*DAMN R6 Forum

I hope the White House isnt playing politics with this...uh wait, of course they are!

Report: bin Laden captured; Pakistan & US deny

TEHRAN, Feb. 28 (Xinhuanet) -- Osama bin Laden has been captured in a tribal region in Pakistan, the IRNA news agency quoted Iran's state radio as saying on Saturday.

 The radio's external service, broadcast in Pushtu, said US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's trip to Pakistan on Thursday had been made in connection with the capture.

"The capture of the al-Qaida leader has been made sometime before, but (US President George W.) Bush is intending to announce it when the American presidential election is held," the radiosaid.

Contacted by IRNA, an Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting(IRIB) announcer at the Pushtu service confirmed the news, saying that they had got it from a "very reliable source" in Peshawar, Pakistan.

The Saudi-born dissident has been accused of masterminding the Sept. 11 terror attacks on American landmarks in New York and Washington in 2001, which killed thousands of people.

The United States has offered 25 million dollars' bounty on his head.

The capture has not been confirmed by US and Pakistani officials.? Enditem

Pakistani FM denies report of bin Laden's capiture

ISLAMABAD, Feb. 28 (Xinhuanet) -- Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri Saturday denied a report that Osama bin Laden has been captured in Pakistan's tribal region.

Iran's state radio Pashto service reported that al-Qaeda leaderOsama bin Laden has been captured in a tribal region in Pakistan.

"I am not in position to confirm or contradict that Osama bin Laden is captured," Kasuri told reporters in Islamabad.

"I will not confirm the report that Osama is being captured by the Pakistan Army during the operation in South Waziristan," he said when asked about the confirmation of the report.

Radio Tehran said that US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's trip to Pakistan on Thursday had been made in connection with bin Laden's capture.

Pakistani officials said that Rumsfeld had not visited Pakistan.

al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden has been accused of masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks on American landmarks in New York and Washington in 2001. Enditem


US denies arrest of Osama Bin Laden

WASHINGTON, Feb. 28 (Xinhuanet) -- the United States Saturday denied news reports that Osama Bin Laden had been captured "for a long time," local media quoted a US official as saying.

Iran's state radio reported Saturday that Osama bin Laden had been captured in a tribal region in Pakistan.

Britain's Sunday Express weekly reported that bin Laden is being surrounded by US. and British special forces in the rugged Pakistani mountains along the Afghan border.

The newspaper said the world most wanted man was within a 16 km by 16 km area, being monitored by a US spy satellite.

"As far as the reports of Osama bin Laden's location, I don't take much credence in them because if we knew where he was in Afghanistan, we would go get him and if the Pakistanis knew where he was in Pakistan they would go get him," US military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Bryan Hilferty said.

"We continue to have rumors over the past two years," he told a news briefing in Kabul, when asked about speculation that bin Laden had been spotted.

?Meanwhile, Pakistani officials also denied rumors that bin Laden had been captured in mountains north of the Pakistani city of Quetta.

"That area is in Pakistan but there is nothing there, life is absolutely normal -- you can go and see," said Pakistani military spokesman Major-General Shaukat Sultan. "There is no operation being conducted there and there are no foreign troops there." Enditem

here are the articles http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-02/28/content_1336750.htm

Why wouldnt they say that they captured him if they did? It's just gonna come back and bite them in the ass.

And that waiting for presidential election dosent really sound logical either...

Aliens abducted Osama and then told Mr Bush they would release him a couple of weeks before the election, that's all. Totally logical, np.

well the thought process behind waiting until the elections is that Bush would get a signicant boost in approval ratings (like he did when Saddamn was caught), and people would re-elect him.  

I would have to imagine that keeping that kind of information secret until late october/early november would be damn near impossible.

If they captured Bin Laden, there's no way Bush would deny it until the election. It's simply too important for an "election tactic."

Hahahahaha!  I wish that were true.  Nothing is too important to an incumbent president seeking reelection to be used as an "election tactic".

