Porter Goss Declares Defeat

Why in the world would CIA Director Porter Goss say that he's pretty sure he knows where bin Laden is but can't go get him because we have to respect the sovereignty of other countries?

I'm not suggesting that we run roughshod over the sovereignty of other nations and I suspect that capturing bin Laden might not be a viable task for a covert special ops group. But I would think that this might be a viable topic for diplomatic discussions.

What Porter Goss is telling us here is that we lack the international heft to negotiate access to take down bin Laden. It's a statement of diplomatic impotence, a shrug at the weakened influence the US wields.  It's a declaration of defeat - "we know where he is but we can't get him". We can't get the cooperation we need.

We've come a long way since the days after 9/11 when a French newspaper declared that "we are all Americans". Haven't we?

Comments

[carla]

We have to respect the sovereignty of other countries?

Oh jeez.

Like we respected Iraq's sovereignty? Like we're currently respecting Iran, North Korea, Syria, Lebanon and any other country we feel the need to invade...whether overtly or covertly?

That's quite a spin.

[Zero]

We have a long history of shitting on other people's doorsteps. Maybe we are turning over a new leaf OR maybe he's full of crapola and has no idea where bin Laden is.

Z

[tas]

Personally, I think Goss is full of crap and the guy couldn't find his own wang if it wasn't attached to him. He just doesn't want the government to admit that our billion dollar intelligence operations have absolutely no clue where the most wanted man on the planet is.

[Mick]

No, that's not the problem. Hell, everybody knows where bin Laden 'probably' is: Pakistan. And that's the problem.

Unlike our current crew, who are about as subtle as measles, Musharraf has been successfully playing both ends against the middle for years. He maintains control of the army, much of which is synmpathetic to OBL and AQ and the Taliban, by giving everybody something, nobody everything, and cracking down on anybody who thinks whatever he gave them wasn't enough.

The Taliban faction gets to keep the border porous so Taliban fighters can run back and forth between Afghanistan and Pakistan for training, fund-raising, and supplies. The AQ faction helps train guerilla fighters headed for both Iraq and Afghanistan, and is allowed to protect those training camps from interdiction by Europeans or the US. And the OBL faction gets a safe haven for their real leader. Meanwhile, Musharraf keeps the US off his back with the occasional arrest of already-compromised 'terrorist' leaders--usually personal enemies of his who got out of line and/or wouldn't obey orders.

This is how things have been done in the Levant for generations. Pervez is good at it. He's survived several coup attempts and at least one internal revolt. The US can't go after bin Laden without going after Musharraf, but if they go after Musharraf, he would then cut off the only co-operation we're getting from that part of the world. He could open the border with Afghanistan for real, not just in spots, turn it into a sieve where the drugs-for-arms trade could go full speed ahead, give the part of his armny that wants it permission to back the Taliban, and BINGO! The 'little' war that everybody's forgotten about blows up into a BIG war nobody wants to think about.

The question is, Why did Porter say it in the first place? He can't go any further and he can't back it up. Was he trying to draw attention from something else? Did he just come over all stupid (not that he isn't)?

I think this is a sign that the Admin is collapsing from the inside. Nobody's running the show, nobody's even riding shotgun or Porter wouldn't have been allowed to bring it up.

[wanda]

Since when did we "respect the sovereignty of other countries..."? Is this some new kind of concept the CIA is trying on for size?

I supsect Goss is pretty damned close to right. They do know where he is, heck we all pretty much know where he is. Yet here we sit, the worlds greatest superpower and we can't convice some pissant little country to hand over the worlds most notorious criminal to us. How pathetic is that? Superpower my ass. Bully is more like it. And you know, nobody likes a bully. Not even the other bullies.

[eRobin]

Gee, I thought that we wouldn't distinguish between terrorists and the states that harbor them ...

[Claude]

"Yet here we sit, the worlds greatest superpower and we can't convice some pissant little country to hand over the worlds most notorious criminal to us".....

The main problem, as usual, is the incredible ignorance of the average US citizen.
My dear fellow Mick, Pakistan has over 100 milion inhabitants and history long ties and interests with all the countries of the region starting from Siria (another "pissant little country" that, among the rest, was one of the major developers of nightvision technology in the'70s).
Pakistan has also a very large army and an even larger and terrible secret structure called ISI, which is very well known for its tentacular presence in all the world.
Oh...by the way.....Pakistan is also a nuclear power and has several mid-range nuclear devices ready that could be delivered to Israel with the Shahib missile to destabilize the region...
Last but not least an enormously large number of cargo ships all over the world are under Pakistani authority (they are historically a people of trade).
Now, fellow Mick, try and put 2 next to 2 and understand why the "superpower" cannot just kick Mussharaf in the face and operate a military taskforce to snatch OBL inside Pakistan while eating hamburgers and spitting tobacco.
ISI could easily put up too much of a price on the US for that.

Sometimes I am amazed.
Why don't US people understand that WWII times, when it was just a matter of numbers of tanks and ships, are over?
Power is not the capability to hammer some country with b-52s...it is the ability to make someone prefer not to.