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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (375700)	3/21/2003 12:07:50 PM
From: JakeStraw	Respond to of 769667

Aide: Clinton Had 90 Percent Chance to Get Bin Laden When ex-President Bill Clinton missed a chance to launch a cruise missile attack targeting Osama bin Laden in November 1998, the mission was thought to have a 90 percent chance of success, Clinton's former Air Force aide said yesterday. The estimate contradicts the ex-president's own claim that the attack likely would have failed because U.S intelligence did not have clear evidence of bin Laden's whereabouts at the time. "We had - probably not a 100 percent guaranteed hit on Osama - but we had probably in the 90s - something we could count on," Lt. Col. Robert Patterson [USAF Ret.] told nationally syndicated radio host Sean Hannity. In his book "Dereliction of Duty: The Eyewitness Account of How Bill Clinton Compromised National Security," Patterson reveals that National Security Advisor Sandy Berger couldn't reach Clinton in time to get approval for the cruise missile attack that likely would have killed the al-Qaeda chief. In a speech last year, however, Mr. Clinton claimed that the chance for success of that mission was less than 50 percent. And, he insisted, "No one thought I should do that." "I could have bombed or sent more missiles in," Clinton told a New York business group in February 2002. "As far as we knew, he never went back to his training camp. So the only place bin Laden ever went that we knew was occasionally he went to Khandahar, where he always spent the night in a compound that had 200 women and children." "So I could have, on any given night, ordered an attack that I knew would kill 200 women and children that had less than a 50 percent chance of getting him." "Now, after he murdered 3,100 of our people and others who came to our country seeking their livelihood you may say, 'Well, Mr. President, you should have killed those young women and children.' But at the time we didn't think he had the capacity to do that. And no one thought that I should do that - although I take full responsibility for it. "You need to know that those are the two options I had. And there was less than a 50/50 chance that the intelligence was right that on this particular night he was in Afghanistan." Lt. Col. Patterson also charges that Clinton was aware of an al-Qaeda plot to hijack airplanes and use them as flying bombs, something the ex-president has never acknowledged. Recounting a 1996 episode in which he said Clinton had asked him to gather up several days' worth of Presidential Daily Briefings from his desk, Patterson recalled: "I opened the PDB to rearrange the notes and noticed the heading 'Operation Bojinka.' I keyed on a reference to a plot to use commercial airliners as weapons and another plot to put bombs on U.S. airliners. ... I can state for a fact that this information was circulated within the U.S. intelligence community, and that in late 1996 the president was aware of it." Plans for Operation Bojinka were discovered during a 1995 raid by Philippine police on the apartment of Ramzi Yousef, an al-Qaeda operative with ties to Iraq who was convicted in 1997 of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (375700)	3/21/2003 1:16:27 PM
From: JakeStraw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Iraqis Surrender, Even to Journalists By ELLEN KNICKMEYER Associated Press Writer customwire.ap.org SAFWAN, Iraq (AP) -- Waving white flags and raising their hands to the sky, hundreds of Iraqi soldiers quickly surrendered to coalition forces in southern Iraq - and some even tried to give themselves up to Western journalists. One Marine traffic control unit manning an intersection in southern Iraq accepted at least 45 soldiers' surrender by sundown Friday. Many of the Iraqis were crammed in the backs of a pickup truck and open-bed trailer, their hands raised. Iraqi officers came in behind, apparently by foot. Marines pulled the prisoners to the side of the road. "Hands up!" Marines barked, pushing the Iraqis along. Skinny, reedy boys who appeared to be still in their teens complied. The Marines searched them and sat them down. Across the road, three Iraqi lieutenant colonels sprawled briefly on the asphalt to be searched. An Arabic-speaking Marine searched the papers of the officers for intelligence information, then handed back their personal effects. "Man, I've been in country two hours, and already I've got two wounded and a truckload of prisoners," one Marine, standing guard over the prisoners with weapon ready, told another. The Marines rolled bales of concertina wire toward the prisoners and planned to keep them in a temporary facility until camps could open up. Some of the Iraqis who gave themselves up were wearing T-shirts and other civilian clothes instead of military uniforms. Lt. Col. Rob Abbott of Camp Pendleton, Calif., said the situation matched the expectations he had after seeing Iraqi troops surrender en masse in the 1991 Gulf War. "I think they're just glad to be out of the fight," Abbott said. "I'd much rather have them come surrender than have me have to go hump them out of holes." The U.S. military has encouraged Iraqi soldiers to surrender rather than risk annihilation fighting to defend Saddam, and troops seem to have encountered limited resistance. Even before any shooting began, 17 Iraqi soldiers surrendered to American soldiers Wednesday. Within a few hours of crossing into southern Iraq, the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit encountered 200 or more Iraqi troops seeking to surrender. One group of 40 Iraqis marched down a two-lane road toward the Americans and gave up. One group of Iraq soldiers alongside a road waved a white flag and their raised hands, trying to flag down a group of journalists so they could surrender. In the town of Safwan, Iraqi civilians eagerly greeted the 1st Marine Division. One little boy, who had chocolate melted all over his face after a soldier gave him some treats from his ration kit, kept pointing at the sky, saying "Ameriki, Ameriki."