I wouldn't be too shocked if this were true. I guess we'll know if we here of Mr. Bin laden being captured in the not too distant future. This whole step up on the hunt for Laden stuff lately has been rather curious. I guess this was why they were staging the "step up". So it would seem all the pieces were in place for such a move from bush.

I doubt that this is true, though I wouldn't put it out of the realm of possibility for Bush.  

I mean, you wouldn't think that the guy would have American citizens arrested and held for 2 years without being allowed to talk to lawyers or family, would you?  But he has.  Why wouldn't he hold this for a more opportune moment?

The funny thing is that if you watch Bill Maher, on his live show he had last night (with both Ralph Nader and the mayor of Detroit) he said something about the fact that Bush already had Bin Laden, and was waiting for the national convention where he was going to have him brought in strung up on a pole being carried buy a couple big game hunters.  Just a joke, but nice timing with this.

I can't believe the media isn't calling the emperor naked on this one. (I'm making an obtuse reference to "The Emperor's New Clothes".

Why the fuck haven't we been looking for this guy for two years?

Oh.

That's right, Iraq sidelined us.

This brewhaha about us moving in on binny, or the SAS getting near him, and blah, should point like a giant flaming arrow at the incompetence, personal goals, and insane political motivations behind the Bush regime and all it's war actions.

We pulled our troops outa Afganistan to invade Iraq.
In doing so we let Binny escape (if he still lives),
Now, in politically sensitive times, the administration at best is waging the dog about "oh we're so close to coming" all over Binny. A worst they have been willfully negligent in their war on terrorism.

And of course, we all remember the imfamous "october surprise" of Reagan hey day?

Reagan, and daddy Bush (ex-head of the CIA) arranged with Iran to make sure that the hostages they held, whose release would garantee a Carter victory in the election of '80, would not be released. Shortly after the election the hostages were released to Reg/Bush. As we know, those bastards were investigated in the illegal arms shipments of the iran/contra affair. This sort of polical switchero is the bush family trademark. It is absolutely not beyond the realm of possiblity for the current regime to hold Binny until such time as they need a "surprise" success in their failed war. We've been hearing ruminations on this one in regards to the capture of Saddam, that the kurds had pinpointed him and sold his location to the US, which in turn held onto that info until it needed the get Saddam the most.

My prediction is that Binny will be caught just before the election. Perhaps right before the RNC in NYC. So they can televise Bush assfucking his old buddy Bin.

ahhhh this has "bullshit" written all over it.

One more thing to add:


If Bush brings out Bin Laden at a more "opportune" time, wouldn't people get royally pissed off at him for keeping it a secret for such a long time and choose not to reelect him?

I mean sure, they'll make it seem like it just happened, but if the time is too opportune for Bush's reelection campaign, many more questions will be raised.

Just a thought.

smelly iranian bullshit. this is about as true as the kurds handing saddam over to the americans unharmed. the amount of bs on the internet is rivaled only by the number of gullible people on the internet.

Smells like bs.... however there is a full scale mission going on in afganistan as we speak involving the US special forces 121 taskforce and Bristish SAS and TASAS - it seems they reckon they are going to get him this time..

oh they most definitly have stepped up the search for him and do hope to get him before the election, there's no doubt about that. i believe they probably will get him before the election, whether it's next week or the week right before. and i wouldn't put it past any politician to hold a card like that till the election. but if we did have him, the leak would've come from either an american soldier or an allie. not an iranian news service.

the end of major operations in iraq, the election, and most importantly, the recent attempts on the president of pakistans life are all signs that usama's day is coming. in my opinion the sooner they capture or kill him the better it is for bush. the usama card will most definitly be the wild card come the debates. who holds that card may win.

I really doubt he is still in Afgansistan... I'd me amazed if they get him in the next year if he is... They might want to have a little chat with Pakistan perhaps ;)

Here's what pisses me off about this.

1) People act like the US and Brits stopped searching for Bin Laden.  They never stopped.  Pulling some of the troops out (never all) of Afghanistan has nothing to do with it.  What are a couple hundred more marines going to do?  Special Forces (from both countries) have been there the whole time.

