Eideard

Daylife/Reuters pictures used by permission

Pakistan has begun to demolish the compound where US forces killed Osama Bin Laden, in the city of Abbottabad…The al-Qaeda leader was shot dead at the compound in the north-western city near the capital Islamabad in May 2011.

Bulldozers arrived after dark to demolish the outer walls, and have been working through the night. There is heavy security around the compound, which served as Bin Laden’s hideout for more than five years.

Residents say an unannounced curfew has been placed in the area, and residents have been asked not to leave their homes, the BBC’s Ilyas Khan in Islamabad reports…

An official of the Abbottabad district administration told the BBC the operation was expected to be completed by about 22:30-23:00 GMT…

Officials say the demolition was decided soon after the 2 May 2011 raid, but it was put off when the government set up a judicial commission to investigate the operation by US forces.

“Since the commission has almost completed its work and did not need the compound for any further investigation, it was decided it should be razed,” an official said. He said the reason for the demolition was the visitors the place continued to attract, which posed a security threat to the area, located in an important garrison town.

Osama Bin Laden is said to have lived in the compound with his family for several years before he was killed.

On that day, a team of US special forces flew from Afghanistan to Bin Laden’s hiding place during the night in stealth helicopters on a secret operation. They swept through the buildings within the high-walled enclosure and shot dead a total of five people, including Bin Laden. Some 40 minutes later, they left, taking with them Bin Laden’s body and a hoard of computer data devices and other information containing intelligence about al-Qaeda and Bin Laden’s activities.

The Pakistan government says the prime reason for the demolition is to remove a point of focus, worship and reverence for the terrorist leader. Poisonally, I think it’s also a perpetual embarrassment for the Pakistan government’s inability [1] to capture Bin Laden living securely under their noses; and [2] US forces taking him out – also under the same noses.

Anyone mind if I pick some ganja from the field next door?

The CIA organised a fake vaccination programme in the town where it believed Osama bin Laden was hiding in an elaborate attempt to obtain DNA from the fugitive al-Qaida leader’s family, a Guardian investigation has found.

As part of extensive preparations for the raid that killed Bin Laden in May, CIA agents recruited a senior Pakistani doctor to organise the vaccine drive in Abbottabad, even starting the “project” in a poorer part of town to make it look more authentic, according to Pakistani and US officials and local residents.

The doctor, Shakil Afridi, has since been arrested by the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) for co-operating with American intelligence agents…

The vaccination plan was conceived after American intelligence officers tracked an al-Qaida courier, known as Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti, to what turned out to be Bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound last summer. The agency monitored the compound by satellite and surveillance from a local CIA safe house in Abbottabad, but wanted confirmation that Bin Laden was there before mounting a risky operation inside another country…

Pakistani intelligence became aware of the doctor’s activities during the investigation into the US raid in which Bin Laden was killed on the top floor of the Abbottabad house. Islamabad refused to comment officially on Afridi’s arrest, but one senior official said: “Wouldn’t any country detain people for working for a foreign spy service?”

The doctor is one of several people suspected of helping the CIA to have been arrested by the ISI, but he is thought to be the only one still in custody…

I love the outrage from sleazy Pakistan bureaucrats when their purported standards are breached. We’re supposed to accept the myth of inviolable comradeship from Ferengis who would sell their nation to the highest bidder in any war fought with gold pieces. And also the second-high bidder, the third, etc…

Pakistani intelligence officials have reportedly arrested alleged informants who gave information to the Central Intelligence Agency before the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, the former al-Qaeda leader.

The New York Times reported on Tuesday that five people had been detained, including an army major who officials said copied the license plates of cars visiting bin Laden’s compound in the city of Abbottabad, weeks before the US operation…

Neither the army nor Pakistan’s intelligence agency would confirm or deny the overall report about the detentions…

The fate of those arrested is unclear, but US officials said that Leon Panetta, the CIA director, raised the issue when he travelled to Islamabad last week to meet with Pakistani military and intelligence officials.

US-Pakistani relations have been strained over the raid by Navy SEALs on Pakistani territory, which was seen as a blow to the prestige of the country’s military.

