 Pakistan's military spokesman said on Sunday he had no knowledge of a report that two years ago a delay by Pakistan in giving clearance for a U.S. airstrike gave time for Osama bin Laden to escape.
The report on the Web site of Britain's Sunday Telegraph newspaper quoted an unnamed senior Western diplomat as saying that the CIA got a lead two years ago that the al Qaeda leader was hiding in Zhob, in the southwestern province of Baluchistan. It said that by the time U.S. officials got the go-ahead from Pakistan for an air strike, bin Laden had left the area.
| That'd be Mahmoud the Weasel's work, of course... |
Pakistan's military spokesman Major-General Shaukat Sultan said he had no knowledge of the specific incident, so could not say if it was right or wrong. "But from what I know of procedures, I assume this would be wrong," he told Reuters. "Intelligence is passed along and acted upon as fast as possible."
| "It's just that sometimes our 'fast' is your 'slow.'" |
Shaukat added that the appearance of such a report two years after a supposed event was "absolutely absurd."
| Yasss... That was a long time ago, and we were all so much younger then..." |
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