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By: - 23rd May 2012 at 17:55 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Well, can't say I'm surprised. I know its a Fox News report, but on checking with other more reputable news agencies, on this occasion, their report appears to be pretty accurate.
By: - 23rd May 2012 at 20:53 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
No more F16 spares until he is free might clarify their minds!
By: - 26th May 2012 at 14:15 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
I wish we would start giving free stuff to India just to **** them off...
With that being said, on a serious note, anyone living on planet Earth can admit that if the Pakistani government had known about the operation beforehand then Bin Laden would have gotten away...
By: - 26th May 2012 at 15:11 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Put the shoe on the other foot Cooper, if an agent operating on behalf of the Government of Pakistan were caught in the USA illegally harvesting samples of DNA, do you think the US Government would just release them?
This is not so much a case of the Pakistani Government exacting revenge on a man implicated in the operation to find and kill Bin Laden, rather, it is testimony that the US Government let one of their agents down. With a 'prize' like Bin Laden being delivered to them then surely the least they could have done was to spirit this man and his family away and given them a new life in the US.
Regards,
kev35
By: - 26th May 2012 at 15:41 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
With a 'prize' like Bin Laden being delivered to them then surely the least they could have done was to spirit this man and his family away and given them a new life in the US.
Must say this did cross my mind, this guy put his neck on the block (literally most likely) & they made no plan to protect him when the spaghetti hit the fan.
Left high & dry springs to mind. :rolleyes:
Quite telling how the US decided to keep the whole deal secret from the Pakistani government, obviously they know who their friends aren't.
By: - 26th May 2012 at 18:16 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
@PhantomII
The police here would probably arrest you for inciting racial hatred for saying something negative about anything of Pakistani origin. We need to four ammendments quite quickly as I've got a brilliant idea for the fifth.
By: - 27th May 2012 at 15:01 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
I don't know all the facts but indeed I wouldn't be surprised if the current administration did fail to help this guy out in return for what he did for us. Personally I'm grateful for his help, but I still maintain my negative position towards the Pakistani government and for that matter anyone in that country who would support or otherwise aid elements of the Taliban or Al-Qaeda.
I realize a lot of people here probably see this and just assume I'm a bigot or whatever. Rest assured its not the case, but when I feel strongly about something I'll speak out. I judge people not on the "color of their skin, but on the content of their character"...major points for who of you foreign chaps can point out the author of that quote.
In short, I find the character of the Pakistani government and all Talban/Al-Qaeda supporters disgusting...
On another note, some of my faith in my own government was restored when I learned they managed to bring that blind Chinese dissident and his family here to the States. I wish the best for him and his family. I only hope his extended family will be safe back in China. Hopefully they can find a way to get them here as well.
By: - 28th May 2012 at 12:55 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Getting this CIA agent out will cost US an arm and a leg.
For Pakistanis if they released this man than that shows everyone in that country that helping foreign intelligence agencies will get you loads of money and a cushy life in a western country.
What did CIA really expect Pakistan to do with a foreign agent? Any other country would have hanged him by now.
By: - 30th May 2012 at 00:32 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Yes because clearly helping to kill one of the most dangerous men in the world was a bad thing for this guy to have done....
The man was responsible for killing Moslems as well as thousands of others of all ethnic and religious backgrounds. I'd think that in this case they could cut the guy some slack...then again I guess that makes too much sense. Saving face is more important than human lives...and clearly helping the United States is bad...
By: - 30th May 2012 at 21:59 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Oh please, let me get my violin out .
This doctor was only interested in money, he didn't have a clue about the target. You really think he was doing this because he knew he is helping to catch Bin Laden?
For all we know his next assignment might have been to spy on nuclear related installations. He is being treated as a traitor and a foreign agent because he is exactly that.
By: - 30th May 2012 at 23:02 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Oh please, let me get my violin out ..
While you're at it, play something in remembrance of all the innocents who died because of Bin Laden's twisted policies.
By: - 30th May 2012 at 23:40 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Bin Laden's twisted policies doesn't mean CIA can run secret ops in other countries and cry when get caught.
If every country started secret ops in other countries to kill people they didn't agree with, than we would be in a dangerous place. Remember Alexander Litvinenko and Polonium! Had someone in UK helped FSB in that assassination Im sure they would be serving time somewhere.
The guy wanted for the deaths of more than 4000 Indians in the Bhopal disaster lives a peaceful and much more luxurious life somewhere in US. I wonder what Americans would do if Indians took him out.
If you help a foreign intelligence agency, without informing your govt, than you are a foreign agent. No ifs and no buts
By: - 31st May 2012 at 02:04 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
In a black & white world, you are completely correct in your assessment of the definition of a foreign agent. The world exists in shades of grey however...at the end of the day the primary reason the Pakistanis are crucifying this guy is to appease the thousands if not millions of Islamic fundamentalists (or those who support them) that reside in that nation. If the Pakistani government is truly in support of helping to eradicate terrorism as they say they are, then in this case they should probably handle this situation in a different manner.
I'll get all kinds of hate comments for what I'm about to say, but its the truth...
Pakistan is full of people who fully supported what bin-Laden (& organizations such as Al-Quaeda) stood (stand) for. There are many countries in the Islamic world that no doubt have many citizens who agree with this sentiment. I fully realize that there are a wide variety of viewpoints on what really defines a terrorist versus a freedom fighter and that in many cases people like bin-Laden are considered heroes by some.
My problem with Pakistan in the last several years is that they have tried to play both sides. They want to get as much aid and support as possible from the United States and other Western nations, and thus they pretend to support our efforts against Islamic extremists in Afghanistan.
On the other hand, they are trying to play to the fanatical crowed in their own nation....
As shady as all governments can be (including my own), the Pakistanis are taking it to a whole new level...this wasn't just some sting operation....the target was one of the most dangerous men in the world...
(FYI...if what you say about that guy in the U.S. is true, then I hope that something can be done to bring him to justice...I would certainly have no qualms with it though I don't know the full story.)
By: - 31st May 2012 at 11:00 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
PhantomII I agree with you.
By: - 31st May 2012 at 12:23 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
If you help a foreign intelligence agency, without informing your govt, than you are a foreign agent. No ifs and no buts
He was convicted of conspiring against the state, not of being a foreign agent; how do you "conspire against the state," when the person involved is (supposedly) an illegal immigrant, and of whom the authorities deny all knowledge? For that charge to stick, he has to have been there with their connivance, and Phantom II has hit the nail right on the head.
By: - 31st May 2012 at 14:48 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
You conspire against the state by being part of the plan which resulted in foreign assault helicopters landing hunderds of miles inside your country.
Bin Laden's immigration status has nothing to do with this, by extention of your argument would it would be ok if I helped ISI in the assasination of one of the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants in UK?
Few years ago we had an Afghan Warlord, accused of murder and torture living on benefits in UK, only when John Simpson of BBC tracked him down did the govt put him behind bars. Perhaps that means the British Govt was protecting him during that time and it would have been ok for foreign soldires to land in London to take this man out.
Or perhaps all my arguments are meaningless because these people were not wanted by a western govt and we all know only other countries are expected to conform to international laws and norms.
By: - 31st May 2012 at 20:34 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
by extention of your argument would it would be ok if I helped ISI in the assasination of one of the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants in UK? .
If he was planning to kill thousands of innocent people, I couldn't care less.
Or perhaps all my arguments are meaningless because these people were not wanted by a western govt and we all know only other countries are expected to conform to international laws and norms
I think "He started it" serves that argument rather well; go outside international law, and don't expect much sympathy if somebody else steps outside the law, to put a stop to it.
By: - 31st May 2012 at 21:20 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Buran, I almost want to believe that you are just trying to play devil's advocate here to stir up debate because I can't even fathom someone truly believing what you keep typing on your replies....
As I said earlier, the world exists in shades of gray...not black and white.
If the British government (or the US government) was protecting someone who had murdered thousands if not millions and broken all kinds of international laws then I certainly wouldn't bat an eyelash if that person was taken out by foreign agents.
I'm sure all governments at one time or another have protected evil people, and even in the case of the US government, I would strongly oppose the protection of a person such as bin Laden.
As for your almost predicted sarcastic remark about the "West" I almost feel like its not worth responding to. You know good and well that bin Laden was a murderer who deserved what he got. The almost pathetic arguments I see people put up regarding the "West" have grown weary and tired.
You cannot justify the protection of a person such as bin Laden no matter how hard you try, and despite what anyone says, the Pakistani government has been protecting him for years....if not then they are incredibly incompetent to have such a widely known figure right in their own backyard and not even know it....
By: - 1st June 2012 at 13:49 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
No one disagrees that Bin Laden’s death was a bad thing.
But your entire argument is based on the assumption that Pakistanis knew about Bin Laden hence they should own up and let this doctor go.
Maybe they did not know about him. If the best intelligence agencies of the world could not find the WMD related infrastructure (reactor / processing plants/ laboratories etc) in Iraq, perhaps the all mighty ISI missed out on finding 1 person in a country of 180 million with porous borders and inadequate policing.
To my knowledge US has not yet found a smoking gun which points to anyone in Pakistani Govt, even after going through the material they found in that compound.
ISI and CIA have a history of joint raids to capture terrorists going back to the 1990s when they caught Aimal Kansi, a onetime CIA informant who went rogue and killed 2 CIA agents in Langley. Even the mastermind of 9/11 KSM was captured in a joint raid.
They had a tried and tested procedure for capturing these bad guys, the Americans for one reason or other went against it and that’s why Pakistanis are miffed. I personally think American Govt did it to extract the most political benefit possible, brave American soldiers going in to take out the man responsible for 9/11 etc.
There is no harm in listening to the other side of the argument!
By: - 4th June 2012 at 07:10 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
We will just agree to disagree. I fully admit that I have no proof the Pakistani government was helping him to evade capture, but it is my firm belief that this idea isn't too far from the truth.
You are right in that there is always a second side to the argument, but I just have difficulty believing that the Pakistanis are fully committed to helping eradicate Moslem extremist groups and their followers. I think that too many of the Pakistani people are behind groups like Al-Qaeda and thus the government simply cannot take a harder stance. The will power isn't there because I think many Pakistanis don't view Al-Qaeda as a bad group. I hope I'm wrong on all those comments though...
Posts: 7,989
By: PhantomII - 23rd May 2012 at 13:37
Wow...what a backwards verdict...
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/05/23/pakistani-doctor-who-helped-us-in-bin-laden-raid-sentenced-to-prison/