A blog for all seasons; A blog for one; A blog for all. As the 11th most informative blog on the planet, I have a seared memory of throwing my Time 2006 Man of the Year Award over the railing at Time Warner Center.
Justice. Only Justice Shall Thou Pursue
One of al Qaeda's leading ideologues and recruiters, Anwar al-Awlaki, was apparently the target of yet another UAV airstrike today, but was unsuccessful in eliminating the man whose writings on Islam inspired the Fort Hood shooter Major Hassan, the Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, Christmas day bomber Abdul Farouk Abdul Mutallab, among others. He's also linked with the 9/11 attacks in that he was apparently the spiritual adviser for at least two of the 19 hijackers.
That it comes so quickly after the raid on Osama bin Laden could be a coincidence, or it could mean that the US is exploiting the terabytes of data collected in the raid that killed the al Qaeda leader.
The attack does not appear to have killed Mr. Awlaki, the officials said, but may have killed operatives of Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen.
It was the first American strike in Yemen using a remotely piloted drone since 2002, when the C.I.A. struck a car carrying a group of suspected militants, including an American citizen, who were believed to have Qaeda ties. And the attack came just three days after American commandos invaded a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and killed Osama bin Laden, the founder of Al Qaeda.
The attack on Thursday was part of a clandestine Pentagon program to hunt members of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the group believed responsible for a number of failed attempts to strike the United States, including the thwarted plot to blow up a trans-Atlantic jet on Dec. 25, 2009, as it was preparing to land in Detroit.
Although Mr. Awlaki is not thought to be one of the group’s senior leaders, he has been made a target by American military and intelligence operatives because he has recruited English-speaking Islamist militants to Yemen to carry out attacks overseas. His radical sermons, broadcast on the Internet, have a large global following.
The Obama administration has taken the rare step of approving Mr. Awlaki’s killing, even though he is an American citizen.
Awlaki has made his reputation as being a top recruiter for al Qaeda and exploiting jihadi sentiments online.
CNN reports that the Awlaki raid was not due to information garnered from the bin Laden raid. Further, this particular UAV airstrike was under the command of the Pentagon, not the CIA.
This photo was taken from Liberty Street near where the former Deutsche Bank building once stood. It shows the plaza and grove of trees planted that ring the two footprint memorials that comprise the Reflecting Absence 9/11 memorial design. The Freedom Tower is now at or above the height of neighboring 7WTC and is fast approaching the height of the 7 Spruce (Frank Gehry's skyscraper) as the tallest in Lower Manhattan.
Protesters have again taken to the streets in defiance of Bashar al-Assad's regime, and the regime has again responded by using deadly force to quell and disperse the protests. Five people were killed in Homs, and casualties were reported elsewhere as the Syrian army has taken up positions outside several cities:
In Homs, Syria's third-largest city, at least five people were killed in clashes with security forces Friday, according to a resident who asked not to be identified. Syrian tanks could be seen on the streets of the western city on the Al Jazeera satellite network, and protesters tweeted that heavy machine-gun fire could be heard in the Asherah, Alseten and Alzahraa areas of the city. Syrian troops had stormed Homs University, according to the Al Arabiya network.
In videos posted online Friday, demonstrators in the nearby town of Talkalekh could be seen demanding the "toppling of the regime."
"Security forces and the army have prevented protesters from entering main squares and are limiting demonstrations in various neighborhoods," said Wissam Tarif, executive director of the Syrian human rights group Insan.
Tarif said security forces had shot at protesters in Douma, Daqba and suburban Damascus, and that government snipers appeared Friday in Zabadani and Saqba.
"They have been made clearly visible to instill fear," he said.
He said the Syrian army had also set up checkpoints at the entrances to several cities.
At least one protester was hospitalized in Damascus after being shot by security forces, he said, and he claimed that many others had been hospitalized in the capital, although that information could not be verified.
Now that al Qaeda has itself admitted that yes, Osama bin Laden is dead, the deathers (aka those who don't believe President Obama when he says that bin Laden is dead) will relent and admit that bin Laden is indeed dead as President Obama says? Any takers on that? I'll even give odds.
No? Good. Because some people will never admit that bin Laden was killed in that raid.
In any event, bin Laden was quite busy while lounging in that Abbottabad compound all these years (his wife says she never left in all that time) plotting and planning further attacks. That he was focusing on railways around the world, and particularly in the US is quite troublesome because rail security particularly in the US has always lagged that of the airlines.
A suspected CIA drone strike targeted a hotel Thursday in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan’s borderlands, killing eight people, according to Pakistani news reports.
A series of missiles pounded the town of Datta Khel, near what U.S. officials believe is the headquarters of the Haqqani network, an Afghan insurgent force that has staged deadly bombings in Afghan cities and regularly attacks NATO troops in eastern Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, as details continue to leak about the raid that killed bin Laden, we're learning about the efforts that came up short to get bin Laden in the past.
“We thought we had ‘No. 1’ on this side of the border,” said a senior American military officer involved in planning the operation. “It was the best intelligence we’d had on him in a long time.”
The military set into motion one of the largest strike missions of its kind, with long-range bombers, attack helicopters, artillery and commandos all ready to pummel the rugged mountain valley along Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan, according to military officers and former government officials.
But just as the half dozen B-2 Stealth bombers were halfway on the 3,000-mile flight to their target, commanders ordered them to return to their secret base in the Indian Ocean, because of doubts about the intelligence on Bin Laden and concerns about civilian casualties from the bombs.
A smaller, more precise raid was carried out by commandos and attack helicopters, killing several dozen militants in the episode, which has not been previously disclosed.
But the founder and formative figure of Al Qaeda was not there.
