Bush, al-Qaeda and Pakistan

I could have sworn I heard President Dubya say that we would root out the terrorists wherever they are.

They caught this guy al-libbi, al-Qaeda' supposed third in command, over in Pakistan last week. They've extracted five others from there. And its supposedly a hot bed of activity. Yet, Bush just looks the other way. Why is this? Why are we not bombing Pakistan back to the stone age?

Whatever his importance, al-Libbi is the sixth Al-Qaeda figure to have been caught in Pakistan, suggesting that the country is now the organisation’s centre of operations. The interior minister, Aftab Khan Sherpao, conceded that Bin Laden and his deputy might be hiding in a Pakistani city.

This whole thing is ridiculous. Now it seems this al-libbi isn't quite who they claimed he is. Big surprise.

No European or American intelligence expert contacted last week had heard of al-Libbi until a Pakistani intelligence report last year claimed he had taken over as head of operations after Khalid Shaikh Mohammad’s arrest. A former close associate of Bin Laden now living in London laughed: “What I remember of him is he used to make the coffee and do the photocopying.”

Captured Al-Qaeda kingpin is case of ‘mistaken identity’
Christina Lamb and Mohammad Shehzad Islamabad

THE capture of a supposed Al-Qaeda kingpin by Pakistani agents last week was hailed by President George W Bush as “a critical victory in the war on terror”. According to European intelligence experts, however, Abu Faraj al-Libbi was not the terrorists’ third in command, as claimed, but a middle-ranker derided by one source as “among the flotsam and jetsam” of the organisation.
www.timesonline.co.uk...

Very interesting ECK.
I wonder who this person is?

Agents were also said to be interrogating a second key Al Qaeda figure captured alongside Al Libbi during a shootout in Mardan. His identity remains a closely guarded secret.

Link

Either 'they' are not telling who this person is because...
#1. The person is of high importance, or
#2. They have no idea who this person is, yet.

Sanc'.

Man, who knows. When I first heard of the capture of al-libbi I was very skeptical. Who had ever heard of the guy before? No one! In the article I posted it sez certain intel people had themselves never heard of the guy. The excuse was.. well.. uh.. we dint wanna tip him off that we were after him! Yeah, sure, youbetcha!

It did say he was responsible for trying to hit Musharef a time or two in Pakistan. To go from that to being al-Qaeda's third in command is quite the stretch.



[edit on 19-09-2003 by EastCoastKid]

ECK, have you seen this ATSNN thread?

Sanc'.

I just saw it. You asked:

This is great news. I just hope that a lot of 'hard' information such as hard-drives and CD's were found at the time of the arrest, as i don't think it will be easy to get true information from al-Libbi himself.

According to that article I read earlier, the only thing they've probly found on him are keys to the jihad cafe.

I think they got their wires crossed; and now they're trying to downplay it.

Why bomb them into the stone age when you have the government of that nation rooting them out for you at no cost. If we bombed them, the tulipwalkers would again accuse the US of killing hundreds of millions of innocent children and no telling what other bull# they can come up with.


Its simple, as long as Mushariff is in charge and cant root them out, let him do it.

[edit on 8-5-2005 by edsinger]

I would also venture to say that someone whose job it is to make coffee and photocopies for bin Laden is in a very important and potentially powerful position.

What can I slip into the coffee?

What is it that I am photcopying?

You didn't read it, I guess. The former Bin Laden associate who said that was being sarcastic. To him and his knowledge, the guy was of little to no importance. This is no surprise. BushCo. hasn't done jack about the so-called terrorists or those who truly give them sactuary. Pakistan is no friend of the USA. Quite the opposite. Yet, BushCo. closes their eyes to it. This whole Global War on Terror is nothing but a fraud. (And that's not to say there aren't terrorists and very hard working agents chasing plots down.) It's a fraud created to justify the PNAC agenda.

You're right - I didn't read it till just now. Usually the link is posted at the beginning of a series of disconnected quotes, not at the end.

And what would you expect the man to say? Would you expect him to tremble and mumble "All is lost! A great source of information has been captured!"

If al-libbi was anything more than a peon and middle-man, I doubt the guy would be so casual and flippant about him.

The first thing I thought of when it broke was.. so why havn't we EVER heard about this guy before? He wasn't even on our watch lists.

I'm sure ol' Pervez is happy he's been disappeared, tho. At least he doesn't havta worry about the crackpot trying to kill him anymore. (al-Libbi's claim to fame.)

The first thing that came to mind when I heard of this guy's capture was "great, we've caught another US government-manufactured terror mastermind." I follow the War on Terror and terrorism in general fairly closely. I've read many books and done plenty of research. I too have never heard of this guy.

If it wasn't such a serious subject I'd probably laugh. Yet another example of this is the announcement on Fox News just a few moments ago that the Iraqi Government captured a "key al Zarqawi aid." Great. Add him to the list of "al Zarqawi aids" we've captured in the past year. How many close aids does this guy have? We've seem to have captured dozens of them yet we're nowhere near capturing al Zarqawi, who himself is likely a US government-manufactured terror mastermind.

Look, I support our government 110% in this war on terror. But the need to make up terrorists for us to capture is not there. I'd rather hear no news then made-up news. If we spent less time manufacturing these terrorists we're capturing and putting out press releases about it and MORE time hunting the real terrorists, we'd have captured bin Laden by now!

Good points Rasputin.

I personally think al Zarqawi is dead.

All this points to what I was saying, that so much of this is pure fiction.

I have total faith and confidence that our intelligence personnel are excellent at what they do, and that they surely would have caught these people by now.

I have an idea for them - go to Fox and enlist Jack Bauer and President Palmer!

Then it would be on!

