Afghanistan-US Pact Means US Presence In Afghanistan For Foreseeable Future

Despite claims that US forces will be leaving Afghanistan by 2014, the fact is that the US will continue to maintain a presence in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future - a decade or longer.

The reasons have as much to do with geography as they do politics.

Afghanistan is vital not only because the US needs to continue to deny al Qaeda a breeding ground in the country that played host to al Qaeda in the runup to the 9/11 attacks, but because it is adjacent to the current breeding grounds for al Qaeda and its affiliated terror groups in Pakistan.

Details of the pact have yet to be released. But over the past year, top generals and Pentagon officials have sketched — in congressional testimony, interviews and forum discussions — an outline of how the U.S. will operate after the accord takes effect, following the departure of most U.S. troops in 2014. U.S. and Afghan troops will live together on joint bases formally operated by the Afghans. The U.S. mission for training Afghan soldiers and police will continue until 2017 or so, although for financial reasons, the size of those Afghan troops under U.S. mentorship will shrink after 2014. Starting immediately, Afghans will have significant if incomplete influence over U.S. commando raids.

But these mentorship missions will not be the most important ones the U.S. executes in Afghanistan after 2014. They’re merely the visible ones. And they’re the cost of getting to the missions the U.S. considers most important.


To be blunt: Afghanistan is valuable to the United States because it’s the most logical place from which to conduct a war in Pakistan that’s primarily fought by armed drones and occasionally special operations forces. It’s not really valuable in and of itself. The U.S. interests in Afghanistan, as defined by the Obama administration, are to keep Afghanistan from internal collapse so al-Qaida doesn’t return. President Hamid Karzai’s government is corrupt? Yawn. Dealing with that is an expensive diversion from the core issue.

The core issue, as the Obama team sees it, is that there’s a residual al-Qaida presence next door, in the Pakistani tribal areas. Because Pakistan won’t let U.S. troops overtly operate on its territory, the U.S. basically needs to rent some nearby property. Afghanistan doesn’t have much to offer the rest of the world — minerals, maybe? — but it has a lot of land abutting Pakistan.

That's right.

It's about maintaining forces close to Pakistani territory. Pakistan, which is nominally a US ally in the war on terror is itself the territory targeted with this deal so that the US can continue to target and eliminate al Qaeda and affiliated terrorists in the frontier provinces that Pakistan's government lacks the ability to contain.

The frontier provinces, including the NWFP and Waziristan, are a hotbed of terrorist activities, and cross-border attacks are all too common. Pakistan maintains nominal control over the territories, which operates autonomously and when Pakistan has sent in military forces to quell the terrorist activities, they've gotten savaged.

In the past three years, the frontier provinces have been increasingly targeted by American UAV airstrikes - hitting high value targets and tracking down links between various terrorists operating there, including the Mehsud clan and Haqqani network.

Those raids, along with the successful raid to eliminate Osama bin Laden, have caused tremendous friction between the US and Pakistani government and the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI). The Administration appears to be accepting the fact that relations with Pakistan will continue to be rocky, but there may be a tacit deal in place to allow the US to use Afghanistan as a staging area for its UAV strikes to go after targets that Pakistan deems inconvenient - the Islamic terror groups like al Qaeda and those other terror groups. Such a deal would give the Pakistani government the maneuvering space to decry UAV airstrikes, but give silent assent to those successful strikes that eliminate threats to Pakistani security as well. After all, the Haqqani network is as much a threat to Pakistan's government as it is to Afghanistan (or the US).

Marines in 'Urinating' Video Identified, Charges Possible

All four US Marines seen in the video depicting them urinating on dead Taliban have been identified and the videographer is also being sought in connection with multiple charges.

Two of the Marines have been interviewed by military officials involved in a criminal investigation into the video, which surfaced online Wednesday, the official said. At less than a minute long, the video appears to show four men in uniform looking around before urinating on three dead bodies. At least one of the men chuckles as they do so.

"Have a great day, buddy," one of the men is heard saying, apparently to a dead body.

If authentic, the video portrays potential violations of both the first Geneva Convention, which calls for the dead to be "honorably interred" and says that "graves are respected," as well as the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice for allegedly bringing "discredit upon the armed forces."

Eugene Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale University, said the Marines will most likely be charged under an interpretation of the Uniform Code for Military Justice and any prison sentences would depend on instructions a military judge will give a jury of military officers who then determine the sentence.

On one of the first websites to feature the video, the member who posted it identified the Marines as belonging to the 3/2 Marine battalion out of Camp Lejeune, an assertion later confirmed by the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC). The battalion served in the northern Helmand Province in Afghanistan last summer. The USMC declined to identify the individual Marines in the video.

These Marines would likely see charges under the UCMJ catchall provision and the conduct unbecoming a member of the Armed Forces. Either can result in a bad-conduct/dishonorable discharge, although prison time is also a possibility.

At a minimum, expect to see these four given a bad-conduct discharge.

