Osama Bin Laden Killed in US Military Operation in Pakistan; USA Has Body

Top Comments on Twitter and Facebook:

Obama sure uses a lot of "I's" in his message... "I authorized...I've oversaw..." Meanwhile, our brave troops are in harms way!

I thought Bin Laden was dead 9 years ago. Just when Barry’s popularity needs a BIG boost. I’m skeptical. sorry.

This is the case of a president that wants to assure his re-election and is and will do everything in his power to make it happen.  This is only the beginning of his smoke and mirrors!

Crowds cheering USA and waving American flags appear at

The timing of this is really weird. It's possible Pakistan and U.S has known his whereabouts for a while & this is a political stunt.

Osama killed by American hands. To the Navy Seals who got the S.O.B., I & all Americans offer heartiest congratulations & deepest gratitude.

If Osama is really dead, good… He can rot in Hell. However, I am very skeptical! I think it is very convenient timing for Obama’s reelection… a bit too convenient!

In his last attack on the world, Osama blew up all of our twitter feeds.

OOPS: MSNBC (and Geraldo on Fox) Says “Obama,” Not Osama Killed http://bit.ly/lgptA7

FBI: 10 Most Wanted list with Bin Laden has not been updated with "Dead/Capture" http://goo.gl/pg7fn

Phillies Crowd Erupts in ‘U-S-A’ Cheers on News of Bin Laden Death http://bit.ly/jr7yuH

Ground zero crowd cheering USA, fire trucks passing by honking in support http://t.co/Kq5m7vF

PRESIDENT OBAMA ANNOUNCES: BIN LADEN STILL DEAD http://j.mp/k2OFgH

FDNY celebrate bin Laden kill.  NYTimes front page http://cl.ly/6Nte

Video:  Osama Bin Laden is Dead

Osama Bin Laden Killed in US Military Operation in Pakistan

WASHINGTON--Osama bin Laden has been killed, President Barack Obama announced Sunday night.

President Obama made the announcement almost ten years after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Within an hour of the news breaking, thousands of spectators were gathering outside of the White House chanting "USA, USA" and singing "God Bless America." Elsewhere in the United States, crowds gathered and fans at baseball games burst into spontaneous cheers.
"Justice has been done," the president said.

CNN and other news agencies reported that the US is in possession of the body and that identification has been absolutely confirmed. No details of bin Laden's death have been yet released.

The operation that killed the al-Qaida leader in a mansion outside of Islamabad was apparently the culmination of weeks of intelligence gathering and no less that five top secret national security meetings between Obama and his war cabinet.

US military and diplomatic installations are on a state of heightened alert and members of the Obama administration and the President have been alerting members of Congress and foreign leaders all night long.

Bin Laden was apparently killed in a "human operation" that was based on actionable intelligence in a mansion outside of Islamabad, Pakistan, according to CNN. He was killed in a highly secure compound, built in 2005, that was a virtual fortress of 15-foot-high walls and barbed wire.

The entire operation lasted just 40 minutes and was conducted by an elite team of US Navy SEALS, CIA officers, and other special military commandos. Pakistani intelligence officials apparently were key to the success of the mission, initial reports suggested.
The announcement comes nearly a decade after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks which started a tireless hunt for the terrorist mastermind and al-Qaida leader.

Challenging the might of the "infidel" United States, Osama bin Laden masterminded the deadliest militant attacks in history and then built a global network of allies to wage a "holy war" intended to outlive him.

The man behind the suicide hijack attacks of September 11, 2001, and who U.S. officials said late on Sunday was dead, was the nemesis of former President George W. Bush, who pledged to take him "dead or alive" and whose two terms were dominated by a "war on terror" against his al-Qaida network.

Bin Laden also assailed Bush's successor, Barack Obama, dismissing a new beginning with Muslims he offered in a 2009 speech as sowing "seeds for hatred and revenge against America."
Widely assumed to be hiding in Pakistan -- whether in a mountain cave or a bustling city -- bin Laden was believed to be largely bereft of operational control, under threat from U.S. drone strikes and struggling with disenchantment among former supporters alienated by suicide attacks in Iraq in 2004-06.

