Pakistan is allowing CIA operatives free access to the bin Laden “villa”:
U.S. officials said that a CIA team is expected to arrive at the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, within days and that the objective is to scrub the site for items that were not recovered by American commandos during the raid early this month or by Pakistani security forces who secured the facility afterward.
“The assault team was there for only 40 minutes,” a U.S. official said. The aim is to return to the site “to do another, more thorough look.” The official, like others interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.
CIA Deputy Director Michael J. Morell negotiated access to the Abbottabad site during a trip to Islamabad last week, when he met with Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the head of Pakistan’s main intelligence service, officials said.
Pakistan’s agreement is considered an encouraging sign that the two spy services will continue cooperating despite anger in Islamabad about the American operation to kill bin Laden and a series of recent ruptures between the CIA and its Pakistani counterpart.
Pakistan has also agreed to allow the CIA to examine materials that Pakistan’s security forces hauled away from the compound in the days after the raid, officials said.
I am uncharacteristically surprised. The Pakistani street is understood to still be seething over the release of CIA contractor Ray Davis, too long imprisoned for having defended himself against an armed attack. And although the CIA and ISI have worked closely together in the past, the focus always seemed to be on gathering intelligence on mutual threats – on those terrorist groups, in other words, over which the ISI had no control. When “good” Taliban – those who only threatened American and Afghan forces – came back to Pakistan’s frontier to rest and refit, the ISI and Pakistani military seemed to shrug them off, nothing to be done, busy at the moment, regrets. India, you know. And in the wake of the bin Laden raid, the Pakistani government “outed” the CIA’s Islamabad station chief, which I understand is considered an un-collegial thing to do amongst the intel types.
Still, Pakistan treats al Qaeda as a mutual threat, and a recent spate of revenge bombings after the bin Laden raid have claimed the lives of over 130 Pakistanis, including a humiliating assault against a naval base in Karachi. And Pakistan’s warm relationship with China, which it uses strategically as a lever against American withdrawal from the region, seems to lately have hit a bit of a bump. So perhaps this is an acknowledgement that the US and Pakistan still have common enemies, even if we do not share the same circle of friends.
Still, if it was me, I’d go in strapped.
It sounds to me like the Pakistanis are acting in a similar fashion to Sir Alec Guinness in, “The Captain’s Paradise”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Captain%27s_Paradise
Where he plays a ship’s Captain that maintains a wife in each of the ports his ship travels between.
Because diplomatically speaking they’re “schtupping” us both.
I suspect the premises have been thoroughly swept by ISI.
Swept by ISI? I would rather wonder what has been planted by ISI.
Just reading today that Tim Lynch is going dark on Free Range International due to security concerns and agreements to keep. As I read his last posting, and its referred to Ghost Teams, it reinforced just how oblivious we are are to circumstances in the AfPak region.
Concerns over trust of Westerners by locals and volatile internal affairs amongst the people themselves, paint a terrifying picture of a place I can scarcely imagine going to for any length of time. It’s depressing, really, to know that people live their whole lives like that, in places where self-professed civil societies have repeated failed to bring about any long lasting peace.
Leave them to it, I say. Leave them to it. Pay them no more mind and give them no more assistance, except to bomb them senseless every time they step out of the region to bring their hate and discontent our way. All we’re doing is wrestling with the pig in a mud bog. Damned foolishness.
Help, fellas. What does Lex, “Still, if it was me, I’d go in strapped”, mean?
I’ve heard of being strapped for cash, I’ve heard of a strapping young man, but this particular idiom escapes me.
” Still, if it was me, I’d go in strapped.”
If by that you mean accompanied by a large number of US Marines, while personally carrying a good assortment of personal weapons, along with having a pair of Apache gunships overhead….That would be my “comfort level” with going to visit CHE Bin Laden….as we proceded away from the premisis, there would be a rather large explosion as the place was leveled to the ground by a few well placed GBUs from above. That would take care of things.
Thanks, SK1
Glad to help…..Rule #1 of Battle – ” Bring a weapon. Bring two weapons. Bring all your weapons. Bring all your friends who have weapons….Remember, Ammo is cheap, life is expensive.”
And the follow-up, ” Anything worth shooting is worth shooting more than once.”
+10
Kinda trust (kinda), verify, and be amply prepared to nullify.
I guess its a bit complicated. And apart from the main outcome, we don’t really yet know the detail of what went down on the night or before or since except it probably isn’t what we read in the papers.
Maybe this old dit offers some clues http://www.everypoet.com/archive/poetry/Rudyard_Kipling/kipling_the_ballad_of_east_and_west.htm
Cheers
I thought I had read all of Kipling, but I had missed that one. Thanks!
“Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet” is (or used to be) perhaps one of the most popularized poem beginnings in the history of English lit, Lex. I’m surprised such a wide-ranging reader such as yourself had never read it. Could a possible explanation be our age differences and that by only a short decade or so behind my generation, America’s grammar schools were already being swept clear of anything that smacked of “white man’s ” “Imperialism” “overweening euro-centrism,” and “privileged Western hegemonic tendencies” ?
Have to say I’ve heard the title line, but never read the whole poem either. Problem is, there are so many great classics out there, a man’s life is not long enough to match.
Upon reflection prompted by your comment I’ll admit ‘tiz Very, VERY true, Bill K.
I was ready to agree, Bill, on there not being enough time. However, 900 titles, each read over an average two week’s time, would last a bit over thirty-four and a half years. Perhaps there is time.
I’ve often thought of what a proper library should consist of, and found a list comprised of some 900 titles. To each their own variant, of course, but proper hard bound books a requirement; flight manuals being the exception, the floppy buggers.
Oh, to have that quiet reading room with the chair that’s just so.
“Two weeks time?”
Geeze, Mongo, unless you’re reading TCTOs or organic chemistry texts or the like, 50 pp/hr is not unreasonable, eh? (Unless, of course, on is “savoring” things over Barbancourt
)
PS: A blog which you might like along this line is “The Port Stands at Your Elbow.” Proprietor is 1/2 of the “Llama Butchers” blog–also fine, btw.
Well, I suppose it depends on one’s mix of light and heavy reading. Switching back and forth between one of Shakespeare’s tomes and Calvin and Hobbes generally allows for the stated average.
I’m unashamed to admit having consumed in one evening, while sipping, mind you, all but about three to four fingers of a fine bottle of Glen Livet, all the while reading one of Tom Clancy’s novels from end to end. After finishing the book and falling asleep (in my bed), my body was pleased to announce that it was time to get up and start the day…after only four and a half hours sleep! One of the few days when I’ve never felt better. Imagine that!
Another blog to read? Oh…very well. I’ll give it a whirl.