Longtime reader EF on the Cheney bombing …
Itâs not getting much play this morning, but it has been reported that Cheneyâs arrival in Bagram/Kabul was another of his secret visits. Not secret from the Taliban, however, who managed to send a suicide bomber to the base to greet the VP â and apparently get through the first ring of security as well.
To iterate the unstated obvious, the Taliban and/or Al Qaeda must have good sources inside the Pakistani, Afghan or United States/Nato governments. Or perhaps even the Saudis, if weâre now siding with Al Qaeda against the Shiites, as per your note on the Hersh article. Presumably, Cheneyâs movements are carefully guarded secrets. If the Taliban knows about them, you have to figure theyâre getting tipped to routing military operations as well. That doesnât augur well for success.
I’m just reading the first reports of this. So it’s not clear to me just how close they got to Cheney or what sort of knowledge the Taliban forces in the area would need to mount the attack. Perhaps it was clear there was some VIP visiting — which given Cheney’s appearance in Islamabad, seemed to be him — and they sent someone to the outer gate of the sprawling base.
As long as it’s Cheney day, though, here’s the question I’m curious why no one is asking at the White House press briefing. Vice President Cheney, we’re told, went to Islamabad to warn the Pakistanis that al Qaeda was reforming along the Pakistani border. But we assume this is happening because the Pakistani government signed that armistice with the pro-al Qaeda groups sheltering them. But the White House signed off on that deal. And it was widely predicted at the time that the deal would have just this effect. So why did the White House sign off on the deal that has allowed al Qaeda to regroup bases on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border?
