Another interesting take on the Abbottabad Commission's report by Mark Stout, Director of the MA Program in Global Security Studies at Johns Hopkins, and an experienced academic and practitioner on intelligence issues. Mark emphasizes the report's description of the May 2011 Abbottabad raid as a humiliation, but notes the Commission's conclusion that it was a humiliation Pakistan brought on itself, saying: "It is possible to understand if not agree with the US decision to unilaterally implement its special operations mission."
Mark also notes the Commission's criticism of the ISI, who failed to commit to searching for Osama bin Laden despite numerous statements from U.S. leaders stating that the al-Qa'ida head was in their country. The report notes that when the CIA passed on a set of telephone numbers that included those belonging to the al-Kuwaiti brothers who were living with him in the Abbottabad compound, the ISI did not properly monitor the numbers.
Thus, Mark concludes, "The Commission seems to have thought that had the ISI been less dysfunctional and had it not 'closed the file' on Bin Laden, Pakistan might have gotten Bin Laden itself or done so in visible cooperation with the United States, either one of which scenarios would have avoided the humiliation of the May 2011 raid."
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