9/5 U.S. Official Says Close to Catching Bin Laden: http://csua.org/u/8xe
Hey, Boondocks called this moooonths ago.
\_ I'll predict that he will not be captured before the election. And
I'd be grateful if morons would stop informing the press that "we're
close to" something. I'm reading the 9/11 commission report, and a
(pre-9/11) leak to the press at one point caused Bin Laden to change
his communications and made him much harder to track.
\_ I agree with you on the general concept but simply saying "we're
close" for the *th time isn't a big deal. Been saying that for
3 years now about every 6 weeks.
\_ I am also in the middle of reading it(I'm not the dude above.)
It's worth remembering that if Pakistan hadn't fucked us,
Bin Laden would've been killed pre-9/11. I agree with you
about leaks, but I would also say that the fact that no
one in the Pakistani gov't is in the loop is neither bad
nor suprising.
\_ The report makes it pretty clear that unless the intelligence
had been 100% with zero chance of collateral damage, no one
would have taken the necessary action to kill OBL before 9/11.
But yes, Pakistan was pretty clearly feeding info to OBL.
\_ cut and pasted directly from chapter 4 of the 9/11 report:
"Later on August 20[1998], Navy vessels in the Arabian Sea
fired their cruise missiles.
Though most of them hit their intended targets, neither
Bin Ladin nor any other terrorist leader was killed.
Berger told us that an after-action review by Director
Tenet concluded that the strikes had killed 20-30
people in the camps but probably missed Bin Ladin by a
few hours.Since the missiles headed for Afghanistan had
had to cross Pakistan, the Vice Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs was sent to meet with Pakistan's army chief of
staff to assure him the missiles were not coming from
India. Officials in Washington speculated that one or
another Pakistani official might have sent a warning to
the Taliban or Bin Ladin."
\_ That was right after the embassy bombings, when there
was a brief flare-up of will. From p.140: "It was in
Kandahar that perhaps the last, and most likely the
best, opportunity arose for targeting Bin Ladin with
cruise missiles before 9/11. In May 1999, CIA assets in
Afghanistan reported on Bin Ladin.s location in and
around Kandahar over the course of five days and
nights.The reporting was very detailed and came from
several sources. If this intelligence was not
.actionable,. working-level officials said at the time
and today, it was hard for them to imagine how any
intelligence on Bin Ladin in Afghanistan would meet the
standard. Communications were good, and the cruise
missiles were ready..This was in our strike zone,. a
senior military officer said. .It was a fat pitch, a
home run.. He expected the missiles to fly.When the
decision came back that they should stand down, not
shoot, the officer said,.we all just slumped.. He told
us he knew of no one at the Pentagon or the CIA who
thought it was a bad gamble. Bin Ladin .should have
been a dead man. that night, he said."
\_ The problem with all this is not that it isn't true,
I believe it is and I'm both pissed off any highly
disappointed in both the GWB and Clinton admins for
not nabbing him years ago, it is that by the time
they could've hit him in Afghanistan, 9/11 was fated
to be. Killing bin Laden would not have stopped
that mission at that point. Had he been nabbed in
the 90s, then yes, probably, but not guaranteed then
either. The real tragedy is that it took 9/11 to
understand we were at war. We'd been attacked
dozens of times yet no one (very few) in the West
understood or believed. Most of Western Europe
still doesn't get it. I think the Brits get it,
kind of, after the Northern Ireland thing. The
French and Germans and Spanish do not get it at all.
The Russians might have just figured it out. Maybe.
The rest are hopeless.
\_ UBL! UBL! UBL is the STANDARD! Abbreviation. |
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