But even as political and security pressures grew on him in 2009-2101, the Saudi-born militant appeared to hit upon a strategy of smaller, more easily-organized attacks, carried out by globally-scattered hubs of sympathizers and affiliate groups. Al=Qaida sprouted new offshoots in Yemen, Iraq and North Africa and directed or inspired attacks from Bali to Britain to the United States, where a Nigerian Islamist made a botched attempt to down an airliner over Detroit on Dec 25, 2009.

While remaining the potent figurehead of al-Qaida, bin Laden turned its core leadership from an organization that executed complex team-based attacks into a propaganda hub that cultivated affiliated groups to organize and strike on their own. With his long grey beard and wistful expression, bin Laden became one of the most instantly recognizable people on the planet, his gaunt face staring out from propaganda videos and framed on a U.S. website offering a $25 million bounty.

Officials say U.S. authorities have recovered bin Laden's body, ending the largest manhunt in history involving thousands of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and tens of thousands of Pakistani soldiers in the rugged mountains along the border.

Whether reviled as a terrorist and mass murderer or hailed as the champion of oppressed Muslims fighting injustice and humiliation, bin Laden changed the course of history.

ASYMMETRIC WARFARE

The United States and its allies rewrote their security doctrines, struggling to adjust from Cold War-style confrontation between states to a new brand of transnational "asymmetric warfare" against small cells of Islamist militants. Al=Qaida's weapons were not tanks, submarines and aircraft carriers but the everyday tools of globalization and 21st century technology -- among them the Internet, which it eagerly exploited for propaganda, training and recruitment.

But, by his own account, not even bin Laden anticipated the full impact of using 19 suicide hijackers to turn passenger aircraft into guided missiles and slam them into buildings that symbolized U.S. financial and military power. Nearly 3,000 people died when two planes struck New York's World Trade Center, a third hit the Pentagon in Washington and a fourth crashed in a field in rural Pennsylvania after passengers rushed the hijackers. "Here is America struck by God Almighty in one of its vital organs," bin Laden said in a statement a month after the September 11 attacks, urging Muslims to rise up and join a global battle between "the camp of the faithful and the camp of the infidels." In video and audio messages over the next seven years, the al-Qaida leader goaded Washington and its allies. His diatribes lurched across a range of topics, from the war in Iraq to U.S. politics, the subprime mortgage crisis and even climate change.

A gap of nearly three years in his output of video messages revived speculation he might be gravely ill with a kidney problem or even have died, but bin Laden was back on screen in September 2007, telling Americans their country was vulnerable despite its economic and military power.

MILLIONAIRE FATHER

Born in Saudi Arabia in 1957, one of more than 50 children of millionaire businessman Mohamed bin Laden, he lost his father while still a boy -- killed in a plane crash, apparently due to an error by his American pilot. Osama's first marriage, to a Syrian cousin, came at the age of 17, and he is reported to have at least 23 children from at least five wives.

Part of a family that made its fortune in the oil-funded Saudi construction boom, bin Laden was a shy boy and an average student, who took a degree in civil engineering. He went to Pakistan soon after the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and raised funds at home before making his way to the Afghan front lines and developing militant training camps. According to some accounts, he helped form al-Qaida ("The Base") in the dying days of the Soviet occupation. A book by U.S. writer Steve Coll, "The Bin Ladens," suggested the death in 1988 of his extrovert half-brother Salem -- again in a plane crash -- was an important factor in Osama's radicalization.

Bin Laden condemned the presence in Saudi Arabia of U.S. troops sent to eject Iraqi forces from Kuwait after the 1990 invasion, and remained convinced that the Muslim world was the victim of international terrorism engineered by America. He called for a jihad against the United States, which had spent billions of dollars bankrolling the Afghan resistance in which he had fought.

TRAIL OF ATTACKS

Al-Qaida embarked on a trail of attacks, beginning with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that killed six and first raised the specter of Islamist extremism spreading to the United States.
Bin Laden was the prime suspect in bombings of U.S. servicemen in Saudi Arabia in 1995 and 1996 as well as attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 that killed 224. In October 2000, suicide bombers rammed into the USS Cole warship in Yemen, killing 17 sailors, and al-Qaida was blamed. Disowned by his family and stripped of Saudi citizenship, bin Laden had moved first to Sudan in 1991 and later resurfaced in Afghanistan before the Taliban seized Kabul in 1996. With his wealth, largesse and shared radical Muslim ideology, bin Laden soon eased his way into inner Taliban circles as they imposed their rigid interpretation of Islam. From Afghanistan, bin Laden issued religious decrees against U.S. soldiers and ran training camps where militants were groomed for a global campaign of violence.