Inside the White House, the disappointment was palpable, according to senior aides to former President George W. Bush. What might have been Mr. Bush’s last chance at redeeming his administration’s failure to capture or kill Bin Laden after the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, when he was cornered in the same Tora Bora region but escaped into Pakistan, did not materialize.
Amid the national relief over the killing of Bin Laden by a Navy Seal team in Abbottabad, Pakistan, this secret chapter in the hunt for the world’s most famous fugitive is a reminder of the years of frustration and false hopes government officials endured in trying to pick up his trail.
It also shows that the CIA was still not on the ball when it came to bin Laden and al Qaeda's operational hierarchy. After all, the CIA was stating at that time that:
The decision is a milestone for the agency, which formed the unit before Osama bin Laden became a household name and bolstered its ranks after the Sept. 11 attacks, when President Bush pledged to bring Mr. bin Laden to justice "dead or alive."
The realignment reflects a view that Al Qaeda is no longer as hierarchical as it once was, intelligence officials said, and a growing concern about Qaeda-inspired groups that have begun carrying out attacks independent of Mr. bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Agency officials said that tracking Mr. bin Laden and his deputies remained a high priority, and that the decision to disband the unit was not a sign that the effort had slackened. Instead, the officials said, it reflects a belief that the agency can better deal with high-level threats by focusing on regional trends rather than on specific organizations or individuals.
The US focus had shifted towards going after al Qaeda's mid level terror network, perhaps hoping to lead to the high value targets in the process. That too may have led them to carry out the 2007 attack in the hopes of capturing or killing bin Laden.
Another report indicates that the US informed the Pakistanis that they were carrying out this mission - while the mission was already underway. Details may or may not be accurate that the Pakistanis had scrambled jets to deal with the inbound flight of US helicopters and were sent away once notification reached the Pakistani military. The lede on that report was that the US could have been close to having a disastrous run-in with the Pakistani military during the mission inside Pakistan's borders with disastrous consequences for both sides.
If the Pakistanis are now scrambling to make more arrests, that intel could come one of four different paths: (1) directly from the people who the US left behind at Abbottabad, (2) the US could have sent them the necessary intel; (3) gathered from independent sources completely; (4) combination of sources. No way to know for sure.
It's the same deal about today's UAV airstrike - there's no way to know if it is connected with the OBL mission raid intel cache, or whether it was planned separately.
UPDATE:
It appears that the CIA was tracking the Abbottabad compound from a house nearby. They used a variety of electronic eavesdropping methods, but the agency refuses to comment on those reports. Some means and methods should not be revealed, lest they reveal too much about tactics and capabilities that the US uses to track down al Qaeda and other high value targets around the world.
UPDATE:
Further evidence of Pakistani duplicity - based on statements being released from the Pakistanis themselves. It raises still more troubling details in the bin Laden search over the years - particularly in how the Pakistanis were involved, especially as it relates to bin Laden's wife who is now in Pakistani custody.
A few key points from the story: She’s now in Pakistani custody, recovering from the gunshot wound; U.S. intelligence officials are unlikely to get the chance to speak with her. After 9/11 when the Afghan campaign began, Pakistan’s government reportedly gave her haven and helped her return to Yemen. She later reentered Pakistan to join her husband, which, as McGirk writes, points out a potentially major intelligence lapse in hindsight: Why take years deciphering courier aliases when bin Laden’s wife could have led them right to him?
On top of that, there’s this detail of further alleged Pakistani duplicity, which will only further inflame tensions at a delicate moment:
Says [an] Arab woman formerly connected to al-Qaeda: “There was an understanding with the Pakistani army. We would get a tip-off that the army planned to raid one of our houses in the tribal area. We would flee but leave some ‘evidence’ behind so that the army could show to the Americans that we’d been there.”
I have no doubt that the latter may help explain the former. If the CIA believed that the Pakistanis were laying down a false trail or were coopted by al Qaeda, then trying to track down bin Laden based on his wife's whereabouts could have been seen as a false trail. This reinforces the notion that the Pakistanis were apparently left in the dark about the operation because the US didn't trust elements within the Pakistani government to not tip off al Qaeda and bin Laden. It also explains, in part, why the Pakistanis aren't going to let the CIA and US officials anywhere near her. On top of cultural and religious misgivings over such interrogations, bin Laden's wife would likely reveal much about bin Laden and al Qaeda's relationship with those within the security services and military.
To allay both domestic and international anger and dismay over the presence of Osama bin Laden in a military cantonment town close to the capital, senior Pakistani officials have told The Daily Beast they recognize that an important head has to roll and soon. They say the most likely candidate to be the fall guy is Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, the director general of the country’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate. In a last ditch effort to control the damage and to assure the US that the ISI was not harboring him and was unaware of his presence in Pakistan, Pasha reportedly flew to Washington today. But these high-level sources who refused to be quoted or named say his resignation is only a matter of time.
With Bin Laden’s whereabouts and activities a mystery in recent years, many intelligence analysts and terror experts had concluded that he had been relegated to an inspirational figure with little role in current and future Qaeda operations.
A rushed examination of the trove of materials from the compound in Pakistan prompted Obama administration officials on Thursday to issue a warning that Al Qaeda last year had considered attacks on American railroads.
The documents include a handwritten notebook from February 2010 that discusses tampering with tracks to derail a train on a bridge, possibly on Christmas, New Year’s Day, the day of the State of the Union address or the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, officials said. But they said there was no evidence of a specific plot. An Obama administration official said that documents about attacking railroads were among the first to be translated from Arabic and analyzed. The materials, along with others reviewed in the intelligence cache, have given intelligence officials a much richer picture of the Qaeda founder’s leadership of the network as he tried to elude a global dragnet.
“He wasn’t just a figurehead,” said one American official, speaking only on condition of anonymity, who had been briefed on the documents. “He continued to plot and plan, to come up with ideas about targets, and to communicate those ideas to other senior Qaeda leaders.”
