Posted on 10/12/2010 7:41:21 AM PDT by La Lydia
TEN years ago, Qaeda terrorists blew a hole in the side of the Navy destroyer Cole in Yemen, killing 17 sailors. Yet the attack’s mastermind still hasn’t been prosecuted, and many of the men tried and imprisoned for the bombing are again free. As Washington debates whether to increase aid to Yemen, it should first remember its duty to seek justice for those sailors...
Our investigation faced difficulties from the beginning. Yemen’s weak central government’s on-again, off-again relationship with extremists meant that Al Qaeda had influential sympathizers in positions of authority...While such obstacles were not unexpected, what surprised us was the lack of support from home. No one in the Clinton White House seemed to care about the case. We had hoped that the George W. Bush administration would be better...
Still, our team pressed ahead and, together with agents from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, we tracked down many of the Qaeda members responsible for the attack, secured confessions from them and prosecuted them...We left Yemen with most of the terrorists locked up.
After we were gone, however, Yemen began releasing terrorists under presidential pardons and through a questionable “rehabilitation” program. Many of the men we helped convict went free....
Meanwhile, the security situation in Yemen has deteriorated...Al Qaeda’s Saudi branch recently moved to Yemen and merged with the local faction to form Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
In response, Washington is considering increasing military aid to Yemen...
An important test of that commitment should be how Yemen responds to a long-overdue request that Mr. Badawi and Mr. Quso be handed over to American officials to be properly prosecuted...Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the plot’s alleged mastermind, who has been in American custody for almost eight years...Nashiri has yet to be tried
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Yup.
“Many of the men we helped convict went free....”
WANTED, Hit Squad. Free oversea travel to exotic foreign countries. High salary and great benefits. Sign up now!
If only....think what we could do with a 1960s-1970s style CIA.
I’m pretty sure I read that the Cole was directed to Yemen so that Friends of Algor could get the contract for refueling.
What’s up with this?
“We had hoped that the George W. Bush administration would be better, but except for Robert Mueller, the director of the F.B.I., its top officials soon sidelined the case; they considered it, according to Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, “stale.” Even the families of the sailors were denied meetings with the White House, a disgrace that ended only when President Obama took office — and a precedent I hope the administration maintains.”
“We long ago realized that if the American government had not let the Cole attack go unanswered, and if our investigation had not been so constrained, we could have undermined Al Qaeda and perhaps even averted the 9/11 attack. After 10 years, we need to finally put that lesson to use.”
The Cole AND the 1983 Beirut attacks. No response??? Is there a statute of limitations on this?
Will they build trophy rooms for these terrorists at the new Ground Zero mosque in NYC?
Not sure if you were joking but I recall reading that the refueling business was owned by a native Yemeni.
The US Navy was also cutting back on oilers at the time too, iirc, and the Cole was closer to friendlier ports to refuel at then Yemen, save for Algor's interference.
Political interference doesn't get reported all that much by the DoD, for obvious [funding] reasons.
The notably exception was bringing up Clinton's sexual harassment of a female AF crew member on AF1.
Feinstein's illegal micromanaging of plumbing or whatever business they [DoD] had with her "husband's company" got swept under the rug, and the Navy forced by then Rep. Patricia Schroeder to qualify a woman aviator for carrier duty that resulted in the loss of a plane and both of the crew. Then, the Navy had to rig the flight simulators to in the accident investigation so that no aviator could handle the conditions at the time of the accident to avoid facts pointing at Schroeder's affirmative action jihad against the military.
The Cole refueling was done by a company called Arab Manufacturing Investment and Trading. The attachment of mooring lines was handled by Al-Mansoob Commercial Group. If you can link either of these to friends of Al Gore I’d be interested to hear about it.
The closest references refer to "Jim Giffen", a US businessman that managed to get in dutch with Kazakhstan, GHWB, Algor, Yemen port operators, and other assorted oil types.
Without getting too conspiratorial about the oil game, I have no doubt the greed and grease of Al Gore contributed to letting the Cole become a target of opportunity.
I could go on about Algor, his father, Armand Hammer and the Soviets, etc.
Then there was Prescott Bush and WW2...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.