Marines Caught On Tape Desecrating Taliban Bodies Deserve Punishment

The Marines who were videotaped while urinating on Taliban members apparently killed in a combat situation deserve whatever punishment is meted out to them. An investigation is underway to determine who was involved, and the charges would likely include conduct unbecoming an officer as well as a general offense (catchall) under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (47 USC Sections 933 and 934). That would include regulations prohibiting photographing/videotaping deceased individuals.

Both charges can lead to dishonorable/bad conduct discharges and/or prison time.

It doesn't take Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) to know that something needs to be done.

The U.S. Marine Corps vowed a full investigation into the 39-second viral video, which infuriated Afghan President Hamid Karzai and others.

“The government of Afghanistan is deeply disturbed by a video that shows American soldiers desecrating dead bodies of three Afghans,” Karzai said in a statement Thursday.

“This act by American soldiers is simply inhumane and condemnable in the strongest possible terms,” he continued. “We expressly ask the US government to urgently investigate the video and apply the most severe punishment to anyone found guilty in this crime.”

TALIBAN: 'SHAMEFUL' VIDEO WON'T HARM POTENTIAL AFGHAN PEACE TALKS

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan also condemned the video.

“This behavior dishonors the sacrifices and core values of every service member representing the 50 nations of the coalition,” said a statement from the ISAF.

Dressed in full combat gear and holding rifles at their sides, the four men stand over the three corpses sprawled out near an overturned wheelbarrow. The warriors start urinating on the bloodied bodies, and cracking sickeningly insensitive jokes.

Bad conduct such as this can hamper the ISAF/US mission in Afghanistan by making it more difficult to gain the trust of potential allies regardless of what one thinks about the Taliban. These Marines need to be dealt with promptly and judiciously.

Taliban Go On Murderous Spree Of Bombings and Attacks Across Afghanistan and Pakistan

Everyone around the NYC metro area has seen the increased security ahead of 9/11 and the warnings about a potential, but unconfirmed attack planned in conjunction with the 9/11 commemoration.

Well, what if we got the right intel, but the wrong place.

The Taliban have gone on a massive murdering spree, with multiple attacks across Afghanistan targeting US and ISAF forces and additional attacks in Pakistan. There's the ongoing attacks against US facilities in Kabul



That follows an ISAF base hit on 9/11 itself. A suicide bomb truck detonated along a perimeter wall and the resulting explosion injured dozens of US soldiers and killed several Afghans.



Now, this could be coincidence, but I don't think it was. There was chatter about high profile attacks, and a mass casualty attack on a US military base and the US embassy would certainly fit that bill of al Qaeda/Taliban seeking to carry out mass casualty attacks against the US.

It doesn't have the same cachet as a bomb blowing up people in Times Square (and certainly wont get the same level of press if such a bombing occurred during the 9/11 anniversary week), but had this been a bombing that killed scores of Americans in Afghanistan, it would have fit the Taliban/al Qaeda goal of murdering Americans during the anniversary period.

This doesn't mean that American law enforcement should relax; just because the anniversary has come and gone doesn't mean that the terror cells haven't stopped proliferating or plotting further attacks. It means that the public has to remain vigilant and law enforcement has to continue working to disrupt plots before they can become operational.

Medal of Honor To Be Awarded To Sgt. 1st Class Leroy Arthur Petry

The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration awarded by the United States government. It's awarded only to those who show "...conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his or her life above and beyond the call of duty while engaged in an action against an enemy of the United States." More often than not, these are awarded posthumously as these soldiers, sailors, Marines, or airmen frequently give their lives so that their fellow comrades in arms can survive.

However, the latest soldier to be awarded the medal will be there in person to accept it. Later today, the Medal of Honor will be awarded to an Army Ranger Sgt. 1st Class Leroy Arthur Petry who saved his comrades by throwing a grenade away, but the grenade blew off his hand.

During the enemy action, he was already injured from bullet wounds to both legs when the grenade was thrown at his position.

An Army Ranger who lost his right hand while tossing an enemy grenade away from fellow soldiers in Afghanistan will be awarded the Medal of Honor on Tuesday.

Sgt. 1st Class Leroy Arthur Petry will be the second living recipient of the Medal of Honor from the Iraq and Afghan wars, according to the U.S. military. President Barack Obama will present the award to Petry.

"It's very humbling to know that the guys thought that much of me and my actions that day, to nominate me for that," Petry said, according to an Army News Service report.

Petry is being awarded the medal for actions on May 26, 2008, in Paktia, Afghanistan.

A Vaccination Ruse To Catch Bin Laden; Drone Program Now In Doubt Over Ongoing Rift

You have to give the CIA credit. They were more than willing to try unconventional means to track down Osama bin Laden and to gain intel they believed necessary to confirm whether they got their man.

The CIA apparently ran a vaccination ruse to obtain DNA information. But perhaps more importantly, the fallout from the bin Laden raid continues to affect the security situation in Afghanistan and the frontier provinces in Pakistan. The drone program and military aid programs to Pakistan are in doubt as the Pakistanis continue to seethe over the raid:

The vaccination program was set up as the C.I.A. was struggling to learn whether Bin Laden was hiding in the compound, and adds a new twist to the months of spy games that preceded the nighttime raid in early May that killed the Qaeda chief.

