U.S. Aborted Raid on Qaeda Chiefs in Pakistan in ’05

Source: NYTimes

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.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/washington/08intel.html?hp

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and Iraq wasn't a sovereign country with risks

Pentagon officials familiar with covert operations said that planners had to consider the political and human risks of launching a military campaign in a sovereign country, even in an area like Pakistan’s tribal lands where the government has only tenuous control.

I would not have blamed a Democratic administration for aborting a mission with such prospects.

that harbored terrorists?

Seems like tolerance to me... another big 'ol flip flop

How jazzed are you really for a war with Pakistan?

didn't Clinton abort at least 500 hits on AQ during his presidency? Wasn't that traitorous and cowardly?

Oh.... wait... that was Clinton. THIS is Rumsfeld and Bush, so it't not just a cowardly fuckup, it's enlightened statesmanship.

Do I need to add :sarcasm: ?

You just cannot put SEALs at risk by exposing them like that. The lives of a few dozen SEALs are far more valuable than a target that was probably pretty shaky.

But, then again, I get pretty prejudiced when the subject involves Spec Ops.

The key is that Bush's future business deals with the Saudis would suffer, were he accidentally to off Osama.

The worse malfeasance occurred in changing focus to Iraq, not in abandoning this one mission that may well have had more disadvantages than advantages. Fuck Rumsfeld anyway, though. ;D

excerpt from the original thread post;

“As much as we all wanted Bin Ladin dead, the use of force by a superpower requires information, discipline, and time,” Mr. Tenet wrote. “We rarely had the information in sufficient quantities or the time to evaluate and act on it.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/washington/08intel.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp

Seems the ISI would and should have a better grasp on intelligence inside their own country;



"Eight top terrorists inside Lal Masjid’

ISLAMABAD: Eight “high value terrorists” wanted by Pakistan and other countries are holed up inside Lal Masjid, while another was killed by security forces in the ongoing operation, Religious Affairs Minister Ejazul Haq said on Sunday.

“Nine suspected terrorists said to be far more dangerous and harmful than Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives were hiding inside the mosque compound,” Haq told a press conference here. He refused to reveal the identities of these militants.

He said that security forces killed one of these suspected terrorists inside Lal Masjid on the second day of the ongoing operation. He was the mastermind of the failed suicide attack on Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz in Attock in 2005, he said.


snip

AFP adds: The hardcore militants inside include two commanders from the banned Harkatul-Jihad-e-Islami, security officials said.

“We believe there are militants from Harkatul-Jihad-e-Islami, which was involved in the Pearl murder. .....
snip

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\07\09\story_9-7-2007_pg1_1