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Was Bill Clinton offered bin Laden on "a silver platter"? Did he refuse? Was there cause at the time?
A: Probably not, and it would not have mattered anyway as there was no evidence at the time that bin Laden had committed any crimes against American citizens.
Let’s start with what everyone agrees on: In April 1996, Osama bin Laden was an official guest of the radical Islamic government of Sudan – a government that had been implicated in the attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993. By 1996, with the international community treating Sudan as a pariah, the Sudanese government attempted to patch its relations with the United States. At a secret meeting in a Rosslyn, Va., hotel, the Sudanese minister of state for defense, Maj. Gen. Elfatih Erwa, met with CIA operatives, where, among other things, they discussed Osama bin Laden.
It is here that things get murky. Erwa claims that he offered to hand bin Laden over to the United States. Key American players – President Bill Clinton, then-National Security Adviser Sandy Berger and Director of Counterterrorism Richard Clarke among them – have testified there were no "credible offers" to hand over bin Laden. The 9/11 Commission found "no credible evidence" that Erwa had ever made such an offer. On the other hand, Lawrence Wright, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Looming Tower," flatly states that Sudan did make such an offer. Wright bases his judgment on an interview with Erwa and notes that those who most prominently deny Erwa's claims were not in fact present for the meeting.
Wright and the 9/11 Commission do agree that the Clinton administration encouraged Sudan to deport bin Laden back to Saudi Arabia and spent 10 weeks trying to convince the Saudi government to accept him. One Clinton security official told The Washington Post that they had "a fantasy" that the Saudi government would quietly execute bin Laden. When the Saudis refused bin Laden’s return, Clinton officials convinced the Sudanese simply to expel him, hoping that the move would at least disrupt bin Laden’s activities.
Much of the controversy stems from claims that President Clinton made in a February 2002 speech and then retracted in his 2004 testimony to the 9/11 Commission. In the 2002 speech Clinton seems to admit that the Sudanese government offered to turn over bin Laden:
Clinton: So we tried to be quite aggressive with them [al Qaeda]. We got – well, Mr. bin Laden used to live in Sudan. He was expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1991, then he went to Sudan. And we'd been hearing that the Sudanese wanted America to start dealing with them again. They released him. At the time, 1996, 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. So I pleaded with the Saudis to take him, 'cause they could have. But they thought it was a hot potato and they didn't and that's how he wound up in Afghanistan.
Clinton later claimed to have misspoken and stated that there had never been an offer to turn over bin Laden. It is clear, however, that Berger, at least, did consider the possibility of bringing bin Laden to the U.S., but, as he told The Washington Post in 2001, "The FBI did not believe we had enough evidence to indict bin Laden at that time, and therefore opposed bringing him to the United States." According to NewsMax.com, Berger later emphasized in an interview with WABC Radio that, while administration officials had discussed whether or not they had ample evidence to indict bin Laden, that decision "was not pursuant to an offer by the Sudanese."
So on one side, we have Clinton administration officials who say that there were no credible offers on the table, and on the other, we have claims by a Sudanese government that was (and still is) listed as an official state sponsor of terrorism. It’s possible, of course, that both sides are telling the truth: It could be that Erwa did make an offer, but the offer was completely disingenuous. What is clear is that the 9/11 Commission report totally discounts the Sudanese claims. Unless further evidence arises, that has to be the final word.
Ultimately, however, it doesn’t matter. What is not in dispute at all is the fact that, in early 1996, American officials regarded Osama bin Laden as a financier of terrorism and not as a mastermind largely because, at the time, there was no real evidence that bin Laden had harmed American citizens. So even if the Sudanese government really did offer to hand bin Laden over, the U.S. would have had no grounds for detaining him. In fact, the Justice Department did not secure an indictment against bin Laden until 1998 – at which point Clinton did order a cruise missile attack on an al Qaeda camp in an attempt to kill bin Laden.
We have to be careful about engaging in what historians call "Whig history," which is the practice of assuming that historical figures value exactly the same things that we do today. It's a fancy term for those "why didn't someone just shoot Hitler in 1930?" questions that one hears in dorm-room bull sessions. The answer, of course, is that no one knew quite how bad Hitler was in 1930. The same is true of bin Laden in 1996.
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Maybe they should have to prove he's alive first. Bush captured KSM who was responsible for the detailed planning of all of the AQ terrorist attacks.
Osama was probably killed back in 2002, perhaps by the same agent who executed Pearl or by some other agent of Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. Most of Al Qaeda was wiped out or captured in 2001-2002. Some fighters returned to their homelands and probably captured. It's doubtful that the Taliban with the support of 40 million Pashtun would have been defeated by 35,000 American troops. We couldn't defeat the majority Shia in Iraq so we essentially let them take over all of the government and run it as they please using their own militias.
