I am amazed at how quickly the Obama administration is going out of its way to assure everyone that we’re sticking with Pakistan for the long haul no matter what. No discussion and little explanation, it’s just assumed that Pakistan becomes the new indispensable partner that anchors US national security, even as every day reveals …
Pakistan
Dear Diary: Which bin Laden Scares You Most?
The U.S. government can’t make up its mind when it comes to Osama bin Laden. Last Saturday, it held an unusual press conference where it released a snippet of video showing a feeble, aging terrorist staring at his flickering image on a small TV screen. On Wednesday, government officials were whispering about bin Laden’s bloody diary …
A Sobering Read on Afghanistan
Over on Small Wars Journal this morning, AfPak vet Paul Overby is asking tough questions about the way forward in Afghanistan:
In the challenge of extricating ourselves from the war in Afghanistan, the most critical element is the actual and emotional heart of the opposition we are facing–the Taliban. This war which is taking an
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Tet II: Vietnam, 1968 = Afghanistan, 2011?
Are the Afghan insurgents stealing from the Viet Cong’s playbook? Colleague Tony Karon thinks so, over at Time‘s Global Spin blog.
“Under The Sea” With bin Laden
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dDtRnstrefE]
OK…so it’s juvenile. But it includes a nice shot of our X’ed-out Osama bin Laden Time cover, so it can’t be all bad.
The Vexing U.S.-Pakistani Relationship Heads South, Post-bin Laden
Pakistan is a recipe with all the ingredients for disaster: start with an engineer who steals blueprints for nuclear weapons, and succeeds in constructing the Islamic world’s first atomic bomb. Then he peddles those schematics to pretty much anyone will to pay. The country, a fragile democracy, is actually run by the army, part of …
The politics of nukes and why the U.S. can’t dump Pakistan
In June 2009, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, the former leader of al Qaeda in Afghanistan, was asked what might happen to Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal if that country’s government destabilized into chaos. This might set off a mad scramble for parts of Pakistan’s significant nuclear arsenal, possibly even causing the United States to execute …
Inside Navy SEAL Team 6
The first rule of Navy SEAL Team 6 is you don’t talk about SEAL Team 6. In fact, the U.S. military has never publicly acknowledged its existence. But over the past week, tales of the Navy’s most elite squadron have blazed like wildfire, as the SEALs’ takedown of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, has generated white-hot …
The Silence from Pakistan
There was a more important story over the weekend than the U.S. propaganda effort to demystify Osama bin Laden by releasing five silent video clips. It involved another kind of quiet coming from Pakistan worth noting, as Karin Brulliard did in Saturday’s Washington Post:
In a nation that is home to an alphabet soup of militant
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Right out of John Boyd’s strategy: disconnect, isolate & disempower your enemy
The account emerging from the Pentagon regarding Osama Bin Laden’s life in that million-dollar compound reads like the last days of Howard Hughes. The guy had been reduced to puttering around with his plots on his computer and dying his beard in anticipation of his great comeback video. He is videotaped …
The Lessons of bin Laden
After a decade of Osama bin Laden, the lessons he taught us crystallized over the weekend, a week after his death at the hands of the U.S. military. They became clear when the Obama Administration released some of his homemade videos. Administration officials said they showed bin Laden to be a hands-on leader of al Qaeda, still in …
The Woman Who Tried to Save bin Laden From the SEALs
Fascinating piece by Time vet Tim McGirk on Osama bin Laden’s fifth wife — and clues she offered about her husband that U.S. intelligence might have missed:
With the benefit of hindsight, it seems that U.S. counter-terrorism experts spent years trying to decipher the name and the whereabouts of bin-Laden’s elusive courier when
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President Thanks SEAL-Drivers of Task Force 160 Today
President Obama is going to thank some of those involved in Monday’s mission against Osama bin Laden during his visit to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, on Friday. Whether or not the SEALs will be there isn’t known: they’re based 500 miles away, at Fort Bragg, N.C. But some key enablers live at the Kentucky base: the Night Stalkers of Task …