It has also aggravated already strained tensions between the United States and Pakistan. The operation was run by a Pakistan doctor, Shakil Afridi, whom Pakistani spies have since arrested for his suspected collaboration with the Americans. Dr. Afridi remains in Pakistani custody, the American official said.

Getting DNA evidence from the people hiding in the Abbottabad compound would have been a significant coup, because it would have allowed the C.I.A. to match the samples with DNA from other members of the Bin Laden family that are on file at the C.I.A. — providing the first hard evidence in years of his whereabouts.

The American official said that the doctor managed to temporarily gain access to the compound, but that he never saw Bin Laden and was not successful in getting DNA samples from any Bin Laden family members. Obama administration officials have said publicly they were not sure whether Bin Laden was in Abbottabad when dozens of Navy Seals commandos stormed the house in May.

The existence of the vaccination program was first reported by a British newspaper, The Guardian. A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment.

It is unclear how the C.I.A. first recruited Dr. Afridi to work for the United States. The Guardian reported that he used a team of nurses and other health workers to administer Hepatitis B vaccinations throughout Abbottabad, even starting the program on poor fringes of the town to maintain a low profile.

Pakistani military and intelligence operatives were furious about the American raid that killed Bin Laden, and relations between the United States and Pakistan have only plummeted since. Pakistani officials have suggested that they might use troops to repel another incursion into Pakistan, and many American officials believe that Pakistan seems more concerned with hunting C.I.A. informants than with finding Qaeda operatives.

American officials said they planned to suspend as much as $800 million worth of military aid to Pakistan — a move partly designed to chasten Islamabad for expelling American military trainers — and several influential American lawmakers have suggested attaching more strings to the billions of dollars sent each year to Pakistan.

Also at stake is the C.I.A.’s armed drone program, which has carried out hundreds of strikes in Pakistan in recent years and has killed several senior operatives from Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban. Pakistan has threatened to expel C.I.A. operatives working on the drone program from a base in southern Pakistan, and the C.I.A. has set up contingency plans to run more flights from a base in eastern Afghanistan.

It is interesting that the Pakistanis seem to be more interested in catching those who may have provided intel to the CIA in the hunt for Osama bin Laden than they are in going after other terrorists hiding in their midst.

Drone airstrikes continue, including one that killed 38 people, and the Pakistanis continue to express their displeasure about those ongoing airstrikes. They threaten to stop US operations from airbases inside Pakistan, and the CIA and US military are contemplating carrying those operations from bases inside Afghanistan.

At the same time, Pakistan is also threatening to reduce/eliminate troops from along its border with Afghanistan, which would enable the Taliban to expand operations on both sides of the border, if the US suspends $800 million in aid.

Pakistan is also looking towards China for military aid, equipment, and assistance.


The Pakistanis are currently engaged in military operations against certain Taliban elements, but they aren't willing to eliminate those Taliban factions because the Pakistani ISI has long used the Taliban to influence events in Afghanistan. They aren't going to suddenly reverse course and no longer seek to influence the outcome in their neighbor.

Pakistan is seeking to preserve ties with the Taliban and other militants that it has used for decades to gain political influence in Afghanistan, according to Imtiaz Gul, director of Islamabad’s Center for Research and Security Studies.

The reliance on guerrillas to project power across Pakistan’s borders is part of an effort to compensate for its smaller size compared with arch-foe India, against which it has fought three wars since the countries separated at independence from the U.K.

Any army offensive “is not going to give satisfaction to the Americans, because Pakistan wants to keep a relationship with some of the groups there,” including the one led by Afghan tribal leader Jalaluddin Haqqani, said Gul.

The U.S., which is withdrawing some troops and planning to end its combat role in Afghanistan by 2014, is pushing Pakistan to crush the Taliban in its territory while helping bring its leaders to peace talks. The U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan describe Haqqani as a major enemy.

Things in South Asia are getting a whole lot more dangerous because Pakistan's ongoing limited actions to deal with the Islamists and Taliban who seek to destabilize the region results from the refusal to cut longstanding ties with those elements.

Pakistan Still Cultivating Terrorists

Despite their claims that they aren't supporting militant groups and terrorists, the fact remains that the Pakistani military and security services are constantly in contact with a wide array of groups, including those that operate in the frontier provinces with Afghanistan and in Jammu and Kashmir.

The Pakistanis are double dealing when it comes to the US, NATO, and claims that they're doing all they can to stop terrorists from operating within their territory.

The former commander said that he was supported by the Pakistani military for 15 years as a fighter, leader and trainer of insurgents until he quit a few years ago. Well known in militant circles but accustomed to a covert existence, he gave an interview to The New York Times on the condition that his name, location and other personal details not be revealed.

Militant groups, like Lashkar-e-Taiba, Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen and Hizbul Mujahedeen, are run by religious leaders, with the Pakistani military providing training, strategic planning and protection. That system was still functioning, he said.

