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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (30976)	6/15/2004 10:46:48 PM
From: lorne	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 81568

#4: Audiotape doesn’t lie. But ____ does. frankenlies.com On page 117 of Lies, Franken takes issue with the following claim from Sean Hannity: "Bill Clinton ... [was] offered Osama bin Laden by the Sudanese government, and they turned the offer down. They could have taken him into custody and begun unraveling his terrorist network 6 years ago [1996]. But they didn’t." (Sean Hannity, Let Freedom Ring (New York: Regan Books, 2002)) The issue: Did the U.S. at least have the option to take Osama bin Laden into custody in 1996, as Sean Hannity has written? Franken points to a couple of former Clinton officials who question this claim.1 In effect, Franken utilizes these officials to discredit Hannity and refute the notion that there was ever such an option. However, Franken’s entire passage rings hollow to those with the knowledge of a recorded statement from someone who should really know the truth of the matter: former President Bill Clinton. At a February 2002 business luncheon in New York, Clinton said this: "Mr. Bin Laden used to live in Sudan ... And we’d been hearing that the Sudanese wanted America to start meeting with them again. They released him. At the time, '96, he had committed no crime against America so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America."2 Sean Hannity is right-on! Don’t believe it? Newsmax has the exclusive audiotape. Listen to it here. There is also a companion article. It has also been reported that Clinton has confided that this failure "was the greatest mistake of my presidency."3 Franken’s passage is particularly sad because he tarnishes a decent, well-intentioned citizen, a Pakistani-American named Mansoor Ijaz, the man who is credited with brokering the U.S.-Sudan deal. A successful businessman and diplomat,4 he is a testament to the American Dream. But Ijaz is also on a special mission to fulfill his father’s dying wish to save his father’s country (Pakistan) and the world from radical extremists and terrorists.5 Here is a man who really loves America. Are you reading this, Al? Oh, yeah. The Clinton tape became public in August 2002, one year before Franken’s book was released. Did TeamFranken not know about the tape? Or did Clinton’s words fail to meet Franken’s "impossibly high standard"?