Maybe it is a whole vineyard full of sour grapes - it still doesn't change the fact that Bush's ineptitude led to massive failures on his part that have damaged our nation to the point it will take decades to recover from his horrific screw-ups. Heck, John Kerry shouldn't be and isn't the only one with sour grapes, we all should have sour grapes towards that bumbling idiot Bush and his evil cronies. He's very obviously Bin Laden's friend and he lied to the people here about getting Bin Laden. He is an outright liar.
Would you be so kind as to list, and quantify, the specific damage(s) of which you speak? If you are able to that is....
Exactly. I think some of the posters have eaten to much turkey this Thanksgiving and their brains have gone soft. The report was ordered by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry and released right before Obama's "historic" speech on Afghanistan.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ZGACK
And the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee is? Senator John Kerry, who, incidentally, LOST the 2004 election to one George W. Bush. Nope. No sour grapes there.
The distinguished Senator, John Kerry, has been going after Osama bin Laden and his ilk since the 1980s. It was his tireless investigative work during the Clinton administration years, that crippled the financial network of al Qaeda and its ilk.
. . .[i]n early 1988. . .John Kerry, then a young senator from Massachusetts, decided to probe the finances of Latin American drug cartels. Over the next three years, Kerry fought against intense opposition from vested interests at home and abroad, from senior members of his own party; and from the Reagan and Bush administrations, none of whom were eager to see him succeed.
By the end, Kerry had helped dismantle a massive criminal enterprise and exposed the infrastructure of BCCI and its affiliated institutions, a web that law enforcement officials today acknowledge would become a model for international terrorist financing.
. . .
By July 1991, Kerry's work paid off. That month, British and U.S. regulators finally responded to the evidence provided by Kerry, Morgenthau, and a concurrent investigation by the Federal Reserve. BCCI was shut down in seven countries, restricted in dozens more, and served indictments for grand larceny, bribery, and money laundering. The actions effectively put it out of business what Morgenthau called, "one of the biggest criminal enterprises in world history."
. . .
Make no mistake about it, BCCI would have been a player. A decade after Kerry helped shut the bank down, the CIA discovered Osama bin Laden was among those with accounts at the bank. A French intelligence report obtained by The Washington Post in 2002 identified dozens of companies and individuals who were involved with BCCI and were found to be dealing with bin Laden after the bank collapsed. . .
[T]he BCCI affair showed Kerry to be a politician driven by a sense of mission, rather than expediency--even when it meant ruffling feathers. Perhaps Sen. Hank Brown, the ranking Republican on Kerry's subcommittee, put it best. "John Kerry was willing to spearhead this difficult investigation," Brown said. "Because many important members of his own party were involved in this scandal, it was a distasteful subject for other committee and subcommittee chairmen to investigate. They did not. John Kerry did."
John Kerry has never -- never -- been a party lackey.
Would you be so kind as to list, and quantify, the specific damage(s) of which you speak? If you are able to that is....
I don't have time to waste digging up numbers for someone like you who will choose to disbelieve anyway.
Just look at the mess our nation is in. We wasted resources in Iraq, billions of $ and 10's of thousands of our soldiers killed or maimed. Meanwhile, Bush ran up the debt to do it. He dropped the ball on Afghanistan and Bin Laden to waste time in Iraq. He turned Iraq into a nation that was under a dictator into one that is open to various terrorist groups now. He did nothing about Iran or South Korea.
He ran up our deficit more than any other president. He left us in a lurch.
If you or any others else don't realize by now how he has inflicted damage on this nation no numbers or explanations will ever be enough for you to know. Blind Bush-worshiping neo-cons still exist.
Senate report to examine Bush's miserable failure of capturing Bin Laden in 2001
Quote:
The reams of new information that the CIA’s Bin Ladin unit had been developing since 1996 had not been pulled together and synthesized for the rest of the government. Indeed, analysts in the unit felt that they were viewed as alarmists even within the CIA. A National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism in 1997 had only briefly mentioned Bin Ladin, and no subsequent national estimate would authoritatively evaluate the terrorism danger until after 9/11.
Therefore, the government experts who believed that Bin Ladin and his network posed such a novel danger needed a way to win broad support for their views, or at least spotlight the areas of dispute.The Presidential Daily Brief and the similar, more widely circulated daily reports for high officials—consisting mainly of brief reports of intelligence “news” without much analysis or context— did not provide such a vehicle. The national intelligence estimate has often played this role, and is sometimes controversial for this very reason. It played no role in judging the threat posed by al Qaeda, either in 1998 or later.
