Repost: US seeks alliance with Moscow for raid on bin Laden

A PLAN FOR SADDAM Iraq News, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 1998
"Newsweek, Nov 16, explained US decision making prior to Iraq's Oct 31 decision to suspend UNSCOM monitoring, "Maintaining sanctions is at the heart of the new US strategy . . . The blueprint was developed last spring by the National Security Council, in response to a plea from national security adviser Sandy Berger. During last February's standoff, a frustrated Berger called one senior official, Richard Clarke, in the middle of the night and complained, astonishing (given all the war talk), that 'we have no strategy on Iraq.' . . . After an extensive study, an ad hoc group pulled together by Clarke concluded-in papers so sensitive they were never circulated below the deputy cabinet level-that, short of invasion, the United States had no good military options on Iraq. Airstrikes were not going to topple Saddam or force him to give the United Nations unfettered access. And UN inspections were overrated: it was simply not feasible to track down all of Saddam's biochemical stash." "

October 25, 1999 The National Security Council Project
SANDY BERGER: "... There are two sets of issues that are not well addressed now by the government. And I don’t quite know what the organizational solution is. One is terrorism, which I believe is the most serious threat to America’s security. More Americans have died at the hands of terrorists than in all the wars since Vietnam. And if you put the overlay of WMD on it, because the fact is that the chance that there will be a biological or chemical or even a nuclear device introduced in the United States over the next ten years, I think, is quite high. So the next level is the general WMD proliferation issue. I think we haven’t got that quite right.

I don’t think we have the right sense of urgency within the government for those problems, and I don’t think we have the right structure within the government. And I don’t know quite what the solution is."

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