"First Reports Are Always Wrong"

NY Times

The Times provides some insight over the changing story about the raid of Osama bin Laden's compound.  Former Pentagon official Victoria Clarke commented that, "First reports are always wrong -- it's a fundamental truth in military affairs," which seems to be emblematic of the evolution of the bin Laden story.  There are details being changed, construing a very smudged illustration of the raid.  This then fosters huge doubts on the legitimacy of the story.  What's just important as killing bin Laden?  Actually shaping the narrative following his death.


The Times points out that a "shifting narrative distracts from the accomplishments of the SEAL team."  There have been two major gaffs in the narrative.  One was the assertion that a woman was used as a human shield.  This has been walked back by the administration.  The other was that bin Laden was killed during the firefight, leaving us to assume he was armed.  It later came out that he was unarmed.  Both may be honest mistakes, and the product of an excited administration anxious to get out info to the press; nevertheless, intentions have less weight than actions in the court of public opinion.


Killing bin Laden has not eliminated the problems he poses the US.  We battled bin Laden as a person which is only one part of the war because it's equally important to battle bin Laden as a symbol.  This whole other battlefront is what is at stake in the narrative following his death.  Bin Laden's death may symbolize that of a resolute freedom fighter now become a tragic martyr. On the other hand, his death may symbolize the demise of a catalyst for terror.


I'm not a fan of propagandists and that's what the Whitehouse looks like right now, but Americans like me aren't the ones the Whitehouse should be worried about deceiving.  Liberal and moderate Muslims are the most impacted by this information.  I might get disgusted, but I'm still gonna support America; whereas, they will be less inclined to forgive.  If the world gets disgusted like they did at the Iraq invasion, then, in short, we're shooting ourselves in the foot in foreign policy.  The world also stopped trusting us after we went into Iraq and said 'trust us - we know what we're doing'.  We should not recast America as the world's bully.


The SEAL team just got back stateside so I hope more accurate information will be coming from their debriefs.  The President's quote about "not spiking the football" by withholding pictures has stuck in my mind because it seems his administration is fumbling the ball all over the place.  

Guardian

This chronicle by the Guardian on Tuesday is a pretty good account of the events leading up to, during, and after the operation where Osama bin Laden was killed.  It talks of details I haven't yet seen elsewhere.  


For instance it states that Leon Panetta, director of the CIA, was heading the assault operation.  An intelligence chief heading an operation of Navy SEAL Team Six, a military unit, is rather unknown to me.  I've heard of ex-pats running missions for the CIA but never them having effective control over active military operations.  The photos released of Obama, Biden, Clinton, and others watching the operation intently may have been at Langley - not the Pentagon or Whitehouse.


Obama gave the green light Friday April 29th for the operation.  The assault was planned for Saturday but apparently bad weather forced a delay of the go-ahead.  Then on Sunday, the President interrupted a round of golf to return to the Whitehouse to prepare for the operation.


It also states that a rocket-propelled grenade was fired upon the stealth helicopters on approaching the compound.  This has not been reported anywhere else.  Then, one of the MH-60 Black Hawks went down after stalling but the pilot was able to bring it down safely.  His body was then taken to the US aircraft carrier Carl Vinson in the Arabian Gulf.


Pakistani officials and its spy agency have stated it had no knowledge of the operation; however, the Guardian article casts doubt on this: "some reports on the strike, sourced in Washington, suggest the Seals took off from Ghazi airforce base at nearby Tarbela Dam. If true, that suggests a convenient contrivance so that Pakistan could avoid ownership of an operation certain to rankle with the notoriously anti-American public."

Other noteworthy reports

The original estimated value of the compound bin Laden was killed in was $1 million.  Yet, this is now in question.  It seems the compound may only be half that estimated value.  This detail was important because most people had imagined bin Laden was hiding in some cave.  So the stark contrast of finding him living a comfortable life was very enlightening and also embarrassing for Pakistan.  More importantly, it would be another detail fumbled by the administration.


This AP article tells us the identity of the courier who became the crux of the manhunt -- Sheikh Abu Ahmed, a Pakistani man born in Kuwait.  He was supposedly killed in the firefight.


The numbers of the SEAL team vary anywhere between 12 and 80, also apparently included a dog.  Varying estimates are interesting because it relates to how many helicopters there were and address why the team couldn't take other bodies such as bin Laden's son.  Also one chopper went down which limited how much they retrieved.  I don't know about other people, but when I pictured a covert team of Navy SEALs  raiding the compound, I imagined 15 to 25 soldiers.  


I also loved this Times story because my old dog, Maggy (just died last week), was mostly Malinois - one of the likely breeds of dog used in the raid.  The article said those breeds “have the best overall combination of keen sense of smell, endurance, speed, strength, courage, intelligence and adaptability to almost any climatic condition."  Sounds like good ol' Maggy to me!

Counterterrorism and Foreign Policy Changes in bin Laden Aftermath

As expected, the killing of bin Laden is still a hot topic as more details come forward.  There are many issues worth discussing including the intelligence operations of CIA and foreign policy implications for Pakistan and Middle East.


