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Breaking news of Osama raid to Pakistan was easier than thought, says Obama

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Breaking news of Osama raid to Pakistan was easier than thought, says Obama


Anwar IqbalUpdated 18 Nov 2020



Barack Obama has claimed in his memoirs that breaking the news to Pakistan of a US raid into Abbottabad to kill Osama bin Laden was easier than he had expected as the then president Asif Ali Zardari understood the US position. — AFP
Barack Obama has claimed in his memoirs that breaking the news to Pakistan of a US raid into Abbottabad to kill Osama bin Laden was easier than he had expected as the then president Asif Ali Zardari understood the US position. — AFP
WASHINGTON: Barack Obama has claimed in his memoirs that breaking the news to Pakistan of a US raid into Abbottabad to kill Osama bin Laden was easier than he had expected as the then president Asif Ali Zardari understood the US position.

The book — “A Promised Land” — was released on Tuesday and gives a blow-by-blow account of the raid by American commandos that killed the world’s most wanted terrorist on May 2, 2011 inside his compound in Abbottabad.

Obama wrote that he knew ordering a military strike inside an allied state violated its sovereignty but he decided to go for it as he did not want to miss the chance to take out the Al Qaeda leader.

“Whatever we chose to do in Abbottabad, then, would involve violating the territory of a putative ally in the most egregious way possible, short of war- raising both the diplomatic stakes and the operational complexities,” he wrote.


The former US president revealed that his two closest aides, the then vice president Joe Biden and defence secretary Robert Gates opposed the raid. The revelation shows why Obama released the book after the Nov. 3 elections as it would have hurt Biden, who is now the President-elect.

After the raid, Obama called many American and world leaders, including the then president of Pakistan.

Zardari “showed genuine emotion, recalling how his wife, Benazir Bhutto, had been killed by extremists with reported ties to Al Qaeda,” Obama wrote.

“I expected my most difficult call to be with Pakistan’s beleaguered president, Asif Ali Zardari, who would surely face a backlash at home over our violation of Pakistani sovereignty,” he wrote.



“When I reached him, however, he expressed congratulations and support. ‘Whatever the fallout,' he said, ‘it’s very good news'."

Obama then asked his military Chief, Mike Mullen, to call his counterpart in Pakistan.

“Mullen had put a call in to Pakistan’s army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and while the conversation had been polite, Kayani had requested that we come clean on the raid and its target as quickly as possible in order to help his people manage the reaction of the Pakistani public,” he said.

Obama said he ruled out involving Pakistan in the raid because he believed that certain elements inside Pakistan maintained links to the Taliban and perhaps even Al Qaeda.



He wrote that when it became increasingly clear that Bin Laden was living in a hideout in Abbottabad, he decided to go for the kill.

“Based on what I’d heard, I decided we had enough information to begin developing options for an attack on the compound. While the CIA team continued to work on identifying the Pacer, I asked Tom Donilon and John Brennan to explore what a raid would look like,” he wrote.

“The need for secrecy added to the challenge; if even the slightest hint of our lead on bin Laden leaked, we knew our opportunity would be lost. As a result, only a handful of people across the entire federal government were read into the planning phase of the operation,” he said.

Although he acknowledged that “Pakistan’s government cooperated with us on a host of counterterrorism operations and provided a vital supply path for our forces in Afghanistan,” he decided not to share the information with Islamabad.

“The fact that the Abbottabad compound was just a few miles from the Pakistan military’s equivalent of West Point only heightened the possibility that anything we told the Pakistanis could end up tipping off our target,” he added.

Published in Dawn, November 18th, 2020

 
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Breaking news of Osama raid to Pakistan was easier than thought, says Obama


Anwar IqbalUpdated 18 Nov 2020



Barack Obama has claimed in his memoirs that breaking the news to Pakistan of a US raid into Abbottabad to kill Osama bin Laden was easier than he had expected as the then president Asif Ali Zardari understood the US position. — AFP
Barack Obama has claimed in his memoirs that breaking the news to Pakistan of a US raid into Abbottabad to kill Osama bin Laden was easier than he had expected as the then president Asif Ali Zardari understood the US position. — AFP
WASHINGTON: Barack Obama has claimed in his memoirs that breaking the news to Pakistan of a US raid into Abbottabad to kill Osama bin Laden was easier than he had expected as the then president Asif Ali Zardari understood the US position.