East Coast Kid: Good to see you're still carrying the flame on this issue.... Pakistan and Saudi Arabia both had 1,000 times more of a hand in 9/11 than Iraq, and yet where are american troops dying right now?

here's a link that may be of interest to the thread, not too sure about the source, but it doesn't really matter since it's just a collection of a lot of news articles, with their own sources cited, detailing pakistans acitivites in the so-called "War on Terror" :

www.yirmeyahureview.com...

-koji K.

[edit on 8-5-2005 by koji_K]

Research skills must not be of no importance this day in time when applied to media personnel?
Simple Google search indicates:
Senior Al Qaeda Leader's Notebook Seized: Al-Libbi's Notebook Believed to Contain Valuable Contact Information, Source Says

Abu Faraj al-Libbi + notebook found

This may be useful to you, but will obviously be found not to your liking being it is those pesky Neocons keeping track and score, right?
The Terrorist Scorecard





seekerof

Hey Koji, thanks for the link. Will definitely check it out.

It seems, for those who havn't heard, certain Pakistanis have given nookular "stuff" to N. Korea. If that isn't an offense worth frying someone over, I don't know what is. That guy got away scot free.

So, who's side is BushCo. on anyway?!

There's no reason in the world for us to be wasting our manpower and equipment in Iraq! It's insane.

Here's a link to another article - its about beltway man-ho Jeff Gannon - but it gets into Pakistan, strangely enuff. I can't confirm the validity of claims made, as I'm unaware of the writer; I'll let the readers be the judge of it. I just thot it was an interesting twist - considering I had just started this thread.

Now, having filled you in on the PDB and Brother Gannon the Fudgepacker, lets look at what comes next on the menu. It seems that foreign informants told the CIA early in March of 2005, that very sensitive information had been, and was being, passed, by an American, to certain countries who were not friendly to the United States. Among these countries were North Korea and Pakistan. Although the President of Pakistan is ostensibly friendly to us, his intelligence agencies are not. They are far more sympathetic to the Muslim fundamentalists that infest their northern provinces than to the self-centered desires of Washington. Musharraf is living on borrowed time and if he falls from power, Pakistan, neighbor of Afghanistan and enemy of India, will most certainly go fundamentalist. Any chance the US might have of interdicting and destroying al Queda will go down the drain and there is a very strong probability that Pakistan will launch a nuclear war against their bitter rival India, probably over control of Kashmir.

At any rate, our CIA discovered, given its incompetence probably quite by accident, that not only these two unpleasant and potentially very dangerous entities have been getting top level inside US intelligence material, others have as well. The PDF was quickly identified as the source of the information because some of the contrived, or tarted up, news contained in it was included in the intercepts. Since the circulation of the PDB is very limited, it was relatively easy to ascertain the dates from which the stolen information was lifted. The investigation was basically twofold. The person, or persons, who were supplying our enemies with very sensitive material had to be located and then the source of this information had to be pinpointed.
www.thetruthseeker.co.uk...

Originally posted by Seekerof
This may be useful to you, but will obviously be found not to your liking being it is those pesky Neocons keeping track and score, right?

The Terrorist Scorecard

Seekerof, you must be really bored today to be paying me so much attention. I am flattered, though.

Btw, it's a shame Byrd shut down that thread on the Palestinian kid. I was in the process of responding to you about it. I think you would've appreciated what I had to say to you about that. Oh well.

There is this report from MSNBC explaining the interest in Al Libbi,

Why he is significant:
• Al-Libbi, a Libyan citizen who has long worked with Osama bin Laden, is believed to have taken over the No. 3 job in al-Qaida with the capture of his mentor Khalid Sheik Mohammed in March of 2003, a senior U.S. official tells NBC News.
• Al-Libbi is in charge of all al-Qaida's U.S. and U.K. operations, including any current plots.
• Al-Libbi knows at least the general whereabouts of bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida's No. 2.
• He is believed to be the mastermind of the Dec. 14 and 25 assassination attempts against Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.
• Al-Libbi is believed to have played a role in organizing the 9/11 attacks as Mohammed's top deputy.
• Al-Libbi was previously the director of al-Qaida's North African operations.

Also according to the MSNBC report al Libbi has been a person of interest for a couple of years by the Pakistani and U.S. governments,

Capturing him had become a top priority of intelligence agencies in both Pakistan and the United States. Although he has been known to intelligence officials for several years and has been a top target since the capture of Mohammed, capturing him has taken on a new urgency with the discovery of surveillance reports and other intelligence.

The discoveries, on the hard drives of computers of three al-Qaida operatives, have provided the United States and Pakistan with a trove of material regarding al-Qaida plans. Much of what is known about al-Libbi comes from al-Qaida detainees, both those captured in 2003, like Mohammed, and those recently captured.

Al-Libbi is more low-key than Mohammed and slightly older. And unlike Mohammed, he is not familiar with the West, which U.S. officials believe put him at a disadvantage compared with his predecessor and mentor. He is typical of the new group of leaders in the terrorist organization, say U.S. officials, not as capable as their predecessors, but dangerous nonetheless.

MSNBC


Other news stories I've come across have said that Al Libbi was captured based on U.S. intell provided to the Pakistanis - one can hardly make the assumption that Bush is not going after these guys based on the available reports detailing the cooperation between the two governments.

There's just way too much hypocrisy going on. They should never have let that pakistani scientist off the hook for supplying N. Korea with those nuke secrets.

Can you provide links to those articles? Muchas gracias.

Originally posted by EastCoastKid
Can you provide links to those articles? Muchas gracias.

Apologies.. I just saw the MSNBC link.

We are not bombing pakistan because
A) they have nuclear weapons
B) they are customers of American made warplanes, rockets, and other fine household weaponry.

As the old saying goes "you don't bomb the hand that feeds you"