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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geode00 who wrote (189768)	6/20/2006 4:16:50 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Here is some commetary from someone, who unlike you, took the time to learn the facts, instead of spewing bogus charges: Wish in one hand, read the 9/11 report in the other... Posted by: Jon Henke on Tuesday, August 16, 2005 I've long defended Clinton against the charges that he failed to extradite Bin Laden from Sudan, attack Al Qaeda when he could, and other somewhat unrealistic charges. His actions at the time were reasonable, given the political climate, what we knew of OBL and what we expected of Al Qaeda. We were wrong, but hindsight is a bitch. But when Clinton says this... "I desperately wish, that I had been president when the FBI and CIA finally confirmed, officially, that bin Laden was responsible for the attack on the U.S.S. Cole. Then we could have launched an attack on Afghanistan early." ....I have to ask some questions. In 1998, we learned that Osama bin Laden's organization Al Qaeda was responsible for acts of terrorism against the United States, eventually including "the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1996 killing of 19 US soldiers in Saudi Arabia, and the 1998 bombings in Kenya and Tanzania". In 1999, he was added to the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List. In 1998, Osama Bin Laden released a fatwa directing Muslims to "kill the Americans and their allies – civilians and military". As a result of all that, Bill Clinton ordered the assets of Osama Bin Laden frozen in August of 1998. That same month, he also attempted to kill bin Laden via cruise missile attack on an Afghan camp. Clearly, by 98-99, Clinton had quite a good idea that Osama bin Laden was both responsible for terrorist attacks against the United States and a continuing danger to the United States. What's more, by late 2000, we did know that Al Qaeda was behind the USS Cole attack. In fact, on page 193 of the 9/11 Commission Report, we find the following: "...the Yemenis provided strong evidence connecting the Cole attack to al Qaeda during the second half of November, identifying individual operatives whom the United States knew were part of al Qaeda. During December, the United States was able to corroborate this evidence. But the United States didn't have evidence of bin Laden's personal involvement in the attacks until Nashiri and Khallad were captured in 2002 and 2003." So, by November we had strong evidence that it was an al Qaeda operation. By December, we had proof. The only thing we lacked was evidence that Osama bin Laden had personally authorized the attack, and we didn't get that until long after 9/11 had happened. Of course, Osama bin Laden was the head of al Qaeda whom we'd been trying to kill off and on for a couple years, so it doesn't seem like a difficult deductive leap. So, I'm left with these questions: if all the pre-USS Cole attacks that were directly tied to al Qaeda were not enough to get Clinton to sign off on launching an "early" attack on Afghanistan, and even the USS Cole attack was insufficient casus belli to launch an "early" attack on Afghanistan....what, exactly, would have prompted him to finally move prior to 9/11? Bill Clinton claims he was willing to wait until the "FBI and CIA finally confirmed, officially, that bin Laden was responsible for the attack on the U.S.S. Cole", but the 9/11 Report claims we "didn't have evidence of bin Laden's personal involvement in the attacks until...2002". Clinton says of his promised strike "I don’t know if it would have prevented 9/11"...but I think we can be pretty certain that an attack circa 2002 would not have prevented the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. Bill Clinton (and President Bush) made what appeared to be reasonable decisions—they turned out to be very unfortunate, but at the time we had every reason to believe they were the best path forward. Bill Clinton should acknowledge those decisions and defend them. He should not, however, pretend that he would have been a regular President John Wayne had he only known who was behind the attack. He did know—as did George W. Bush—and he didn't go get them. Hindsight is a bitch, but she's an accurate bitch. qando.net