The book — “A Promised Land” — was released on Tuesday and gives a blow-by-blow account of the raid by American commandos that killed the world’s most wanted terrorist on May 2, 2011 inside his compound in Abbottabad.

Obama wrote that he knew ordering a military strike inside an allied state violated its sovereignty but he decided to go for it as he did not want to miss the chance to take out the Al Qaeda leader.

“Whatever we chose to do in Abbottabad, then, would involve violating the territory of a putative ally in the most egregious way possible, short of war- raising both the diplomatic stakes and the operational complexities,” he wrote.


The former US president revealed that his two closest aides, the then vice president Joe Biden and defence secretary Robert Gates opposed the raid. The revelation shows why Obama released the book after the Nov. 3 elections as it would have hurt Biden, who is now the President-elect.

After the raid, Obama called many American and world leaders, including the then president of Pakistan.

Zardari “showed genuine emotion, recalling how his wife, Benazir Bhutto, had been killed by extremists with reported ties to Al Qaeda,” Obama wrote.

“I expected my most difficult call to be with Pakistan’s beleaguered president, Asif Ali Zardari, who would surely face a backlash at home over our violation of Pakistani sovereignty,” he wrote.



“When I reached him, however, he expressed congratulations and support. ‘Whatever the fallout,' he said, ‘it’s very good news'."

Obama then asked his military Chief, Mike Mullen, to call his counterpart in Pakistan.

“Mullen had put a call in to Pakistan’s army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and while the conversation had been polite, Kayani had requested that we come clean on the raid and its target as quickly as possible in order to help his people manage the reaction of the Pakistani public,” he said.

Obama said he ruled out involving Pakistan in the raid because he believed that certain elements inside Pakistan maintained links to the Taliban and perhaps even Al Qaeda.



He wrote that when it became increasingly clear that Bin Laden was living in a hideout in Abbottabad, he decided to go for the kill.

“Based on what I’d heard, I decided we had enough information to begin developing options for an attack on the compound. While the CIA team continued to work on identifying the Pacer, I asked Tom Donilon and John Brennan to explore what a raid would look like,” he wrote.

“The need for secrecy added to the challenge; if even the slightest hint of our lead on bin Laden leaked, we knew our opportunity would be lost. As a result, only a handful of people across the entire federal government were read into the planning phase of the operation,” he said.

Although he acknowledged that “Pakistan’s government cooperated with us on a host of counterterrorism operations and provided a vital supply path for our forces in Afghanistan,” he decided not to share the information with Islamabad.

“The fact that the Abbottabad compound was just a few miles from the Pakistan military’s equivalent of West Point only heightened the possibility that anything we told the Pakistanis could end up tipping off our target,” he added.

Published in Dawn, November 18th, 2020
Pakistan academy trains cadets. its not involved in fighting. PMA is a very big landmark in Abbotabad spread over hundreds of acres so it has proximity to of thousands of homes in Abbotabad
its a shame Osama managed to live his last days in Abbotabad but it was Pakistan tip off of Al Qaeda courier that helped in locating him

Mullah Omar leader of Afghan Taliban, on the other hand managed to live for 10 years & peacefully die in close proximity to an American base in Afghanistan
why not apply the same logic and suggest that US military commanders at the Base were complicit in letting Mullah Omar live just accross the base and never get discovered?
 
Here comes the pressure from the American Military Establishment. They're itching for another war, this time in Pakistani territory.
 
Here comes the pressure from the American Military Establishment. They're itching for another war, this time in Pakistani territory.


Well times change quickly
They are more than welcome
 
Mullah Omar leader of Afghan Taliban, on the other hand managed to live for 10 years & peacefully die in close proximity to an American base in Afghanistan
why not apply the same logic and suggest that US military commanders at the Base were complicit in letting Mullah Omar live just accross the base and never get discovered?

