Osama, Zawahiri to be tried in Pakistan if captured

GWB’d likely pay or do anything to get him to the US.

Mmmmm, yeeeeeeeeeeah, maybe not so much. Remember? GWB–and the rest of the Right–proclaimed bin Laden a nonissue a long time ago, back when the Left was saying, “Hey, what about ‘dead or alive’?”

mck,

Well, you gave it the old Leftist try didn’t you?

I knew precisely where you were headed.

You won’t get away with that routine on this blog though.

You won’t get away with picking and choosing “choice quotes” that make your point while leaving the remainder of the context on the floor.

Sorry.

For the purposes of intellectual honesty, with which you are unfamiliar, here’s the entire exchange:

Q Mr. President, in your speeches now you rarely talk or mention Osama bin Laden. Why is that? Also, can you tell the American people if you have any more information, if you know if he is dead or alive? Final part — deep in your heart, don’t you truly believe that until you find out if he is dead or alive, you won’t really eliminate the threat of –

THE PRESIDENT: Deep in my heart I know the man is on the run, if he’s alive at all. Who knows if he’s hiding in some cave or not; we haven’t heard from him in a long time. And the idea of focusing on one person is — really indicates to me people don’t understand the scope of the mission.

Terror is bigger than one person. And he’s just — he’s a person who’s now been marginalized. His network, his host government has been destroyed. He’s the ultimate parasite who found weakness, exploited it, and met his match. He is — as I mentioned in my speech, I do mention the fact that this is a fellow who is willing to commit youngsters to their death and he, himself, tries to hide — if, in fact, he’s hiding at all.

So I don’t know where he is. You know, I just don’t spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you. I’m more worried about making sure that our soldiers are well-supplied; that the strategy is clear; that the coalition is strong; that when we find enemy bunched up like we did in Shahikot Mountains, that the military has all the support it needs to go in and do the job, which they did.

And there will be other battles in Afghanistan. There’s going to be other struggles like Shahikot, and I’m just as confident about the outcome of those future battles as I was about Shahikot, where our soldiers are performing brilliantly. We’re tough, we’re strong, they’re well-equipped. We have a good strategy. We are showing the world we know how to fight a guerrilla war with conventional means.

Q But don’t you believe that the threat that bin Laden posed won’t truly be eliminated until he is found either dead or alive?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, as I say, we haven’t heard much from him. And I wouldn’t necessarily say he’s at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don’t know where he is. I — I’ll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run. I was concerned about him, when he had taken over a country. I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban.

But once we set out the policy and started executing the plan, he became — we shoved him out more and more on the margins. He has no place to train his al Qaeda killers anymore. And if we — excuse me for a minute — and if we find a training camp, we’ll take care of it. Either we will or our friends will. That’s one of the things — part of the new phase that’s becoming apparent to the American people is that we’re working closely with other governments to deny sanctuary, or training, or a place to hide, or a place to raise money.

And we’ve got more work to do. See, that’s the thing the American people have got to understand, that we’ve only been at this six months. This is going to be a long struggle. I keep saying that; I don’t know whether you all believe me or not. But time will show you that it’s going to take a long time to achieve this objective. And I can assure you, I am not going to blink. And I’m not going to get tired. Because I know what is at stake. And history has called us to action, and I am going to seize this moment for the good of the world, for peace in the world and for freedom.

For the purposes of intellectual honesty, with which you are unfamiliar, here’s the entire exchange:

Well, Einstein, nothing you copied and pasted changed anything about what I wrote. Bush admits to being interested in al Qaeda in general, but your quotes reaffirm that he is not interested in bin Laden in particular which was, if you’ll remember, the thrust of Scott’s post.

As a matter of fact, combining the Righty talking point of “al Qaeda is defeated” with what Bush said only makes my point stronger. He lost interest in bin Laden when he was “[shoved out] more and more on the margins.”

If al Qaeda has essentially been defanged–as the Right has suggested for a long time now–then Bush really has no interest in bin Laden.

Spin all you want, but it doesn’t change the facts.

Aye and Scott… you can’t do battle with the mental midgets that believe the battle against the global Islamic jihad movements is just bin laden, or just those wearing carrying the AQ membership cards. Those minds are devoid of the movement and their strategy as a whole.

Most of us understand that when OBL is limited in movements and communications by being so high profile, his effectiveness has been hampered. That does not mean that his command tasks have not been transferred down the chain to others. And there have been massive deaths of their more experienced leadership on all fronts.

As for where OBL would be tried *if* Pakistan actually caught him… first, I’d have to believe they’d hang on to him. They have a nasty habit of trading their prisoners in their sundry truces they set up. The jihad movements in their borders would raise serious local mayhem as long as he was imprisoned.

Secondly, why bring GWB into this? The chances of capturing OBL and determining his fate with the red tape that will be involved by the end of Dubya’s term are pretty darn slim.

The big question is how will the Pakistan/US relations evolve under the new POTUS. What I see is Obama, willing to meet Chavez, Ahmadinejad, Castro et al, but snubbing Colombia and the leadership of our allies… including Asif ali Zardari. Obama’s never met with any of these people personally. He demonstrates no more interest than a passing phone call conversation at best… when he’s not busy bashing NAFTA and CAFTA, that is.

