow in a deeply troubled relationship between the US and the country that remains, even with the terror figure’s death, the epicenter of Islamist extremism.
One particularly gnawing question for the US, some analysts say, will be: How is it that Pakistani officials insisted for years that Mr. bin Laden was not on their territory, even as he built and inhabited a huge, walled compound in a city outside the country’s capital that is home to the Army’s military academy and many high-ranking Pakistani military officials?
Abbottabad, Pakistan: 5 things to know about where Bin Laden died
“Why was Osama bin Laden able to live, and apparently for some time, in a mansion so close to a military garrison in a major city?” says Lisa Curtis, senior research fellow for South Asia at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. “That’s the type of question the Pakistanis are going to have to face as the two countries assess all the implications of this operation.”
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A question that will have to be answered satisfactorily prior to any more foreign aid.
Musharraf: Bin Laden mission violated Pakistan – Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on Monday accused the U.S. of violating his country’s sovereignty by sending in special forces to kill Osama bin Laden.
“American troops coming across the border and taking action in one of our towns, that is Abbottabad, is not acceptable to the people of Pakistan. It is a violation of our sovereignty,” Mr. Musharraf told CNN-IBN, an Indian news channel.
He added that it would have been “far better if Pakistani Special Services Group had operated and conducted the mission. To that extent, the modality of handling it and executing the operation is not correct.”
Bin Laden was killed Sunday in a firefight with Navy SEALs in a million-dollar, fortified compound located in an affluent neighborhood in Abbottabad, about a two-hour drive from Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad.
Senior U.S. officials, who briefed reporters early Monday, said the Obama administration did not inform Pakistani authorities of the mission until after it was concluded.
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Screw Musharraf and Pakistan.
We got Osama, suckers….
WikiLeaks: Osama bin Laden ‘protected’ by Pakistani security – American diplomats were told that one of the key reasons why they had failed to find bin Laden was that Pakistan’s security services tipped him off whenever US troops approached.
Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISID) also allegedly smuggled al-Qaeda terrorists through airport security to help them avoid capture and sent a unit into Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban.
The claims, made in leaked US government files obtained by Wikileaks, will add to questions over Pakistan’s capacity to fight al-Qaeda.
Last year, David Cameron caused a diplomatic furore when he told Pakistan that it could not “look both ways” on terrorism. The Pakistani government issued a strongly-worded rebuttal.
But bin Laden was eventually tracked down and killed in compound located just a few hundred yards from Pakistan’s prestigious military academy in Abbotabad.
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America's realtionship with Pakistan will be re-examined particularly by the U.S. Congress which funds Pakistan's foreign aid.
Phil Goff, the leader of New Zealand’s Labor party lashed out on Thursday at former United States Ambassador Charles Swindells for accusing Wellington of over-reacting to the 2004 arrest of two suspected Mossad agents who had allegedly tried to obtain New Zealand passports fraudulently.
In diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks, Swindells said New Zealand’s government had “little to lose” by acting against Israel “and possibly something to gain in the Arab world… actively pursuing trade with Arab states”.
Goff said Swindells was appointed ambassador to New Zealand because he was a “Republican Party funder,” adding that the former American envoy did not understand diplomacy, and as a result fed wrong information about New Zealand to his government.
Goff said Swindells let his background as a financier influence how he saw foreign affairs.
“It’s the norm for the Americans to appoint ambassadors that aren’t professionals… Charles I think really suffered from a lack of knowledge and a lack of understanding of how countries work and what they do,” he said.
The Lamsesteam media or MSM has NOT covered Obama’s missteps with regards to foreign policy, including Iraq and Afghanistan. Remember how NBC and CBS news were all over President George W. Bush and the daily body counts? Remember all of the fallen soldier’s families being interviewed as their bodies were returned to America?
Now, there are crickets.
What about national security and WikiLeaks.
Is anyone placing blame on the Obama Administration?
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Sunday that President Obama and the White House deserve a large share of the blame for the massive amounts of classified information revealed through WikiLeaks.
