Doctor who ran fake CIA vaccination drive to find Osama bin Laden is jailed

[WestVirginiaRebel]

UK Guardian:

The Pakistani medical official who ran a fake CIA vaccination programme to help find Osama bin Laden has been jailed for 33 years.

A spokesman for Khyber Agency, an administrative unit in Pakistan's restless frontier, said Dr Shakil Afridi would face decades in jail – despite calls from senior US officials to release the man who helped with efforts to track down the al-Qaida chief.

The tough sentence for the former surgeon general of Khyber will be taken as another sign of the terrible state of US-Pakistan relations.

And it will further alarm western critics of Pakistan who say the country has put far more effort into trying to understand how US spies and special forces were able to plan and launch the Bin Laden raid than into how the al-Qaida leader was able to remain for so long in the Pakistani army garrison town of Abbottabad.

The sentence was announced just days after Barack Obama snubbed the Pakistani president, Asif Ali Zardari, by refusing to hold a formal meeting with him at the Nato conference in Chicago.

In January Leon Panetta, the US defence secretary, said he was "very concerned" about the arrest of Afridi after Pakistan's intelligence service discovered he had set up a fake hepatitis B vaccination scheme with his nurses going from house to house in Abbottabad in the weeks before the raid on Bin Laden's hideout in May last year.

"For them to take this kind of action against somebody who was helping to go after terrorism, I just think it is a real mistake on their part," Panetta said in January.

There had been hopes that Afridi would eventually be quietly released after the controversy surrounding the Bin Laden raid had subsided.

________

 

Our "allies" show their support, again...

[clearvision]

And we show our support for those that helps us...

[raygun]

I'm unable to make a coherent comment concerning the matter given the degree of visible degradation that Sec State has undergone.

 

Shortly after the 2008 induction into office of the current Admiinstration, there were several reports of Ms. Clinton being significantly injured at least twice.

 

Quite frankly, Ms. Clinton appears nearly conintuously in the media as Ms Pelosi did once (immediately after the the imfamous meeting of ALL the top-honcho financial 'Czars'; at the press conference prior to the imfamous Wall Street 'bail-out').

 

What is Ms Clinton willing to give up to get the man released from Pahk-istan prison? Has anybody noticed how the name of the country has changed since innauguration of the current Administration?

[pollyannaish]

Between this and the China dissent's treatment, I am with @raygun--I am incoherent, and in my case is it is because of my anger.

 

We should have gotten this man and his family out of the country.

[raygun]

Wait.

 

What are you saying?

[pollyannaish]

Wait.

 

What are you saying?

 

All I'm saying is this whole thing makes me so angry that I am practically incoherent on the subject. If people go out of their way to help us, the least we can do is protect them from harm...even from harm from our "allies."

 

I was not sure if you were saying your anger was at Mrs. Clinton specifically, or something else, so I didn't want to "take your name in vain" so to speak. I suspect we are on the same side on this . ;-)

 

I actually think this has more to do with Valerie Jarrett and President Obama than it does Hillary Clinton, to be honest. And I'm no fan of hers!

[raygun]

I don't know what you're talking 'bout.

 

Didn't your Mom teach you to respect your elders?

[pollyannaish]

I don't know what you're talking 'bout.

 

Didn't your Mom teach you to respect your elders?

 

[raygun]