The crash program across the intelligence community to translate and analyze the documents has as its top priority discovering any clues about terror attacks that might be in the works. Intelligence analysts also were scrubbing the files for any information that might lead to identifying the location of Al Qaeda’s surviving leadership.
Since Sunday night, when President Obama announced the killing of Bin Laden in a daring raid, counterterrorism officials have been alert to the possibility of new attacks from Al Qaeda to avenge its leader’s death and prove its continuing relevance.
Department of Homeland Security officials have reviewed potential terrorist targets and deployed extra security at airports. And in response to the new evidence seized at the Bin Laden compound, the Transportation Security Administration issued a bulletin to rail companies.
But officials emphasized that the information was both dated and vague. “It looks very, very aspirational, and we have no evidence that it developed beyond the initial discussion,” said Matt Chandler, a spokesman for Homeland Security.
The initial data may not end up being accurate and the review may yet turn out to be an incomplete or completely different interpretation..
Still, it does raise questions on how bin Laden was able to maintain operational security for all these years and goes to show just how capable he was in being able to maintain contacts with other al Qaeda through his trusted couriers.
That bin Laden lived in Abbottabad means that far from being cut off from the rest of al Qaeda, he was much more likely to be in control and providing guidance and plotting further attacks.
The intel from the raid also appears to have uncovered plots to blow up trains or tampering with rails. It's all about causing mass casualty attacks and doing the most damage - perhaps in connection with the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
Railroads have long been targeted by al Qaeda and several plots have been disrupted in the past in the US, including plots to blow up the PATH tunnels to New York, subway bomb plots, and unfortunately al Qaeda successfully carried out deadly attacks against railroads in Madrid.
Steve Cuozzo of the Post suggests retiring the name Ground Zero because of the connotations it possesses, and that we should again be calling it the World Trade Center (WTC). After all, Towers 1 and 4 are being built and are reaching to impressive heights, and the transit hub is well underway. The memorial's above-ground features are largely in place.
Freedom Tower as seen from West. St
I've used the terms mostly interchangeably over the years since 9/11 - headlining Ground Zero as part of my ongoing coverage of the fight to rebuild. In time I figure that people will again call it WTC; the Port Authority pretty much made the call to keep the WTC moniker when they reestablished PATH service in 2003 just months after the site was cleared of much of the debris. The MTA too calls it WTC. I guess that people of a certain age will also know the site as Ground Zero, while others will see it as WTC.
In essence, that is what the National September 11 Memorial and Museum issued on Wednesday: a clear, navigable computerized guide to the location of every name inscribed on the bronze parapets that are being installed along the perimeters of the pools where the World Trade Center towers once stood.
It is the last critical design detail to be announced in a process that began more than seven years ago with the naming of Michael Arad and Peter Walker and Partners as architects of the 9/11 memorial. The memorial is to open to family members on Sept. 11 and to the public, by reservation, the next day.
Meanwhile, victims’ family members, friends, colleagues and acquaintances — and the public, too — can find out for the first time exactly how the names are arranged. On the memorial’s Web site, they can also learn which names have deliberately been placed near others to denote what Mr. Arad calls “meaningful adjacencies.”
That adjacency might mean the victims were close friends or fond acquaintances, were related by blood or marriage or simply common interests, that they bowled together or dined together. It was up to victims’ relatives to make a request.
“Over 1,200 requests were made to bring that opportunity into the design,” Mr. Arad said on Wednesday. “All of them were met.”
“It really enriches the memorial,” he said. “It allows families’ and friends’ stories to be told.” He said the “river” of names, without other identification (like age or title or company affiliation), was meant to convey simultaneously a sense of individual and collective loss.
“It was important to not put the names in an arrangement that looked like the pages of a ledger,” Mr. Arad said. “To the naked eye, it looks random. But to those who know, and for those who bother to learn, it is anything but.”
Pains were taken in laying out the names to ensure that Person A would be next to Person B, while Person B would be near Person C. And so on. “It involved a combination of the most complex computerized algorithms and the most basic analog function of pinning something up on the wall,” Mr. Arad said.
Announcement of the names arrangement was not timed to coincide with President Obama’s visit to the World Trade Center on Thursday, said Joseph C. Daniels, the president and chief executive of the memorial and museum.
Instead, he said, the idea was “to communicate with families significantly ahead of time so they can start familiarizing themselves with the locations.”
The arrangement does not go nearly as far as some family members had hoped in specifying where victims were employed, on what floors they worked and how old they were. But it is a significant change from the purely random system once advocated by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who is chairman of the memorial foundation.
In a compromise reached in 2006, victims were grouped by north and south tower, or by flight, with panels set aside for victims at the Pentagon and those who died in the 1993 attack on the trade center. A separate section was set aside for “first responders,” principally firefighters and police officers.
Ground Zero seen from livecam; WTC memorial and Freedom Tower visible
President Barack Obama will be in New York City to make his way to Ground Zero to commemorate the death of Osama bin Laden nearly 10 years after the deadly 9/11 attacks. Walking through the gauntlet around Ground Zero this morning, I noticed something unusual, which was that there were a whole lot fewer people than usual milling about and winding their way through the streets to get to work. I guess quite a few people who normally work in the area are staying home (working from home) rather than deal with the President's visit and all the security cordons/frozen zones it brings). Lots of security present around Ground Zero, particularly along Vesey by the PATH.
Media outlets have been pushed back on Church to Barclay, which makes a whole lot of sense from a crowd control standpoint, but if you're over there - there isn't much point to actually being at a live remote. You aren't able to use Ground Zero as a backdrop, especially when they're on the wrong side of the street to have any chance of a view.
