PAPER: CLINTON HAD THREE CHANCES TO SEIZE BIN LADEN

Drudge ^ | 01-05-02 | unknown as of yet

[Cuban123]

breaking on drudge....

[Gritty]

I know this is a hopeless question, but tell me,... is there anything Clinton did right during his eight years trashing this country?

[xm177e2]

Yes, it was the Sunday Times, I guess Sullivan sort of scooped Drudge (Drudge has a few more details, though)

"INCOMING: My sources tell me the Sunday Times of London is about to unload stunning new evidence of Bill Clinton’s negligence toward al Qaeda. Stay tuned."--From (the redesigned) AS.com, posted yesterday

[HardStarboard]

The following is lifted from the report quoted by Drudge...

>>>A second offer to get Bin Laden came unofficially from Mansoor Ijaz, a Pakistani-American millionaire who was a donor to Clinton's election campaign in 1996. <<<

Sheez, did Clinton ever have any American donors?

[Cuban123]

PRESIDENT Bill Clinton turned down at least three offers involving foreign governments to help to seize Osama Bin Laden after he was identified as a terrorist who was threatening America, according to sources in Washington and the Middle East.

Clinton himself, according to one Washington source, has described the refusal to accept the first of the offers as "the biggest mistake" of his presidency.

The main reasons were legal: there was no evidence that could be brought against Bin Laden in an American court. But former senior intelligence sources accuse the administration of a lack of commitment to the fight against terrorism.

When Sudanese officials claimed late last year that Washington had spurned Bin Laden's secret extradition from Khartoum in 1996, former White House officials said they had no recollection of the offer. Senior sources in the former administration now confirm that it was true.

An Insight investigation has revealed that far from being an isolated incident this was the first in a series of missed opportunities right up to Clinton's last year in office. One of these involved a Gulf state; another would have relied on the assistance of Saudi Arabia.

In early 1996 America was putting strong pressure on Sudan's Islamic government to expel Bin Laden, who had been living there since 1991. Sources now reveal that Khartoum sent a former intelligence officer with Central Intelligence Agency connections to Washington with an offer to hand over Bin Laden — just as it had put another terrorist, Carlos the Jackal, into French hands in 1994.

At the time the State Department was describing Bin Laden as "the greatest single financier of terrorist projects in the world" and was accusing Sudan of harbouring terrorists. The extradition offer was turned down, however. A former senior White House source said: "There simply was not the evidence to prosecute Osama Bin Laden. He could not be indicted, so it would serve no purpose for him to have been brought into US custody."

A former figure in American counterterrorist intelligence claims, however, that there was "clear and convincing" proof of Bin Laden's conspiracy against America. In May, 1996, American diplomats were informed in a Sudanese government fax that Bin Laden was about to be expelled — giving Washington another chance to seize him. The decision not to do so went to the very top of the White House, according to former administration sources.

They say that the clear focus of American policy was to discourage the state sponsorship of terrorism. So persuading Khartoum to expel Bin Laden was in itself counted as a clear victory. The administration was "delighted".

Bin Laden took off from Khartoum on May 18 in a chartered C-130 plane with 150 of his followers, including his wives. He was bound for Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. On the way the plane refuelled in the Gulf state of Qatar, which has friendly relations with Washington, but he was allowed to proceed unhindered.

Barely a month later, on June 25, a 5,000lb truck bomb ripped apart the front of Khobar Towers, a US military housing complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The explosion killed 19 American servicemen. Bin Laden was immediately suspected.

Clinton is reported to have admitted how things went wrong in Sudan at a private dinner at a Manhattan restaurant shortly after September 11 last year. According to a witness, Clinton told a dinner companion that the decision to let Bin Laden go was probably "the biggest mistake of my presidency". Clinton could not be reached for comment yesterday, but a former senior White House official acknowledged that the Sudan episode had been a "screw-up".

A second offer to get Bin Laden came unofficially from Mansoor Ijaz, a Pakistani-American millionaire who was a donor to Clinton's election campaign in 1996. On July 6, 2000, he visited John Podesta, then the president's chief of staff, to say that intelligence officers from a Gulf state were offering to help to extract Bin Laden.

Details of the meeting are confirmed in an exchange of e-mails between the White House and Ijaz, which have been seen by The Sunday Times. According to Ijaz, the offer involved setting up an Islamic relief fund to aid Afghanistan in return for the Taliban handing over Bin Laden to the Gulf state. America could then extract Bin Laden from there.

