"A secret military operation in early 2005 to capture senior members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas was aborted at the last minute after top Bush administration
officials decided it was too risky and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan,
according to intelligence and military officials.
The target was a meeting of Qaeda leaders that intelligence officials thought included Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy and the man believed to run the terrorist group’s operations. But the mission was called off after Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, rejected the 11th-hour appeal of Porter J. Goss, then the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, officials said. Members of a Navy Seals unit in parachute gear had already boarded C-130 cargo planes in Afghanistan when the mission was canceled, said a former senior intelligence official involved in the
planning."
This move has prompted a lot of critism from blogs on the right. There seems to be the feeling that we should have entered Pakistan with no interest for the fact that we would be violating an international boundary. What they are over looking is the question, would getting Zawahri be worth the instability and the potential downfall of the president of Pakistan. Would it be worth some of the most extreme muslim groups in the world getting their hands on nuclear weapons. I don't think it was worth the risk, and I think that they made a smart move in not going into Pakistan.
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