Bryan, some of these stories are catching up with my conversation with the shade of James Jesus Angleton, in which he explicitly raised the possibility that Zawahiri ratted out his boss. Angleton had a plausible theory: Al Qaeda is getting slaughtered in Afghanistan, cash flow is down, recruitments are down, and the really big prize–Egypt, as you note–is on the table.
If UBL were in favor of fighting to the last recruit in Afghanistan, Zawahiri might have decided to, uh, bite the bullet.
But there is a lot of disinformation in the air. The Pakistanis surely knew about the operation. It will eventually emerge, I suspect, that the helicopters reached Abbotville from a base in Pakistan, not from Afghanistan. And whoever betrayed UBL has every good reason to cover it up. So who are the candidates? The list is pretty interesting:
1. The Pakistanis (to draw the increasingly painful sting of American complaints about their legendary duplicity);
2. The Saudis (many reasons);
3. One of UBL’s “trusted associates” (for the money and to save his skin);
4. The Iranians (if it turns out that UBL arrived fairly recently in Pakistan, rather than the story he was in the villa for five years, which is hard to believe…)
And of course, the Middle East’s favorite deus ex machina, the Mossad. Right on the eve of Netanyahu’s big trip to Washington, no less.
Anyway, Angleton deserves a lot of credit for sniffing it out at the outset, don’t you think? All thanks to medieval technology (my ouija board)!
The US Government should certainly claim that every one of them “betrayed” OBL. Some with more information than others but because each found it in THEIR interst to “stab him in the back”.
That will create friction and, most importantly, distrust, among the enemy. Just as there is no honor among thieves, there is none among Terrorists. Distrust is like acid on a rock. Eventually it weakens even the strongest.
It might be in Zawahiri’s interest to promote this, now that OBL is gone.
My first reaction on hearing the news that we’d capped him was to wonder who shopped the ol’ boy. You see, I have this strange feeling that the intel that’s been gabbled about this past week — you know: we found out his courier’s nom de guerre; then his real name; then we tracked him about the place, and then to This Place; then we did a bunch of satellite photos; then we watched the inmates burning their trash, and couldn’t see a telephone line, &c. &c. &c. — is just not a or the basis on which one sends in SEAL Team Six, or Delta Force, or whatever that Air Force analogue is. You don’t send those boys in, on that kind of a mission, 30 miles from the capital city of a (nominal, at least) ally, and in a neighborhood populated by its retired senior nut-crackers, unless you Jolly Well Know whom you’re going to find. “We were really, really, REALLY confident that it was OBL in there,” just doesn’t get it. Dear reader, please recall that this is a president who, fer cryin’ out loud, won’t address an elementary school class without a Telepromptr, and I’m supposed to believe that he sent in Team Six without absolutely, positively knowing? He’s going to gamble his presidency on “I’m really sure”?
So OBL got shopped; but by whom? I disagree it might have been the Saudis or the Iranians; he’s been their most useful scarcecrow since the Clinton administration. “You’re just hasslin’ us because you can’t find Osama and you’ve got to kick dirt at the umpire so folks won’t see you can’t hit a breaking ball.”
My own Top 3 Contenders are his own people, Pakistan, and the Taliban, in that order. To which of those groups is he useful, at all? His money’s spent or frozen, and he can’t very well go traipsing about the place drumming for more. He daren’t so much as light off a cell phone to wish one of his concubines a happy mothers’ day. He’s a focal point for attention to al Qaeda; so long as he’s alive to pick his own fleas not even President Ayers . . . ummm . . . Obama can abandon the manhunt for him. Dead, he’s a martyr. Dead, he’s a (bogus) argument, which al Qaeda’s allies at the NYT et al. can and will (just wait, gentle reader) deploy in support of the argument that Osama’s-dead-now-we-can-all-go-home-and-pretend-it’s-September 10. Dead, he’s a job opening. My first question was who’s playing Stalin to his Lenin?
Second of course is Pakistan, which has obviously been harboring him for years now. The area he was living in is populated by officials who only survived to retirement age (please let us not forget how this part of the world operates) because they made it their business to know who everyone about them was, with whom he was connected, and what he was up to, both short- and long-term. At all times. And we’re supposed to accept that his neighbors, who by definition are Wired In Big-Time, just ignored a windowless, fortified, sealed-off compound going up in their midst? Anyone who propounds the theory that Pakistan did not know precisely who lived there is simply not to be taken seriously. Same dynamics apply from Pakistan’s standpoint: Osama’s no use to them; their allies are in power in most parts of Afghanistan outside the capital; their allies’ foot-soldiers are doing well up in the “tribal” (read: “we aren’t willing to control them”) areas. The U.S. is growing increasingly restive about their not-even-subtle-anymore game. Throw President Photo Op a bone. Pakistan and its (real) allies can be assured that he will strut and puff (and yep, he’s got a right to, up to a point; the Call was his to make and he in fact made it, knowing full well that with a very few unfortunate circumstances halfway around the gloge he could end up with another Desert One on his hands 18 months before a re-election campaign), and his sycophants in the press will portray him as a cross between Horatio at the bridge, Roland, and Pastor Bonhoeffer. Because the present American high command just isn’t all that interested in winning this struggle, Osama’s death will be presented as an argument that we’ve won and can all go home and plunder Joe the Plumber.
