(Note: A technical glitch affected this post duriing the early part of this day. I hope it is resolved now.) I am always astonished by the Republican ability to turn their own scandals around on their Democratic opponents. The Path to 9/11 provides only the most recent example.The infamous scene of Sandy Berger deep-sixing an opportunity to take out Bin Laden closely parallels something that actually happened -- after 9/11, after Bush took office. From Newsweek, last year:
But in a forthcoming book, the CIA field commander for the agency's Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora, Gary Berntsen, says he and other U.S. commanders did know that bin Laden was among the hundreds of fleeing Qaeda and Taliban members. Berntsen says he had definitive intelligence that bin Laden was holed up at Tora Bora—intelligence operatives had tracked him—and could have been caught.(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)
In his book—titled "Jawbreaker"—the decorated career CIA officer criticizes Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Department for not providing enough support to the CIA and the Pentagon's own Special Forces teams in the final hours of Tora Bora, says Berntsen's lawyer, Roy Krieger. (Berntsen would not divulge the book's specifics, saying he's awaiting CIA clearance.) That backs up other recent accounts, including that of military author Sean Naylor, who calls Tora Bora a "strategic disaster" because the Pentagon refused to deploy a cordon of conventional forces to cut off escaping Qaeda and Taliban members. Maj. Todd Vician, a Defense Department spokesman, says the problem at Tora Bora "was not necessarily just the number of troops."From the Times of India in 2003:
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has struck a deal with the US not to capture Osama Bin Laden, fearing this could lead to unrest in Pakistan, according to a special investigation by The Guardian...From today's Washington Post:
The paper's information is based on comments made by Mansoor Ijaz, an American of Pakistan origin who, the paper said, knows al-Qaeda better than most people and had close contacts in Pakistan's intelligence agencies.
Ijaz believed an agreement was reached between Musharraf and US authorities shortly after Bin Laden's flight from his stronghold Tora Bora in Afghanistan in December 2001.
On the videotape obtained by the CIA, bin Laden is seen confidently instructing his party how to dig holes in the ground to lie in undetected at night. A bomb dropped by a U.S. aircraft can be seen exploding in the distance. "We were there last night," bin Laden says without much concern in his voice. He was in or headed toward Pakistan, counterterrorism officials think.More:
That was December 2001. Only two months later, Bush decided to pull out most of the special operations troops and their CIA counterparts in the paramilitary division that were leading the hunt for bin Laden in Afghanistan to prepare for war in Iraq, said Flynt L. Leverett, then an expert on the Middle East at the National Security Council.
"I was appalled when I learned about it," said Leverett, who has become an outspoken critic of the administration's counterterrorism policy. "I don't know of anyone who thought it was a good idea. It's very likely that bin Laden would be dead or in American custody if we hadn't done that."
Today, however, no one person is in charge of the overall hunt for bin Laden with the authority to direct covert CIA operations to collect intelligence and to dispatch JSOC units. Some counterterrorism officials find this absurd. "There's nobody in the United States government whose job it is to find Osama bin Laden!" one frustrated counterterrorism official shouted. "Nobody!"As we noted earlier, Pakistan now says -- according to no less a source than ABC News! -- that Osama is free to go about his business in that country as long as he leads a "peaceful life." Bush remains allied to and supportive of Pakistan, despite his vow to go after any country that harbors terrorists. (Pakistan also harbors A.Q. Khan.)
Am I one of those wild and irresponsible conspiracy theorists claiming that W has intentionally protected Osama Bin Laden? Perish the thought. I'm just asking a simple question: If Bush did have such intentions, what would he have done differently?
4 comments:
Always love your blogs. Great post. I feel though, that Bin Laden is dead. I believe there's been at least 2 Bin Laden patsies since 9-11. It does seem , with their latest release, they are getting better at producing them in a convincing fashion. I guess we can thank the Rendon group for that.
when my freind worked as a paramilitary officer with CIA around Tora Bora, he told me " Bush wants this". That was around election time. He led me to believe** that binLaden is real and was alive... but Bush wants him out there reeking havoc to get republicans elected. He also was scared to death when Plame's name got out. He likewise was moved from Afghanistan to Iraq as the stories are being told. Jerked around he called it. He verified that alot of nose candy keeps the grunts awake around the clock and he has a huge problem with that now. He was stop lossed for over a year and a half and basically said Repubs are no different than Dems.... and none of them are * all about America**. Most of them are globalists and elitist and dangerous as hell. Remember that come National Housecleaning Day please. Vote for balance, it's the only thing we can do to help ourselves.
"Bush let bin Laden escape" is just more false opposition/disinformation. The fact is that bin Laden was either captured or killed during the invasion of Afghanistan (probably killed). These guys like Berntsen, Scheuer, and the rest of these "CIA insiders" who pretend to offer these harsh criticisms of Bush are just there to cover up the fact that the bin Laden was nothing but a Islamic drug lord, and that 9/11 was staged by US and Israel to justify starting the "War on Terror". If they were spilling genuine dirt on 9/11 they would not be interviewed on television and their books would not be on the display shelves at Borders. Use some skepticism.
You have to hand it to the neocons: they are very good at controlling the opposition.
Anon 6:08--I'm sincerely sorry for what Bush Co. and their co-conspirators chose to do to your friend and his commitment to serve. And while I can't accept his characterization that the Democrats are anywhere near the same as Republicans, in the sense that Dems are "all" "globalists," "elitist," "dangerous" or in any other sense comparable to the neo-cons, (it's very sad that your friend believes that) National Housecleaning Day is an awesome expression and you may consider it stolen.
Post a Comment