The former commander’s account belies years of assurances by Pakistan to American officials since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that it has ceased supporting militant groups in its territory. The United States has given Pakistan more than $20 billion in aid over the past decade for its help with counterterrorism operations. Still, the former commander said, Pakistan’s military and intelligence establishment has not abandoned its policy of supporting the militant groups as tools in Pakistan’s dispute with India over the border territory of Kashmir and in Afghanistan to drive out American and NATO forces.

“There are two bodies running these affairs: mullahs and retired generals,” he said. He named a number of former military officials involved in the program, including former chiefs of the intelligence service and other former generals. “These people have a very big role still,” he said.

Maj. Gen. Zaheer ul-Islam Abbasi, a former intelligence officer who was convicted of attempting a coup against the government of Benazir Bhutto in 1995 and who is now dead, was one of the most active supporters of the militant groups in the years after Sept. 11, the former commander said.

He said he saw General Abbasi several times: once at a meeting of Taliban and Pakistani militant leaders in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province as they planned how to confront the American military in Afghanistan; and twice in Mir Ali, which became the center for foreign militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas, including members of Al Qaeda.

There were about 60 people at the Taliban meeting in late 2001, soon after the Taliban government fell, the former commander said. Pakistani militant leaders were present, as were the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, and Muhammad Haqqani, a member of the Haqqani network.

Several retired officials of Pakistan’s premier spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, were also there, he said, including a man known as Colonel Imam but who was actually Brig. Sultan Amir, a well-known trainer and mentor of militants, and General Abbasi. The militant groups divided Afghanistan into separate areas of operations and discussed how to “trip up America,” he said.

The Pakistani military still supports the Afghan Taliban in their fight to force out American and NATO forces from Afghanistan, he said, adding that he thought they would be successful.

Some Pakistanis will say that these kinds of linkages were severed and these groups are no longer operating with the sanction of the government, but that's highly suspect.

Barbaric Terrorists Attack Afghan Hospital; 60+ Dead; 120 Wounded

Terrorists targeted an Afghan hospital in Eastern Afghanistan, killing at least 60 people. The Taliban denied responsibility, claiming that they don't attack hospitals (even though they've had no problems attacking schools or civilians in any other locale.

This wasn't the only terror attack in Afghanistan, as a bomber blew up an explosive in a bazaar, killing at least 10 people in northern Afghanistan.

The Problematic End of the Afghan Surge

President Obama is set to announce that the Afghan surge, where 30,000 additional US troops were stationed in Afghanistan, will come to an end in 2012. 10,000 troops will be pulled back this year, and 20,000 more will be pulled out by the end of 2012.

This doesn't end the US commitment to Afghanistan and the troop levels will be as they were when President Obama took office - 70,000.

These troop reductions are both deeper and faster than the recommendations made by Mr. Obama’s military commanders, and they reflect mounting political and economic pressures at home, as the president faces relentless budget pressures and an increasingly restive Congress and American public.

The president is scheduled to speak about the Afghanistan war from the White House at 8 p.m. Eastern time.

Mr. Obama’s decision is a victory for Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has long argued for curtailing the American military engagement in Afghanistan. But it is a setback for his top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, who helped write the Army’s field book on counterinsurgency policy, and who is returning to Washington to head the Central Intelligence Agency.

Two administration officials said General Petraeus did not endorse the decision, though both Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who is retiring, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reluctantly accepted it. General Petraeus had recommended limiting initial withdrawals and leaving in place as many combat forces for as long as possible, to hold on to fragile gains made in recent combat.

In announcing the withdrawals, Mr. Obama will fulfill a pledge he made in December 2009, when he coupled the deployment of 30,000 additional troops with a promise to begin winding down America’s engagement by the middle of this year. But the speed and scope of this plan is striking.

The troop withdrawals this year appears to be higher than a level that outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates and General David Petraeus were comfortable with, but it appears that budgeting and politics are trumping security.

Now is not the time to sit back and take the pressure off the Taliban and al Qaeda affiliated Islamists in Afghanistan or the frontier provinces along the Afghan-Pakistani border. It's the time to hammer home the fact that they've lost and that if they want the US to leave, it will be on US terms.

Reducing troop levels will allow the Taliban to claim victory when no such claim could be warranted and that will further allow them to recruit and regain a foothold in areas that are being held by ISAF and US forces.

I fear that this drawdown will allow the Taliban and al Qaeda to reassert themselves in these regions. It also means that intel gathering will be harder to come by in these regions as we will no longer have sufficient boots on the ground to carry out intel gathering missions to go along with fighting the Taliban where they appear.

It means that capturing foreign fighters and their facilitators will be harder as there are simply fewer US troops (and other ISAF troops) to monitor the region and take the fight to the Taliban.

Hamid Karzai Essentially Ends the Afghan War in Favor of Taliban?

The US and its coalition partners have frequently targeted compounds in Afghanistan where Taliban and al Qaeda are suspected of carrying on meetings or gathering. Some of those airstrikes have resulted in civilian casualties, but after the latest such incident, Afghan leader Hamid Karzai has called on the US and the ISAF to cease targeting housing compounds, according to USA Today:

"From this moment, airstrikes on the houses of people are not allowed," Karzai told reporters in Kabul.

