McCain was really banking on an Osama-catch to boost his November hopes. Racism and idiocy can carry you a long way. But will it be enough?

Pakistan says US not hunting bin Laden on its turf

NEW YORK (AP) — Pakistan’s top diplomat said Saturday there are no U.S. or other foreign military personnel on the hunt for Osama bin Laden in his nation, and none will be allowed in to search for the al-Qaida leader. [...]

“Our government’s policy is that our troops, paramilitary forces and our regular forces are deployed in sufficient numbers. They are capable of taking action there. And any foreign intrusion would be counterproductive,” he said Saturday. “People will not accept it. Questions of sovereignty come in.”

The United States has grown increasingly frustrated as al-Qaida, the Taliban and other militants thrive in Pakistan’s remote areas and in neighboring Afghanistan, and has offered U.S. troops to strike at terror networks. Critics in Washington also have expressed frustration with the new Pakistani government’s pursuit of peace deals in the region.

Leave it to Washington to be frustrated over someone else’s pursuit of peace.

Have I missed something? Is Bush finally resuming his search for Osama? After all, he is quoted as saying: “I don’t know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don’t care. It’s not that important. It’s not our priority“, and: “I am truly not that concerned about him.”

No doubt about it though, a Saddam’style hanging of Osama would be a much needed boost to republicans before the November elections.

Musharraf tells U.S.: Stay out of Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) — Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has made it clear that a U.S. military mission to capture Osama bin Laden or other top al Qaeda leaders on Pakistani soil would be unwelcome and “against the sovereignty of Pakistan.”

President Musharraf says the United States would regret attempting to hunt for Osama bin Laden in western Pakistan.

President Musharraf told the Singapore Straits Times that his military has the experience to operate in the mountainous terrain near the Afghan border and if the United States went in they would “regret that day.”

The New York Times reported last Sunday that the Bush administration is considering expanding covert operations in the western part of Pakistan to shore up support for Musharraf’s government and to find bin Laden and his second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

“Nobody will come here until we ask them to come and we haven’t asked them,” Musharraf told the Strait Times this week.

Strait Times reporter Anthony Paul asked Musharraf: “If the Americans came, would you treat that as an invasion?”

“Certainly,” Musharaff said. “If they come without our permission, that’s against the sovereignty of Pakistan.”

He said if there is good intelligence that bin Laden is hiding in Pakistan “the methodology of getting him will be discussed together and we’ll attack the target together.”

bin Laden urges Iraq fighters to unite and Bush is calling for more moolah.

Yep. We’re in this war for a looong time to come.

Leak severs link to al-Qaeda’s secrets

Firm says Bush administration’s handling of video ruined its spying efforts

A small private intelligence company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups obtained a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last month, and around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, it notified the Bush administration of its secret acquisition. It gave two senior officials access on the condition that the officials not reveal they had it until the al-Qaeda release.

Within 20 minutes, a range of intelligence agencies had begun downloading it from the company’s Web site. By midafternoon that day, the video and a transcript of its audio track had been leaked from within the Bush administration to cable television news and broadcast worldwide.

Joby Warrick, WashingtonPost.com

MSNBC.com

By LEE KEATH
The Associated Press

CAIRO, Egypt - Osama bin Laden will release a new message soon declaring war on Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, al-Qaida announced Thursday.

The announcement of the upcoming message came as al-Qaida released a new video in which bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, boasted that the United States was being defeated in Afghanistan, Iraq and other fronts.

Speakers in the video promised more fighting in Afghanistan, North Africa and Sudan’s Darfur region.

The messages are part of a stepped-up propaganda campaign by al-Qaida around the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Earlier this month, bin Laden released two messages - including his first new appearance in a video in nearly three years.

A banner posted on an Islamic militant Web site on Thursday advertised that another message would be released, though it did not say whether bin Laden would appear in video or speak in an audiotape.

“Soon, God willing: ‘Come to Jihad (holy war)’, from sheik Osama bin Laden, God protect him” the banner read.

read more HERE

from AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A new video purportedly featuring Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden appeared on the Internet Tuesday, the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States, CNN reported.

The video shows a still image of Bin Laden with a voice identified as his praising September 11 hijacker Walid al-Shehri, who was aboard American Airlines Flight 11 which crashed into the World Trade Center, it said.

The authenticity of the video was not immediately confirmed, the television network said, adding that the video did not appear to show any moving images of Bin Laden.

Bin Laden appeared on a video on Friday, his first since October 2004, when he threatened new attacks against the United States in a video just days before the US presidential election.

Al-Qaeda’s media arm, As-Sahab, had said Monday that it would release a second video of the group’s leader.

CNN said the video released Tuesday appeared to be purely a eulogy of Shehri, who like Bin Laden hails from Saudi Arabia. There is also no indication of when it was recorded, the US news network said.

But questions over the elusive Saudi extremist’s beard cropped up at a Congressional hearing Monday featuring top US security experts, including Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell.