The best views aren't actually along Church, but at the World Financial Center, which is where Fox5 was filming this morning for their morning live show. One other vantage point would be the plaza in front of 7WTC or the park on the south side of Ground Zero near Liberty.
Other networks in NYC were simply reporting from their usual locations. That will probably change once the President is in town and starts making his rounds - first to the Broadway firehouse, then to NYPD Precinct 1, and then to Ground Zero to meet with families and to lay wreaths at the memorial.
Reports indicate that Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Senators Kristen Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Bloomberg, George Pataki, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (who was a New York Senator at the time of the attacks) will all be in attendance. That necessarily requires a heightened police presence.
UPDATE:
If you're in the NYC metro area today and plan on using PATH to/from WTC, prepare for delays and a suspension of service from about noon onwards. Service is to be suspended for about an hour when the President is in/near Ground Zero, and will resume thereafter. Also expect bus service along Church and Broadway to come to a halt along with other frozen zones around the city as the President moves around Manhattan.
President Obama is currently visiting FDNY's Broadway firehouse.
On a wall at the firehouse, located at 8th Avenue and 48th Street, are the 15 photos of the brave men who gave their lives to save others on 9/11.
“Every day when I wake up and I see my own family, I think about them. Every day I come to work, I look at the memorial on the wall and I think about them,” Venditto said.
“It’s never far from your thoughts here in this house. I mean, the moment you walk through the door, you see the pictures,” firefighter Andrew Sforza said.
It has been a decade since Maureen Santora buried her son Chris’ remains. That day, she was the very picture of heartbreak, but on Monday she was elated.
“I’m just filled with joy that my son is up in heaven, screaming and yelling and saying ‘we got him, we got him ma,’” she told CBS 2′s Don Dahler.
Firefighter John Fila was more somber, knowing that he could have been killed that day. He was supposed to be working, but switched shifts with Chris Santora.
Crowds on Vesey Street before it was closed to traffic
Security atop the Post Office building
Looking down at the memorial and the crowd gathered for the memorial
Crowds gathered along Church Street in front of the Hilton
UPDATE:
The NY Times liveblogged the President's visit to Ground Zero.
UPDATE: NJ.com reports that someone in the crowd near Ground Zero was arrested after suspected of pulling a gun out of a backpack near Church and Vesey:
Authorities apprehended a man who witnesses say may have pulled a gun out of a backpack as President Barack Obama's motorcade passed today in New York.
The man, who wore a blue hat, had dark curly hair and appeared to be in his 20s, was wearing a backpack. New York Police Department officers and Secret Service agents shouted, "Get down, get down," and tackled the man at the corner of Church and Vessey Streets in lower Manhattan.
Obama had just left the World Trade Center site and his motorcade was turning from Vessey Street to Church Street when the incident occurred in front of the Church Street Station Post Office.
May turn out to be nothing (like someone getting a camera out of their bag and someone overreacting).
All I can say is that it wasn't me (I was in the crowd, but left before the motorcade went past so I missed out on the commotion). The photo was included in a story by Fox5 NY.
As a result of the breaking news that Osama bin Laden was killed in a US raid inside Pakistan earlier this week, the ongoing crackdown by Bashar al-Assad's regime against the opposition has flown under the radar. The harsh crackdown continues but protesters aren't backing down either. They continue to protest, despite security forces firing on the crowds, including at Aleppo University:
Some of the latest video footage to emerge from Syria overnight Tuesday purportedly shows pro-democracy protesters at Aleppo University being shot at by riot police.
The video could not be independently verified.
Protesters alleged that police also used tear gas to disperse the crowd of about 1,500 gathered at the university's dormitories, and arrested scores of students, confiscating cellphones and laptops. There were no initial reports of injuries.
Assad is hoping that he can remain in power by increasingly relying on his Alawite base, but that could be a losing proposition given that the Alawites are a minority within Syria.
Osama bin Laden had 500 Euros in cash and two telephone numbers sewn into his clothing when he was killed, CBS News has confirmed.
The news was first reported by Politico Wednesday. It was unclear whether the money was denominated in Euros or another currency, but the revelation seems to indicate that the al Qaeda leader was prepared to flee in the event of a raid like the U.S. military strike in which he was killed on Sunday.
The Killing of Osama bin Laden
The details come from officials who attended a classified intelligence briefing on Capitol Hill.
"CIA Director Leon Panetta told lawmakers about the items found in bin Laden's clothing in response to a question about why he wasn't guarded by more security personnel at his relatively luxurious home in a military town north of Islamabad," Politico reported. "The answer, according to one source who attended the briefing: Bin Laden believed "his network was strong enough he'd get a heads-up" before any U.S. strike against him."
You can be sure that the US is going to track down those phone numbers although al Qaeda has likely disposed of those phones. Those numbers will still be extremely useful in clawing back through bin Laden's movements and confirming other intel gathered over the past several years.
The cache of documents, computer files, and other information will yield much about al Qaeda's ongoing operations, financial dealings, and potential terror operations that were being considered or green lighted.
UPDATE: Pakistani sources are attempting to give a different version of events, including intimating that the US special forces essentially executed bin Laden, which runs counter to the official US line. One has to take the Pakistani reports with more than a grain of salt as they frequently publish rumors and conspiracies as fact. Still, the official US version of events has shifted in the past several days as new details emerge.
The Pakistani who owned the compound that sheltered Osama bin Laden in his final years said he was buying the property for “an uncle,” according to the doctor who sold the land in 2005.
The man was identified in property records as Mohammad Arshad; neighbors said one of two Pakistani men living in the house went by the name Arshad Khan. The two names apparently refer to the same man and both names may be fake. But one thing is clear — bin Laden relied on a small, trusted inner circle as lifelines to the outside who provided for his daily needs such as food and medicine and kept his location secret. And it appears they did not betray him.