NATO says it never conducts such strikes without Afghan government coordination and approval. A spokesman for NATO forces in Afghanistan said they will review their procedures for airstrikes given Karzai's statement but did not say that it would force any immediate change in tactics.

"In the days and weeks ahead we will coordinate very closely with President Karzai to ensure that his intent is met," spokeswoman Maj. Sunset Belinsky said. Karzai has previously made strong statements against certain military tactics — such as night raids — only to back off from them later.

But if Karzai holds to what sounds like an order to international troops to abandon strikes, it could bring the Afghan government in direct conflict with its international allies.

"Coalition forces constantly strive to reduce the chance of civilian casualties and damage to structures, but when the insurgents use civilians as a shield and put our forces in a position where their only option is to use airstrikes, then they will take that option," Belinsky said.

Yet, the New York Times soft-pedals the report:

Speaking at a news conference at the presidential palace in Kabul, Mr. Karzai declined to offer specifics on what actions the government would take, saying only that Afghanistan “has a lot of ways of stopping it.”

In an admonishment that carried an air of threat, he said NATO forces were on the verge of being considered occupiers rather than allies.

“If they continue their attacks on our houses, then their presence will change from a force that is fighting against terrorism to a force that is fighting against the people of Afghanistan,” he said. “And in that case, history shows what Afghans do with trespassers and with occupiers.”

Mr. Karzai has used similar language before, but taken with other recent statements, his comments could further threaten a relationship with his Western backers that has been strained over issues like night raids, corruption and the continuing scandal surrounding questionable loans and huge losses at Kabul Bank.

NATO officials responded diplomatically, saying they would continue to work with the Afghan government to reduce civilian casualties.

“General Petraeus has repeatedly noted that every liberation force has to be very conscious that it can, over time, become seen as an occupation force,” Rear Adm. Vic Beck of the Navy, a spokesman for the NATO-led military coalition, said in a statement, referring to Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top coalition commander in Afghanistan. He added, “We are in agreement with President Karzai on the importance of constantly examining our actions in light of that reality — and we are doing just that.”

Karzai says that NATO shouldn't treat Afghanistan as an occupying nation. Nowhere does he make such harsh statements against the Taliban, which has been the bane of the Afghan's existence for so long:



That all but cedes the field of battle to the Taliban, who have no such interest in preserving civilian lives and who all too frequently target civilians and use civilians as human shields.

It makes going after the Taliban and al Qaeda increasingly difficult and means that further airstrikes against housing compounds would be bringing the US into a more direct conflict with Karzai and the Afghan government.

This puts the US in an untenable situation of trying to deal with the Taliban, who not only use the Pakistani frontier provinces as a safe haven, but use housing compounds inside Afghanistan to further destabilize the US-backed Afghan government.

More Details Emerge On Raid That Got Bin Laden; And One That Missed

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.

The US has also carried out the first UAV airstrike since bin Laden's death, targeting terrorists in the frontier province of Waziristan:

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.

The NYT reports that intel had indicated that bin Laden may have contemplated a meeting in Tora Bora in 2007, and that a mission was planned and aircraft routed to intercept, but were called back when the intel turned out to be less than reliable and concerns raised about collateral damage. That instead led to a commando mission - killing a bunch of terrorists, but revealing that bin Laden wasn't among them.

“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.

Note too that this was after the shutdown of the bin Laden section in the CIA by the Bush Administration.

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.

UPDATE:
The Pakistanis can cooperate only so much without setting off the Islamists in a serious way. One report today indicated that the Pakistanis knew to some extent about the raid and have to claim otherwise to keep the Islamists from jumping ugly in a serious way to overthrow the government.

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.

UPDATE:
Apparently the Pakistanis understand the visuals of the situation, and they may have decided that the best course of action is to sack the head of the Pakistani intel services (ISI):

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.

White House Reshuffles National Security Posts

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has long made it known that he wished to retire, and he will now get his wish. President Obama has selected current CIA director Leon Panetta to succeed Gates as Defense Secretary, while tapping General David Petraeus to take over as Director of the CIA.

The appointments, set in motion by the impending retirement of Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, are part of a significant rearrangement of Mr. Obama’s national security team that will include several new assignments within the closest circle of his diplomatic, military and intelligence advisers.

Mr. Gates is expected to step down this summer.

The changes at the top of Mr. Obama’s national security team have long been expected.

Not long after Mr. Gates leaves, the term will expire for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, who, like the defense secretary, was appointed by President George W. Bush. And Deputy Secretary of State James B. Steinberg has announced that he is leaving for an academic job — removing one of the crucial players in Mr. Obama’s efforts to manage China’s rise.

But Mr. Gates’s role is the most critical. He often allied with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton — who has said that she intends to leave the administration when this term ends — including persuading Mr. Obama to start the military buildup in Afghanistan in 2009. Together they won many other battles, but they visibly split last month on the military intervention in Libya.

Several other key diplomats are leaving government and the term for the Joint Chiefs of Staff are ending, giving the President the opportunity to put his own stamp on those positions.

