Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (268846)	7/1/2002 2:05:44 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

Thanks for the links outlining the WH involvement in the "Airlift of Evil". From the New Yorker piece: "...In interviews, however, American intelligence officials and high-ranking military officers said that Pakistanis were indeed flown to safety, in a series of nighttime airlifts that were approved by the Bush Administration. The Americans also said that what was supposed to be a limited evacuation apparently slipped out of control, and, as an unintended consequence, an unknown number of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters managed to join in the exodus. "Dirt got through the screen," a senior intelligence official told me. Last week, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld did not respond to a request for comment." "...A C.I.A. analyst said that it was his understanding that the decision to permit the airlift was made by the White House and was indeed driven by a desire to protect the Pakistani leader. The airlift "made sense at the time," the C.I.A. analyst said. "Many of the people they spirited away were the Taliban leadership"—who Pakistan hoped could play a role in a postwar Afghan government. According to this person, "Musharraf wanted to have these people to put another card on the table" in future political negotiations. "We were supposed to have access to them," he said, but "it didn't happen," and the rescued Taliban remain unavailable to American intelligence." "...The Bush Administration may have done more than simply acquiesce in the rescue effort: at the height of the standoff, according to both a C.I.A. official and a military analyst who has worked with the Delta Force, the American commando unit that was destroying Taliban units on the ground, the Administration ordered the United States Central Command to set up a special air corridor to help insure the safety of the Pakistani rescue flights from Kunduz to the northwest corner of Pakistan, about two hundred miles away. The order left some members of the Delta Force deeply frustrated. "These guys did Desert Storm and Mogadishu," the military analyst said. "They see things in black-and-white. 'Unhappy' is not the word. They're supposed to be killing people." The airlift also angered the Northern Alliance, whose leadership, according to Reuel Gerecht, a former Near East operative for the C.I.A., had sought unsuccessfully for years to "get people to pay attention to the Pakistani element" among the Taliban. The Northern Alliance was eager to capture "mainline Pakistani military and intelligence officers" at Kunduz, Gerecht said. "When the rescue flights started, it touched a raw nerve." newyorker.com From the SAAG link: "The Kunduz battle was important because there was authentic information that many hard-core members of the Al Qaeda, though not the office-bearers themselves, and of the International Islamic Front For Jehad against the US and Israel, such as the leaders of the non-Arab components of the Front, had taken shelter there after withdrawing from Mazar-e-Sharif and Kabul." "When the Taliban and the foreign terrorists withdrew from Mazar and Kabul, part of them went southwards towards Jalalabad and Kandahar and the remaining fortified themselves in Kunduz near the Tajikistan border. They went to Kunduz because it is the only town in Northern Afghanistan with a sizeable Pashtun population and were hence hopeful of support from the local population." "It would be reasonable to infer that among those who took shelter in Kunduz there would have been at least some with possible knowledge of the identities of the surviving members of the plot to launch the September 11 terrorist strikes in the US, the Al Qaeda's future plans and its capability for the use of weapons of mass destruction." "The inept handling of the Kunduz siege and the success of Pakistan's military-intelligence establishment in taking advantage of the confusion to airlift its serving and retired officers serving with the Taliban have deprived the United Front and the international coalition of an operational bonanza. The sequel of this inept handling could retard further the achievement of the operational aims of the coalition." saag.org