Officials said the arrests of the alleged informants was just the latest evidence of the fractured relationship between the two nations.

The New York Times also said that at a closed briefing last week, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee asked Michael Morell, the deputy CIA director, to rate Pakistan’s co-operation with the US on counterterrorism operations, on a scale of one to 10.

“Three,” Morell replied, according to officials familiar with the exchange, the newspaper said.

That’s encouraging. I’d have rated it lower – and less productive – than that.

A suspected U.S. drone strike in Pakistan’s tribal region killed four suspected militants Friday, intelligence officials said.

It was the latest in a spate of suspected drone attacks that the United States has carried out in Pakistan since U.S. forces killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in the early morning hours of May 2.

Why must American journalists speak lawyerese? I understand why media owners, editors and producers crack the whip on “suspected perpetrator” and similar crap in daily domestic news. We’re talking about military operations on the other side of the planet.

The suspected drone fired two missiles on a vehicle in the area of Miran Shah of North Waziristan, a region near Pakistan’s border that is rife with Islamic extremists, two intelligence officials said. They asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Suspected U.S. drone strikes, a source of tension between the two nations, have increased in pace in Pakistan since bin Laden’s death.

The United States has carried out six suspected drone strikes in Pakistan in the past 15 days, according to a CNN count based on information from Pakistani intelligence sources. That works out to an average of one strike every 2.5 days.

From January 1 through May 5, by contrast, the United States conducted 20 suspected strikes, an average of one drone strike every six days, according to CNN’s count.

The recent increase, however, probably is not due to intelligence gained from bin Laden’s compound, Bill Roggio, a military affairs analyst and editor of the Long War Journal, has said.

“This uptick is not unusual from a recent historical perspective, he said. “What has happened, since the bin Laden raid, is that the U.S. has not felt pressured to dial back the attacks due to Pakistani sensibilities.”

Makes sense to me. Apparently, the White House and the State Department don’t feel much pressure to keep up the patent leather pretense that the Pakistan government has broad-based control over all departments, everyone follows political guidance as expressed by President Zardari.

Uh-huh.

“If I were dead, would I be sitting here playing with my iPad?”

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Where is the death certificate?? Why are they hiding the death certificate??
The post title speaks for itself. I rest my case.

Tea, anyone?

This is one of a series released by the White House – touching meetings, decision, announcement
of the raid in Pakistan that led to the killing of Osama Bin Laden

U.S. forces administered Muslim religious rites for Osama bin Laden aboard the USS Carl Vinson, pictured, on Monday in the Arabian Sea, a senior defense official said.

The official, who discussed the matter on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, declined to specify the methods of identification, but two Obama administration officials said DNA evidence confirmed the death.

The officials claimed the DNA evidence provides a match with 99.9% confidence…

The U.S. is believed to have collected DNA samples from bin Laden family members in the years since the 9/11 attacks that triggered the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan. It was unclear whether the U.S. also had fingerprints or some other means to identify the body on site…

The body was photographed before being buried at sea, although no images have been released by the Obama administration.

The U.S. official who disclosed the burial at sea said it would have been difficult to find a country willing to accept the remains. Obama said the remains had been handled in accordance with Islamic custom, which requires speedy burial…

Burial at sea also removes any focal point, access for worship by nutballs still devoted to Bin Laden’s murderous ideology.

It was not clear Monday whether the Obama administration intended to release its photos of bin Laden’s body.

In July 2003, when U.S. forces killed Saddam Hussein’s sons, Odai and Qusai, in a gunbattle in northern Iraq, the U.S. military released graphic after-death photographs in an effort to prove to Iraqis that they were dead.

I think most rational people know that jihadists aren’t especially interested in scientific proof. Evidence rarely means little to True Believers.

 
Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed Sunday in a firefight with U.S. forces in Pakistan and his body was recovered, President Barack Obama announced Sunday.

“Justice has been done,” Obama said in a dramatic, late-night White House speech announcing the death of the elusive mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the New York and Washington.

