Posted on 05/04/2011 9:21:56 AM PDT by Signalman
Transcript TONY JONES, PRESENTER: Pakistan's prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gillani, has rejected criticism of Pakistan's intelligence services for failing to locate Osama bin Laden.
Speaking in Paris tonight, prime minister Gillani said that ignorance of bin Laden's hideout was the result of an international intelligence failure.
Pakistan's foreign minister says the United States was alerted to suspicions about the compound where bin Laden was hiding back in 2009.
The response comes after the White House changed its account of the assault, now conceding that Osama bin Laden was unarmed.
John Stewart reports.
JOHN STEWART, REPORTER: The US administration's account of what happened during the raid on bin Laden's hiding place has changed. Yesterday the White House said that bin Laden was armed and had been hiding behind his wife when he was killed.
Today, it was revealed that bin Laden was not armed when he was shot dead and not using his wife as a human shield.
JAY CARNEY, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Bin Laden's wife rushed the US assaulter and was shot in the leg but not killed. Bin Laden was then shot and killed. He was not armed.
JOHN STEWART: The White House said that bin Laden had shown some resistance to being arrested.
The CIA chief said there was an option to take bin Laden alive, but the US Navy SEALs were also permitted to kill him.
LEON PANETTA, CIA DIRECTOR: The authority here was to kill bin Laden. And obviously under their the rules of engagement, if he had in fact thrown up his hands, surrendered and didn't appear to be representing any kind of threat, then they were to capture him. But they had full authority to kill him.
JOHN STEWART: Critics say that taking bin Laden alive was a better option.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON, HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYER: This man has been subject to summary execution, and what is now appearing after a good deal of disinformation from the White House may well have been a cold-blooded assassination.
The irony of this is that this is what Osama bin Laden craved. He wanted - the last thing he wanted was to be put on trial.
JOHN STEWART: And while that may now be academic, tensions between America and Pakistan continue to grow, with more questions today being asked about how bin Laden was able to hide in this huge fortress-like building so close to a military base.
PETER KING, REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN: It's very hard to believe that some elements of the Pakistani Government, whether the military or intelligence, were not aware of this.
JOHN STEWART: The US claims that bin Laden may have lived in the compound for five years. Pakistan's powerful spy agency, the ISI, says it raided the home in 2003, before its huge security walls were built, but they had not checked it since then.
America;s aid program to Pakistan could be reviewed if it's revealed that Pakistani authorities knew of bin Laden's whereabouts.
DIANNE FEINSTEIN, DEMOCRAT SENATOR: I think we have to know whether they knew - if they - the Pakistani's knew. If they didn't know, why didn't they know?"
JOHN STEWART: Today Pakistan's prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gillani, hit back at his country's critics, calling the decade-long search for bin Laden an international failure.
YOUSAF RAZA GILLANI, PAKISTANI PRIME MINISTER: Certainly, we have intelligence sharing with the rest of the world, including the United States, so if somebody points out that there is some of the lapses from Pakistan side, that means there's the lapses from the whole world.
JOHN STEWART: Today the CIA director bluntly stated that Pakistani authorities were deliberately kept out of the loop.
LEON PANETTA: We made the decision that we would not inform them, that we would conduct this operation unilaterally.
JOHN STEWART: And a series of WikiLeaks files casting new light on the fraught relationship between the US and Pakistan may explain why.
This week a London newspaper published details of a December 2009 cable in which the Government of Tajikistan warned the United States that corrupt Pakistani spies were deliberately thwarting efforts to catch bin Laden, tipping him off whenever a raid on his hideout was about to take place.
Pakistani media are reporting that senior Al Qaeda figures are meeting to decide who will replace bin Laden.
The man thought most likely to become the next Al Qaeda leader is Ayman al-Zawahiri. The Egyptian-born surgeon spent three years in Egyptian jails before becoming bin Laden's chief strategist and deputy.
The FBI has a $25 million bounty on Zawahiri's head and is hoping that new information seized from computers in bin Laden's compound will help track him down.
John Stewart, Lateline.
I thought Holder wanted terrorists caught to be given a Miranda warning?
Rush is saying right now that it looks like Panetta is running the country.
Meanwhile, I can’t figure out this guy.
http://www.stevepieczenik.com/bio.htm
he claims Bin laden was already dead.
He also claims a General told him 9/11 was a false flag.
This blows my mind that someone like that says he will go before a Federal Grand Jury and name the General.
he is also supposedly an advisor to the DOD
Is the CIA pulling some psy ops thing right now.
I agree. Pakistan's ISI didn't fail in that area. They knew for years where bin Laden was.
Jeez, no one in this administration can keep their stories straight!!!
“ignorance of bin Laden’s hideout was the result of an international intelligence failure. “
And yesterday I read here that Christine Amanpour mentioned a “secure villa in Pakistan” as OBL’s hideout, in 2008 or thereabout.
It could be that up until last Sunday, an alive OBL fit the script, and then the script got re-written, and that character had to go. Or, he was worth something up until then.
You need not be armed to be resisting arrest. Simply making any threatening gesture to one of the arresting individuals is more than sufficient!!!!
Maybe the White House assumed that the SEALs would have a throw down like the Chicago PD does.
In all seriousness, I believe the rumor that the SEALs grabbed him and asked what should be done. The President hesitated and Panetta gave the kill code. I don’t have a problem with believing that at all, nor do I disapprove.
Whether OBL actually had a weapon in his hand is immaterial. He’d already fired on us in 1998, 2000 and 2001 and killed thousands of innocent people.
OUR guys were firing BACK.
“Jeez, no one in this administration can keep their stories straight!!!”
They have to keep altering the facts to make Bush look bad.
Why is the 0 administration covering up the ‘arms to Mexico’ scandal.
I am trying to find anyone who cares whether OBL was armed, of even if he resisted, or if he did a fan dance for the Seals first. Honk if you care.
Thankfully we didn’t do the prisoner thing in some county court house in the middle of Hoboken.
...meanwhile, the ISI hustles al-Zawahiri and the rest of the operational heirarchy of al-Qaeda to a safe new location.
Does everything have to be a muddy mess?
I don’t really care whether or not he was armed. None of the victims on 9/11 were armed, either.
Now the ‘throwing the Navy Seals “under the bus” is officially starting.
Nor do I.
“If you don’t know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.” Henry A. Kissinger
There were helicopters landing on the property. There were gun shots and screaming downstairs and OBL just stayed in his bedroom unarmed? This story does not make sense.
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