4 ms·
1. If Pakistan is paranoid about India then it will have concentrated its air defences facing India, not Afghanistan. The USA also has the resources to know the
by cmdkeen 11y ago
1. If Pakistan is paranoid about India then it will have concentrated its air defences facing India, not Afghanistan. The USA also has the resources to know the location of Pakistani radar sites and thus plan routes to avoid them.
1&2. Just because it is a garrison city, and if the Pakistani air defence noticed, this is not going to be a situation in the playbook. The local watch officer doesn't have a set of standing orders to deal with this, which means people need waking up. A full on invasion has plans and procedures, two helicopters don't constitute that and there will be rules of engagement etc. Especially in a country with a history of military coups you don't delegate to local forces the sort of decision making process to go and deal with a situation like this. Plus the state within a state aspect of ISI cuts both ways, the local army's reaction can also be explained as "I want nothing to do with whatever secret stuff is happening over there".
3. I can absolutely believe that. Guards attract attention and are a massive risk in terms of extra low level people having information that they may accidentally leak.
He was the most wanted man in the world, how would guards have helped? He was facing nation states not gangs. He survived all those years because he kept a low profile with a tiny number of people knowing his location.
4. Why would it be released? It isn't like anyone is claiming he is still alive.
5. See 1. But also bear in mind that many of the options available to Pakistan would have had severe repercussions. If they knew (or heavily suspected) it was a US raid then they were hardly going to shoot it down. It could have taken a decent amount of time just to run down the "are you sure this isn't us?" line, proving a negative takes time. Once the information necessary to make a decision was received it is entirely possible someone senior made the deliberate call to be deescalatory and deal with the situation diplomatically - which is arguably the right call.
As for the police why would they interfere in what is clearly (someone's) military operation, something which is likely to be a career or life ending move.
You need to account for human nature, military bureaucracy and never attributing to malice what can be explained by incompetence.
- tptacek 11y agoThere is also the real risk/reward involved. Pakistan is an ally, is dependent on the US for aid, and even if it wasn't, absolutely cannot afford a military confrontation with the US. So, game it out: if the mission fails, and the SEALs are stranded in Abbotabad, then what happens? Probably nothing, other than some embarrassment for the administration. The SEALs could probably fly back commercial if they had to. This isn't a midnight raid into North Korea we're talking about.
- Tloewald 11y agoI see you conspicuously do not address point 2 (which, by the way, is also buttressed by eyewitness testimony that Pakistani plain-clothes security showed up before the raid and told people to keep clear, etc.) Your suggestion that all the radar was merely pointed in the wrong direction is ridiculous. "You need to account for human nature, military bureaucracy and never attributing to malice what can be explained by incompetence" But this is specifically addressed in the article. The Pakistanis frequently explain inconvenient facts as incompetence.
- cmdkeen 11y agoNice to see you read my entire post which does very much reference point 2. The whole "they knew in advance" thing is getting into massive conspiracy theory territory where a shedload of relatively junior people know a massive secret and have all managed to keep it. Whilst also of course going and telling a load of civilians about said secret. On the radar point I've love you to explain why it is ridiculous. Ground based radar is sited in a way to reduce the blindspots created by terrain features. Given Pakistan has viewed Afghanistan as a client state essentially since the Soviet pullout, yet is terrified of India it is surely credible that detecting low flying aircraft coming from Afghanistan is not top of the priority list when it comes to siting their radar? I like that your conspiracy theory involves a government secretly being much more competent than it claims to be.
- Tloewald 11y agoYou don't keep conspiracies secret by keeping quiet, you keep them secret by burying them in confusing noise -- plausible deniability. This is why we have crazy stories about flying saucers and people still believe carrots improve your eyesight. The truth is out there mixed up with all kinds of half truth and bullshit. Radar is arranged to create overlapping coverage and handle planes flying weird courses (and switching to secondary targets and flying home). It's possible the US knows Pakistans air defence grid so well that it could pull this off but it wouldn't be because their radar is pointed at India. Governments claim incompetence to cover up stuff all the time. "We lost those records." Suggesting that the Pakistani government is incapable of doing this is silly.
- dennisgorelik 11y ago> Why would it be released? It isn't like anyone is claiming he is still alive. I'm claiming that Bin Laden may still be alive. Or, quite the opposite, he might have been killed long time ago. Without body, Obama's claims about Navy Seals killing Osama Bin Laden in 2011 are unsubstantiated.
- cmdkeen 11y agoWell Osama was making and releasing tapes, referencing current events, up until 2011 after which AQ acknowledged his death. Which lends credibility to a) his being alive up until 2011 and b) that he died then. You'd need to come up with a reason for the US to announce his death and AQ playing along...