Update on previous post:


I mentioned before how I have been suspicious of the way he died.  For years, starting with Bush II, we stated publicly that we had a "dead or alive" policy for the manhunt of bin Laden. The CIA Director has stated that bin Laden would have been captured if he surrendered and was not a threat.  Killing him in cold blood is not justice - disgracing him by hauling him off to face the music of the US courts may have been the better path to justice.  I don't want to assume they had the luxury to do so, but until we get more info, we won't know for sure.  There are also concerns in Europe that US may have been "wrong to act as policeman, judge and executioner.  Based on the current details, it is feasible that this operation was conducted with a "dead or dead" policy, meaning that regardless of an option do a live-capture we were going to kill him.

CIA Ops:

We can talk about the timing - whether the operation to kill Osama bin Laden was politically motivated - and speculate on the current information we're being given about the intelligence trail.  Bin Laden's death comes 6 months before the 10 year anniversary of September 11th, which is when al Qaeda got the world's attention and Bin Laden vaulted to the most wanted man in the world.  al Qaeda had been involved in terrorist plots before such as the  bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.  ("The Looming Tower" has great insight of the al Qaeda roadmap to 9/11 and of bin Laden himself)  

So it's been to my wonder how it could take so long for the most advanced and powerful military in the history of the world, coupled with the full breadth of a massive intelligence web with unprecedented resources, could not find one man. Now, I know that I can't fully grasp the difficulty of finding bin Laden, but honestly given the resources of the US Government and the power it yields, what should my expectations have been?  Supposedly, we almost killed him in Pakistan only a couple weeks after 9/11, and if we had killed him, then that would have probably surpassed my expectations.

Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, has been making appearances on show after show, seemingly touting the operation as an intelligence success. The intelligence trail apparently goes back a couple years to interrogations of detainees at Gitmo.  It was first gathered there the name of bin Laden's courier - basically his connection to the outside world.  In August 2010, the CIA found the courier who had made a call on his cell phone to someone else already being wiretapped.  However, no intelligence ever surfaced, at least none presented to the public, that bin Laden was seen at the compound.  This means the President took a gamble based on the CIA guessing right.  As far as I know, there's been no published work on the CIA's incorrect guesses to bin Laden's location, so I'm really sure how to judge the success rate of intelligence on this one.

Now, I do not think this justifies any kind of torture at Gitmo.  Apparently the profile of the courier became more prominent once Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a Gitmo detainee and mastermind of 9/11 attacks, was questioned about the role of the courier in al Qaeda.  KSM seemed to protect the courier's identity, saying the courier knew nothing and was insignificant, and the CIA interpreted this to mean the courier was important.  I think that torture is, unconditionally, a violation of human rights and is additionally viewed so by international law.  Right now, it's unclear which methods were used to get this information.  

Further implications:

This article by Michael Ware, who used to be one of my favorite journalists before he stepped out of the spotlight on IR by resigning from CNN, talks about some pretty interesting things.  The best point was: "Make no mistake, his slaying is without a doubt a heavy symbolic body blow to the al-Qa'ida organization. But when it comes to its ability to continue waging its campaign of attacks and terror that's all it promises to be. Symbolic."

The operation will also greatly affect relations with Pakistan.  A Wall Street Journal article does a good job in discussing this.  We didn't tell Pakistani officials about the operation, which is very telling about our current relationship.  The US and Pakistan have been on especially rocky terms ever since the Raymond Davis incident earlier this year.  Their President Musharraf has exclaimed that this operation was a unilateral action violating Pakistan's sovereignty.  He is correct and I suspect that if the operation had resulted in the killing of an elite mullah instead of bin Laden, we would be discussing more problems for the US in terms of international law.  Also what would have happened if Pakistani forces also moved in on the compound after having noticed the helicopters flying in just a couple minutes away from a military school?

The questions Pakistan will be facing are going to be truly embarrassing and damaging - Are you too corrupt for the US to trust you in a joint operation? Did you have knowledge of bin Laden living in Pakistan, especially in a mansion so close to Islamabad and a military academy?  How did you not pick up helicopters in your airspace for hundreds of miles (both coming and going)?  The answers are going to either stem from incompetence or complicity, and they won't ever state publicly if they were complicit.  Pakistan is in a lose-lose situation.

Thomas Friedman hopes the death of bin Ladenism comes with the death of the man himself.  I completely agree with Friedman on his points.  Although it took so long to get him, bin Laden saw his claims that self-rule is only obtained thru murderous violence and digression to puritanical Islam.  Perhaps it is a sign that the "Arab spring" or "Arab awakening" and peaceful cries for democracy happened the same year as bin Laden's killing.  "We killed bin Laden with a bullet.  Now the Arab and Muslim people have a chance to do their part -- kill bin Ladenism with a ballot".  <<He's such a good writer!!

Geronimo EKIA

Okay so first, I'm sorry for not updating for months.  In short: I had a good first semester; went on a month-long trip around Australia with my Dad over the summer; started an internship with a human rights NGO, Diplomacy Training Program, which is located on my uni's campus; went to Melbourne for a week and hung out with Cesar; been pretty good so far in the second semester; and recently starting reffing soccer games.

