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Flap’s Links and Comments for May 3rd on 12:40
These are my links for May 3rd from 12:40 to 13:49:
- In-Sen: Richard Lugar Calls For Afghanistan Endgame – At a time when many Republicans are praising President Obama following the U.S. operation that killed Osama bin Laden, Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) is doubling down on his effort to press the president on an endgame for the war in Afghanistan.
"Clearly it would not be in our national security interest to have the Taliban take over the government or have Afghanistan reestablished as a terrorist safe haven," Lugar said in a Tuesday statement. "But the President has not offered a vision of what success in Afghanistan would entail or how progress toward success would be measured."
On Monday, Lugar welcomed the news that bin Laden had been killed but said his death should also serve as a reminder. "The reported death of Osama bin Laden is welcome news, but it in no way eliminates the threat from the terrorism he espoused," he said. "This is another reminder that Americans cannot hide from global affairs."
Lugar's questioning of the strategy in Afghanistan isn't new, but it shows that his team expects the news of bin Laden's death to bring more attention to the debate over the mission in Afghanistan.
"If anything, the attack on bin Laden proves that maybe we are more successful and should be putting our money and resources in those kinds of operations wherever al Qaida is, which is in Yemen and in Africa and not necessarily in Afghanistan," said Lugar adviser Mark Helmke.
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The rationale for continued troop presence in Afghanistan may very well have disappeared with Bin Laden's death.
Lugar is trying to bolster favor with voters in Indiana, while he best do that with domestic matters and then retire.
- President 2012 Arizona Poll Watch: Mitt Romney 48% Vs. Barack Obama 44% | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – President 2012 Arizona Poll Watch: Mitt Romney 48% Vs. Barack Obama 44% #tcot #catcot
- Another Version of the Osama Bin Laden Courier Story | The Weekly Standard – Another Version of the Osama Bin Laden Courier Story
- Another Version of the Osama Bin Laden Courier Story – Yet another version of how U.S. intelligence officials identified Osama bin Laden’s courier has been published. Again, we need confirmation from intelligence officials to determine which details are true. It is not at all clear at this point how this went down.
The Associated Press reports that “detainees in the CIA’s secret prison network told interrogators about an important courier with the nom de guerre Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti who was close to bin Laden.” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed later “confirmed knowing al-Kuwaiti but denied he had anything to do with al-Qaida.”
A new tip came in 2004, when “top al-Qaida operative Hassan Ghul was captured in Iraq.” According to the AP’s account:
Ghul told the CIA that al-Kuwaiti was a courier, someone crucial to the terrorist organization. In particular, Ghul said, the courier was close to Faraj al-Libi, who replaced Mohammed as al-Qaida's operational commander. It was a key break in the hunt for in bin Laden's personal courier.
Then, after al-Libi was captured in May 2005:
Under CIA interrogation, al-Libi admitted that when he was promoted to succeed Mohammed, he received the word through a courier. But he made up a name for the courier and denied knowing al-Kuwaiti, a denial that was so adamant and unbelievable that the CIA took it as confirmation that he and Mohammed were protecting the courier. It only reinforced the idea that al-Kuwaiti was very important to al-Qaida.
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- In-Sen: Richard Lugar Calls For Afghanistan Endgame – At a time when many Republicans are praising President Obama following the U.S. operation that killed Osama bin Laden, Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) is doubling down on his effort to press the president on an endgame for the war in Afghanistan.
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Flap’s Links and Comments for May 3rd on 06:25
These are my links for May 3rd from 06:25 to 06:29:
- Clues Gradually Led to the Location of Osama bin Laden – For years, the agonizing search for Osama bin Laden kept coming up empty. Then last July, Pakistanis working for the Central Intelligence Agency drove up behind a white Suzuki navigating the bustling streets near Peshawar, Pakistan, and wrote down the car’s license plate. The man in the car was Bin Laden’s most trusted courier, and over the next month C.I.A. operatives would track him throughout central Pakistan. Ultimately, administration officials said, he led them to a sprawling compound at the end of a long dirt road and surrounded by tall security fences in a wealthy hamlet 35 miles from the Pakistani capital.
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A fascinating story of Osama Bin Laden's demise.
- Bin Laden lived in Pakistan compound 5-6 years – Osama bin Laden lived for the past five to six years in the compound deep inside Pakistan where the al Qaeda leader was killed by U.S. forces, President Barack Obama's counterterrorism adviser said on Tuesday.
Bin Laden, who was living in Afghanistan before a 2001 U.S.-led invasion helped topple its Taliban regime, was holed up in a compound in the military garrison town of Abbottabad in Pakistan before Sunday's operation to kill him.
"Well I think the latest information is that he was in this compound for the past five or six years and he had virtually no interaction with others outside that compound. But yet he seemed to be very active inside the compound," White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan said on the CBS Early Show program.