In addition, the Clinton administration was facing the possibility of major combat operations against Iraq. Since 1996, the UN inspections regime had been increasingly obstructed by Saddam Hussein.The United States was threatening to attack unless unfettered inspections could resume. The Clinton administration eventually launched a large-scale set of air strikes against Iraq, Operation Desert Fox, in December 1998. These military commitments became the context in which the Clinton administration had to consider opening another front of military engagement against a new terrorist threat based in Afghanistan.
I don't have time to waste digging up numbers for someone like you who will choose to disbelieve anyway.
Just look at the mess our nation is in. We wasted resources in Iraq, billions of $ and 10's of thousands of our soldiers killed or maimed. Meanwhile, Bush ran up the debt to do it. He dropped the ball on Afghanistan and Bin Laden to waste time in Iraq. He turned Iraq into a nation that was under a dictator into one that is open to various terrorist groups now. He did nothing about Iran or South Korea.
He ran up our deficit more than any other president. He left us in a lurch.
If you or any others else don't realize by now how he has inflicted damage on this nation no numbers or explanations will ever be enough for you to know. Blind Bush-worshiping neo-cons still exist.
You are wrong regarding running up the debt, the current president holds the trophy for that one. As far as having Bin Lala, what would you good leftist do with him? Put him through our legal system? Clinton did have him on a silver plate and I am sure Bush goofed it up as well. We have such a hard time being mean. Another thing, what would you have had Bush do with Iran? If he had launched another war you would be peeing your pants over it. What may I ask has your guy done with Korea or Iran besides talk and bow to them?
I don't have time to waste digging up numbers for someone like you who will choose to disbelieve anyway.
Could it be because there are no numbers to prove the bs you stated? But lets continue
Quote:
Originally Posted by BergenCountyJohnny
Just look at the mess our nation is in. We wasted resources in Iraq, billions of $ and 10's of thousands of our soldiers killed or maimed. Meanwhile, Bush ran up the debt to do it. He dropped the ball on Afghanistan and Bin Laden to waste time in Iraq. He turned Iraq into a nation that was under a dictator into one that is open to various terrorist groups now. He did nothing about Iran or South Korea.
He ran up our deficit more than any other president. He left us in a lurch.
If you or any others else don't realize by now how he has inflicted damage on this nation no numbers or explanations will ever be enough for you to know. Blind Bush-worshiping neo-cons still exist.
I didnt put words in your mouth, but stop pretending i did. I respect what you said, and dont at all mind repeating YOUR words to YOU, like..
And then when asked about Ayers, Wright, and many of Obama "friends", you tried to then spin it into "family members", meaning you have a HUGE double standard and guilt by association only matters when speaking of Republicans..
NO. I simply IGNORED your reference to ayers and others since your post was off topic.
Bush was a miserable failure, and he and his family (BUSH) had many shady dealings, with Bin Laden and others, and I said it is relevant.
And, you try putting words in my mouth by saying child molesters and the parents thereof, are guilty by association, and implying that this is what I said or meant, which to me is off topic too. How you dragged all these other figures into this thread I'll never know why, and pointed to what you stated was trying to put words in my mouth, which you did try to do.
Child molesters and their parents and bill ayers has absolutely nothing to do with the thread. Although, you're trying to make it appear as if they are. Are you not the one always pointing to especially me about staying on topic, when you yourself wander from it quite a bit?
I never asked about ayers, you're the first to mention him and child molesters and their parents' guilt by association, and President Obama's past drug use. I've been trying very hard to stay on the subject.
These figures have nothing to do with Bush's failures or his and his family's lousy and questionable associations.
You're a master at spinning, I can tell. BTW, so can others.
I'll reiterate once again. If a person commits a crime, and a relative knows this person committed the crime, don't you think that authorities would want to question the relatives or friends if the perpetrator is on the run? I think American people need to know why the Bin Laden family was ushered out of the U.S.A. so quickly. If the Bush family had nothing to hide in the first place, would you not think that they (BUSH) would want the cloud of suspicion and speculation lifted from them? If the Bin Laden family and circle of friends had nothing to hide or keep secret, don't you think they'd be willing to stick around to answer a few questions?
Bush failed by not ordering his friends, the Bin Ladens to stay in the U.S. for questioning. He failed again at not capturing the man.
At best, if Bush is ever brought to task legally, he could be charged with subversion and aiding and abetting with an enemy, and obstruction of justice.
The Senate report Conclusion: Bin Laden was 'within our grasp'
Senate report: Bin Laden was 'within our grasp' - Yahoo! News (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091129/ap_on_go_co/us_tora_bora_bin_laden - broken link)
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