Posted on 05/21/2002 11:02:28 AM PDT by Retired Chemist
NewsMax.com
Monday, May 20, 2002 11:09 a.m. EDT
Sen. Feinstein Blames Monica Missiles for 9-11 Attacks
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said Sunday she believes that Osama bin Laden decided to launch deadly terrorist strikes on U.S. territory in direct response to President Clinton's failed missile strikes on bin Laden's Afghanistan headquarters in 1998.
"I think once we struck bin Laden in '98, the training camps, the open-source information, in other words, the people writing books, and one of them being Yosef Bodansky, points out in his book that that was a turning point for bin Laden," Sen. Feinstein told CNN's "Late Edition."
"That's when he decided he was going to go after the United States. Now, I happen to believe that's correct," she contended.
The Clinton administration's Aug. 20, 1998, missile strike against bin Laden's Khost, Afghanistan, training camp has been dubbed by critics the "Monica missile attack" because of widespread suspicions the ex-president used it to create a distraction from Monica Lewinsky's Sexgate grand jury testimony, scheduled for the day before.
With her comments to CNN, Sen. Feinstein becomes the highest-ranking elected official to endorse the theory that the deadly 9-11 attacks were planned in direct response to the ill-fated 1998 strikes, which included an attack on a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory.
Clinton has repeatedly tried to justitfy the 1998 missile strikes, sayings he had reliable intelligence that placed bin Laden in his Khost encampment up to a few hours before the attack was launched.
But some now theorize that the failed attempt to kill bin Laden not only enraged the al Qaeda chief to the point that he decided to target the U.S. directly, but that Clinton's decision not to pursue subsequent plans to kill bin Laden left the terror mastermind in a position to carry out his 9-11 plan for revenge.
In little-noticed comments last February to a group of Long Island, N.Y., business leaders, Clinton explained why he didn't do more to take bin Laden out after the failed missile strikes.
"I actually trained people to do this. We trained people," he revealed.
"But in order to do it we would have had to take them in on attack helicopters 900 miles from the nearest boat, maybe illegally violating the airspace of people if they wouldn't give us approval."
Clinton said he also weighed an option to bomb Khandahar because U.S intelligence had tracked bin Laden to a compound in the city. But he decided to spare the terror chief in order to avoid killing innocent Afghans.
"As far as we knew, he never went back to his [Khost] training camp," Clinton told the Long Island crowd. "So the only place bin Laden ever went that we knew was, occasionally, he went to Khandahar, where he always spent the night in a compound that had 200 women and children.
"So I could have, on any given night, ordered an attack that I knew would kill 200 women and children," Clinton said.
The ex-president bolstered his excuse for not bombing bin Laden a second time by arguing that such an attack "had less than a 50 percent chance of getting him." (See: Clinton: I Wanted to Bomb Khandahar)
Reproduced with the permission of NewsMax.com. All rights reserved.
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics: Al Qaeda Clinton Scandals War on Terrorism
A product that might interest you: FBI whistle-blower tells how the Clintons helped cause 9-11
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Why do I get the image of a MontyPython-esque troop of dems yelling, "Run Away! Run Away!"
Yes. It must be so. Our tepid and unprovoked attack in 1998 angered that poor man and made him want to destroy us.
I also believe that we caused Hitler to invade France. It's all our fault.
what a putz....................
"I think once we struck bin Laden in '98, the training camps, the open-source information, in other words, the people writing books, and one of them being Yosef Bodansky, points out in his book that that was a turning point for bin Laden," Sen. Feinstein told CNN's "Late Edition."
It is scary, isn't it. But we all know she doesn't mean it. . . .
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