Posted on 07/07/2007 4:39:07 PM PDT by Sub-Driver
U.S. Aborted Raid on Qaeda Chiefs in Pakistan in ’05 By MARK MAZZETTI
WASHINGTON, July 7 — A secret military operation in early 2005 to capture senior members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas was aborted at the last minute after top Bush administration officials decided it was too risky and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan, according to intelligence and military officials.
The target was a meeting of Al Qaeda’s leaders that intelligence officials thought included Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy and the man believed to run the terrorist group’s operations.
But the mission was called off after Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, rejected the 11th-hour appeal of Porter J. Goss, then the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, officials said. Members of a Navy Seals unit in parachute gear had already boarded C-130 cargo planes in Afghanistan when the mission was canceled, said a former senior intelligence official involved in the planning.
Mr. Rumsfeld decided that the operation, which had ballooned from a small number of military personnel and C.I.A. operatives to several hundred, was cumbersome and put too many American lives at risk, the current and former officials said. He was also concerned that it could cause a rift with Pakistan, an often reluctant ally that has barred the American military from operating in its tribal areas, the officials said.
The decision to halt the planned “snatch and grab” operation frustrated some top intelligence officials and members of the military’s secret Special Operations units, who say the United States missed a significant opportunity to try to capture senior members of Al Qaeda.
Their frustration has only grown over the past two years, they said, as Al Qaeda has improved its abilities to plan global attacks and build new training compounds in Pakistan’s
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
No “lawless territory” ought to be considered soverign. In this era, there is simply no excuse for lawless territories. Either police or forfeit sovereign rights. F pak.
I’ll trust Rummy’s judgement long before NYT reporters, thanks.
Musharef has been targeted repeatedly for assassination, including last week while on a jetliner. Better safe than sorry.
If we have to depend on Paki relations to get him, we’re in deep hindu.
It’s too bad our leadership does not have the balls of the men the are supposed to command.
As in the past our enemies are allowed a safe area. It’s good that this was not the policy in WW2.
Exactly! And these unnamed military and intel sources spilling their guts to the Slimes does not impress me in the least. Wish we could nail these leakers.
mushroomed to several hundred operatives? Rummy could see a clusterflop in the making.
I forgot to add blabber mouths in brackets.........this is front page for Sunday’s edition.
” Wish we could nail these leakers.”
Ellie replied languidly in a stifling, breezeless room, her lemonade glass streaming condensation onto the worn oak nightstand as the curtains wafted in and out the viewless window, “I suppose Bush really ought to do something about that, somtime.”
It looks like with the positive things happening now in both Iraq and Afghanistan the Slimes have to look harder for stories that imply this administration did wrong.
It’s a shame we have an enemy within in the form of our free press, it’s time they started helping in the WOT.
Musharef has been targeted repeatedly for assassination, including last week while on a jetliner. Better safe than sorry.
I agree 100 %. There have to be a lot of factors looked at, but think what would have of Musharef was killed because of the attack. Pakistan, an Islamic country with a high percentage hating the US with nukes. Not good !!
It doesn’t take guts to turn a tenuous ally into a nuclear bomb wielding enemy.
The notion that any action inside Pakistan will result in the overthrow of Musharraf is just that. It is a theory. What is also likely is that the longer we allow Al Qaeda leadership to freely operate within a region would result in another 9/11. I would rather have the frustrations of those pursuing AQ leadership on the field aired out now instead of hearing about it after the next 9/11.
If anything, my man Rumsfeld proved to be pretty ruthless in killing terrorists. If he called off the mission, then he probably had a damn good reason.
“There is a degree of frustration that is off the charts, because they are looking at targets on a daily basis and can’t move against them,” he said.
The officials acknowledge that they are not certain that Mr. Zawahri attended the 2005 meeting in North Waziristan, a mountainous province just miles from the Afghan border. But they said that the United States had communications intercepts that tipped them off to the meeting, and that intelligence officials had unusually high confidence that Mr. Zawahri was there.
No we don't put that many special operators into a raid when we don't know if the target is even there.....also they would have walked into meat grinder.
No thanks...
I had to laugh in order not to cry.
Bless your heart. ;)
Pure "editorializing" here - It has not created resentment...it has without question created frustration. But on the whole the understanding of these political variables is well understood.....
That doesn't mean they don't want to be turned loose more....They certainly do. And they want to be turned loose more without HQs in the COC creating such a large footprint that the Op almost assuredly will be called off...(they are willing to deal with the risks, sans the larger security footprint).
I have no idea what, if anything, in this article may be accurate, but I do know that to the extent US officials might ever be too risk-averse a big part of it is that they know that MSM SCUM like this reporter will twist whatever they do and smear our leadership and efforts.
Let’s hope this op was called off for good reasons, but the savage irony of NY Times scum revealing information that they acknowledge is CLASSIFIED in order to embarrass the USA, even while they claim that Rumsfeld was too risk-averse, is overwhelming.
Don’t these MSM dinbats have any shame at all, don’t they have any sense of embarrassment when they write and publish articles like this one?
You got it (cold reality is the MSM will & are doing all they can to hurt our efforts in this WOT....Plain and simple...as ugly as that truly is).
Yea right! Why would there be a near full scale invasion when we have missiles? Must be election time, the Times are pulling unnamed sources out of their a**es again.
Sadly, PC killed a lot of SEALs that day.
Most folks on here never bother to find out what the nature of the Paki-army is really like & that Mush is little more than a figurehead.
Things like that will make things more complicated & won’t show a lot of folks worshipped on here in a positive light.
Exactly.
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