2) Stop acting like it's so easy to catch the guy.  Like not catching him is incompetence.  Man hunts for killers go on for years in America, where it's easy to track people down.  This is another country, and a backwards one at that.  You think satellites can see deep into caves now?  Saddam was caught living in a hole.  He would have gotten away with it for a long time if someone hadn't given him up.  Well Bin Laden isn't hated by the people there anywhere near like Saddam.  It's unlikely that someone close enough to know where he is will give him up.  Technology isn't going to catch the guy that isn't using technology.  You could disappear in the forests of America and never be found by the law, if you stayed in hiding.  And that's the catch, eventually, Bin Laden will want to do something else, and come out of hiding.  That's when he'll be caught.

eric rudolph, the most wanted man in america for 10 years or so, hid in the mountains in his own backyard. the feds were looking for him for years, they hired some of his old army buddies, some of his old school friends and even some of his family to search the mountains where they thought he was. and it wasn't until some lady working at a walmart or something near the mountains spotted him going through a dumpster for food that he was caught.

For me it's not that they've stopped looking for him. It's that we switched our priorities from catching the ring leader of the group of terrorists that murdered 3000 Americans to conquering an impotent nation *under the guise of fighting terrorism*.

I want my country to fucking kill Binny. Why are we in Iraq when we haven't got the bastard? That's my simple question, one which frames much of my personal scorn, and I think liberal scorn in general, in regards to the conquering of Iraq and the half-assed search for Binny.

Sure, American forces never stopped looking for Binny. But it is also true that a vast number of troops, material, and intellegence resources was switched from the battles in Afganistan and the search of Binny to prep the war in Iraq, and later to fight it.

I buy that catching Binny is hard work. So why weren't we balls out trying to get him? With the current efforts, it seems like the Administration has had no real interest till now in catching Binny,  and then only for politcal expediancy. It's shameful, shameful in a way Clinton (or any hated liberal) never was.

that has to be one of the funniest things i've read here in a long long time.

I doubt he is still in Afghanistan or Pakistan, and if he's a prudent Islamic Jihad'ist he won't allow himself to be taken alive. I'm willing to bet he used his expert CIA training to skip out to Bangladesh( a country with a 138 million people, 83% Muslim) and lay low for a while, that's what I'd do if the most powerful nation in the world wanted my head on a stick.

Actually, I think you have a little of the cart ahead of the horse.

You see, we agree how hard it is to catch Bin Laden, and it is going to take a long time, not troops, but time.  So, instead of looking like you are doing nothing, you attack the guy you know you can find.  Clinton used to bomb Iraq every single time Monica was on Page 1.  Bush just took a page from that book, and figured if it was going to take years to catch Bin Laden, he didn't want to look helpless, so go beat up on the normal punching bag.  

Yes, believe it or not, the war wasn't all about oil. (that's to some of the liberals that keep saying it was ALL about oil).

So, as long as you can't catch Most Wanted #1, while you are still looking for him, you send others out after Most Wanted #4.

But, for all that, I don't think it has hurt the hunt for Bin Laden at all.  Like I said, that will just take time.

Waiting for the milk to go sour?

I think it was Kennedy who spoke best about doing the difficult things and not postponing the problem: "...not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

Basically, Bush has side stepped the hard part (catching Binny), and guessed, wrongly, that Iraq would be en total a piece of cake.

Now we hear tell that the US has delt with Pakistan, a contry which we know now was trading nukes and the necessary tech to make nukes to members of the axis of evil (Iran, N. Korea), by giving them a free pass. Oh, you sold this shit that we invaded Iraq for maybe possilbly possessing? Well, um, we need toget Binny really really badly now. What if we, like, ignored that nuk-le-ar stuff, and you let us put troops on the ground?

Is it ok to pass the buck like that? To dodge responsiblity? To engage in epic hypocracy? I don't think so. True leaders stand up and do what needs to be done and then they do it. Liars stand up, open their mouths, and flithy green/gray shit comes streeming out.