Among those in that inner circle were Arshad and his brother. Arshad is suspected as the courier who ultimately led the Americans to bin Laden, unwittingly, after years of painstaking tracking. American officials said the courier and his brother were killed in the American commando raid Monday in the northwestern Pakistani town of Abbottabad.
The true identities of the two confidants and their exact links to other high ranking al-Qaida figures remain one of the biggest mysteries surrounding bin Laden. But more details about one of the key aides to bin Laden emerged Wednesday.
Qazi Mahfooz Ul Haq, a doctor, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he sold a plot of land to Arshad in 2005. He said the buyer was a sturdily built man who had a tuft of hair under his lower lip. He spoke with an accent that sounded like it was from Waziristan, a tribal region close to Afghanistan that is home to many al-Qaida operatives.
The Palestinians claim that they've had a breakthrough on their reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah. To do so, they're ignoring key issues and hoping that the rest of the world do the same.
International mediators should drop their demand that the Gaza Strip's Hamas rulers recognize Israel, an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Wednesday, just hours before his Western-backed government was to sign a reconciliation deal with Hamas.
The accord, to be inked in Cairo, would end a four-year rift between the bitter rivals and pave the way for a joint caretaker government ahead of national elections next year.
Israel has denounced the plan for Abbas' Fatah movement to join forces with Hamas because of the militant group's long history of deadly attacks against Israeli targets, and has equated the deal with a renunciation of peacemaking.
Like the United States and the European Union, Israel considers Hamas a terrorist organization and says it will not negotiate with a future Palestinian government that includes the Iranian-backed group.
It's not clear whether Western powers would deal with the new government that is to emerge from the unity deal. They've said they are waiting to see its composition.
The Quartet of Mideast mediators — the U.S., the E.U., United Nations and Russia — has long demanded that Hamas renounce violence and recognize the principle of Israel's right to exist.
Hamas has no intention of making peace with Israel. It's antithetical to Hamas' very existence. These tenets are part of the Hamas charter - the call to destroy Israel begins in just the second paragraph:
Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it" (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).
The terror group was founded on the principles that Israel must be destroyed and that Israel's destruction is a religious and political obligation among Palestinians. Hamas went to war with Fatah after the 2006 elections over how the two terror groups diverged in their means towards a Palestinian state and Israel.
The whole reconciliation is based on an understanding that a caretaker government would handle affairs until new elections are carried out. Perhaps everyone should put any kind of talk of a peace process on hold to see what kind of outcome those elections bring. After all, the last elections showed that Fatah was incapable of handing over power in an election and Hamas was incapable of dominating in the West Bank.
For those that don't get the irony of the photo, that's a copy of the FBI's Most Wanted Listing of Osama bin Laden next to a no trespassing sign posted on the fence lining the World Trade Center complex - violators will be prosecuted.
Once again, the media has camped out all around Ground Zero to report on reactions relating to the death of Osama bin Laden in a daring raid in Pakistan. Many in the crowds are simply trying to see which reporters are busy reporting on the reaction, while the crowds are funneled into a smaller area of sidewalk than usual.
The same agency that determines that New Jersey was required to pay in the first place is the same agency that determined that their original decision was correct. That's how these things work, but it doesn't mean the fight over the money is over by any stretch.
It ignores that Christie will still end up saving New Jersey taxpayers billions in dollars in exposure to cost overruns - overruns that the federal government refused to cover, even as it acknowledged the potential overruns could exceed their estimates and that NJ Transit was incapable of providing cost containment.
It is also instructive to look across the Hudson River to the Port Authority's PATH Transit hub and see what happens when cost overruns hit hard. That project was initially expected to cost $2.2 billion, and efforts were made to try and keep the cost from going above $2.8 billion. We're now at $3.4 billion and it is expected to eventually cost $3.8 billion. Those are costs that will be passed on to Port Authority customers in one form or another - whether it's higher rents for tenants, higher fares on PATH, or higher tolls at Port Authority bridges and tunnels.
New Jersey needs infrastructure improvements, but it cannot and should not break its bank to do so - and interstate projects should be completed with interstate assistance. That was sorely lacking in the ARC tunnel project, where New York was not putting up any funds - and the feds refused to backstop the cost overruns.
The successor project, the Gateway tunnel has a better arrangement for funding, and New Jersey taxpayers will not be on the hook for the overruns.
So, in the end, New Jersey taxpayers benefit from the killing of the ARC tunnel, Amtrak benefits with a tunnel project that does what the ARC was originally intended to do - expand Amtrak and NJ Transit access to Manhattan along with high speed rail improvements, and provide better access and coordination between the relevant agencies that are to carry out the construction of the project.
It's also instructive that the New Jersey congressional delegation isn't exactly pulling out the stops to get the FTA to back off the repayment - they'd rather see Gov. Christie embarrassed by all this rather than fighting to protect NJ taxpayers from a project that was ill-conceived by Gov. Corzine and which would have saddled NJ Transit with a boondoggle to rival that of the Secaucus Transfer (all while NJ Transit lacks an operating budget to run increased service to boot).
The Daily News reported last week that the Nissan bid received the highest score in the competition based on design features like interior legroom and durability.
Bloomberg and Taxi and Limousine Commission Chairman David Yassky in November revealed that Nissan was among three finalists in the competition, along with Ford and Turkish carmaker Karsan.
At the time, officials said the winner would get a 10-year contract giving them exclusive right to make and sell yellow cabs to city hacks and fleet owners.
An interior shot of the Nissan cab.NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission
The choice is bound to be controversial. While there are 13,200 yellow cabs, only about 240 are handicapped accessible. Advocates saw the competition as an opportunity to increase the mobility for the estimated 50,000 wheelchair users in the city, along with many others who have difficult walking.
