ROSEMONT, Ill. (Christian Examiner) – Osama bin Laden was a “good man” who only decided to wage war against the United States after it broke its Cold War promises to rebuild Afghanistan once Russia was expelled from the country, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan said in an address to his followers, a handful of Muslims and several Jews Sunday.
A bit of news early in John Brennan’s testimony. Former CIA official Michael Scheuer has charged that Brennan, as chief of the CIA station in Saudi Arabia during the late 1990s, convinced the Clinton administration not to attempt an operation to capture Osama bin Laden. Asked by Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) whether that story is true, Brennan said it was.
“Based on what I had known at the time,” he said, “I didn’t think it was a worthwhile operation and had low chances of success.”
He was not in the chain of command and had no control over decisions made in Washington — Clinton national security adviser Sandy Berger ordered the operation cancelled. Brennan said he had “no second thoughts whatsoever … chances of success were minimal” and it was likely that “other individuals were going to be killed.”
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., opposed cutting foreign aid to Pakistan by arguing, among other things, that the Pakistanis haven’t gotten enough credit for their assistance in the operations that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden.
Kerry was responding to Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who suggested that the United States demand that Pakistan release Dr. Shakeel Afridi, whom they arrested after he helped the United States find bin Laden. Kerry noted the logistical support Pakistan provides to the Aghanistan war before suggesting that Pakistan helped American forces get bin Laden.
“Our folks were able to cooperate on the ground in Pakistan,” Kerry said during his first hearing about his nomination to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. “That’s one of the ways we were able to get Osama bin Laden. I don’t think the Pakistanis have frankly gotten credit, sufficiently, for the fact that they were helpful. It was their permissiveness in allowing our people to be there that helped us to be able to tie the knots that focused on that. To some degree — not exclusively, obviously, but to some degree.”
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President Obama ordered the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound, eliminating the man responsible for the 9/11 attacks: twitter.com/BarackObama/st…
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) November 5, 2012
In an adaptation from his new book, The Finish—first reported for Vanity Fair—magazinecontributing editor Mark Bowden reveals that President Obama intended to put Osama bin Laden on trial in the federal court system if he had been captured, rather than killed, during the Abbottabad raid. Bowden had access to key players including C.I.A. deputy director Michael Morell and the president himself.
According to Bowden in the story—in November’s Vanity Fair—in the unlikely event that bin Laden surrendered, Obama saw an opportunity to resurrect the idea of a criminal trial, which Attorney General Eric Holder had planned for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. This time, the president tells Bowden, he was prepared to bring bin Laden back and put him on trial in a federal court. “We worked through the legal and political issues that would have been involved, and Congress and the desire to send him to Guantánamo, and to not try him, and Article III.” Obama continues: “I mean, we had worked through a whole bunch of those scenarios. But, frankly, my belief was if we had captured him, that I would be in a pretty strong position, politically, here, to argue that displaying due process and rule of law would be our best weapon against al-Qaeda, in preventing him from appearing as a martyr.”
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(ANI) — Film-makers in Hollywood are terrified of inciting further retribution against America over a string of new films showing the US mission to kill Osama Bin Laden.
The shooting for two films is complete and they are scheduled for release before Christmas, with a third awaiting the go-ahead. All are under scrutiny after protests across the Islamic world and the killing of the US ambassador in the Libyan city of Benghazi over the anti-Islam US film on Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), according to the Daily Express.
At least one fearful studio has asked an Islamic cleric to vet its script. Senior executives at another studio have entered into intense briefing sessions with US State Department officials to minimise or expunge any content which otherwise might be viewed as offensive.
Filmmakers are worried that fundamentalists could target cinemas where the films are playing, with one admitting: “We are even asking if we dare release anything on this subject.”
In late 1999, two years before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people, a group of Afghan agents loyal to an anti-Taliban guerrilla leader proposed assassinating Osama bin Laden. All they wanted was the $5 million reward the Clinton administration had offered for bin Laden’s capture, says a former Polish spy who was the Afghans’ go-between on the plot.
The CIA rejected the plan, however, saying, “We do not have a license to kill.”
“They gave us the exact location of the houses where bin Laden would be staying in Kandahar, the route he would be taking between his living quarters, his meeting place, and what kind of transportation he would be using,” Makowski told McClatchy in a recent interview, referring to the city in southern Afghanistan that was the Taliban’s seat of power. The Afghans planned to use car bombs to kill the Saudi-born leader of al Qaida.
(CBS News) Al Qaeda has wasted no time in calling for the death of the former Navy SEAL who has written a book under a pseudonym which his publisher Dutton calls a first person account of the death of Osama bin Laden.
A jihadist forum, al-Fidaa, located in Malaysia, posted the death calls and provided the author's name and photograph under a headline titled "First Image of One of the Dogs who killed Bin Laden." Dogs are considered unclean in Islam.
Al-Fidaa, which is also used by al Qaeda to recruit suicide bombers, posted comments by one member, Abu (father of, in Arabic) Dujanah al-Kinani, warning that the "lion's cubs," the mujahedeen (holy warriors), are now waiting for the right time to avenge bin laden's death. Usama means "lion" in Arabic. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the new leader of al-Qaeda has called bin Laden, "the lion of Islam." Jihadi online forums sometimes refer to Bin Laden as the "Lion of the Holy Jihad."
At the urging of Valerie Jarrett, President Barack Obama canceled the operation to kill Osama bin Laden on three separate occasions before finally approving the May 2, 2011 Navy SEAL mission, according to an explosive new book scheduled for release August 21. The Daily Caller has seen a portion of the chapter in which the stunning revelation appears.
