A War America Could Never Win:Osama bin Laden Dead Or Alive?

Hantu Laut



September 11 2001, the World Trade Centre demolished by two hijacked commercial planes commandeered by Arab terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qeida terrorist organisation.Nearly 3000 died in the final collapse of the Twin Tower, landmark of America's pride.



For nearly a decade, Osama managed to elude the dragnet put up by the U.S military and the CIA. For many years he was assumed to be hiding in the mountainous region bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan, protected by the Talibans and war lords, in one of the most lawless and restive regions on the globe.



For almost a decade the U.S military was fooled of his whereabouts, searching for him in all the wrong places, dropping bombs hopefully to hit the intended target, but Osama always seemed ten steps ahead and was never found, dead or alive.



American bombs, more often than not, hit innocent civilians rather than Osama and his wild and wily supporters but America claimed otherwise, that they hit terrorist's encampments.

U.S military might with all its sophisticated hardware and advanced surveillance and stealth technology could not, in George Bush's best cowboy slugger, smoke Osama out of his lair. Osama remained elusive and was the most wanted man on the FBI Ten Most Wanted list with a bounty of $25 million from the US government plus $2 million offered by the Airline Pilot Association for his head, dead or alive.



Despite the huge bounty on his head no bounty hunter or squealer in his fold has taken up the offer.Osama remained the most elusive fugitive.For almost a decade no one had dared sell him to the American.



First presumed dead by the American in the battle of Tora Bora, Osama and major Al Qeida and Taliban leaders under the pretext of a truce to give them time to surrender their weapons managed to give US forces the slip and escaped to the mountainous region of Pakistan.

George W.Bush's big bluster about capturing Osama was a source of embarrassment and spent inordinate amount of time in pursuing the Al Qeida leader.Humiliated, Bush said "I truly am not concerned about him" and his war on terror turned out to be America's longest horror.

The Vietnam War lasted 103 months, by this June the Afghan War would have exhausted 104 months and still no end in sight.

How come Osama managed to fool the American hiding in plain sight in million dollar high security residence in an area full of soldiers and close to Pakistan premier military academy and only 30 miles from the capital Islamabad without the knowledge of the Pakistani military and government?

Osama bin Laden's Abbottabad compound - in pictures

Was the Pakistani government complicit in giving him protection or knew of his shelter but kept it from the American?

The Pakistani government may have a lot of explaining to do on how the most wanted man in the world living among the general population could have escaped detection.

America's so called allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan might not be so allied.

The US indiscriminate bombing in Pakistan that have hit civilian targets have angered the Pakistani population and put tremendous pressure on the government.

America's arrogance would continue to destabilise the region and a long fought war would not bring any change to both countries other than more anger and more militant attacks on civilians targets in the country and Western targets overseas.

Obama should be congratulated for having done George Bush's unfinished job.

Like the Soviets withering war in Afghanistan, the American will walk out of Afghanistan with their tails in between their legs.

Islam Under Siege: Those Bloody Talibans

Hantu Laut

This can happen to us if we allow the religious fanatics and deviants take over this country.

Pakistan is on the way to becoming a failed state and a danger to the rest of the world. Because of its nuclear capability the world will be in great danger if those nuclear arsenal fall into the wrong hands.The hands of the religiously misguided Talibans.

The present leadership is too weak, incompetent, corrupted and rotten to the core to be able to take care of the worsening situation.

Asif Ali Zardari is a known crook and a suspected murderer. He made a pact with the devil.He made a pact with the Talibans and allowed them to rule the Swat valley under the Taliban's brand of Islamic law.

Pakistan should forget about democracy and should go back to military rule.What's the use of democracy if your country is going to the dogs.

I was against the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. Pakistan ? Yes, go ahead, invade it, before it's too late.

An ultimatum should be given to the Pakistani government to wipe out the Talibans in the next six months failing which an international invasion force should be deployed to take over the country and wipe out the Talibans.A UN international force headed by the US should be considered to spearhead the invasion.