Advocates for the disabled have been pushing for the Karsan design because it featured ramps that mechanically extend from both sides of the vehicle. Its design also featured a see-through roof, offering new vertical vistas for everyday riders and tourists.
Large fleet owners wanted the Ford Transit Connect, another van that has been used for commercial purposes in Europe and has been approved for use as a cab in U.S. cities like Boston.
Either way, the taxi of the future won't be on the road anytime soon.
The Karsan was a more flexible interior with the ADA compliance thrown in. Moreover, Karsan had announced that they'd build a factory to manufacture the taxis in Brooklyn, giving a boost to the local economy on top of the features that mean much to those who use taxis on a regular basis.
I expect that the decision will come under tremendous scrutiny and that local politicians will demand a review - particularly those from Brooklyn who lost out on the opportunity for the factory and the jobs and impact on the local economy.
Moreover, the only reason I can see the Karsan project losing is that it simply wasn't a household name among carmakers as compared to Nissan.
The streets around Ground Zero were once again packed with media outlets covering the ongoing reaction to the death of bin Laden. They were stacked up along Church Avenue in front of the post office, and commuters and gawkers were a mass of humanity crawling along Vesey Street, which is the major pedestrian access point along the north side of Ground Zero between PATH and Lower Manhattan.
The spontaneous reemergence of memorials and notes tagged to the fencing along the perimeter of Ground Zero is a mix of thank yous, flowers, flags, and other ephemera relating to bin Laden's death.
And the number of media outlets is sure to increase by several times with President Obama coming to Ground Zero on Thursday. No time has been set by the White House for his arrival in New York, but it's sure to be met with a crush of media and onlookers. He's expected to meet with family groups and responders privately.
As with the scene yesterday, the crowds are mostly reserved and contemplative - occasionally someone will walk through in jubilation, but with the area the site where so many were murdered, it's hard to be jubilant over bin Laden's death when it cannot bring back all those who were killed. It's a mixed emotion. There's satisfaction in knowing that the US could manage to identify the courier, track his whereabouts since 2007, and then carry out the mission with precision to a just conclusion.
Fallout from the death of Osama bin Laden continues to ripple throughout the world. Bin Laden's burial at sea has been criticized, even though that's a far better fate than the nearly 3,000 who were murdered at the World Trade Center. Some criticize that the US was too respectful, while others claim the US was not respectful enough. To me, that says that the US got it right - and I believe that the burial at sea was necessary to eliminate any possibility that his burial site could be treated as a rallying point.
As new details of the raid continue to leak out, the real questions are being pointed in the direction of Pakistan. What did they know and when did they know that bin Laden was living large in their country?
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari submitted an op-ed in the Washington Post today in response to the US mission that killed Osama bin Laden in the town of Abbotabad, just miles from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.
Let us be frank. Pakistan has paid an enormous price for its stand against terrorism. More of our soldiers have died than all of NATO’s casualties combined. Two thousand police officers, as many as 30,000 innocent civilians and a generation of social progress for our people have been lost. And for me, justice against bin Laden was not just political; it was also personal, as the terrorists murdered our greatest leader, the mother of my children. Twice he tried to assassinate my wife. In 1989 he poured $50 million into a no-confidence vote to topple her first government. She said that she was bin Laden’s worst nightmare — a democratically elected, progressive, moderate, pluralistic female leader. She was right, and she paid for it with her life.
Some in the U.S. press have suggested that Pakistan lacked vitality in its pursuit of terrorism, or worse yet that we were disingenuous and actually protected the terrorists we claimed to be pursuing. Such baseless speculation may make exciting cable news, but it doesn’t reflect fact. Pakistan had as much reason to despise al-Qaeda as any nation. The war on terrorism is as much Pakistan’s war as as it is America’s. And though it may have started with bin Laden, the forces of modernity and moderation remain under serious threat.
My government endorses the words of President Obama and appreciates the credit he gave us Sunday night for the successful operation in Khyber Pakhtunkhawa. We also applaud and endorse the words of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that we must “press forward, bolstering our partnerships, strengthening our networks, investing in a positive vision of peace and progress, and relentlessly pursuing the murderers who target innocent people.” We have not yet won this war, but we now clearly can see the beginning of the end, and the kind of South and Central Asia that lies in our future.
Only hours after bin Laden’s death, the Taliban reacted by blaming the government of Pakistan and calling for retribution against its leaders, and specifically against me as the nation’s president. We will not be intimidated. Pakistan has never been and never will be the hotbed of fanaticism that is often described by the media.
Zardari is in a real tough position right now. He's got to simultaneously defend his country from claims that he was harboring al Qaeda's top dog, claiming that he was providing assistance (unidentified and uncorroborated by US officials who have studiously stated that they shared no aspects of this mission with any other country, including Pakistan), and has to be worried that the Islamists will try to topple his government because of its existing ties with the US (a belief that the government is complicit with the US even if there was no actual). Given the way that Pakistanis love their conspiracy theories (even more than the nutjobs who think Osama wasn't real, wasn't killed, or any permutation thereof), all kinds of speculation is rampant in Pakistan right now over what Pakistan's government knew and when did they know of it.
Fact is, no one really knows what the Pakistani government knew about bin Laden's location, but it is highly suspicious that he was able to live in relative comfort in a compound just yards from the country's military academy and where military personnel go to retire. It is plausible that members of the military or the ISI were complicit in keeping bin Laden's whereabouts hidden but it once again indicates the difficulty of trusting the Pakistani government to reveal key details. Those questions are being asked by members of Congress on both sides of the aisle - and they have good reason to ask those questions. Similar questions are being asked by other countries, including the UK.