In ”Leading from Behind: The Reluctant President and the Advisors Who Decide for Him
“ Richard Miniter writes that Obama canceled the “kill” mission in January 2011, again in February, and a third time in March.
A few months before Osama bin Laden's death, websites linked to al Qaeda ran excited commentary about a proposed new killing machine dubbed the "human lawn mower." The idea was to attach rotating blades to the front of a pickup truck and drive the contraption into crowds.
While some jihadists admired the idea, one graying veteran of the terrorist movement took a stand against it. That was bin Laden himself, by then living out his twilight years in a Pakistani villa with ample time to think about his legacy. The man who famously ordered jetliners flown into skyscrapers drew the line at cutting down humans like weeds.
Gadahn wrote much as if he were a media planner corresponding with a client. He included suggestions about the timing of video appearances after the 2010 U.S. midterm elections and use of high-definition video, and made snarky evaluations of major U.S. networks.
As I wrote last week, Gadahn hated Fox News (“falls into the abyss”); he liked MSNBC but complained about the firing of Keith Olbermann; he had mixed feelings about CNN (better in Arabic than in English) and made flattering comments about CBS and ABC. Basically, he wanted to play them all off to al-Qaeda’s best advantage. He also mentioned print journalists, most prominently Robert Fisk of The Independent of Britain. He cites three Americans (“Brian Russ,” “Simon Hirsh” and “Jerry Van Dyke”), though it’s uncertain whom he meant.
Serving and former US Navy SEALs have slammed President Barack Obama for taking the credit for killing Osama bin Laden and accused him of using Special Forces operators as ‘ammunition’ for his re-election campaign.
The SEALs spoke out to MailOnline after the Obama campaign released an ad entitled ‘One Chance’.
In it President Bill Clinton is featured saying that Mr Obama took ‘the harder and the more honourable path’ in ordering that bin Laden be killed. The words ‘Which path would Mitt Romney have taken?’ are then displayed.
Besides the ad, the White House is marking the first anniversary of the SEAL Team Six raid that killed bin Laden inside his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan with a series of briefings and an NBC interview in the Situation Room designed to highlight the ‘gutsy call’ made by the President.
Mr Obama used a news conference today to trumpet his personal role and imply that his Republican opponent Mr Romney, who in 2008 expressed reservations about the wisdom of sending troops into Pakistan, would have let bin Laden live.
‘I said that I’d go after bin Laden if we had a clear shot at him, and I did,’ Mr Obama said. ‘If there are others who have said one thing and now suggest they’d do something else, then I’d go ahead and let them explain it.’
Keep on reading…Former Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen also takes issue with politicizing bin Laden's killing.
(Politico) — Adm. Mike Mullen has told NBC News that he worries “a great deal” that the Osama bin Laden raid could be overly politicized in 2012 campaign season.
The interview, part of NBC News’s special Rock Center episode pegged to the anniversary of bin Laden’s death, was previewed on NBC Nightly News tonight.
President Obama’s re-election team on Sunday claimed presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney lacked the grit to order the killing of Osama bin Laden, in a particularly aggressive attack drawing Republican scorn around the anniversary of the al Qaeda leader’s death.
Asked whether Romney would have approved the same clandestine raid Obama ordered a year ago, when he dispatched a Navy SEALs team to bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan, Obama campaign adviser Robert Gibbs said, “I don’t think it’s clear that he would.”
London: Two of Osama's widows were involved in a vicious catfight in a Pakistani prison over the youngest wife's suspicion that the eldest had betrayed the slain al-Qaeda leader, a media report said on Thursday.
The brawl took place as Khairiah Saber, Osama Bin Laden's eldest wife branded her younger rival Amal Ahmed al-Sadah, a slut, sparking off a vicious catfight in the prison.
The brawling pair, kept in custody since the world's most wanted terrorist was killed last May, had to be pulled apart by shocked guards.
Guards were under "strict instructions" never to leave oldest wife Khairiah, 61, alone with youngest Amal, 29, in case one of them kills the other, the Sun reported.
A commander from Pakistani spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) told the daily how the amazing bust-up was sparked by Amal's suspicions that Khairiah had betrayed five-times married Bin Laden, by leaking his location in Pakistan to US Special Forces.
The U.S is not a signatory to the International Criminal Court treaty. However, President Obama did have the U.S break with past tradition and vote to refer Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to the ICC. If the ICC pursues prosecution, I wonder if Obama will turn himself in?A Spanish lawyer has formally accused Barack Obama of crimes against humanity for ordering the assassination of Osama bin Laden.
...In his written complaint, the Majorca-based lawyer said bin Laden should have been "pursued, arrested, tried and convicted" on behalf of "the victims of some terrible and appalling atrocities". The killing of bin Laden was even worse as it took place in foreign territory, Pakistan, without the permission of that government, he said.
(Haaretz) — A British animal rights organization has asked the Pakistani government for permission to promote peace by decorating the compound where al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was killed last month, the organization announced Thursday.
The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) said they had written to President Asif Ali Zardari, asking him to allow them paint the compound walls with slogans reading, “Give Peas a Chance – Go Vegan” and “Nonviolence begins on your plate.”
“The art work will feature images of peas arranged to represent different religious symbols, including the Christian cross, the Muslim star and crescent, the Hindu Aum, and the Jewish Star of David,” said PETA president Ingrid Newkirk.
