Report: George W. Bush Put In Place Deal That Allowed Bin Laden Raid

It's the Guardian so salt to taste.

The US and Pakistan struck a secret deal almost a decade ago permitting a US operation against Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil similar to last week's raid that killed the al-Qaida leader, the Guardian has learned.

The deal was struck between the military leader General Pervez Musharraf and President George Bush after Bin Laden escaped US forces in the mountains of Tora Bora in late 2001, according to serving and retired Pakistani and US officials.

Under its terms, Pakistan would allow US forces to conduct a unilateral raid inside Pakistan in search of Bin Laden, his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the al-Qaida No3. Afterwards, both sides agreed, Pakistan would vociferously protest the incursion.

"There was an agreement between Bush and Musharraf that if we knew where Osama was, we were going to come and get him," said a former senior US official with knowledge of counterterrorism operations. "The Pakistanis would put up a hue and cry, but they wouldn't stop us."

...A senior Pakistani official said it had been struck under Musharraf and renewed by the army during the "transition to democracy" – a six-month period from February 2008 when Musharraf was still president but a civilian government had been elected.

Over the weekend Noam Chomsky (yeah, I was surprised to find out he was still alive too) wrote an idiotic piece saying the raid violated international law (oh and that Bush was a bigger criminal than bin Laden). Adam Serwer was one of the liberals defending Obama from the charge of international lawlessness (something liberals take seriously. Well, sometimes).

Today's lesson: Some liberals mistake their personal pacifism for what is actually circumscribed under international law.

Shooting bin Laden was certainly legal but what about sending the US military into Pakistan unbidden? That's not exactly kosher according to international law. So either Obama is an international criminal, his (and other liberal) professions of fidelity to international law are situational at best or...there was a pre-existing deal.

I hold no stock in international law. It's a fiction that is occasionally useful to us but mostly allows the little countries and liberals to bitch about something. Still, I think if they want to hold the US to when Republicans are in charge, they need to live by it (though I'm glad when they ignore it in our interest). Now though it appears, as one might have expected, that this whole thing was set in place but Evil International Law Breaking Cowboy George W. Bush.

Gutsy call indeed.

posted by DrewM. at 03:25 PM

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