I was curious about the current situation in the Middle East and I came across an article about how "close" the U.S. has gotten to al Qaeda's second in command: Alyman al-Zawahiri. How close exactly is the C.I.A to this man? They almost ran into him while pursuing another senior al Qaeda leader in Pakistan on February 2003, and in 2004 the U.S. notified Pakistani officials that they suspected Zawahiri to be in a particular mountainous region in South Waziristan. So the Pakistanis bombed that location. What exactly came about with Zawahiri? According to the Associated Press who quoted officials, he suffered only minor injuries in the bombing. In January 2006, U.S. officials once again believed to have known the location of the terrorist leader. "U.S. officials said they thought al-Zawahiri left the meeting before the attack, but officials now believe he probably was never there." Reading that line made me wonder who exactly was not in the right state of mind, the national security producer or the C.I.A. If they suspected him to be at a location, why didn't they make a move or make any effort at all, considering it was "a high-level meeting with top al Qaeda operatives?
The article goes on to talk about how the U.S. almost had bin Laden shortly after 9/11. "CIA officers who were present at the battle in Tora Bora in December 2001 say they heard bin Laden on radio transmissions and called for U.S. ground forces to help get him." BUT, unfortunately, the U.S. commander in the region was not convinced with the intel and claimed that he "didn't have enough resources to send." This was fresh out of 9/11, the spike of the hunt for the people responsible for the attack on the nation. How exactly is it possible to not have enough resources to capture the main man who started it all?
3 comments:
I have seen a few CIA shows (I hope they are somewhat accurate) and learned in U.S. History class how nosy the CIA gets. The CIA overthrew more than 14 (potential) communist governments around the world and installed new (dictators) leaders during the Cold War. They have the resources and those resources have been improving every year. But it's not all about how much resources America has. It's also about the elements America cannot control.
Many people who help hide Al Qaeda related members hold deep hatred for the U.S. and people's hearts are something that the CIA cannot control. Al Qaeda also has home advantage. They know the region-it's their land. No matter how skilled the CIA operatives are, they are still foreigners to the land.
That does sound fairly ridiculous, but the CIA is well established and fairly deliberate, so there are most likely some other reasons for why they did not take advantage of these opportunities.
As side note, It's nice to see a post on this topic. For a while, stories about Alyman al-Zawahiri and Bin Laben dominated the news, but now it just seems to have fallen by the wayside. I suppose that this is a fairly good illustration of just how fickle the attention of the news media really is.
That is ridiculous because the CIA has the resources to capture Bin laden but they did not. I find that really ridiculous, yes there are other elements that help Al queda hide but the U.S advancement in technology and resources should take every opportunity they can get to catch Al Queda and they shouldnt hesisate one bit to any type of intel.
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