Recruits were drawn from Central, South and Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa and even Europe by their common hatred of the United States, Israel and moderate Muslim governments, as well as a desire for a more fundamentalist brand of Islam. After the 1998 attacks on two of its African embassies, the United States fired dozens of cruise missiles at Afghanistan, targeting al-Qaida training camps. Bin Laden escaped unscathed. The Taliban paid a heavy price for sheltering bin Laden and his fighters, suffering a humiliating defeat after a U.S.-led invasion in the weeks after the September 11 attacks.

ESCAPE FROM TORA BORA

Al-Qaida was badly weakened, with many fighters killed or captured. Bin Laden vanished -- some reports say U.S. bombs narrowly missed him in late 2001 as he and his forces slipped out of Afghanistan's Tora Bora mountains and into Pakistan.

But the start of the Iraq war in 2003 produced a fresh surge of recruits for al-Qaida due to opposition to the U.S. invasion within Muslim communities around the world, analysts say. Apparently protected by the Afghan Taliban in their northwest Pakistani strongholds, bin Laden also built ties to an array of south Asian militant groups and backed a bloody revolt by the Pakistani Taliban against the Islamabad government.

Amid a reinvigorated al-Qaida propaganda push, operatives or sympathizers were blamed for attacks from Indonesia and Pakistan to Iraq, Turkey, Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Spain, Britain and Somalia.
Tougher security in the West and killings of middle-rank Qaida men helped weaken the group, and some followers noted critically that the last successful al Qaida-linked strike in a Western country was the 2005 London bombings that killed 52.

But Western worries about radicalization grew following a string of incidents involving U.S.-based radicals in 2009-10 including an attempt to bomb New York's Times Square. In a 2006 audio message, bin Laden alluded to the U.S. hunt for him and stated his determination to avoid capture: "I swear not to die but a free man."

© 2011 Thomson/Reuters

Crowd in Front of White House

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Al-Qaida: We Would Use Pakistani Nukes On America

DUBAI — If al-Qaida were in a position to do so, it would use Pakistan's nuclear weapons in its fight against the United States, a top leader of the group said in remarks aired on Sunday.

Pakistan has been battling al-Qaida Taliban allies in the Swat Valley since April after their thrust into a district 60 miles northwest of the capital raised fears the nuclear-armed country could slowly slip into militant hands.

"God willing, the nuclear weapons will not fall into the hands of the Americans and the mujahideen would take them and use them against the Americans," Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, the leader of al-Qaida's in Afghanistan, said in an interview with Al Jazeera television.

Abu al-Yazid was responding to a question about U.S. safeguards to seize control over Pakistan's nuclear weapons in case Islamist fighters came close to doing so.

"We expect that the Pakistani army would be defeated (in Swat) . . . and that would be its end everywhere, God willing."

Asked about the group's plans, the Egyptian militant leader said: "The strategy of the (al-Qaida ) organization in the coming period is the same as in the previous period: to hit the head of the snake, the head of tyranny: the United States.

"That can be achieved through continued work on the open fronts and also by opening new fronts in a manner that achieves the interests of Islam and Muslims and by increasing military operations that drain the enemy financially."

The militant leader suggested that naming a new leader for the group's unit in the Arabian Peninsula, Abu Basir al-Wahayshi, could revive its campaign in Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter.

"Our goals have been the Americans . . . and the oil targets which they are stealing to gain power to strike the mujahideen and Muslims."

"There was a setback in work there for reasons that there is no room to state now, but as of late, efforts have been united and there is unity around a single leader."

Abu al-Yazid, also known as Abu Saeed al-Masri, said al-Qaida will continue "with large scale operations against the enemy" — by which he meant the United States.

"We have demanded and we demand that all branches of al-Qaida carry out such operations," he said, referring to attacks against U.S.-led forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The militant leader said al-Qaida would be willing to accept a truce of about 10 years' duration with the United States if Washington agreed to withdraw its troops from Muslim countries and stopped backing Israel and the pro-Western governments of Muslim nations.