"And we know that he had released videos and audios. We know that he was in contact with some senior al Qaeda officials," Brennan added.
"So what we're trying to do now is to understand what he has been involved in over the past several years, exploit whatever information we were able to get at the compound and take that information and continue our efforts to destroy al Qaeda," Brennan added.
The fact that the al Qaeda chief had lived in the compound for such a long time has prompted some U.S. lawmakers to demand a review of the billions of dollars in aid the United States provides Pakistan, which is fighting a Taliban insurgency.
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America must re-evaluate its relationship with Pakistan and
1. Freeze any foreign aid
2. Limit travel and require VISAs for Pakistanis traveling to the USA
- Clues Gradually Led to the Location of Osama bin Laden – For years, the agonizing search for Osama bin Laden kept coming up empty. Then last July, Pakistanis working for the Central Intelligence Agency drove up behind a white Suzuki navigating the bustling streets near Peshawar, Pakistan, and wrote down the car’s license plate. The man in the car was Bin Laden’s most trusted courier, and over the next month C.I.A. operatives would track him throughout central Pakistan. Ultimately, administration officials said, he led them to a sprawling compound at the end of a long dirt road and surrounded by tall security fences in a wealthy hamlet 35 miles from the Pakistani capital.
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Flap’s Links and Comments for May 2nd on 11:17
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.
- 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.
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Flap’s Links and Comments for May 2nd on 03:02
These are my links for May 2nd from 03:02 to 09:24:
- The Secret Team That Killed bin Laden – From Ghazi Air Base in Pakistan, the modified MH-60 helicopters made their way to the garrison suburb of Abbottabad, about 30 miles from the center of Islamabad. Aboard were Navy SEALs, flown across the border from Afghanistan, along with tactical signals, intelligence collectors, and navigators using highly classified hyperspectral imagers.
After bursts of fire over 40 minutes, 22 people were killed or captured. One of the dead was Osama bin Laden, done in by a double tap — boom, boom — to the left side of his face. His body was aboard the choppers that made the trip back. One had experienced mechanical failure and was destroyed by U.S. forces, military and White House officials tell National Journal.
Were it not for this high-value target, it might have been a routine mission for the specially trained and highly mythologized SEAL Team Six, officially called the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, but known even to the locals at their home base Dam Neck in Virginia as just DevGru.
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- Michael Bloomberg: Send the immigrants to Detroit – Everyone has a solution to the immigration problem these days. (At least until they are actually elected to public office when they seem to forget about it.) Should we build a fence? Have more screeners? Shut down the process entirely? Out in the Big Apple, Mayor Bloomberg thinks he’s come up with a far more creative solution to the problem. We’ll just let all of the immigrants in who want to come, but as soon as they arrive we just ship them all to Detroit.
Mayor Bloomberg has a fix for the nation’s immigration debate: Send ‘em to Detroit.
“If I were the federal government,” Bloomberg told David Gregory on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday morning. “Assuming you could wave a magic wand and pull everybody together, you pass a law letting immigrants come in as long as they agree to go to Detroit and live there for five or ten years.”
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How stupid is Bloomberg?
- A New Immigration Consensus – Or a Sell Out for Americans? – We believe in the need to secure our borders, make it possible to hold businesses accountable for verifying the status of workers, address the reality that 11 million people are here illegally and cannot be deported en masse—and increase lawful opportunities for those who want to come to this country and contribute to our prosperity. Nevertheless, our nation cannot afford to wait for Washington to get its act together and pass comprehensive immigration reform. There is too much at stake. Our economy demands that we take immediate action on the most urgent—and politically attainable—reform: making it easier for job creators to come and stay here.
Creating a visa for entrepreneurs who already have funding to start their businesses will lead directly and immediately to American jobs. Visa reforms to improve temporary and permanent pathways for companies to fill the current shortages of engineers, scientists and other specialists—whose annual visa caps are often exhausted within days of becoming available—will spur growth at existing U.S. companies.
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Big corporations like Bloomberg would rather import talent from outside the USA then invest in America to develop our own talented entrepeneurs and business people of the future.
We have a vast underclass of illegal immigrants that need remediation rather than a new importation of immigrants that may or may not stay in America.
Bloomberg and his cohort would be better to concentrate on education reform and scholarships for American citizens to attend graduate schools.
The offshore talent should have the same visa requirements as everyone else.
- @Flap Twitter Updates for 2011-05-02 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2011-05-02 #tcot #catcot
- The Secret Team That Killed bin Laden – From Ghazi Air Base in Pakistan, the modified MH-60 helicopters made their way to the garrison suburb of Abbottabad, about 30 miles from the center of Islamabad. Aboard were Navy SEALs, flown across the border from Afghanistan, along with tactical signals, intelligence collectors, and navigators using highly classified hyperspectral imagers.