Osama Wanted To Kill Obama And General Petraeus

The United States on Thursday released 17 documents found at Osama bin Laden's Pakistani compound in the raid that killed the Al-Qaeda chief a year ago.The White House allowed the declassified documents to be published online by the Combating Terrorism Centre at the West Point military academy. The papers include letters or draft letters dated from September 2006 to April 2011, a total of 175 pages in the original Arabic.The documents reveal internal correspondence inside the Al-Qaeda network, including letters authored by bin Laden and leaders of the group's affiliate in Yemen and fellow militants in Somalia and Pakistan.Bin Laden had planned to kill US President Barack Obama and General David Petraeus, who then was the top US commander in Afghanistan, and had issued instructions to Illyas Kashmiri to set up two units to target Air Force One carrying them. "Bin Laden had asked Atiyya's predecessor, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, to task Ilyas, presumably Ilyas Kashmiri, to set up two units, one in Pakistan and another in Bagram, Afghanistan, to target airplanes known to be carrying President Obama and/or General Petraeus on their visits to these areas."He only wanted President Obama and General Petraeus to be targeted," CTC said in its report. He explained that the death of President Obama would see the "utterly unprepared" Vice President Joe Biden automatically assume the presidency, which would cause the US to enter into crisis mode, and "the killing of Petraeus would have a serious impact on the course of the war," as bin Ladin considered him to be "the man of this (critical) phase", CTC said based on the analysis of these documents. Bin Laden did not explain, however, why he did not want "Secretary of Defence (Robert) Gates or the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Admiral Mike) Mullen or Special Envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan (Richard) Holbrooke" to be targeted. In letters from his last hideout, bin Laden fretted about dysfunction in his terrorist network and crumbling trust from Muslims he wished to incite against their government and the West. "I plan to release a statement that we are starting a new phase to correct (the mistakes) we made," bin Laden wrote in 2010. "In doing so, we shall reclaim, God willing, the trust of a large segment of those who lost their trust in the jihadis." A US analysts' report released along with bin Laden's correspondence describes him as upset over the inability of spinoff terrorist groups to win public support for their cause, their unsuccessful media campaigns and poorly planned plots that, in bin Laden's view, killed too many innocent Muslims.Bin Laden adviser Adam Gadahn urged him to disassociate their organisation from the acts of al-Qaeda's spinoff operation in Iraq, known as AQI, and bin Laden told other terrorist groups not to repeat AQI's mistakes.The correspondence includes letters by then-second-in-command Abu Yahya al-Libi, taking Pakistani offshoot Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan to task over its indiscriminate attacks on Muslims. The al-Qaeda leadership "threatened to take public measures unless we see from you serious and immediate practical and clear steps towards reforming (your ways) and dissociating yourself from these vile mistakes that violate Islamic Law," al-Libi wrote. And bin Laden warned the leader of Yemeni AQAP, Nasir al-Wuhayshi, against attempting a takeover of Yemen to establish an Islamic state, instead saying he should "refocus his efforts on attacking the United States." Bin Laden also seemed uninterested in recognising Somali-based al-Shabab when the group pledged loyalty to him.The US said the letters reflect al-Qaeda's relationship with Iran - a point of deep interest to the US government - as "not one of alliance, but of indirect and unpleasant negotiations" over some al-Qaeda terrorists and their families who were imprisoned in Iran. Nothing in the papers that were released points directly to al-Qaeda sympathisers in Pakistan's government, although presumably such references would have remained classified. Bin Laden described ‘trusted Pak brothers’ but didn't identify any government or military officials who might have been aware or complicit in his hiding. Bin Laden was proud of the security measures that kept his family safe for many years, the report said. It said bin Laden boasted that his family "adhered to such strict measures, precluding his children from playing outdoors without the supervision of an adult who could keep their voices down."