Zardari is right to state that his country has been ravaged by Islamic terrorists, particularly Taliban and al Qaeda. Yet, each time the Pakistani government (whether under Zardari or his predecessor, Pervez Musharraf) cracks down, it doesn't go far enough to eliminate the threat. It does just enough - anything more and the Islamists in the Pakistani government (Parliament, military, ISI) would thwart further action.
He further claims that radical Islamist parties make up a small fraction of his government, but that overlooks those other groups that lean towards radicalism and who do not condone crackdowns against the Islamists.
Pakistan barely maintains control over the frontier provinces, which are overrun with Taliban and have hosted al Qaeda for years on end. Efforts to thwart the Taliban have met with mixed success - and the body count among Pakistani soldiers is quite high and
The country can't align itself too greatly with the US for fear of assassinations or coups to install a more Islamist government, but doing nothing allows the Islamists free reign in the frontier provinces.
The question of what Pakistan knew and who knew might be revealed in the treasure trove of intel captured by the special forces team that carried out the mission. They recovered numerous computers, hard drives, thumb drives, and other intel that can be critical to unraveling the logistical network and other contacts, as well as identifying other key members and locations. It could also shed light on other planned or contemplated targets.
Bin Laden's death may also result in a reappraisal of ongoing military operations by the ISAF in Afghanistan, including the possible withdrawal of troops earlier than 2014. I think that would be a serious mistake, considering that al Qaeda and the Taliban remain a serious threat, and allowing them safe haven is a mistake.
The following are additional photos taken from around Ground Zero, and they don't begin to convey the competing feelings of sadness for all those who were murdered and the grief that the families have to live with, and the happiness in knowing that Osama bin Laden can no longer plot further attacks. I'll let these photos tell the story instead:
This post is going to be a running post during the day, as I add additional photos taken by different means (phone/camera).
The line of trucks covering the Osama death story from Ground Zero.
Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.8
New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was in attendance, running between interviews along Vesey in front of the 9/11 Tribute Center:
Rudy Giuliani making the media rounds.
Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.8
More photos will be forthcoming. The crowds are larger than a typical spring day, but not the crush of humanity one could have expected to turn out. Then again, the media are lining up all around Ground Zero, with the majority camped in front of the post office on Church. Other media outlets are located in front of 7WTC and then lining the surrounding streets. Helicopters are hovering overhead to taken in the overview of the site.
Rudy Giuliani praised President Obama's "courage" for the risky method he chose to take down Osama bin Laden, adding his death is a "significant step" in the war on terror - but saying the tones of jubilation feel strange to him.
"I feel a great deal of satisfaction that justice has been done, and I admire the courage of the president to make a decision like this because if something had gone wrong everyone would be blaming him," Giuliani told POLITICO Monday morning in his first comments since the capture. "And I admire the courage and professionalism of our military intelligence officials who carried this out and this is a great victory against terror. Nobody can minimize it. He was a symbol more than anything else right now but ... symbols are really important."
"Oh God, please make this news not true... God curse you Obama," said one message on an Arabic language forum. "Oh Americans... it is still legal for us to cut your necks."
Some forums members urged others not to believe news of the death until it was confirmed online by militant news sources.
"The source of news that we trust is that which comes from the mujahideen (holy warrior)," a message on Ansar forum said. "Be patient and don't spread rumors...we've asked this repeatedly, so please do not write anything on the subject."
Hours later, several of the threads discussing bin Laden's death had been shutdown.
But 'Asad al-Jihad 2', labeled a "prominent member of the jihadist internet community" by the monitoring group SITE, acknowledged the leader's death and vowed revenge.
"The whole world hangs on the death of one man, and if all his enemies were killed their effect would not be the same as his," SITE quoted him as saying on the Shumukh al-Islam forum.
"We will take our revenge on behalf of the Islamic Ummah for the death of the Sheikh of Islam ... Whoever wishes this to be the end of jihad or a means to weaken the organization, I say to him: Wait a little!"
MESSAGE OF JIHAD
Bin Laden's killing, in a compound outside the Pakistani city of Islamabad, dealt a symbolic blow to the global militant network, although Islamist forum posters said the strike would not change their commitment to fighting Western powers.
"Osama may be killed but his message of Jihad will never die. Brothers and sisters, wait and see, his death will be a blessing in disguise," said a poster on another Islamist forum.
Osama bin Laden was killed, but that didn't kill the ideology or the terror group he helped spawn. We're going to have to remain vigilant to prevent further attacks, whether they're decreed to be in revenge for bin Laden's death or for any number of purported grievances that these terrorists use as excuses for their brutality and mass carnage.
US Special Forces from SEAL Team Six carried out a daring raid last night and killed Osama bin Laden in a large compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan last night, which is located 30 miles north of the capital of Islamabad and 120 miles from the Afghan border. The news hits hard here in the New York City metro area where al Qaeda carried out the deadliest terror attack in history, murdering more than 3,000 people and destroying the World Trade Center. For the families of those killed or injured in the attacks, this is a bittersweet moment since they will never get closure - they will always be lacking their loved ones who were so cruelly taken from them on the orders of bin Laden.
Once the news was broadcast following President Obama's official announcement last night, the area around Ground Zero was one of jubilation and reflection (more here). This morning, broadcasters and hundreds of police were controlling the gathered crowds and those trying to make their way to jobs in and around Lower Manhattan.
A trusted courier of Osama bin Laden’s whom American spies had been hunting for years was finally located in a compound 35 miles north of the Pakistani capital, close to one of the hubs of American counterterrorism operations. The property was so secure, so large, that American officials guessed it was built to hide someone far more important than a mere courier.
What followed was eight months of painstaking intelligence work, culminating in a helicopter assault by American military and intelligence operatives that ended in the death of Bin Laden on Sunday and concluded one of history’s most extensive and frustrating manhunts.