Finally there are the Taliban. Osama is their competitor, for money, for recruits, for air time. Anyone’s who’s even slightly familiar with the back stories to the coalitions which won World Wars I and II will recall that even the tightest of allies, Britain and the U.S. (O! for the days . . .), kept a very close watch on what each other was doing, and how the manner in which the war was fought out would implicate their post-war objectives . . . which were, let us not forget, not identical. So the Taliban with Osama. He’s a center of authority and legitimacy. So are the Taliban. He’s all about global jihad. The Taliban is about geopolitical power (if not, then why are they so keen to keep taking over the same god-forsaken country?). To them, dead, he’s a martyr. Dead, he’s a recruiting tool (“Kid, Osama couldn’t even hide from the Infidel in his own kitchen. We’re the goods now. Allah hasn’t cut those people (i.e., al Qaeda) a break in years; do you really think they’re Right With Allah? You need to sign on with us, kid. Here’s your vest; make sure you don’t get the detonaters wet.”). Dead, Osama won’t order operations which might compromise their own.
Osama got sold down the river. The most likely candidates for having done so are those nominally closest to him. In which case they merely demonstrate that everything we’ve been saying about them these past 13 or so years is true or worse.
I must say, I find this kind of conjecture trivial. We have versions of how the information came out that are very damaging to the enemy, too weak to withstand a little pressure so a captive gave up the name, but we are too weak to embrace our own victories so the propaganda value of knowing how to force a confession without causing permanent damage goes to waste.
1. I have never believed that AQ was an independent organization. I think the best guess is that when it was exiled from Somalia to Afghanistan, it was adopted by Iraqi intelligence in cooperation with ISI, which was and is running the Taliban.
2. At some point a few years ago, ISI was left with the whole ball of wax. It was probably they who decided to rat out Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the brutal Palestinian who was running the Iraq operation. By that time it was clear that a Sunni government was not going to be established in Iraq, and ISI did not want to run the risk of provoking the Iranians.
3. I credit the report that OBL was living in Abbottobad for several years. It makes perfect sense, with ISI running things, OBL was a 5th wheel, and, he was “retired” and told to work on his memoirs. OBL was not running AQ with out coms or an office that had them. Besides, if OBL were important they would have at least provided him with bodyguards.
4. Zawahiri didn’t rat OBL out. He is probably in a similar pension in another “safe” town under the CC&C of ISI.
5. Did ISI rat OBL out? Most likely, What better way to get the US out of the neighborhood. Now, Obama can now declare the war won and exit. And they got the $50 million. And OBL is a martyr who can be summoned up to motivate the rabble when necessary.
6. The Iranians had a motive if they figured that it would set the US and Pakistan at odds, but I think that is too much of a 3 cushion shot.
7. OBLs trusted associates probably did not know where he was. except for the two “couriers” who got shot during the raid. They were clearly not part of the deal.
8. The Saud’s didn’t do it. They are too pissed at BO to hand him a prize. If they liked BO, they could have given him a much bigger prize by upping oil production.
The first place this was reported from, was a Saudi news paper. It got me to wondering if someone in Saudi Arabia was trying to foment some hate and discontent between Zawahiri’s Egyptian faction and Bin Laden’s Saudi and Yemin followers. Get them to fight amongst each other, and sit back and watch.
Frankly, I think we got him ourselves. We had a safe house in town right under ISI’s nose, it turns out, and frankly, our intel is so much more capable now than it was ten years ago it’s hilarious.
It has been reported that a live person, OBL’s other son?, was taken from the compound by the U.S. If true then that is who sold him.
Is the Pope catholic? I don’t know if it was Zawahiri–it would make more sense if the Pakistanis dropped the dime on him–In the end someone was either a rat or incompetent enough to attract attention and lead the US forces to the “mansion.”
OBL could have been still alive if only he had severed all ties to AQ and got himself an apartment in Islamabad. All he had to do was to dress in a burka and keep his mouth shut.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouija
One of the first mentions of the automatic writing method used in the Ouija board is found in China around 1100 BCE, in historical documents of the Song Dynasty.
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The businessmen Elijah Bond and Charles Kennard had the idea to patent a planchette sold with a board on which the alphabet was printed. The patentees filed on May 28, 1890 for patent protection and thus had invented the first Ouija board.
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For whose benefit are all the stories? Forty minutes? A short distance from a military academy? Buried at sea? The crew of the Vinson will be lubricated by every agent available come next port visit.
I think Pakistan’s insurance is really China, Pakistan’s deepest and most important strategic partner. Witness Pak generals constantly freaking out about India. Perhaps what that really signifies is, Pakistani opposition to India is its strategic crux because, without that conflict, China would not think Pakistan very valuable.
Plus I must bring up again an interesting CSPAN broadcast of a House China briefing sometime in early 2010, I believe, starring the head of PACOM, his Marines counterpart, and the head of the China (or E Asia desk, or something) from the State Department. ALL of them said China has not even begun to talk about aiding the US in the WOT, much less cooperate. When a Congressman from Georgia asked the panel whether they’d read Unrestricted Warfare, the panel said that they had, but they would rather discuss it in closed session.
So now we have Osama squashed next to Pakistan’s West Point, and – aside from the lunatic idea that Pakistan didn’t know – we are to invited to infer that Pakistan did it through “rogue elements of ISI” or Iran? Really. The previous round of global terror – PLO, Baader-Meinhoff, Carlos the Jackal, Red Brigades, Shining Path, Sandinistas, etc. – were all supported, and often created, by the Soviet Union. Why is it that this round of Islamists, whom China supplied along with us, through Pakistan, during the Soviet-Afghan thing, we can’t possibly finger China as the ultimate sponsr, or the SCO?
I don’t get it. These little trashcanistans, no matter how virulent and suicidal, would not suddenly up and wage strategic war against the USA. I just find that scenario utterly implausible. Maybe they would AS PROXIES, but not because they’d gotten some crappy little network together. Sorry, I just don’t buy it.
Well, there’s always this startling possibility: the Americans tracked Bin Laden through a close confidant, woke him up one night, shot him in the face and tossed his body off an aircraft carrier into the Arabian Sea.
The End.