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Doctor Who Helped Find Bin Laden Given Jail Term, Official Says [W:58]

justabubba

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A Pakistani doctor who helped the Central Intelligence Agency locate Osama Bin Laden
through a fake vaccination campaign in the city of Abbottabad was convicted on Wednesday of treason and sentenced to 33 years in prison, a senior official in Pakistan said.
A tribal court here found the doctor, Shakil Afridi, guilty of acting against the state ...
In January, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta confirmed that the United States had been working with Dr. Afridi to gain access to Bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad in the months before the raid.
...
According to Pakistani security officials, Dr. Afridi admitted to helping the C.I.A. before the raid by Navy Seals that killed Bin Laden in May 2011. That operation angered Pakistani officials who viewed it as a violation of the country's sovereignty and because they were not told about it ahead of time.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/w...laden-given-jail-term-official-says.html?_r=1

this will certainly motivate other pakistani nationals to assist our efforts to thwart terrorism [/s]

and panetta, the head of the CIA, is the person who put this operative at risk. such a dumb ass
 
Just goes to show whose side Pakistan is really on. We should be stopping ALL foeign aid (both military and otherwise) to that nation.
 
Apparently the Pakistan government is not our side. At the same time I can understand charging a citizen with treason for helping out a foreign government to carry out a military operation on your country's soil without getting the go ahead of the government.Then again Pakistan is a country that allows the US to fly drones into it,so the idea they care about sovereignty is a lie.
 
Just goes to show whose side Pakistan is really on. We should be stopping ALL foeign aid (both military and otherwise) to that nation.

We should be stopping foreign aid to all countries. Our country is in debt and our citizens come first.
 
It gives us insight into Pakistan's true views, and it shows us the flaws in our own system of info release.

The doctor suffers so that we gain. Tragic, but at least some good comes from it.
 
This development is not too surprising. The current regime in Pakistan is focused strictly on maintaining power and it is willing to put that goal ahead of all other matters. As a result, the regime remains unreliable as far as U.S. interests are concerned. It is also becoming an even greater risk to regional stability vis-a-vis Afghanistan and India.

The U.S. effort to press for former President Musharraf's departure from power is a strategic blunder for which the full costs have yet to be borne. Pakistan is no more democratic than it was under the military-led Musharraf government and its political institutions have frayed dramatically.

Even as there have been few benefits, either for Pakistan's people or U.S. interests, the costs of the blunder are rising. Pakistan's evolution into a mainly unreliable partner since them (much more unreliable than it had been) and its closure of land-based supply routes to Afghanistan is just one example of those costs. This latest "conviction" is another.

Once NATO forces have largely left Afghanistan by 2014, one should not be surprised if the current regime carries out policies that further destabilize Afghanistan. That Afghanistan is led by a regime that is perceived as illegitimate by many of its residents and one that is inconsistent with that country's decentralized nature magnifies the possible damage Pakistan could cause.

Finally, Pakistan continues to slide toward failed state status. That outcome could have broad implications were extremist elements to join the government, possibly on their own or by invitation of a regime desperate to maintain power, even if part of a power-sharing arrangement (usually, those arrangements have short shelf lives for governments that lack public mandates and in which governing institutions are weak).
 
We should be stopping foreign aid to all countries. Our country is in debt and our citizens come first.

I agree, but that's a topic for another time and place. I'm talking about directly due to this action by the Pakistani Government. If they prefer to stand on the side of people like OBL instead of us, then they need to be treated as co-conspirators with OBL.
 
I imagine there was a touch of quid pro quo about this situation. Hard for me to believe the Americans couldn't have gotten this guy out. This is their fall guy so the Pakistani's can save some face.

He won't last long in a Pakistani prison I imagine.
 
Just goes to show whose side Pakistan is really on. We should be stopping ALL foeign aid (both military and otherwise) to that nation.
To be fair, Pakistan is on Pakistan's side just as the USA is on the USA's side. If a US citizen helped Pakistani forces carry out a military operation within America, I suspect US federal authorities would have questions for them.

I'm not saying any of it is right, just that the idea that we're so upstanding and moral while they're underhanded and selfish is either naïve or dishonest.
 
A. we should be sending this guy letters & care-packages. He is a hero.

B. we should consider a raid to get this guy out of prison, bring him to the USA, and give him a free house and car.

C. we need to send a message to the world, that when you help us....we appreciate it. This guy needs our help.
 
To be fair, Pakistan is on Pakistan's side just as the USA is on the USA's side. If a US citizen helped Pakistani forces carry out a military operation within America, I suspect US federal authorities would have questions for them.

Then the US should not have any dealings (military, economic, diplomatic, etc...) with Pakistan.
 
I agree, but that's a topic for another time and place. I'm talking about directly due to this action by the Pakistani Government. If they prefer to stand on the side of people like OBL instead of us, then they need to be treated as co-conspirators with OBL.

We should, yes, but our government is committed to the fantasy that Pakistan is an ally in the War on Terror.
 
call Rush

call Hannity

call everyone. We need to let the world know that the USA does NOT leave its friends behind.
 
We should, yes, but our government is committed to the fantasy that Pakistan is an ally in the War on Terror.

I do not think we have ever thought that. Especially since we knew he went to Pakistan following the Tora Bora fiasco.
 
call Rush

call Hannity

call everyone. We need to let the world know that the USA does NOT leave its friends behind.

Too late for that. We've been leaving our friends behind since 1974 and we're still doing it. We're going to do it in Iraq and Afghanistan.
 
call everyone. We need to let the world know that the USA does NOT leave its friends behind.

Not at all. We need to let these countries like Pakistan know that they need to get fully behind US Policy or they WILL get left behind, PERMANENTLY. That means the next time there's a 6.5 magnitude earthquake in their country, there's not going to be any US Aid showing up to bail their asses out either.
 
Seems to me that this information would have been classified. WTF was Panetta thinking?

this
panetta was the head of the CIA
if that is not scary enough, he is now in charge of DoD
 
Too late for that. We've been leaving our friends behind since 1974 and we're still doing it. We're going to do it in Iraq and Afghanistan.

true, we left the Kurds behind and the Shiites behind after the Gulf War.

not good. why should anyone help us if we have no integrity?
 
true, we left the Kurds behind and the Shiites behind after the Gulf War.

not good. why should anyone help us if we have no integrity?

and don't forget all of those who supported us in vietnam, such as the Montagnards - a people we promised to protect - as we abandoned them to flee from the approaching NVA
 
Then the US should not have any dealings (military, economic, diplomatic, etc...) with Pakistan.
You think the US should only have relations with countries who are willing to put American considerations above and beyond their own? But no other country are allowed to have the same attitude?
 
The doctor and his entire family should have been stealth choppered out of that fvcking country within 24 hours of bin Laden's death.

If the man chose to stay in Pakistan it's his choice, but if the USofA did not make any and every effort to get him out early on, perhaps even before the raid that killed Osama, then we are truly a nation with no heart.

Perhaps this is a horrible way for us to NOT pay the doctor the reward for helping capture/kill the world's most wanted man.

No matter how you look at it, it's sickening.
 
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