Asked about the whereabouts of al-Qaida's top leaders, he said: "Praise God, sheikh Osama (bin Laden) and sheikh Ayman al-Zawahri are safe from the reach of the enemies, but we would not say where they are; moreover, we do not know where they are, but we're in continuous contact with them."

Source: Thomson Reuters 2009

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power

Romney blasts Obama's 'tour of apology'

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) accused President Obama of embarking on a "tour of apology" around the globe at the expense of America's national security.

"It's not because America hasn't made mistakes — we have," the former Republican presidential contender said, explaining his criticism, "but because America's mistakes are overwhelmed by what America has meant to the hopes and aspirations of people throughout the world."

Romney noted an interview Obama gave on Arabic television, in which the president said the U.S. had dictated to the world. A British newspaper, he said, had declared Obama the president who had been the most critical of his own country while on foreign soil.

"That would be a most unfortunate distinction at any time," Romney said. "But it is particularly so today. With all that is transpiring in the world, in Iran, North Korea, Georgia, Somalia, Iraq, Pakistan [and] Afghanistan, this is the time for strength and confidence, not for apologizing to America's critics."

Kicking off the conservative Heritage Foundation's "Protect America" month, Romney addressed a largely friendly crowd as he continues to explore a repeat bid for the White House. Romney allies insist the governor is undecided about a second run and is not even thinking about it, but behind the scenes the former Massachusetts governor is building a foundation that could launch an encore bid.

Like most governors, Romney found himself lacking in foreign affairs credentials during his White House bid. In establishing himself as a deep thinker on national security and foreign policy, Romney sought to fill a key gap.

He highlighted missile defense, a program that has dragged on for more than two decades without reaching completion. President Obama has said he does not support continuing the program.

"Rarely in history has any program had the promise to do more good or spare more suffering than a system of missile defense," Romney said. "Backing away from missile defense and depleting the defense budget to fund new social programs, particularly in the face of global turmoil, would put America and Americans at risk."

Romney also called for an increase of at least $50 billion in the Defense Department's modernization budget, to be used to improve the nation's nuclear arsenal and to upgrade the military's tracked vehicles and tanks.

Romney advocated for a more aggressive stance toward international threats, especially North Korea. He called diplomatic negotiations a ploy that has allowed the rogue nation to build up its nuclear capabilities.

"Action — strong, bold action coming from a position of strength and determination — is the only effective deterrent," Romney said, calling for "regime-crippling" sanctions for North Korea.
During his presidential race, Romney drew heavily on his experience as a businessman, and on the day General Motors filed for bankruptcy, he said he had called for those steps to be taken.
"It is, by the way, a course I recommended a number of months ago," Romney said of GM's filings. "As a boy from Detroit, I'm still saddened by that."

Following the end of his presidential race, in February of last year, Romney has spent the past year campaigning for Republican candidates around the country. Over the last week he has campaigned with Virginia Republican gubernatorial nominee Bob McDonnell and with Chris Christie, who faces a primary on Tuesday in the New Jersey governor's race.

The former Massachusetts governor has also kept a loyal following of staffers close at hand. Several former top staffers and supporters, including ex-Sen. Jim Talent (R-Mo.) and Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), attended the speech.

Romney, who remains active in the so-called invisible primary in advance of a potential 2012 bid, appearing with fellow Republicans around the country and taking a turn on "Fox News Sunday" this weekend, will again raise his profile early next year with the scheduled release of a new book.

The governor has signed on with St. Martin's Press for the volume, scheduled to be released in early 2010.

By Reid Wilson – The Hill

Source:  Fox Nation

Posted:  Knowledge Creates Power

Why the U.S. Should Listen to India's Voters

Last November, 131 million Americans voted, and the whole world took notice. Over the last month, about 700 million Indians voted, and most Americans, like most of the world, didn't much notice.

To be sure, American elections are more important to people all over the world than those in any other country. But the election in India is more important to Americans than most of us realize. Including, perhaps, our president.

This was not always so. During the Cold War, India was something of a de facto ally of the Soviet Union. This was due in part to our alliance with its rival neighbor Pakistan, but also to a feeling of solidarity with the U.S.S.R. on the part of the ruling Congress Party and its two historic leaders, Jawaharlal Nehru and his daughter Indira Gandhi.