The Sunday Times has established that after a fierce internal row about the sincerity of the offer, the White House responded by sending Richard Clarke, Clinton's most senior counterterrorism adviser, to meet the rulers of the United Arab Emirates. They denied there was any such offer. Ijaz, however, maintained that the White House had thereby destroyed the deal, which was to have been arranged only through unofficial channels. Ijaz said that weeks later on a return trip to the Gulf he was taken on a late-night ride into the desert by his contact who told him that Clarke's front-door approach had upset a delicate internal balance and blown the deal. "Your government has missed a major opportunity," he recalls being told.

Senior former government sources said that Ijaz's offer had been treated in good faith but, with the denial of the UAE government, there was nothing to suggest it had credibility.

A third more mysterious offer to help came from the intelligence services of Saudi Arabia, then led by Prince Turki al-Faisal, according to Washington sources. Details of the offer are still unclear although, by one account, Turki offered to help to place a tracking device in the luggage of Bin Laden's mother, who was seeking to make a trip to Afghanistan to see her son. The CIA did not take up the offer.

Richard Shelby, the leading Republican on the Senate intelligence committee, said he was aware of a Saudi offer to help although, under rules protecting classified information, he was unable to discuss the details of any offer. Commenting generally, he said: "I don't believe that the fight against terrorism was the number one goal of the Clinton administration. I believe there were some lost opportunities."

[Belial]

I just want to point out the title of the article doesn't match its contents. Three episodes were discussed, the first, truly a missed opportunity. The second, a flubbed, possible opportunity. The third, not necessarily any opportunity at all to seize Bin Laden...in fact it was a chance to place a bug on his mother.

[NYC GOP Chick]

Thankfully, no. But I did come face to face with him (through his limo window) when he was on his way to one of her fundraisers. I think he was a bit surprised to see a woman in Manhattan glare at him instead of gaze adoringly.

[tbeatty]

Conme on. Bill Clinton was working on his legacy. Vigorously seizing Arab terrorists would have jeopardized the wonderful mess Clinton left in Israel. What's a couple thousand American lives compared to Bill Clinton's legacy? Certainly Bill was willing to make this sacrifice.

[NYC GOP Chick]

Not at all. And all the best-looking (straight) guys are Republican, or at least lean this way. :-D

[NYC GOP Chick]

Raping someone and telling her to put some ice on it? Getting a hummer from some airhead? Wandering around Manhattan, badgering everyone about how he really, really, really, REALLY tried to get bin laden? Avoiding Booba?

[Mia T]

thanx!

Q ERTY4 + Q ERTY6 = rodham clinton REALITY CHECK!

 

Clinton's failure to grasp the opportunity to unravel increasingly organized extremists, coupled with Berger's assessments of their potential to directly threaten the U.S., represents one of the most serious foreign policy failures in American history

Clinton Let Bin Laden Slip Away and Metastasize

 

 

Bill Clinton may not be the worst president America has had, but surely he is the worst person to be president.*

---GEORGE WILL, Sleaze, the sequel

 

Had George Will written Sleaze, the sequel (the "sequel" is, of course, hillary) after 9-11-01, I suspect that he would have had to forgo the above conceit, as the doubt expressed in the setup phrase was, from that day forward, no longer operational.

Indeed, assessing the clinton presidency an abject failure is not inconsistent with commentary coming from the left, most recently the LA Times: "Clinton Let Bin Laden Slip Away and Metastasize."

When the clintons left office, I predicted that the country would eventually learn--sadly, the hard way--that this depraved, self-absorbed and inept pair had placed America (and the world) in mortal danger. But I was thinking years, not months.

It is very significant that hillary clinton didn't deny clinton culpability for the terrorism. (Meet the Press, 12-09-01), notwithstanding tired tactics (if you can't pass the buck, spread the blame) and chronic self-exclusion. ("I knew nuttin'.")

If leftist pandering keeps the disenfranchized down in perpetuity, clinton pandering,("it's the economy, stupid"), kept the middle and upper classes wilfully ignorant for eight years.

And ironically, both results (leftist social policy and the clinton economy) are equally illusory, fraudulent. It is becoming increasingly clear that clinton assiduously avoided essential actions that would have negatively impacted the economy--the ultimate source of his continued power--actions like, say, going after the terrorists.

It is critically important that hillary clinton fail in her grasp for power; read Peggy Noonan's little book, 'The Case Against Hillary Clinton' and Barbara Olson's two books; it is critical that the West de-clintonize, but that will be automatic once it is understood that the clintons risked civilization itself in order to gain and retain power.