Do not underestimate the madness of these religious deviants. If they can use suicide bombers to kill innocent civilians they will have no qualms about using weapon of mass destruction.

Outcry in Pakistan after video of a 17-year-old girl's flogging by the Taliban is shown on TV

• Taliban spokesman says 'they did the right thing'
• Renewed controversy over peace deal in Swat valley

• Declan Walsh in Islamabad
• The Guardian, Saturday 4 April 2009
• Article history

WARNING: This video contains images some people may find disturbing Link to this video

The Pakistani government has ordered an inquiry into the flogging of a 17-year-old woman by Taliban militants in the troubled Swat valley, after public outrage triggered by shocking video footage of the punishment.

The images, played yesterday on private television channels, show a burka-clad woman being pinned to the ground by two men while a third whips her backside 34 times. The woman is seen screaming and begging for mercy as a crowd of largely silent men look on. She is accused of having had an illegal sexual relationship, according to local law. Her brother is among those restraining her.

President Asif Ali Zardari led a wave of public condemnation, and ordered the arrest of the perpetrators. Prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani termed it "shocking" and called for an immediate inquiry. At the supreme court, the newly reinstated chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, summoned officials to a hearing scheduled for Monday to investigate the incident.

"Our constitution allows no space for such public brutality, and our civilisation and culture have no tolerance for it either," said Sherry Rehman, a former information minister.

But the talk of arrests and inquiries are unlikely to amount to much. The Pakistan government's writ has all but collapsed in Swat, where armed militants loyal to a hardline preacher named Maulana Fazlullah have taken control. The teenage woman was flogged in Kabbal, a remote district where Taliban rule is the law. An order by the chief justice to produce the woman in Islamabad next Monday is unlikely to be heeded.

Muslim Khan, a Taliban spokesman, defended the punishment as appropriate under Islamic law, but said it should have been applied by a pre-pubescent boy in a private setting. "She had to be punished," he told Geo News. "The punishment administered by local Taliban was in our knowledge and they did the right thing, but the method was wrong."

Read more......

Throw Out A Good Man, Installed A Crook

Hantu Laut

This could, if it happens, be the most dangerous failed state ever.The clock is ticking waiting for the day the extremists and religious fanatics to take over the state and throw the world into utter chaos and possible nuclear holocaust.

Pakistan is now moving much faster than before into becoming a failed state and a nightmare for the rest of the world. The Talibans, the most extreme of all Islamists, had taken over the Swat valley in the north just 100 miles from the capital Islamabad.The government is powerless and have surrendered the territory to this hordes of mad men.

Throw out a good man and installed a known crook, this is what you get.

Can Pakistan Be Governed?

TO ENTER the office where Asif Ali Zardari, the president of Pakistan, conducts his business, you head down a long corridor toward two wax statues of exceptionally tall soldiers, each in a long, white tunic with a glittering column of buttons. On closer inspection, these turn out to be actual humans who have been trained in the arts of immobility. The office they guard, though large, is not especially opulent or stupefying by the standards of such places. President Zardari met me just inside the doorway, then seated himself facing a widescreen TV displaying an image of fish swimming in a deep blue sea. His party spokesman, Farhatullah Babar, and his presidential spokesman, Farahnaz Ispahani, sat facing him, almost as rigid as the soldiers. Zardari is famous for straying off message and saying odd things or jumbling facts and figures. He is also famous for blaming his aides when things go wrong — and things have been going wrong quite a lot lately. Zardari’s aides didn’t want him to talk to me. Now they were tensely waiting for a mishap.