The Congress vision of India was built on three pillars: socialism, autarky and secularism. Socialism meant a government-driven economy policed by a Permit Raj -- government bureaucrats had to approve every economic change. Autarky meant cutting India off from world trade, so that local industries could grow. Secularism meant toleration of religious diversity in a nation with both a large Hindu majority and the world's second-largest Muslim population.

The fall of the Soviet Union removed two of these three pillars. Manmohan Singh, then finance minister and now prime minister, began dismantling the Permit Raj. Successive governments led by the Congress Party and the Hindu nationalist BJP opened up India to trade, and export industries grew. Secularism remained, embraced by the Congress and not entirely repudiated by the BJP.

With the de facto alliance with the Soviets defunct, India was now open to an American alliance. Bill Clinton became the first U.S. president to visit India in years. George W. Bush moved further, cultivating closer ties with India and signing and getting ratified a nuclear cooperation treaty.

It became obvious that we had much in common. Both countries have a large and capable military, both have nuclear weapons, both have electoral democracies and English common law traditions, and both are prime targets of Islamist extremists. After Sept. 11, when Pakistan's Gen. Pervez Musharraf made a U-turn and promised to help the United States in Afghanistan, he did so in the awareness that the United States had a friend on the other side of his border.

India also has the potential to contain the power of China, in conjunction with other well-armed democracies around its periphery -- Japan, South Korea and Australia. Its economy has been growing almost as fast as China's, and it now has a middle class of perhaps 200 million people.

The election held over four weeks in April and May has produced a result very much to our advantage. The Congress Party has been returned to power with a larger share of the vote than indicated by pre-election and exit polls and will no longer need Communists and left-wingers for majorities in the Lok Sabha. The BJP attacked Congress for being too close to the United States; voters evidently decided that this was not a minus but a plus.

All of which puts the ball in Barack Obama's court. He has scarcely mentioned India in public since he became president, even as he has been making emollient noises to the mullah regime in Iran. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, said publicly she wouldn't object to China's abuses of human rights, while India has worked hard to uphold human rights.

The United States is preoccupied with the turmoil inside Pakistan, as well as with Pakistan's problematic role in the fight against the Taliban. But building closer relations with India would give us more leverage in Islamabad. Clinton, who played a constructive role in her husband's outreach to India, should understand this. Perhaps Obama does, too.

But it's hard to tell. Obama has continued military operations in Iraq and stepped them up in Afghanistan, but otherwise he is banking heavily on the proposition that he can persuade those who have been our sworn enemies that they should be our friends. Maybe that will work. But in the meantime, it would not hurt to show some solicitude for our friends in India, with whom we share strategic interests and moral principles. The 700 million voters of India have chosen to be our ally. We should take them up on it.

by Michael Barone - a senior writer with U.S. News & World Report and the principal co-author of The Almanac of American Politics, published by National Journal every two years. He is also author of Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan, The New Americans: How the Melting Pot Can Work Again, the just-released Hard America, Soft America: Competition vs. Coddling and the Competition for the Nation's Future

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power

Leon Panetta on Pakistan, Nukes and Pelosi

Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta said Monday that the U.S. does not know the location of all of Pakistan's nuclear weapons but is confident there are "pretty secure" measures to keep them out of terrorists' hands.

Panetta's comments come just days after the top U.S. military officer told Congress that there is evidence that Pakistan is adding to its nuclear weapons systems and warheads.

Speaking at a downtown forum organized by the Pacific Council on International Policy, Panetta was asked if nuclear weapons in Pakistan are more safely guarded than those in the former Soviet Union.

"Obviously, we do try to understand where all of these are located," the director said. "We don't have, frankly, the intelligence to know where they all are located."

He added that the U.S. is confident that Pakistani government has a "pretty secure approach to try to protect these weapons."

"It is something that we continue to watch," the director said. "The last thing we want is to have the Taliban have access to nuclear weapons in Pakistan."

At a congressional hearing last week, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked whether there was evidence that Pakistan was adding to its nuclear arsenal. He replied: "Yes."

Pakistan later issued a denial. Pakistan is battling a growing insurgency by Islamist militants with links to al-Qaida and the Taliban. Washington is considering giving it billions of dollars in aid to help fight the insurgents, who are blamed for attacks on U.S. and foreign troops in neighboring Afghanistan.

"I am not aware of any U.S. aid that has gone toward nuclear weapons, save that which is very focused in the last several years, last three or four years, on improving their security. Which is exactly what we'd like and they've done that," Mullen said in Washington Monday.