Both Panetta and Petraeus are known quantities when it comes to their ability to handle the job, but it means that the job of dealing with the ongoing war in Afghanistan will fall to others and will be the third such switch in little more than a year. Petraeus had taken over for Gen. Stanley McCrystal after McCrystral was forced to resign over inappropriate comments in a Rolling Stone interview.

That's perhaps the biggest downside of the moves - the inability to maintain a sense of continuity on the leadership in the Afghan theater of operations.

Great Escape: Taliban Carry Out Massive Prison Breakout

In a scene straight out of the movie The Great Escape, Taliban thugs tunneled hundreds of feet into a prison compound in Kandahar, Afghanistan and hundreds of prisoners were able to escape.

Officials at Sarposa prison in Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban, say they only discovered the breach at about 4 a.m., a half hour after the Taliban said they had gotten all the prisoners out.

The militants began digging the tunnel about five months ago from a house within shooting distance of the prison guard towers. It was not immediately clear whether they lived in the house while they dug. They meticulously plotted the tunnel's course around police checkpoints and major roads, the insurgent group said in a statement.

The diggers finally broke through to the prison cells around 11 p.m. Sunday night, and a handful of inmates who knew of the plan unlocked cells and ushered hundreds of inmates to freedom without a shot being fired.

Later on Monday, reporters were taken into the prison to view the opening of the tunnel in one of the cell blocks.

Reuters photographs showed a hole, several feet deep, cut into the concrete floor of one of the cells. The hole, big enough to allow one man to climb down at a time, appeared to be connected to a tunnel.

To say that this was a huge failure of Afghan security at the prison complex is an understatement. It would further appear that members of the Afghan security at the prison looked the other way as the prisoners were able to escape from the compound as the Taliban claimed that they had obtained keys to prison gates from "friends".

Failed Pakistani Suicide Bomber Hopes To Try Again

A teenage Pakistani suicide bomber whose bomb failed to detonate hopes to have the opportunity to try again. He and his cohorts had planned to blow up parishioners at a Sufi shrine and while the teenager's bomb didn't detonate, several others did - killing 42 people and wounding 100 more:

A teenage suicide bomber who failed to blow up pilgrims at a shrine in Pakistan stunned his captors when he made clear how desperate he was to die for his cause.

"Let me go, I want to be a martyr," 14-year-old Fida Hussain screamed as policemen led him away. "I want to send all you policemen to hell."

While Hussain was unable to detonate the bomb strapped to his chest, others succeeded Sunday, killing 42 people and wounding 100 more among the thousands gathered at a Sufi shrine near Dera Ghazi Khan.

A second suspect was also detained alive at the shrine, but police revealed no details about him.

Both apparently hail from an area known for breeding militants.

With his strikingly boyish face, Hussain represents the most insidious practice of the Taliban in recruiting young, uneducated boys to carry out suicide attacks.

Experts say young boys are not only less suspicious, but they are easier to indoctrinate into the cause.

"You are all accomplices of the enemies of Islam who are bent upon eliminating Islam and Muslims," Hussain yelled, according to police officer Khalid Mahmood.

The Taliban and al Qaeda recruit from those who are wholly ignorant and are impressionable in order to indoctrinate them into a nihilistic worldview where those who do not practice Islam as they do are worthy targets and that promises of paradise in the afterlife are sufficient to lure them into becoming suicide bombers.

This is the face of evil in Pakistan, and the Islamists in Pakistan have created a monster in which they backed the Taliban and protect those who are enabling these extremists to indoctrinate many more to their cause. Anyone who speaks out against laws like the anti-blasphemy laws, is targeted for assassination. Non-Muslims are targets, and anything that can be used to whip their fellow Islamists into a violent frenzy is seized upon, including the idiot Florida Pastor Terry Jones, whose exhortations to burn a koran and hold a mock trial of Mohammad has led to multiple days worth of rioting and more than a dozen dead.

Pakistan Still Playing Both Sides In Afghanistan

The Washington Post has reported that Pakistan's ISI (its intelligence service) has managed to provide medical assistance to Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban that controlled Afghanistan and gave shelter to Osama bin Laden before 9/11. Of course, the Pakistani government and the ISI deny the report:

Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar was treated in hospital with the help of Pakistan's intelligence agency after suffering a heart attack earlier this month, the Washington Post reported.

Citing "The Eclipse Group," a private network run by ex-CIA, State Department and military officials, the newspaper said the elusive Taliban chief spent several days at a hospital in Karachi, Pakistan.

Most of the senior members of the Afghan Taliban, including Mullah Omar, fled to neighboring Pakistan when U.S.-backed Afghan forces toppled their strict Islamist regime in late 2001.

'Some brain damage'
The firm said its source was a doctor, who was not identified. According to the report, Mullah Omar was "rushed" to hospital by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency on Jan. 7.

"While I was not personally in the operating theater, my evaluation based on what I have heard and seeing the patient in the hospital is that Mullah Omar had a cardiac catheter complication resulting in either bleeding or a small cerebral vascular incident, or both," the Post quoted the doctor as saying.