The president himself, natty in a navy suit, his black hair brilliantined to a sheen, was the very picture of ease. Zardari beamed when we talked about New York, where he often lived between 2004, when he was released from prison after eight years, and late 2007, when he returned to Pakistan not long after his wife, Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated by terrorists. For all that painful recent history, Zardari is a suave and charming man with a sly grin, and he gives the impression of thoroughly enjoying what must be among the world’s least desirable jobs. Zardari had just been through the most dangerous weeks of his six months in office. He dissolved the government in Punjab, Pakistan’s dominant state, and called out the police to stop the country’s lawyers and leading opposition party from holding a “long march” to demand the reinstatement of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who had been sacked, along with most of the high judiciary, by Zardari’s predecessor, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Zardari defused the situation only by allowing Chaudhry’s return to office and giving in to other demands that he had previously and repeatedly rejected.

Yet, despite this spectacular reversal, the president was not in a remotely penitent state of mind over his handling of the protests against him. “Whoever killed my wife was seeking the Balkanization of Pakistan,” he told me. “There is a view that I saved Pakistan then” — by calling for calm at a perilous moment — “and there is a view that by making this decision I saved Pakistan again.” There had been, he said, a very real threat of a terrorist attack on the marchers on their way to Islamabad. That is why his government invoked a statute dating back to the British raj in order to authorize the police to arrest protesters and prevent the march from forming. I pointed out that Benazir Bhutto faced a far more specific threat and was outraged when General Musharraf kept her from speaking on the pretext of protecting her. The president didn’t miss a beat. “And therefore,” he rejoined, “we moved to the other side”: that is, he reversed his order to the police, and permitted the protesters’ march, just before giving in to their demands altogether. Read more....

Bring Back The Crooks

Hantu Laut

Throw out a good man and bring back the crooks.That's what exactly the Pakistani voters have done to their country.

The return of Asif Ali Zardari , the widower of Benazir Ali Bhutto to Pakistani politics and President was nothing less than emotional sympathy of the Pakistani people.A dangerous trend in many Asian countries.

His wife assasinated in December 2007 by suicide bomber while on a campaign trail to make a comeback to Pakistani politics brought him back from the dead. Her death was the cause celebre that catapulted Zardari to the nation's highest office.

This is the man dogged with shady commercial deals that landed him in jail for 7 years.Known as "Mr Ten Percent" his shady deals included charges of money laundering in Switzerland, shady deals in Dubai and mysterious real estate acquisition in Britain and France.The worst allegation against him was the murder of his brother-in-law, Benazir's brother Murtaza Bhutto in 1996 in Karachi.

In 2007 under American and British brokered deal, President Musharraf dropped all charges against Zardari and allowed his wife to return to Pakistan to participate in the elections.

Musharraf, seen by the American and British as coming to an end of his shelf life and usefulness convinced him to return Pakistan to civilian rule and to allow not only Benazir Bhutto to return but another crooked politician ex-Premier Nawaz Sharif who was in exiled in Saudi Arabia.

It's turbulent times in Pakistan,inflation is running over 25%, the country foreign reserve is dwindling fast over the past few months and there is acute shortage of fuel and electricity.

Zardari biggest headache and challenge would be the restive Northwest Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan where the Talibans have gained a strong foothold and had Talibanizied the province with extreme form of Islam.

With two crooks running the country we would have to wait and see whether Pakistan would see true democracy and better economic development or would suffer even worse....

...a state of disrepair and despair.

Pakistan: A Failed State ?

Hantu Laut

Former Pakistan Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated just days before Pakistan parliamentary election.

A sad and tragic end to another famous political family.Like the Kennedys and Ghandis, she has seen tragic and turbulent years and eventually met a violent end herself.

Her father was toppled from power and hanged by the man who grabbed power from him.She was ousted from power twice with allegations of corruption and abuse of power.Her husband was sent to prison for corruption. One brother died under suspicious circumstances, suspected of being murdered, in his home in Paris.Another brother was assassinated while on a political campaign trail in Pakistan.Benazir, undaunted, continue the fight to save Pakistan from the militants.She paid it with her life, adding another chapter to Islamic militancy and madness.

Will her children pursue the same course like she did after father ?

The end of another cursed political dynasty. What's next for Pakistan ?

May her soul rest in peace and those who murdered her burned in hell.