American officials said that Bin Laden was shot in the head after he tried to resist the assault force, and that one of his sons died with him.
For nearly a decade, American military and intelligence forces had chased the specter of Bin Laden through Pakistan and Afghanistan, once coming agonizingly close and losing him in a pitched battle at Tora Bora, in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan. As Obama administration officials described it, the real breakthrough came when they finally figured out the name and location of Bin Laden’s most trusted courier, whom the Qaeda chief appeared to rely on to maintain contacts with the outside world.
Detainees at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had given the courier’s pseudonym to American interrogators and said that the man was a protégé of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the confessed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.
American intelligence officials said Sunday night that they finally learned the courier’s real name four years ago, but that it took another two years for them to learn the general region where he operated.
Still, it was not until August when they tracked him to the compound in Abbottabad, a medium-sized city about an hour’s drive north of Islamabad, the capital.
C.I.A. analysts spent the next several weeks examining satellite photos and intelligence reports to determine who might be living at the compound, and a senior administration official said that by September the C.I.A. had determined there was a “strong possibility” that Bin Laden himself was hiding there.
It was hardly the spartan cave in the mountains where many had envisioned Bin Laden to be hiding. Rather, it was a mansion on the outskirts of the town’s center, set on an imposing hilltop and ringed by 12-foot-high concrete walls topped with barbed wire.
The property was valued at $1 million, but it had neither a telephone nor an Internet connection. Its residents were so concerned about security that they burned their trash rather putting it on the street for collection like their neighbors.
American officials believed that the compound, built in 2005, was designed for the specific purpose of hiding Bin Laden.
Months more of intelligence work would follow before American spies felt highly confident that it was indeed Bin Laden and his family who were hiding in there — and before President Obama determined that the intelligence was solid enough to begin planning a mission to go after the Qaeda leader.
Bin Laden, however would not come quietly, and he returned fire. Members of the team killed bin Laden and extracted his body to a base in Afghanistan where he was positively identified with facial recognition software and other means. From there, his body was buried at sea.
Now, there was speculation that no country would accept his remains as being the reason that his body was buried at sea, but I think the more likely explanation is that the US simply didn't want his burial location to turn into a rallying cry for al Qaeda and those loyal to the jihad. A burial at sea wipes eliminates that possibility, but the ideology lives on.
Al Qaeda has been seriously damaged by the attack and death of bin Laden, but the group is far from defanged. Ayman al Zawahiri is still at large, and the terror group continues to receive shelter from Taliban and utilizes the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan as a base of operations.
The terror group will continue to attempt further attacks, and it's important to note that while bin Laden was the face and major fundraiser for the group and pressed home the notion of jihad, Zawahiri and others have been the more public figures in the past several years. Expect Zawahiri to take a more active role in leading al Qaeda and spreading the jihadist rhetoric and ideology, along with Anwar al-Awlaki. Both men have been spreading jihadi ideology online and rallying others to their cause.
As noted above, the US didn't let Pakistan's government know about the mission until it was completed. There's damned good reasons for that - the Pakistani government is far from reliable and the ISI is likely harboring further Taliban and al Qaeda within the country and not acting against the terror group whose leader lived in comfort just yards from Pakistan's army military academy where the country's army trains its cadre of leaders and in a city where many in the army go to retire. A Pakistani army division headquarters is located there as well, making this a major center for the Pakistani military.
Bin Laden's death doesn't mean the end of the conflict against al Qaeda and the Islamic extremists who justify attacks against the US and the West. It just means that there will be a new face associated with terror attacks to come. That doesn't mean that his death shouldn't be lauded for eliminating a scourge of humanity whose actions set in motion the worst terror attacks in history and tremendous bloodshed and misery for many throughout the world.
The successful raid also raises new questions about what the Pakistani intel service (ISI) knew, and how the Pakistanis were unable to located bin Laden when he was living so openly and so close to major Pakistani military installations.
Finally, I want to personally thank all those who stuggle to keep us safe and go after these terrorists, along with President Obama for green-lighting the mission and enabling the military and intel services to coordinate and execute the mission with precision and professionalism.
UPDATE:
Here's a map showing the final location of where bin Laden lived before the raid:
UPDATE:
This is perhaps the most poignant of all the photos taken in the past 48 hours and was captured by a NYT cameraman:
UPDATE: Pakistanis are both stunned by the news, and many are angered over the attack on bin Laden. Former Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf is angered at the violation of Pakistan's sovereignty. Considering that Pakistan's own ISI routinely ignores Afghanistan's sovereignty by providing aid and comfort to Taliban and al Qaeda, and refuses to deal with embedded Taliban and al Qaeda within Pakistan's own territory, they government in Islamabad is going to be on the hot seat to explain how they completely missed the fact that bin Laden was living large just yards from the Pakistani military academy.
Clearly, this is going to lead to a re-evaluation of US-Pakistani relations - both the public declarations and the private behind the scenes level discussions. Pakistan's ISI and military simply can't be trusted, especially with time sensitive information to maintain operational security, and that was a major reason that President Obama kept the mission close to the vest and didn't inform any US allies, lest any information leak before the mission was carried out.
This also means that the Islamists in Pakistan may carry out additional attacks against the US/NATO/ISAF supply lines, and perhaps the Pakistani military may no longer give NATO/US/ISAF forces the logistical support they have had in the past (although the Pakistani military hasn't exactly done a great job protecting those convoys in the past). President Obama must have weighed the potential repercussions of taking this action versus informing Pakistan, etc., and found that the benefits outweighed the potential fallout/blowback. I think that was the right move.
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.
So, who was captured along with who else was killed in the raid? That's going to make for some interesting reading down the line.