Secondly, while I first treated this as a sort of travel blog, though rarely updated (sorry!), the main reason I felt an urge to blog again was to start posting my opinions on international issues.  My curiosity/excitement/bewilderment about the recent death of Osama bin Laden has made me feel even more compelled to state my opinions and raise some questions.  Also this new direction to the blog's mandate will help me illustrate my thoughts on issues.

To begin, I was about to eat lunch on Monday when I got a 'push' update on my iphone from the Huffington Post that the President would be having a press conference soon.  I thought this was a little weird considering it was around 930pm ET but I went ahead and got food.  As I was eating Channel 7 cut to CNN coverage of a developing situation, where Wolf Blitzer appeared before me along with the headline, "Osama bin Laden is Dead".  

To say the least, I was a little shocked - maybe the right word is 'flabbergasted'.  I mean, we had been looking for the prick for nearly a couple decades now.  I was not aware of any publicly-stated security focus on him for a long time.  For the most part, the Taliban, Hezbollah, Hamas and other terrorist groups had become the focus of most discussions on terrorism.  While waiting for the President to speak from the East Room of the Whitehouse, I grabbed my laptop and updated my status using a Huffington Post article: "wow, world is at a standstill waiting for the President to make probably the biggest announcement of his presidency".


I actually imagine everybody was scrambling to get to a tv, but they had plenty of time because the President started his speech about 45 minutes late (after the scheduled time).  Twitter was going nuts with updates.  I was trying to find more details on news articles with the relevant headlines, but they wouldn't load, because I suspect too many people were trying to access them, overwhelming the servers. 

Then I listened intently to President Obama announce that bin Laden had been killed in a US special operation in Pakistani town of Abbottabad.  The President said he died in a firefight with US Navy SEALs, the best of the best.  No Americans were killed, although we lost a helicopter, which was icing on the cake!  Bin Laden was killed in a $1 million-dollar mansion.  He said that 'justice has been done' for all of those who perished on 9/11 and their families.  He delivered a great speech, especially the ending: "Let us remember that we can do these things not just because of wealth or power, but because of who we are: one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all".

What got me most, was the crowd amassing outside of the Whitehouse cheering and singing the star spangled banner.  Most people in the crowd were young people, most likely from Gerogetown and GW campuses.  These kids were out celebrating the bin Laden's death in spite of the fact that they were meant to be studying for their final exams in the coming week.  Then I saw a video posted of fans yelling USA at a Phillies/Mets game after learning about bin Laden's death.  I think this shows how much we needed this after nearly 10 years into the War on Terror.  We never really got excited about Saddam Hussein being found and hanged, or when we pulled out of Iraq.  In a sense of closure, we were waiting for this.

Then we found out that bin Laden's body was laid to rest at sea.  At this point, I smacked my forehead, because we look like we're trying to destroy the best evidence for a murder - the body.  So this will cast doubts on whether we actually killed him.  Then I read this Guardian article which talks about the dilemma of burying the body when no country wants it.  It could also have become a shrine for followers.  Apparently burial at sea is an option under Islamic traditions, but it had to be done within 24 hours (another Islamic tradition).  So I guess it doesn't look as bad since they were trying to respect religious traditions (which fosters goodwill from Arabs and Islam).

Today, the Obama administration tweaks its story by exclaiming that bin Laden had been unarmed.  This development raises a whole lot of controversial points.  Looking through the lenses of legalism, this is quite troubling.  If bin Laden had been armed, then killing him would have been justifiable under laws and principles governing conflict.  However, if bin Laden was unarmed, he then had to present some kind of threat to the SEALs to warrant his death.  I'm sure there are several scenarios where a threat would warrant such action, but remember that the SEALs had to secure the entire compound before reaching the top floor of the mansion to find bin Laden alone in his bedroom.  You have to ask yourself what one man would be able to do without a gun against a handful of the deadliest human weapons on the planet, who also had guns.  If unarmed and presenting no threat, soldiers are obligated to capture (or set free) enemy combatants, or anyone for that matter.  So, if the SEALs had the option to capture bin Laden and chose to kill him anyway, then this was an appalling execution.  

Remember from the HuffPo article that the SEALs handcuffed people with zip ties in the compound before getting to bin Laden.  After they killed him, they gathered computers and other potentially helpful intelligence material.  Clearly, not everything happened in the heat of a firefight. They also took his body when they left the compound.  So there were both the means and ability for him to be taken alive.  Someone needs to explain to me why a team of Navy SEALs could not do a live-capture of an unarmed 54-year-old. 

Nonetheless the story is developing and more details are coming out, and the significance of bin Laden's death is yet to be measured.  We will hopefully learn more from DNA match releases, pictures of the body, and maybe a video clip from the firefight itself.  


The code name for bin Laden was Geronimo.  When the SEALs came out of the compound they said "Geronimo EKIA" which means, enemy killed in action.  An evil has been purged from the Earth.