Pakistan is thought to possess more than 60 nuclear weapons under a program that began when its traditional enemy, India, started producing them.

The advance of the Taliban has raised fears in the West that the weapons could fall into militant hands. A more likely scenario, analysts say, is that Islamists may infiltrate its nuclear facilities and get hold of nuclear knowledge and material.

He never mentioned fallout from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's charge that she was misled in 2002 about the use of waterboarding. In a statement last week, Panetta defended the CIA, saying "it is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress."

The former California congressman said he wanted to improve relations with Congress and welcomed vigorous oversight from Capitol Hill. He urged Democrats and Republicans to put aside partisanship in an era of grave dangers around the globe.

"There's been a lot of poison in the well in these last few years," he said.

"If they start to use these issues as political clubs to beat each other up with, then that's when we not only pay a price, but this country pays a price."

In a wide-ranging discussion of national security, Panetta said the U.S. needs a "strong intelligence surge" to match military efforts against the Taliban, warned that nations like Somalia and Yemen must not become training grounds for a new generation of al-Qaida militants, and defended airstrikes aimed at al-Qaida leaders in Pakistan that have claimed some civilian lives.

___

Associated Press Writer Anne Gearan in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

Penetta On Pelosi… 05.15.09

The head of the CIA defended the agency Friday against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's charge that she was misled in 2002 about the use of waterboarding, but he said it ultimately is up to Congress to decide where the truth lies.

"Let me be clear. It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress," CIA Director Leon Panetta wrote in a message to agency employees that was released to the public. "That is against our laws and our values."

Referring to Pelosi's remarks, he said, "The political debate over interrogation reached a new decibel level yesterday."

Panetta's rebuttal was far more muted that a counterattack the Republicans unleashed against Pelosi.

"I think her accusations against our terror-fighters are irresponsible and, according to the CIA's record, Speaker Pelosi was briefed on what had been done," said Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, the senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee. "It's outrageous that a member of Congress would call our terror-fighters liars."

Pelosi drew the criticism a day after opening her weekly news conference with a prepared statement accusing agency briefers of misleading her in 2002 in connection with the use of waterboarding, an interrogation technique that simulates drowning.

In the statement, she repeated that she was not told that waterboarding had been used, even though it had been, and said an aide informed her of its use after other lawmakers had been briefed in 2003.

Several hours after Panetta circulated his message, Pelosi issued a response that blamed the Bush administration rather than the CIA by name for any errors in connection with the briefings.

"My criticism of the manner in which the Bush administration did not appropriately inform Congress is separate from my respect for those in the intelligence community who work to keep our country safe," it said.

Pelosi has been the target of a campaign orchestrated in recent days by the House Republican leadership, which is eager to undercut her statements as well as stick Democrats with partial responsibility for the use of waterboarding in the Bush administration.

Some Democrats have expressed surprise that she chose to inject herself more deeply into the controversy, especially at a time when President Barack Obama enjoys widespread public support and Republicans are suffering extremely low approval ratings. Associates of the California Democrat say she decided it was an error to allow Republican attacks to go unanswered any longer.

At the White House, spokesman Robert Gibbs decided to stay out of the controversy. "I appreciate the invitation to get involved but I'll decline to R.S.V.P.." He said the president wanted to look forward, not back.

Panetta, a former Democratic lawmaker from Pelosi's home state of California, said records from the period "indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of (terrorist suspect) Abu Zubaydah, describing `the enhanced techniques that had been employed.'"

He cited a "long tradition in Washington of making hay out of our business. ... But the political debates about interrogation reached a new decibel level yesterday when the CIA was accused of misleading Congress."

He added, "We are an agency of high integrity, professionalism and dedication. Our task is to tell it like it is — even if that's not what people always want to hear."

An unclassified chart released last month by the CIA describes a total of 40 briefings for lawmakers over a period of several years on enhanced interrogation techniques. Pelosi's name appears once, as having attended a session on Sept. 4, 2002, when she was the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. Former Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., who at the time was the chairman of the committee and later became CIA director, also was present.

While Goss has scoffed at Pelosi's description of the briefing, other lawmakers have challenged the accuracy of the CIA's overall reconstruction of events.