What I also saw was McCain, personally wanting to introduce Palin - face to face -to all our allies. At this moment, Palin has more “experience” with the Pakistani leadership, and other allies, than the DNC POTUS offering.

Aye and Scott… you can’t do battle with the mental midgets that believe the battle against the global Islamic jihad movements is just bin laden, or just those wearing carrying the AQ membership cards. Those minds are devoid of the movement and their strategy as a whole.

I never said he was. I said that he was not a priority to Bush. You underscore that fact, for which I thank you.

Secondly, why bring GWB into this? The chances of capturing OBL and determining his fate with the red tape that will be involved by the end of Dubya’s term are pretty darn slim.

I don’t know; why don’t you ask Scott? He’s the one who brought it up.

Half quote all you want, but I see UBL as a bi-partisan/AMERICAN problem, not a Bush problem

Duh. That’s why the Left has been outraged by the Bush Administration’s shoving him to the back burner.

I love how you guys take me to task for “misquoting” stuff by totally making rhetorical positions up for me out of whole cloth. Classic.

Actually, mck, what Scott said in his original post was that he couldn’t see Bush, McCain *or* Obama allowing Pakistan to retain possession of Bin Laden for trial without a fight.

It was you, in your post #1, that stated Bush wouldn’t care enough to do so.

So no… it was *you* who brung up the debate about Bush’s assessment on Bin Laden’s priority… none of which was in context to getting him to the US for trial. You merely stated your opinion that Bush felt Bin Laden was no longer important. An assessment that is so mentally challenged for military strategy and fact that it’s laughable.

He’s not on the back burner… never been. He’s a target, like every other jihad movement leader target. Our Afghan theatre and intel there are always on his trail because he can lead us to others as well.

But thank you for aptly demonstrating that the left think-speak parsing of sentences for political BS… ala “the meaning of is”… is still alive and well.

That’s why the Left has been outraged by the Bush Administration’s shoving him to the back burner.

I disagree that bin Laden’s been “shoved in the back burner”, simply because the efforts to hunt down bin Laden aren’t on the frontpages (I suppose the efforts would be, if it involved classified intell leaked to the NYTimes).

Also, much of the “Left outrage” is due to the fact that so many of them have misunderstood the broad scope of the war we find ourselves engaged in, and merely have the pre-9/11 law enforcement mindset of mopping up Osama and al Qaeda, rather than looking to fix the plumbing and turn off the faucet.

These might be of interest….

I had “clipped” and saved to file, this NYTimes article from earlier in the month:

September 12, 2008
On the White House
As Bush Presidency Winds Down, bin Laden Hunt Takes On New Significance
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON – Of all the unfinished business of his presidency, the hunt for Osama bin Laden may be the most vexing for President Bush.

Mr. bin Laden’s whereabouts, and why he has not been captured “dead or alive,” as Mr. Bush vowed just days after Sept. 11, 2001, invariably come up in Washington conversation this time of year, as the nation marks the anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Now, with Mr. Bush just having commemorated his final Sept. 11 as president on Thursday, the question looms larger than ever.

And the answer is much different than it was seven years ago.

“This is not the movies, we don’t have superpowers,” Dana Perino, the White House press secretary, said Wednesday, offering up the explanation that the al Qaeda leader has proved far more elusive than anyone thought. Is Mr. Bush frustrated? She ducked the question. “President Bush is trying to get it done.”

Gone was the old Bush Texas swagger that came with the “dead or alive” comment, and persisted for months afterward. Listen to Mr. Bush on Dec. 28, 2001, at his ranch in Crawford, Tex, when asked if he was concerned Mr. bin Laden was eluding the manhunt: “He is not escaping us. This is a guy who, three months ago, was in control of a country. Now maybe he’s in control of a cave. He’s on the run.”

And still is, leaving Mr. Bush to cope, at the end of his presidency, with the expectations he himself set at the beginning. His first press secretary, Ari Fleischer, says it felt right at the time for Mr. Bush to provide ”tough talk” to reassure a nervous nation. But in retrospect, Mr. Fleischer says, it was a mistake.

“He will tell you that it was a mistake,” Mr. Fleischer said. “His wife pointed that out to him right away; she told him privately that he should not have said that about Wanted, Dead or Alive, she thought it was too gung ho. He disagreed, but he agrees with her now.”

The new tone, Mr. Fleischer said, reflects a president who is “chastened about how tough a lot of this has been,” and has “learned to be more guarded” in what he says. But if Mr. Bush has learned, the men who are vying to succeed him have not.

Senator John McCain of Arizona, the Republican presidential nominee, has promised to follow Mr. bin Laden “to the gates of hell.” Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, the Democratic nominee, used his acceptance speech during the party’s convention in Denver to try to one-up Mr. McCain.

“You know John McCain likes to say that he’ll follow bin Laden to the gates of Hell,” Mr. Obama said, “but he won’t even follow him to the cave where he lives.”

