Report: U.S., Pakistan had bin Laden deal

WASHINGTON, May 9 (UPI) -- The United States and Pakistan have had a deal about al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden for nearly a decade, Britain's Guardian reported Monday.
The newspaper said former U.S. President George Bush struck a deal permitting a U.S. operation like last week's raid with Pakistan's leader at the time, Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
U.S. Navy SEALs descended on bin Laden's Abbottabad, Pakistan, compound and killed him. Al-Qaida acknowledged bin Laden's death Friday and vowed revenge. U.S. President Barack Obama said in a CBS "60 Minutes" interview aired Sunday plans for the raid were a closely held secret and no one in the Pakistani government was informed beforehand.
The U.S.-Pakistan deal permitted not only operations against bin Laden, but against his two top aides in the terrorist chain of command,The Guardian said.
"There was an agreement between Bush and Musharraf that if we knew where Osama was, we were going to come and get him," a former senior U.S. official told the newspaper. "The Pakistanis would put up a hue and cry, but they wouldn't stop us."
The official said the agreement was renewed with the military as the civilian government was installed.
The Guardian said efforts to contact Musharraf for comment were unsuccessful.


Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/05/09/Report-US-Pakistan-had-bin-Laden-deal/UPI-29781304970130/#ixzz1LvNgsETd

I wonder; why wouldn’t Pakistan simply go after this monster?  We needed some sort of special agreement to allow us to march across, fly into, or otherwise infiltrate the sovereign country of Pakistan?  Was it a better deal for them to allow us to violate their borders, than if they were to eliminate bin Laden?  So this was all about public relations then?  They would harbor the leader of Al-Qaida and we would do their dirty work.  They could look like the good guys to certain factions within the Muslim world and we would be the bad guys.  If you read the particulars; once the deed was done, then the Pakistani government would put on a dog-and-pony show, and scream about how we had violated their borders, and how we are the villains, etc.  Will any country in that part of the world ever truly be our ally?  Can they be our ally?  Goofy diplomacy has become the norm in Washington, when it comes to the Middle East.  We prostitute ourselves for oil and the American consumers/taxpayers are the unsuspecting “Johns”.