Associated Press

Posted:  Ask Marion – Knowledge Creates Power

Obama and the Great Game

by  Patrick J. Buchanan

The day before Richard Holbrooke arrived in Kabul, eight suicide bombers and gunmen attacked the Justice and Education ministries, killing 26 and wounding 57.

Kabul was paralyzed, as the Taliban displayed an ability to wreak havoc within a hundred yards of the presidential palace.

The assault came as President Obama is both conducting a strategic review and deciding how many additional U.S. troops to send.

Earlier, there was talk of 30,000, bringing the U.S. total to 63,000. Now, there are reports Obama may commit no more than the three brigades promised in 2008, and only one brigade now.

Clearly, the United States is checking its hole card. Can we draw to a winning hand? Or is this hand an inevitable loser -- and we must cut our losses and cede the pot? No longer, anywhere, is there talk of "victory."

Nor is the diplomatic news good.

Last week, Kyrgyzstan gave us six months to vacate Manas, the air base used to resupply U.S. forces. A week before, guerrillas blew up a bridge in the Khyber, cutting the 1,000-mile supply line from Karachi to Kabul. Before that, guerrillas bombed U.S. truck parks in Pakistan.

While in Pakistan, Holbrooke was told by all to whom he spoke that, while U.S. Predator strikes may be killing Taliban and al-Qaida, the deaths among tribal peoples are turning Pakistan against us.

What would winning Afghanistan for democracy profit us, if the price were losing a nuclear-armed Pakistan to Islamism?

The expulsion from Manas, after Kyrgyzstan received a reported $2 billion in aid from Moscow, raises a question.

Is Russia restarting "The Great Game" she played against Victoria's Empire in Central Asia, which ended in 1907 with a British-Russian entente, dividing Iran into spheres of influence, with both sides agreeing to keep hands off Afghanistan?

As Russia has as great an interest in preventing an Islamist Kabul, and has assisted NATO's resupply of its forces, why would Moscow seek to expel us from a base vital to the war effort?

Does Russia simply seek to be recognized by the United States as the hegemon of Central Asia, the sole great power that decides who can and who cannot use former Soviet bases?

For if Manas is closed and the Karachi-Khyber-Kabul supply line is compromised or cut, Obama would seem to have but three options.

First would be to go back, hat-in-hand, to Islam Karimov, the Uzbek ruler charged with grave human rights violations, and ask him to reopen the Karshi-Khanabad (K2) air base, from which we were expelled in 2005. And what would be Karimov's asking price?

Second is the Russia option. If Moscow now holds the whip hand in the old Soviet republics, what is Moscow's price to let us remain in Manas or use other Soviet bases over which it wields veto power?

The answer is obvious. Neither Georgia nor Ukraine is to be brought into NATO. The independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, won in the August war with Georgia, is not to be challenged. The U.S anti-missile missiles planned for Poland are not to be deployed.

In turn, Russia will cancel any missile deployment in Kaliningrad, recommits to the terms of all conventional forces agreements in Europe and assist in the effort in Afghanistan. Russia rejoins the West, and the West stays off Russia's front porch.

Be not surprised if the Russians come trolling before an overextended American empire an end to the Great Game in Central Asia like the one the ministers of Nicholas II offered the ministers of Edward VII.

And the third option? It is Iran.

Before 9-11, Iran was more hostile to the anti-Shia Taliban than we, and it has no desire to see them return. Indeed, Tehran was a supporter of the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as both were ruled by mortal enemies.

The long way for U.S. and NATO war materiel to reach Kabul via Iran would be through a Turkey-Kurdistan-Iran supply line. The shorter would be from Iranian ports straight into Afghanistan.

Price of an entente? An end to the 30-year U.S.-Iranian cold war and a strategic bargain whereby Iran is allowed to develop peaceful nuclear power, under supervision, the United States lifts its embargo, and regime change is left to the Iranian people.

President Ahmadinejad, no fool, and facing an uncertain election this year, is already signaling interest in negotiations with Obama.

A complication. How would "Bibi" Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman regard a U.S.-Iran rapprochement -- to prevent a Taliban triumph in Kabul?

Yet, if the Taliban's enemies in Russia, Iran, Pakistan and Central Asia will not assist us, this war cannot end well. And if they will not help, Obama should cut America's losses, come home and let their neighbors deal with a triumphant Taliban.