“First, is this his beard?” Republican Senator Norm Coleman asked the spy chief. “Do we expect that — is it a signal?”

read more HERE

The Associated Press

CAIRO, Egypt - Terror mastermind Osama bin Laden plans a new video addressing the American people regarding the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, terror monitoring groups said Thursday.

SITE Intelligence Group said an Internet announcement of the plan included a photo of the al-Qaida leader from the upcoming video - his beard, which in previous messages had been streaked with gray, was entirely dark.

Intelcenter, which is based in Alexandria, Va., and also monitors Islamic Web sites, said the video was expected within the next 72 hours, or by Sunday. That would come before the sixth anniversary next Tuesday of the World Trade Center attack. The last bin Laden video was in October 2004, shortly before the U.S. presidential elections.

Rita Katz, director of the Washington-based SITE Institute, said bin Laden’s beard appeared to have been dyed, which she said is a popular practice in the Middle East.

“I think it works for their benefit that he looks young, he looks healthy,” Katz said of the new image.

Why do I get the feeling that there’s a handful of higher-ups in our government that know exactly where Bin Laden is?

Into Thin Air

He’s still out there. The hunt for bin Laden.

Osama Bin Laden; Slip sliding away

Sept. 3, 2007 issue - The Americans were getting close. It was early in the winter of 2004-05, and Osama bin Laden and his entourage were holed up in a mountain hideaway along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Suddenly, a sentry, posted several kilometers away, spotted a patrol of U.S. soldiers who seemed to be heading straight for bin Laden’s redoubt. The sentry radioed an alert, and word quickly passed among the Qaeda leader’s 40-odd bodyguards to prepare to remove “the Sheik,” as bin Laden is known to his followers, to a fallback position. As Sheik Said, a senior Egyptian Qaeda operative, later told the story, the anxiety level was so high that the bodyguards were close to using the code word to kill bin Laden and commit suicide. According to Said, bin Laden had decreed that he would never be captured. “If there’s a 99 percent risk of the Sheik’s being captured, he told his men that they should all die and martyr him as well,” Said told Omar Farooqi, a Taliban liaison officer to Al Qaeda who spoke to a NEWSWEEK reporter in Afghanistan.

The secret word was never given. As the Qaeda sentry watched the U.S. troops, the patrol started moving in a different direction. Bin Laden’s men later concluded that the soldiers had nearly stumbled on their hideout by accident. (One former U.S. intelligence officer told NEWSWEEK that he was aware of official reporting on this incident.)

And so it has gone for six years. American intelligence officials interviewed by NEWSWEEK ruefully agree that the hunt to find bin Laden has been more a game of chance than good or “actionable” intelligence. Since bin Laden slipped away from Tora Bora in December 2001, U.S. intelligence has never had better than a 50-50 certainty about his whereabouts. “There hasn’t been a serious lead on Osama bin Laden since early 2002,” says Bruce Riedel, who recently retired as a South Asia expert at the CIA. “What we’re doing now is shooting in the dark in outer space. The chances of hitting anything are zero.”

Evan Thomas, Newsweek

Read the rest of this (large & in depth) article at: MSNBC.com

cross posted at Democratic Underground

The fact that Osama bin Laden — who planned and executed the attacks of September 11th, 2001, murdering three thousand people — is still not even a target of the President of the United States some six long years later should tell everyone in this country one thing: George W. Bush has no intention of ever capturing or bringing him to justice. And why is that? Because the Bin Ladens and the Bush Families have been business partners for over 50 years now. In fact, we might as well call it the B&B Company, because that’s what it truly is!

LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON, LIKE GRANDSON:

In the middle of the last century, a young George Herbert Walker Bush, the son of Prescott Bush, found early on that pimping cheap Arabian oil against his fellow Texan oilmen had both its political and financial rewards. Indeed, it was Bush’s relationship with his new found Arabian oil buddies that eventually cost him his bid to for the U.S. Senate from Texas after Senator Lloyd Bentsen exposed Bush’s undercutting Texas oil men with cheap Arabian crude. Sure, Bush may have lost his shot at the Senate, but what did that really matter? The grease of money from his new Arabian friends, dictators and business tycoons, more than compensated for his loss to Bentsen.

Bush soon carved himself out a very special niche in international business: he became the premier American contact and agent for the Saudi family, the Bin Ladens. In fact, this relationship was so tight that whenever GHW Bush traveled all those many years to the Middle East, he passed over the many fine hotels in Saudi Arabia…always preferring to stay in the bin Laden family palace. Indeed, the Bin Laden and Bush coziness became downright family-like. When GHW Bush’s daughter, Dorothy, divorced her husband and was “depressed”, it was the Bin Ladens who took her in — only as kinship do — giving her a place to regain herself. Later, it is reported, Dorothy would go on to provide cover for closeted homosexual David Dreier and “date” him when he needed to be seen with a woman. Such endearing family values!

Read more »