"After the operation, there seemed to be some brain damage with Mullah Omar having slurred speech," he added.

The Eclipse Group's report said that "after 3-4 days of post-operative care in the hospital, he was released to the ISI and ordered to take absolute bed rest when at home for at least several days."

It said that Mullah Omar was staying at "an ISI 'guest house' in Karachi under ISI guard."

Pakistan continues to play the US for foreign assistance and military aid despite continuing to provide safe havens for al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists. They utilize the frontier provinces with impunity and carry out attacks inside Afghanistan and repeatedly threaten US and ISAF supply lines inside Pakistan.

Reflecting on the Death of Richard Holbrooke

Yesterday, veteran US diplomat Richard Holbrooke died at the age of 69 from a torn aorta. My sympathies go out to his friends and family. He is best known for brokering the Dayton Accords which ended the conflict in Bosnia.

While his family will mourn his loss and are directly affected by his death, so too is the US foreign policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Holbrooke had been on President Obama's vanguard of trying to deal with the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan's longstanding support of the Taliban and ongoing crossborder actions enabling the Taliban to regroup and rearm. Frankly, he had more foreign policy experience than most everyone else around him, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Indeed, Clinton got the job that Holbrooke had sought for himself - primarily because Holbrooke had backed Clinton during the 2008 primary race. However, Clinton took Holbrooke on to her staff and put him in a position to deal with the most intractable problems facing the new Administration - dealing with the situation in Afghanistan.

While Holbrooke's last words were reportedly to his Pakistani doctor telling him to end the fighting, the words of Afghan leader Hamid Karzai are far more troubling and relevant. Despite years of cajoling and propping up Karzai as the leader of the Afghans, Karzai still thinks that the country might be better off with the Taliban.

For more than an hour, Gen. David H. Petraeus, U.S. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry and other top Western officials in Kabul urged Karzai to delay implementing a ban on private security firms. Reconstruction projects worth billions of dollars would have to be shuttered, they maintained, if foreign guards were evicted.

Sitting at the head of a glass-topped, U-shaped table in his conference room, Karzai refused to budge, according to two people with direct knowledge of the late October meeting. He insisted that Afghan police and soldiers could protect the reconstruction workers, and he dismissed pleas for a delay.

As he spoke, he grew agitated, then enraged. He told them that he now has three "main enemies" - the Taliban, the United States and the international community.

"If I had to choose sides today, I'd choose the Taliban," he fumed.

After a few more parting shots, he got up and walked out of the wood-paneled room.

The riposte, and the broader fight over private security contractors, prompted deep alarm among senior U.S. officials in Kabul and Washington. The Obama administration had been trying for the better part of a year to cast aside earlier disputes and make nice with Karzai. But it clearly was not working. Eikenberry told colleagues at the embassy that the relationship had hit its lowest point in years.

As President Obama and his national security team assess the war this week, a central element of the discussion will be their difficulties in building a partnership with Karzai. Despite a concerted effort by top diplomats and commanders, the United States has been unable to achieve more than ephemeral bonhomie with the Afghan leader.

How is it that Karzai has come to view the US as a greater enemy than the Taliban, who routinely murders and butchers Afghans without concern for human rights or remorse? And how is it that relations have declined in the past year. Part of that stems from the approach taken by the White House and its foreign policy objectives - which include withdrawal from the country under a misguided notion of timelines.

Karzai can read the political situation in Afghanistan better than President Obama and his foreign policy staff. Karzai has to live in Afghanistan. The diplomats can go back home to the safety of Foggy Bottom. He knows that the Taliban can reassert themselves the moment the US leaves, and he's not about to signal to the Taliban that he intends to cross paths with them. He will make accommodations so as to remain in power. Instead of showing that the US will commit to a lengthy period of rebuilding and nation-building that would go a long way to assisting the Afghan nation and undermine the Taliban threat, Karzai views the US as another obstacle to his hold on power because aligning with the US as the US withdraws is tantamount to a death sentence.

President Obama Makes Surprise Visit To Afghanistan

President Barack Obama made a surprise visit to Afghanistan today although a proposed meeting between the President and Afghan leader Hamid Karzai was unable to go forward due to inclement weather and security concerns.

President Barack Obama slipped unannounced into dangerous Afghanistan on Friday, one year after widening an ever deadlier war and just days before a pivotal review about the 9-year-plus conflict.

Under intense security, Obama landed in night's darkness after a clandestine departure from the White House on Thursday, where plans of his trip into the war zone were tightly guarded.

The White House said rough weather forced Obama to abruptly drop plans to meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul. The White House determined the wind, dust and cloud cover made it unsafe for the president to fly by helicopter from the huge military complex here to the presidential palace 30 miles away.

In a rapidly changing sequence of events, the White House then said they would speak by secure videoconference — but later said that, too, was dropped. Instead, the two leaders were expected to speak by phone.

While the meeting with Karzai didn't go as planned, the President will get to meet and greet and thank the troops at Bagram air base, and that's worth the visit all by itself.