I suppose it's the same reason why the Americans / NATO are about to leave Afghanistan with basically the Taliban in charge as precisely decided by the Americans and the rest of the NATO forces there.
 
its a shame Osama managed to live his last days in Abbotabad but it was Pakistan tip off of Al Qaeda courier that helped in locating him
US don't care. Some say, Saddam attacked Iran on US behest, then US turned away from him. If Pak collaborated that much, then it mustn't had let Obama get all the credit. This US appeasement is lethal, and has harmed Pak till coming centuries now.
Mullah Omar leader of Afghan Taliban, on the other hand managed to live for 10 years & peacefully die in close proximity to an American base in Afghanistan
good
 
Zardari is the guy who said about Indian planes violating our airspace that and i quote "Ghalti sa ahh ga hoon ga" What else would he have said?
Obama was even a bigger moron to expect that the likes of Zardari would say anything else besides pretending to understand US position. All he could say in response was to bring BB in discussion as if Obama gave a ****?
The darkest days of Pakistan under Zardari, Nawaz and Gen Kyani.
 
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The same Bin Laden they buried at sea because they athought his wahhabi supporters might build a tomb or shrine to him? The same extremist wahhabi supporters who blow up shrines and consider them shirk?

If you believe that I've got a bridge to sell.
 
Why didnt pakistan traced him instead of tipping americans and causing a huge embarasment to the country
I wonder my self too

I will sue the explanation of Mi5 deputy director who was asked similar questions after failing to stop the terror attacks in London.
(its virtually impossible tyo monitor every single suspect and track and deploy resources to every information most of which turns out to be a dud).

what I know and remember from that story is that Pakistan didnt have the scope beyond Pakistan to track and associate the courier outside the country. there have been many leads in hundred or thousands some leading to dead end and some to false information.
he was passed to CIA as a person of interest as he came and went out of the country. incidentally he was already known to CIA outside and was marked as a suspect. CIA didnt share that information with Pakistan and quietly monitored his movements in Arabia and Pakistan. even the compound had been searched many times before and was found to be empty it was one of the many places that Osama might have used and moved on in the past.
and then flown away in a chinook. Americans claim that they managed to fill in all troops and dead body and intel information in boxes exta in a single helicopter after one of that crashed. chinook is missed out in the movie and other claims about the raid.

Americans actually did tell ISI about the impeding raid. but this is never made public nor is the claim that Americans did confide with the military and civilian leadership but it was too afraid to take on Osma openly.

after the raid the SEAL toops were facilitated in their return journey and first were taken to Tarbela base and then picked up by Chinook and flown away.

this is the information which is conveniently missed out as it doesn't help with "suspect Pakistan narrative".
beyond embarrassment, Pakistan not only took the blame of the suspect and secretly supporting Osama but also took the brunt of the backlash of Al Qaeda and TTP when thousands of Pakistanis were killed in terror attacks throughout the year as a revenge by Al Qaeda.


I have wrote much on this repeatedly and quoted people of the area what they actually saw.
I have no interest in repeating any further or answering any follow up questions.

in short our leadership (civ/ mil) made wrong decision of not calling out American lies and failing to prove that they helped in the raid instead of standing accused of being Al Qaeda facilitators.
looking at the horrible and pathetic condition that Osama was living in that compound it is really ridiculous to even entertain for a moment that Pakistanis were getting money from him (he had few goats a vegetable patch, some hen and broken furniture).
 
I have already told you about this five years ago that it was joint operation between USA, Zardari and Gen Kayani. Idea was floated by Gen Kayani and that’s why Pentagon wanted to hire him after his retirement. OBL was already dead back in 2003 or 2004, some analysts says that he was dead even before 2001 due to kidney failure. His wife and daughter was leaving in Abbottabad house.
 
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US don't care. Some say, Saddam attacked Iran on US behest, then US turned away from him. If Pak collaborated that much, then it mustn't had let Obama get all the credit. This US appeasement is lethal, and has harmed Pak till coming centuries now.

good
the criminal silence of Pakistani leadership can be pardoned. Americans contradicted themselves in their narrative of the raid and thanked Pakistan for its support then made suggestion that Pakistan was colluding due to a military academy being in that town and then stating that they had no intelligence on Pakistani leadership being aware or partner in hiding Osama. in the end they made a more ridiculous suggestion that maybe low ranking Pakistani military/ intelligence was involved in Hiding Osama for that long (those who are aware how military officials are rotated in areas and positions all across the country after every few years without any prior knowledge can rubbish that idea).
I suppose it's the same reason why the Americans / NATO are about to leave Afghanistan with basically the Taliban in charge as precisely decided by the Americans and the rest of the NATO forces there.
yea
Pakistan will be blamed for supporting Afghan Taliban again in the future.
they will show videos of Pakistan facilitating Afghan Taliban (in meetings with Americans) with American name omitted,
 

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