It shouldn't take books, however, to see that a leader is a dangerous, self-absorbed sicko. People should be able to figure that out for themselves. The electorate must be taught to think, to reason. It must be able to spot spin, especially in this age of the electronic demagogue.

I am not hopeful. As Bertrand Russell noted, "Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so. "

Mia T, hillary clinton blames hubby for terrorism

(SHE knew nuttin')

Meet the Press, 12-09-01

 

 

*George Will continues: There is reason to believe that he is a rapist ("You better get some ice on that," Juanita Broaddrick says he told her concerning her bit lip), and that he bombed a country to distract attention from legal difficulties arising from his glandular life, and that. ... Furthermore, the bargain that he and his wife call a marriage refutes the axiom that opposites attract. Rather, she, as much as he, perhaps even more so, incarnates Clintonism

Q ERTY3 co-rapist  bump!

 

also:

 

CLINTON-WAS-AN-UTTER-FAILURE Containment Team Scheme Fails Again

Ollie North Laughs Ann Lewis Off Stage

 

Helen Thomas Syndrome: THE SYMPTOMS

 

Will Riefenstahl-esque "editing to perfection" resurrect the clintons?

 

WHOSE DOG WAS WAGGED?

 

Frankenstein, The Sequel:

'Black Hawk Down' Was Set to Blame Clinton for 9/11

 

hillary's head revisited:

hillary clinton's brain (such as it is) II

 

Buddy Death Report Raises More Questions Than It Answers

[Howlin]

Gee didn't Joe Leiberman call for an investigation on why these attacks happened ...

The SECOND I heard him say that, I thought to myself, "He has no CLUE what he's asking for."

I bet you NEVER hear another word about that commission.

[Queen of Excelsior]

I'd love to know who the "former senior government officials" are. They evidently didn't get their invitation to the "Rebuild the Legacy Extravaganza" held last week in Harlem.

[BOBTHENAILER]

Got that right. You get the Slick Willie, jailed railed and NAILED award from humble Bob.

[BOBTHENAILER]

Glad to hear it. Take care, keep the faith....Had to LOL in re your comment to JROB about glarin' at the scum. Keep on Glarin''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

[YaYa123]

More info from a recent Vanity Fair:

http://www.sudan.net/news/press/postedr/58.shtml

Just a snippet: "....THE MUKHABARAT, A SUDANESE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, spent the early to mid-1990s amassing copious amounts of information on bin Laden and his cohorts at a time when they were relatively unknown and their activities limited, author David Rose reports. From the fall of 1996 until weeks before the September 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, the Mukhabarat made repeated efforts to share its files on terrorists with the U.S. On more than one occasion senior F.B.I. officials wanted to accept the offers, but were apparently overruled by the State Department.

FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE MADELEINE ALBRIGHT and her assistant secretary for Africa, Susan Rice, declined to comment for this story....."

Notice the silence of Madeleine Albright. But remember the name of Susan Rice. She was all over television when the Vanity Fair article on this came out. She claimed all this was untrue. (Susan Rice could be Cheryl Mills sister...and they both drank the same kool-aid)

And just think of the tales Albright's boy toy Jamie Rubin has shared with wifey poo Christiane Amanpour. Things we'll never know, about Clinton's totally screwed up State Department under Albright.

[pray4liberty]

And just think of the tales Albright's boy toy Jamie Rubin has shared with wifey poo Christiane Amanpour. Things we'll never know, about Clinton's totally screwed up State Department under Albright.

Clinton now has the 'out' he's been looking for. He'll just blame Maddie for all of it!

[Rebelbase]

I'm still waiting for evidence of DNC donations linked to Bin Laden to surface.

[Mo1]

I bet you NEVER hear another word about that commission.

Ahhhhh ... I'm not so sure about that one .. Joe has a habbit of going with what ever is popular .. and if this story has any legs to it ... you bet Joe will mention it again .. remember .. he has hopes to run for President ..

[BOBTHENAILER]

Here I was enjoying chocolate chip cookies and milk and you had to go and make me queasy thinking about Albright & Rice, Rubin & I'mnotsopoor. Is the Vanity fair article out now?

Clinton has to be feeling like he's on the business end of a few B-52 long sticks. It just keeps coming, pounding, screaming................ah-hahahahahahaha

[NYC GOP Chick]

I'm not desperate or willing to settle. :-D