Democrats like to taunt Mr. Bush over Mr. bin Laden; every so often, aides to Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, circulate an e-mail message headlined “The Bin Laden Tick-Tock,” counting the number of days the al Qaeda leader has been at large since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The White House, though, is running a tick-tock of its own. When Mr. Bush dedicated a memorial at the Pentagon on Thursday, he counted the days another way: 2,557, he said, without another terrorist attack. This is the flip side of the Sept. 11 story: seven years ago, most Americans were convinced the nation would be attacked again, and many believed Mr. bin Laden would be caught.

That it hasn’t turned out that way surprises some experts. Daniel Markey, a Pakistan expert who worked in the State Department under Mr. Bush from 2003 through 2007, said he routinely begins lectures “by saying that if somebody had told us shortly after 9/11 that we still wouldn’t have captured or killed bin Laden, there would have been real shock.”

Mr. Markey says that finding Mr. bin Laden would have been difficult under any circumstances, but that the difficulty was compounded when the United States shifted its intelligence assets to Iraq – a point Mr. Obama has made on the campaign trail. “The United States never had it easy finding and killing this guy,” Mr. Markey said. “But we did things along the way that may have made it more difficult than it needed to be.”

As the Bush presidency winds down, there is evidence the hunt is taking on fresh urgency. Earlier this month, American Special Forces helicopters attacked al Qaeda militants in a Pakistani village near the border of Afghanistan, the first publicly acknowledged United States ground raid on Pakistani soil. Officials have said Mr. Bush secretly approved orders in July for such ground assaults inside Pakistan, without the prior approval of Pakistani officials.

Experts like Mr. Markey say that catching Mr. bin Laden’s top lieutenants is as important as catching Mr. bin Laden himself, a point Ms. Perino has made repeatedly. “Fighting the war on terror has been a lot more than just hunting Osama bin Laden,” she said, adding, “As the president says, ’Osama bin Laden is not out there leading any parades.’ ”

Still, for a president who once told the journalist Bob Woodward that he kept an scorecard of al Qaeda leaders, with an X drawn over the photographs of the ones who had been captured or killed, it would almost certainly be satisfying to draw an X over Mr. bin Laden’s bearded face.

“He’s always focused on it’s not just one man, it’s the whole movement,” Mr. Fleischer said. “But knowing him, I am certain that there’s a small piece of him that would love to have bin Laden caught before 1/20/09.”

Also of interest, is this one from June:

June 15, 2008
Get Osama Bin Laden before I leave office, orders George W Bush

Sarah Baxter

President George W Bush has enlisted British special forces in a final attempt to capture Osama Bin Laden before he leaves the White House.

Defence and intelligence sources in Washington and London confirmed that a renewed hunt was on for the leader of the September 11 attacks. “If he [Bush] can say he has killed Saddam Hussein and captured Bin Laden, he can claim to have left the world a safer place,” said a US intelligence source.

Bush arrives in Britain today on the final leg of his eight-day farewell tour of Europe. He will have tea with the Queen and dinner with Gordon Brown and his wife Sarah before holding a private meeting with Brown at No 10 tomorrow and flying on to Northern Ireland.

The Special Boat Service (SBS) and the Special Reconnaissance Regiment have been taking part in the US-led operations to capture Bin Laden in the wild frontier region of northern Pakistan. It is the first time they have operated across the Afghan border on a regular basis.

The hunt was “completely sanctioned” by the Pakistani government, according to a UK special forces source. It involves the use of Predator and Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles fitted with Hellfire missiles that can be used to take out specific terrorist targets.

One US intelligence source compared the “growing number of clandestine reconnaissance missions” inside Pakistan with those conducted in Laos and Cambodia at the height of the Vietnam war.

America rarely acknowledges the use of Predator and Reaper drones, but the most recent known strike was on a suspected Al-Qaeda safe house in the Pakistani province of North Waziristan earlier in June. Villagers said the house was empty.

Intelligence on the whereabouts of Bin Laden is sketchy, but some analysts believe he is in the Bajaur tribal zone in northwest Pakistan. He has evaded capture for nearly seven years. “Bush is swinging for the fences in the hope of scoring a home run,” said an intelligence source, using a baseball metaphor.

A Pentagon source said US forces were rolling up Al-Qaeda’s network in Pakistan in the hope of pushing Bin Laden towards the Afghan border, where the US military and bombers with guided missiles were lying in wait. “They are prepping for a major battle,” he said.

The main operations in Pakistan are being undertaken by Delta, the US army special operations unit, and the British SBS.

Special forces are being sent to capture or kill Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters based on intelligence provided by the Special Reconnaissance Regiment and its US counterpart, the Security Co-ordination Detachment.

The step-up in military activity has increased tensions between Pakistan and the US. A senior Pakistani government source said President Pervez Musharraf had given tacit support to Predator attacks on Al-Qaeda.

Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, said last week that the US would “partner [the Pakistanis] to the extent they want us to” to combat insurgents.

Pakistan lodged a strong diplomatic protest last week over what it claimed was an airstrike on a border post with Afghanistan that killed 11 of its troops.

The United States declined to accept this version of events. “It is still not exactly clear what happened,” said Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser.