Osama Bin Laden - Wanted Dead or Alive! Well, it's dead now

Killed in a compound not a cave!

So Osama Bin Laden is finally cornered and killed. Not in the Afghan hills. Not in the sandy deserts of Saudi Arabia. Not even in a cave in the Caucasus Mountains. No, he was found in PAKISTAN!! Right under the noses of those dozy "democrats" that the Americans trusted all these years. 35 miles away from Islamabad in a fortified compound enjoying some status as a recluse and a reject.

You'd think in a country as garrulous as Pakistan that somebody would have talked. In fact, it is unbelievable that the country's bigwigs did not know. Right now the president and prime minister are huddled together concocting some get-out clauses to put in a statement. Thank goodness the US authorities saw fit not to tell the Pakistanis what was going on. Pakistan has been a loose cannon ever since it was created. Anyway, they now know the world knows they can't be trusted. Since 2005 Bin Laden has been stuck in this compound, sipping mint tea and talking turkey with passing vagrants. Obviously somebody spoke up in order for the special forces to do the ultimate deed. But it's all grapevine stuff in order to put a stop to the wild goose chase that Bin Laden started. Don't ask the Pakistani president on a duck shoot. He'd fire off at the first flutter he saw.

With Bin Laden at rest, if not at peace, the world can move on. Hopefully the al-Queda franchise can go bust. Let them fade away. Today is a good day for President Obama. He stuck to the hunt for Bin Laden without fanfare and futile gestures. And he was not afraid to do the right thing. Sticking to diplomatic niceties would have been crazy. He ordered the raid and he got a result.

Osama Bin Laden killed. The White House releases information that public enemy number one is killed.

Sir Jock stirs it up over Afghan mission

Only this last week, the hapless Gordon Brown was telling us all about that nasty Alky Ada he keeps on about. Well, today Sir Jock Stirrup rode into town to appear on the Andrew Marr Show.
He said, amongst other things, this -

"It is true that al-Queda are not operating in Afghanistan at the moment. It is also true that over the last couple of years in particular the al-Queda core has suffered significant damage".

Not in Afghanistan? Where are they, then? Oh, don't tell me, it's Pakistan. But we aren't going after them there are we? Not a chance! We don't want uprisings in Britain do we?

What a shower! Brown waffles on about his wretched Afghan campaign. He has about as much clue as those hopeless First World War generals. As with most British people, I have a relative laid to rest in that battlefield. Have we learnt anything?

Gordon Brown's Afghan egg displeases curate's congregation

The curate's egg was good in parts. He was implying that something which is partly good can be ruined by the bad bit.

Right Reverend Host. "I’m afraid you’ve got a bad Egg, Mr. Jones!"
The Curate. "Oh no, my Lord, I assure you! Parts of it are excellect!"

We could say the same about Gordon Brown's speech this morning. He is still trying to persuade us that his nemesis, Alky Ada, is about to strike out in London on a savage rampage all due to the problems starting in Kabul. Cut off the Afghan terrorists and Britain is a safer place. It's all poppycock. He ruins a basically good premise by including untruths and speculation. Al Queda are in Pakistan giving grief to that benighted country. If they ever were in Afghanistan they have long since fled. Terrorists are not insurgents. Fine point, maybe, but the aims are different. It is the Taliban, a group of warlords and displaced poppy farmers, that are the anti-social scourge of the Afghans. We don't wish to seize the moment in Pakistan to go after Al Queda. Probably because we would get an uprising in Britain as well as in Pakistan.

So the Afghan war is about telling us we are fighting terrorism to make Britain a safer place. The Taliban are enemies of the democratising process of Afghan society. We are telling Karzai about corruption. Gordon Brown lectures him on good governance, suggesting that a government must not stand back and let corruption take place. Excuse me! What has Brown beeen doing in Westminster? Trying to hide MPs expenses, his own cleaning bills and Sky Sports subscriptions, by invoking parliamentary privilege, stifling freedom of information and redacting documents. Nice one.

The country is not behind this war because the premise is false. We are behind our soldiers and each and every one of them has put themselves where virtually none of us would go. But the government needs to do far better than come up with this travesty of the truth.

There are four countries in the world that the "West" has difficulty with. Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan. Not one is a fully functioning democracy. All have despots waiting to take over. All have simmering grievances. The peoples of each country want peace and prosperity. They don't care if it is with democracy or with a benign overlord. They just want peace. In that, Gordon Brown is right to say that the first duty of a government is the security of the nation. But he negates his good reasons by including fancifully bad ones.

Until the truth is out, this war will go nowhere. Until our objectives are crystal clear, we have only the curate's opinion to guide us.

Bin Laden been dead for seven years?

The Daily Mail asks the question as to whether the rich boy turned cave-dwelling terrorist is actually dead. They think he might have gone to his Maker seven years ago. A book called Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive? is out now. Written by political analyst and philosopher Professor David Ray Griffin, former emeritus professor at California's Claremont School of Theology, it is provoking shock waves - for it goes into far more detail about his supposed death and suggests there has been a cover-up by the West. Another Senate hearing for the truth?

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1212851/Has-Osama-Bin-Laden-dead-seven-years--U-S-Britain-covering-continue-war-terror.html#ixzz0QuG1p3RA

More terror plots likely

The New York Times is in a quandary. They are trying to answer this question - "Does the United States need a large and growing ground force in Afghanistan to prevent another major terrorist attack on American soil?" - and they don't seem any nearer the answer.

The trouble is that the powers-that-be have completely muddled up the Taliban with al-Queda. It is rather like linking Hitler's Lebensraum with Mussolini's prancing fascism. Mussolini was only tenously linked to the Nazi war effort. The British described the Italians as being "co-belligerents" as if they could be conveniently unhitched from Hitler's bandwagon without too much trouble. "Let the Eyeties sort it out after the war" seemed to be the slapdash approach.

Similarly the Muslim fighting forces that are the Taliban and al Queda have very different agendas. If I live to be 1000 I doubt very much if I will be bothered by a Taliban bomber in Solihull. al-Queda is another matter. But they are not in Afghanistan, but in that terrorist haven that is Pakistan. Trouble is that Pakistan is a former British colony and loads of Pakistanis live in Britain. Whereas the Afghan Taliban gets shot at for causing an anti-democratic regime to have been created (and for wanting it back!), the Pakistani al-Queda groups just get a wigging from half-hearted Pakistani generals (always with one eye open for a possible coup in Islamabad).

It would be totally inappropriate to invade Pakistan and root out the real terrorists, wouldn't it? Expensive trials that have convicted demonic would-be bombers have proved the point. Not one Afghan has been lifted by the Metropolitan police for being a terrorist in action.

So what are we doing in Afghanistan? It appears we are hopelessly inadequate when it comes to checking up on the democratic process. Ballot stuffing under our noses! We are woefuly inadequate in destroying the poppy crops, so the cocaine trade carries on as usual and we have not found a single al-Queda terrorist in Kabul or the whole of Afghanistan. The Taliban may be a cruel and crazed mob, but they are just that and keep to the hills. It is the terrorists in Pakistan, linked to the "home-grown" bomb plotters that we have to be concerned with.

So maybe the answer to the question that the New York Times poses is this. Look for the terrorists in Pakistan and not Afghanistan. Tell the Pakistani government they've got a month to clean up or they face a desert storm. That's the real answer. However, I suspect this present cloud-cuckooland battle will continue and we will all be the worse for it.

Alky Ada and the Spooks!

I am currently reading Matthew Parris' autobiography. A good read with some really good insights into the human existence, his as much as others. In one part of his life, just after Cambridge, the MI6 or 5 brigade thought he would make a good spook. He thought so too, but came to realise that he was not cut out for spying. The problem was they didn't. They offered him a job! Parris puts it brilliantly - "On reflection it struck me I was too unreliable to be a spy. I am not discreet, not self-effacing, not patient, not heterosexual and besides, there was, as Mrs.Thatcher would have put it and probably has, 'something not quite right about that boy'. It's a matter of relief that I had noticed my unsuitability for British intelligence. It's a matter of concern that British intelligence never did." And he goes on to say that if you ever thought British Intelligence was just like the books, all Oxbridge dons and closed door meetings, then it is "just like that".

I have heard some accounts of friends' friends passing through the hallowed halls of these spying types. Joining all the tales together and it does give the impression of a service to our country that is more wing and a prayer than anything else. So it comes as no surprise that MI5 may have mistakenly recruited Al Queda operatives as willing Muslim informants.

Patrick Mercer, chairman of the Home Affairs counter-terror sub-committee, said he was told six recruits were ejected after worries about their past. Questions are now being asked. Good, because if these six wonders were still operating what sort of fantasies would MI5 chiefs be living under? The mind boggles. An Arab once said to me, "You British, you can be such fools," and he meant it kindly, as if to urge remedial treatment in an alpine clinic.

As they say, this story has legs.

Joe Biden's not really sure, is he?

Joe Biden's been chatting to the BBC. His take on the war in Afghanistan is that it is in the interests of the US and the UK. "It is worth the effort we are making," he said, warning that the terror groups on the border with Pakistan could "wreak havoc" on Europe and the US. He reiterated the Obama administration's rationale for the conflict. "This is the place from which the attacks of 9/11 and all those attacks in Europe that came from al-Qaeda have flowed from that place - between Afghanistan and Pakistan." So we should be in Pakistan too, then, clearing out the caves and cosy hiding places there? I doubt it.

This is a war without a clear purpose. On Mondays it's about democracy in Kabul. Tuesdays it's about fighting the Taliban. Wednesday it's back to the terrorist agenda of al-Qaeda. Biden says the terror groups who shelter along the Afghan-Pakistan border combine with the country's role in the international drug trade - supplying 90% of the world's heroin - means the war in Afghanistan needs to succeed. So are we trying to suppress and eradicate the drugs trade, fight terrorism or put democracy in place? Or do all three at once?

I would think such incoherent thinking is just fuel to the average Afghan cave-dweller. These guys have been living rough since they started to walk upright. Their only respect for modernity is mobile phones and designer specs. Taking pot shots at the beggars isn't going to change the mindset much.

If it was down to me, I'd hire a fleet of planes to spray the poppy crops, I'd give ten minutes warning that exocet missiles were coming at those caves, I'd put extreme pressure on the Pakistani, Somali and other governments to shape up, and I'd chuck out the bearded wonders wandering the streets of London and other cities as undesirable aliens.

But it isn't down to me!

Porkies from Petraeus? No! Revelations on Iraq!

When General Petraeus leaves the US Army and gets a job in civvy street, he'll do well to keep away from selling sub-prime loans or second-hand cars! Any savvy buyer will spot him a mile off.

His Capitol Hill showing displayed all the body language of a man trying to please his masters, whilst desperately keeping his intellect in check. John McCain and his 100 Years War pysche were well satisfied. Others were less sure. I'm very much a conservative opposed to this pantomime of trying to suggest that al-Queda is the enemy in Iraq. Thankfully, one senator, Joe Biden, got Ryan Crocker, the US Ambassador to admit that Afghanistan and Pakistan, not Iraq, was the central front in the battle against al-Qaeda. Is Mr.Crocker spending too much time in a fantasy world?

Then General Petraeus stated that the US had not "turned any corners" nor "seen any lights at the end of the tunnel," in contrast to statements last summer in which he claimed corners had been turned. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for the surge. Here again, John McCain is talking up stuff without a scintilla of common sense attached to it. Petraeus will be out to grass come the New Year!

Petraeus also confirmed that the Iraqi government is failing to take the necessary steps to ensure sufficient progress in the areas of politics and security responsibility. All very makeshift and tenuous. And to add insult to injury, he said that the United States, whilst accusing Iran of destructive and destabilising machinations in the country, is favouring with the very Shiite faction most closely linked to Iran! What on earth is the man thinking of? I thought George Bush was apopletic about Iran. How come his generals are cosying up to the enemy within?

Americans (and the British) should be asking more questions. This whole Iraq invasion is fuelled by spin, deceit, and subterfuge. People are dying. If Mr.Bush wants to hold back the tears, let him do it AFTER he has come clean about this war. Otherwise it all looks a bit false.