Obama said U.S. forces led the operation that killed bin Laden. No Americans were killed in the operation and they took care to avoid civilian casualties, he said.

“The United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda and a terrorist who is responsible for the murder of thousands of men, women and children,” Obama said…

U.S. officials said that after searching in vain for the al Qaeda leader since he disappeared in Afghanistan in late 2001, the Saudi-born extremist was killed in the Pakistani town of Abbotabad and his body recovered.

Having the body may help convince any doubters that bin Laden is really dead.

He had been the subject of a search since he eluded U.S. soldiers and Afghan militia forces in a large-scale assault on the Tora Bora mountains of Afghanistan in 2001.

The trail quickly went cold after he disappeared and many intelligence officials believed he had been hiding in Pakistan.

While in hiding, bin Laden had taunted the West and advocated his militant Islamist views in videotapes spirited from his hideaway.

Besides September 11, Washington has also linked bin Laden to a string of attacks — including the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the 2000 bombing of the warship USS Cole in Yemen.

This death alone does not mean victory. But, this death is a significant moment and hopefully may be the beginning of an end to a deadly chapter.

UPDATE: Here’s a link to the IT geek’s tweets – Sohaib Athar (@ReallyVirtual – who live-blogged the raid without knowing what he was watching. Getting away from the city for the day, relaxing in the mountains.

A founding patron of the Taliban in Afghanistan died in the hands of a younger generation of militants in the tribal badlands of Pakistan in the last few days, a victim of the vicious forces he helped create, Pakistani officials said Monday.

Brig. Sultan Amir, known by his nom de guerre, Colonel Imam, was captured by the Pakistani Taliban in northern Waziristan last March. Whether he was killed by his captors, or died of a heart attack as reported by the Taliban, remained unclear.

The demise of Colonel Imam comes 10 days after another veteran figure in the emergence of the Afghan Taliban, Gen. Naseerullah Babar, 82, died after a long illness at his home in Peshawar, in northwest Pakistan.

The death of the two men signified the end of an era of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan that began in the 1970s, stretched into the American-backed mujahedeen resistance against the Soviet occupation and was followed by the coercive Taliban rule of Afghanistan in the 1990s…

Colonel Imam formed a close bond with Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader who welcomed Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan…

A weathered figure with a long white beard and white turban who looked to be in his 70s, Colonel Imam was initially trained by the Special Forces at Fort Bragg, N.C., in 1974, and completed a master parachutist course with the 82nd Airborne Division…

A senior Pakistani government official in the tribal areas, Tariq Hayat, said Monday that he had been informed by a Pakistani official in North Waziristan that Colonel Imam was dead. The militants were demanding a ransom for the return of the body, he said. Only after the body has been reclaimed would the cause of death be known, Mr. Hayat said.

Chickens coming home to roost land in the Pentagon about as frequently as any other center for the training of imperial flunkies.

RTFA for the details. If you have watched American policy in South Asia for a spell you ain’t about to be surprised.

A Spanish politician said on Saturday that he was “stupefied” by the FBI’s decision to use his photograph to compose its latest image of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and is considering taking legal action. “Firstly I will ask the FBI for an explanation, which they haven’t given me yet, and then I will reserve the right to take legal action,” Gaspar Llamazares told CNN+.

“In the last few days I have seen the security services involved in some very strange things, some major failures, but I would never have believed they could have affected me so directly,” he said.

LLamazares is a former leader of Spain’s communist party Izquierda Unida and is currently its parliamentary spokesman.

An FBI agent said the organization was aware of similarities between the image — an “age-progressed photograph” intended to give an updated idea of bin Laden’s appearance — and that of “an existing photograph of a Spanish public official.”

Special agent Jason Pack said a forensic artist had been unable to find suitable features from the FBI’s database of photographs and used a picture from the Internet instead…

“I am stupefied the FBI has used my photo — but it could have been anyone’s — to compose a picture of a terrorist. It affects my honor, my own image and also the security of all us,” LLamazares said.

BTW – I hope you really don’t think they searched through the Web for the photo they used. Since he’s a Lefty, they probably got Llamazares’ image from one of their own databases.