Secret NATO-Taliban Talks Included Taliban Imposter

Secret talks between Taliban leaders and NATO and Afghan forces turned into a farce when it was revealed that one of the so-called Taliban leaders was an imposter.

For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the repeated appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.

But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all. In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little.

“It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”

So, no one knows who the guy really was, and what he has done with the money.

Classic.

And what should really be noteworthy is just how much contact this guy had with top level Afghan and NATO commanders and political leaders, including Afghan President Hamid Karzai and had been flown around in NATO aircraft. This represents a serious flaw and failure in the intel on Mansour and the Taliban.

French Police Arrest 12 In Terror Sweep

At least 12 al Qaeda suspects arrested around Europe in a plot to attack targets in France.

Three of the men allegedly linked to man caught with bomb-making kit in Naples; arrests come as US, France, other European nations have stepped up terrorism alert vigilance.

French authorities arrested twelve men on Tuesday morning on suspicion of involvement with al-Qaida and terror plots, news agencies reported.AFP reported a police source as saying the men were detained in the southern French cities of Marseille and Bordeaux. According to an official, police seized "some weapons, including a Kalashnikov and a pump-action shotgun, as well as ammunition."

Also on Tuesday, French police arrested three men said to be linked to a man of Algerian origin taken into custody by Italian police in Naples on Saturday, who is due to be extradited to France. Police reportedly found the phone numbers for the three men in the mobile phone of the Algerian man.

The man, 28, had been under a European arrest warrant when he was caught, allegedly with a bomb-making kit.

Depending on how you read the numbers, we're looking at least at 13 (9 arrested in one sweep in France, 1 arrested in Italy, 3 arrested in France in connection with the Italy arrest).

Intel was gathered from another captured terrorist in Afghanistan, which led law enforcement and intel services to disrupt and arrest this group. CNN provides more information on the source of the intel:

Western intelligence officials say they learned about the potential attacks after Ahmed Sidiqi, a German citizen of Afghan descent, was arrested in Afghanistan in July and taken to the U.S. air base at Bagram for questioning. He has not been charged, and intelligence sources in Germany said he was cooperating with the investigation. According to German intelligence officials, Sidiqi and 10 others left Hamburg in 2009 for the tribal areas of Pakistan -- where most of the group joined a jihadist group fighting U.S. and coalition forces across the border in Afghanistan.

Sidiqi told American interrogators that at least one member of his travel group was to be a "foot soldier" in the plot, with other members of the group helping to plan the attacks, a European counterterrorism official told CNN.

Sidiqi's sister says that he had attended the Hamburg Germany mosque where 9/11 collaborators attended. Other relatives are in denial, claiming that Sidiqi would not get himself involved in terror ops, but his actions apparently betray that notion.

UAV Airstrike Kills German Militants In Pakistan As Unrest Continues

A United States UAV airstrike in the Waziristan town of Mir Ali appears to have taken out a bunch of German militants. The exact number of casualties is not yet known, but it is highly unusual for such a large concentration of foreign terrorists to congregate in the area.

Pakistani intelligence officials say five German militants are believed to have been killed in an American missile strike close to the Afghan border.

The officials say the missiles hit a house in the town of Mir Ali in North Waziristan region late Monday.

Two say the victims were believed to be German citizens in the region for terrorist training.

A third says they were believed to be foreigners, but gave no details.

A Reuters report said eight militants of German nationality were killed by missiles from a pilotless aircraft.

The officials spoke anonymously because their agency does not permit operatives to be named in the media.

This comes on the heels of NATO convoys to Afghanistan being repeatedly attacked in Pakistan, which has put the NATO efforts under considerable strain.

It's also on the heels of alerts in Europe over potential terror attacks. The US State Department issued warnings to those Americans visiting Europe to be vigilant (as if that isn't what people should be doing generally).

There were 21 UAV airstrikes this past September - the most for any month.

The CIA has been trying to eliminate leaders of the Haqqani network, an Afghan Taliban faction operating out of North Waziristan which is seen as one of the most effective forces fighting U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

North Waziristan is home to a variety of militant groups, some fighting the Pakistani government, others battling U.S.-led NATO troops in Afghanistan.

Some militants are foreigners who have taken up the cause of holy war against the West and see North Waziristan as a safe haven or training ground.

U.S. and British alerts about possible attacks in Europe highlight concern that growing numbers of militants are going from the West to remote war zones for training in answer to al Qaeda's online call for violence.

The immediate trigger for Sunday's travel alerts was intelligence about a plot against European targets reportedly originating with a group of individuals in mountainous northern Pakistan, some of them believed to be European citizens.

Few details of the conspiracy are known. But the plot appears to be of the kind that Western officials believe poses the most significant danger today -- the use of so-called self-radicalized militants with no previous record of extremism.

This area has been the focus of military action for quite some time. Mir Ali was the scene of a major Pakistani military action in 2007, where Pakistani troops killed nearly 200 people, most of whom were terrorists, though the Pakistani forces got bloodied in the process. Quite a few of the UAV airstrikes have been directed in the vicinity of Mir Ali.