Gingrich said the leaks are “a scandal of the first order” and that they demonstrate the Obama administration is “shallow” and “amateurish” when it comes to national security.
“You have a private first class who downloads a quarter million documents, and the system doesn’t say, ‘Oh, you may be over extended?’ I mean, this is a system so stupid that it ought to be a scandal of the first order,” Gingrich said. “This administration is so shallow and so amateurish about national security that it is painful and dangerous.”
It is obvious that the Obama Administration is in over their heads – on the order of Jimmy Carter incompetence.
We all applaud the successful thwarting of the Christmas-Tree Bomber and hope our government continues to do all it can to keep us safe. However, the latest round of publications of leaked classified U.S. documents through the shady organization called Wikileaks raises serious questions about the Obama administration’s incompetent handling of this whole fiasco.
First and foremost, what steps were taken to stop Wikileaks director Julian Assange from distributing this highly sensitive classified material especially after he had already published material not once but twice in the previous months? Assange is not a “journalist,” any more than the “editor” of al Qaeda’s new English-language magazine Inspire is a “journalist.” He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands. His past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban. Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders?
What if any diplomatic pressure was brought to bear on NATO, EU, and other allies to disrupt Wikileaks’ technical infrastructure? Did we use all the cyber tools at our disposal to permanently dismantle Wikileaks? Were individuals working for Wikileaks on these document leaks investigated? Shouldn’t they at least have had their financial assets frozen just as we do to individuals who provide material support for terrorist organizations?
Most importantly, serious questions must also be asked of the U.S. intelligence system. How was it possible that a 22-year-old Private First Class could get unrestricted access to so much highly sensitive information? And how was it possible that he could copy and distribute these files without anyone noticing that security was compromised?
The White House has now issued orders to federal departments and agencies asking them to take immediate steps to ensure that no more leaks like this happen again. It’s of course important that we do all we can to prevent similar massive document leaks in the future. But why did the White House not publish these orders after the first leak back in July? What explains this strange lack of urgency on their part?
We are at war. American soldiers are in Afghanistan fighting to protect our freedoms. They are serious about keeping America safe. It would be great if they could count on their government being equally serious about that vital task.
- Sarah Palin
But, hasn’t President Obama’s Administration been plagued by incompetence from the beginning?
I won’t say I told you so – but America made a mistake electing a POL who basically voted PRESENT his entire career. No leadership there, folks.
And, now onto the FINALS where President Obama may not win re-election and the Democrats may very well lose control of the U.S. Senate.
President George W. Bush is long gone (in political terms) and there is no one to blame for the current economic malaise and unemployment. With the WikiLeaks revelation, the bloom has come of the Hopey Changey American image foreign policy of Obama as well.
Watch the Dems in the lame duck session of the Congress as they attempt to salvage and pay back some ethnic constituencies that did NOT desert them in November. It will be a pathetic attempt at political maneuvering.
The folks that are sweating today are the staffers in the Obama White House and the Clinton State Department as more private cables/discussions are revealed via WikiLeaks.
A cache of a quarter-million confidential American diplomatic cables, most of them from the past three years, provides an unprecedented look at backroom bargaining by embassies around the world, brutally candid views of foreign leaders and frank assessments of nuclear and terrorist threats.
Some of the cables, made available to The New York Times and several other news organizations, were written as recently as late February,revealing the Obama administration’s exchanges over crises and conflicts. The material was originally obtained by WikiLeaks,
an organization devoted to revealing secret documents. WikiLeaks intends to make the archive public on its Web site in batches, beginningSunday.
The anticipated disclosure of the cables is already sending shudders through the diplomatic establishment, and could conceivably strain relations with some countries, influencing international affairs in ways that are impossible to predict.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and American ambassadors around the world have been contacting foreign officials in recent days to alert them to the expected disclosures. A statement from the White House on Sunday said: “We condemn in the strongest terms the unauthorized disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security information.”
Allahpundit over at Hot Air has a good summary of the good stuff from WikiLeaks since their servers appear to be down.
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