[lugsoul]

The truth is bad, but for some reason lots of folks here want to deviate from it as if that helps the cause.

Yes, have Mansoor say what he said in his own words in his column on the subject. Which is that Sudan offered OBL not directly to us, but to the Saudis, who refused. And that subsequently Sudan offered a deal to get him to us through an unidentified third-party Gulf ally (later revealed to be Qatar) - and that Qatari intel officials decided not to tell us that OBL was coming through until his plane had already left for Afghanistan.

Were we stupid and inept and dealing with the Sudanese on this? Sure. But the concept that they offered him directly to us is just factually inaccurate, and not even Ijaz claims that.

[bpjam]

The details are almost insignificant when considering the real picture: Clinton wouldn't do anything beyond using lawyers. If OBL were being offered, he didn't think it important enough to figure out how to get the lawyers to do it. Period. End of story. It was NOT on his agenda as Richard Clarke himself told reports shortly after Bush took office (back when he wasn't a kool aid drinker and was happy that Condi was making plans to go after Al Qaeda - of course, he was also mostly obsessed with cyber-terrorism and not actually blowing stuff up terrorism according to his own memos).

I don't think that the people who did this ABC movie were trying to help any cause. There is undoubtedly stuff in this which makes Bush look bad too - except Bush doesn't care about his 'legacy' so he doesn't have a team of lawyers dedicated to spinning bad news and destroying potential enemies. (You think Clinton would have let Cindy Sheehan run around alive and uninjured? Not likely)