Martha Raddatz from ABCNEWS: Is White House Blocking Search for Bin Laden?

[FourScore]

Is White House Blocking Search for Bin Laden?
Pentagon Would Use Special Forces to Nab Bin Laden in Pakistan, New York Times Says
By MARTHA RADDATZ
June 30, 2008—

The Pentagon has drafted a secret plan that would send U.S. special forces into the wild tribal regions of Pakistan to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, but the White House has balked at giving the mission a green light, The New York Times reported today.

The Bush administration, which has seven months left in its term, gave the go-ahead for the military to draw up the plan to take the war on terror across the Afghan border and into the mountains of Pakistan where bin Laden is believed to be hiding, according to the newspaper.

Intelligence reports have concluded that bin Laden has re-established a network of new training camps, and the number of recruits in those camps has risen to as many as 2,000 in recent months from 200 earlier this year.

Although the special forces attack plan was devised six months ago, infighting among U.S. intelligence agencies and among White House offices have blocked it from being implemented, the Times reported.

SNIP

The Taliban of Pakistan, who are close al Qaeda allies, have grown alarmingly stronger in Pakistan's lawless border areas and threatened the regional capital of Peshawar last week.

Pakistan's new coalition government, which has made a series of truces with the militants in recent months, was forced over the weekend to launch an offensive to push the militants back from the outskirts of Peshawar.

Pakistan called the operation a success, even though none of the heavily armed militants in the area were reported killed.

Pakistan announced Sunday that Bush had invited Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani to Washington next month. High on that visit's agenda is the question of whether Pakistan can restrain the Taliban by itself or whether the United States could decide to take action in the tribal areas.

A separate report said the Bush administration has also begun a "major escalation of covert operations against Iran ... to destabilize the country's religious leadership."

The charge was made by veteran journalist Seymour Hersh in the current issue of The New Yorker magazine.

Hersh claims that elite American commando units are operating inside Iran and that Congress has authorized $400 million for the covert operations...

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=5275304

[Captain Hilts]

1. We'll just have to wait for Obama to nab Osama. nt

[eppur_se_muova]

7. FAUX News drones would be apoplectic ...

They'd have to say the names three or four times every time, and still end up perplexed as to whether or not they had gotten it right.

Man, I'd PAY to see that. :)

[Captain Hilts]

9. You and me both. nt

[spanone]

2. god save us from our appointed leaders

[ladjf]

3. If bin Laden is still alive, he will never set foot in a court. He knows

were the bodies are. And if he squealed in court, the impact might be almost as dramatic as the 9-11 attack.

[NewJeffCT]

16. They said that about Saddam Hussein, too

and looked what happened there.

[ladjf]

19. I believe that Bin Laden would be more dangerous on the stand.

However, there are ways to incapacitate witnesses.

[gratuitous]

4. And what if it is, Martha?

What are you going to do about it . . . little girl?

(Don't you just see the Bush administration as Robert Mitchum from Night of the Hunter?)

[Captain Hilts]

10. That "little girl," has done some very good, tough reporting in Iraq. nt

[gratuitous]

12. And what is she and her network going to do about it?

If the White House is hampering bringing Osama bin Laden to justice, what's to be done? Will she and her network give this story one airing on a Monday during a holiday week in the middle of the summer, or will they really bore in, and do some "good, tough reporting" not just in Iraq, but in Washington DC and New York? This appears to be a problem (and there are a lot of them with this administration) that can't be solved with one two-minute segment on the evening news.

[Gabi Hayes]

15. like this, on the heels of Powell's blowfest at the UN?

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/05/28/gibson/


On the same show, Diane Sawyer introduced Martha Raddatz to talk about the Powell speech, and Raddatz promptly said things like this:


"Good morning, Diane. Secretary Powell laid out a strong case against Saddam Hussein," and like this: "Powell said Iraq moved weapons to avoid detection. Satellite imagery, he said, shows a storage area for chemical weapons," and like this:

"Powell also said evidence indicates that Iraq may have 25,000 liters of anthrax, has two of three components needed to build a nuclear bomb, and has ties to and harbors al Qaeda."

They then cut to Condoleezza Rice saying: "The Iraqis know what they need to do. And a little bit here and a little there is not going to get it done." Raddatz concluded:

"Powell's presentation walked a delicate line between revealing new information and protecting methods of intelligence gathering." There was not a single syllable uttered that questioned any of this and, needless to say, no dissenting voices were heard.

[Captain Hilts]

17. I said she's done some strong reporting on the costs - human - of the Iraq War...nt

[Gabi Hayes]

18. no you didn't

please reread the post to which I responded

thanks

[Pirate Smile]

5. This should have been the story for today.

[Igel]

6. Almost certainly.

Knotty problem.

Send in troops--covert or not--and you wind up pissing off the locals. What people say about Iraq--our troops provoke most of the violence, even Iraqi-vs-Iraqi violence--would be said about Pakistan.

It would also provoke the authorities. Given Musharraf's tenuous hold, it would have pitched him over very quickly. We've seen how forceful Zardari and Sharif and Gilani are--Gilani is stuck, as Zardari and Sharif try to figure out how best to manipulate things to get power, with most of the machinations involving personal consequences from undoing part of the PCO and purge of the highest levels of the judiciary. So right now they're letting the Islamists pretty much have a free hand--well, until it became clear that the government wasn't in the governing business, and some show had to be made--and pissing off the jurists, for whom the entire judicial purge was a direct affront on *their* power.

Now to do something would immediately cause Zardari and Sharif to find a rallying cause--they're killing people like us, so everybody like us must rally together. As it is, Zardari's afraid of upsetting the Islamists lest they say 'boo' at him, and Sharif rather likes many of them.

So, yeah, I can see why * might not let the marines tramp into the Pukhtun areas, given the sheer number of factions, the complexity of the interplay between the tribal/religious/criminal factions, and the fact that the us-vs-them is present in ways that make *'s use of the phrase pale to singing Kumbaya around a campfire.

[JDPriestly]

8. This will be the September/October surprise.

Bush will push into Pakistan and capture what is left of Bin Laden's command operation.

If the Taliban doesn't stop him.

I have been predicting this for a long time. They have been listening in to Al Qaeda in Pakistan for a long time and have been waiting for the strategically best moment politically to go in.

I suspect that Congressional leaders have already told Bush that the authorization for the Afghanistan invasion more than covers capturing Al Qaeda leadership wherever it is. (I hope they catch him, but the use of this for political purposes is disgusting. They could have caught the Al Qaeda leadership years ago.)

[noel711]

11. Duh! Does the pope wear red shoes?

And yet the media is running circles around Wesley Clark...

[jazzjunkysue]

13. ABC does news? ABC does truth? Why?

Do they think the truth will come out after this administration packs up and leaves?

Gee- I guess it would make sense if the "news" knew about it and started reporting it, since it will all come out eventually.

I wonder which ABC exec will be fired for this? Or, is it someone's parting shot on the way out to retirement?

[bdamomma]

14. this shouldn't be of no surprise to us, the bushes and bin ladens

are thick as thieves. What total BS.