I don't understand all of this "George Bush created ISIS" talk. Educate me please

[superbeets]

You've missed my point again.

Who cares if it's ISIS, The Taliban, AQ, Al-Shabaab or anyone else? All terrorists are terrorists in the end.

The total force size has been estimated from tens of thousands to over two hundred thousand.

[h=2]Weapons[edit][/h][h=3]Conventional weapons[edit][/h]The most common weapons used against US and other Coalition forces during the Iraq insurgency were those taken from Saddam Hussein's weapon stockpiles around the country. These included AKM variant assault rifles, PK machine guns and RPG-7s.[SUP][108][/SUP] ISIL has been able to strengthen its military capability by capturing large quantities and varieties of weaponry during the Syrian Civil War and Post-US Iraqi insurgency. These weapons seizures have improved the group's capacity to carry out successful subsequent operations and obtain more equipment.[SUP][109][/SUP] Weaponry that ISIL has reportedly captured and employed include SA-7[SUP][110][/SUP] and Stinger[SUP][111][/SUP] surface-to-air missiles, M79 Osa, HJ-8[SUP][112][/SUP] and AT-4 Spigot[SUP][110][/SUP] anti-tank weapons, Type 59 field guns[SUP][112][/SUP] and M198 howitzers,[SUP][113][/SUP] Humvees, T-54/55, T-72, and M1 Abrams[SUP][114][/SUP] main battle tanks,[SUP][112][/SUP] M1117 armoured cars,[SUP][115][/SUP] truck-mounted DShK guns,[SUP][110][/SUP] ZU-23-2 anti-aircraft guns,[SUP][116][/SUP][SUP][117][/SUP] BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launchers,[SUP][109][/SUP] and at least one Scud missile.[SUP][118][/SUP]
ISIL shot down an Iraqi helicopter in October 2014, and claims to have shot down "several other" helicopters in 2014. Observers fear that they have "advanced surface-to-air missile systems" such as the Chinese-made FN-6, which are thought to have been provided to Syrian rebels by Qatar and/or Saudi Arabia, and purchased or captured by ISIL.[SUP][119][/SUP]
[h=3]Aircraft[edit][/h]When ISIL captured Mosul Airport in June 2014, it seized a number of UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters and cargo planes that were stationed there.[SUP][120][/SUP][SUP][121][/SUP] According to Peter Beaumont of The Guardian, it seemed unlikely that ISIL would be able to deploy them.[SUP][122][/SUP]
ISIL also captured fighter aircraft in Syria. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported in October 2014 that former Iraqi pilots were training ISIL militants to fly captured Syrian jets. Witnesses reported that MiG-21 and MiG-23 jets were flying over al-Jarrah military airport, but the US Central Command said it was not aware of flights by ISIL-operated aircraft in Syria or elsewhere.[SUP][123][/SUP] On 21 October, the Syrian Air Force claimed that it had shot down two of these aircraft over al-Jarrah air base while they were landing.[SUP][124][/SUP]
[h=3]Non-conventional[edit][/h]ISIL captured nuclear materials from Mosul University in July 2014. In a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Iraq's UN Ambassador Mohamed Ali Alhakim said that the materials had been kept at the university and "can be used in manufacturing weapons of mass destruction". Nuclear experts regarded the threat as insignificant. International Atomic Energy Agency spokeswoman Gill Tudor said that the seized materials were "low grade and would not present a significant safety, security or nuclear proliferation risk".[SUP][125][/SUP][SUP][126][/SUP]
Reports suggest that ISIL captured Saddam era chemical weapons from an Iraqi military base[SUP][127][/SUP] and has deployed chlorine gas based chemical weapons against Iraqi Government forces, Syrian Government and Syrian Opposition Forces,[SUP][128][/SUP] and unidentified chemical weapons against Kurds in Kobanî, Syria.
ISIL has a long history of using truck and car bombs, suicide bombers, and IEDs.
[h=2]Equipment table of commonly used weapons[edit][/h][h=3]Infantry weapons[edit][/h][h=4]Assault Rifles[edit][/h]

Name	Type	Quantity	Origin	Photo	Notes
AKM	Assault Rifle		Soviet Union		Captured from Syrian and Iraqi Army
AK 47	Selective fire Assault Rifle	8000+[SUP][129][/SUP]	Soviet Union		Most commonly used
Type 56 assault rifle	Assault Rifle		China		Captured from Syrian Army
Zastava M70	Assault Rifle		Yugoslavia		Captured from Iraqi Army and Police
M16 rifle	Assault Rifle	1000+[SUP][129][/SUP]	United States		Captured from Iraqi Army & Police; manufactured by FNand Colt [SUP][130][/SUP]
M4A1 SOPMOD (Limited)[SUP][131][/SUP]	Carbine Rifle		United States		Captured from Iraqi Army & Police
H&K G36[SUP][131][/SUP]	Assault Rifle		Germany
Steyr AUG	Assault Rifle		Austria

[h=4]Sniper Rifles[edit][/h]

Name	Type	Quantity	Origin	Photo	Notes
Dragunov SVD	Designated marksman rifle	3000+[SUP][129][/SUP]	Soviet Union
PSL/FPK[SUP][132][/SUP]	Designated marksman rifle		Romania
M14 EBR (Limited)	Designated marksman rifle		United States		Captured from Iraqi Army [SUP][133][/SUP](8:40 mins) [SUP][134][/SUP]
Mosin Nagant	Sniper rifle		Soviet Union		Equipped with PU, PE, and modified PSO-1scopes [SUP][135][/SUP] [SUP][136][/SUP]
KSVK 12.7	Anti-materiel rifle		Russia
M99	Anti-materiel rifle	[SUP][129][/SUP]	People's Republic of China

[h=4]Machine gun　[edit][/h]

Name	Type	Quantity	Origin	Photo	Notes
RPD	Light machine gun	[SUP][129][/SUP]	Soviet Union
RPK	Light machine gun	[SUP][129][/SUP]	Soviet Union
PKM	Squad automatic weapon	[SUP][129][/SUP]	Soviet Union		Most common belt-fed machine gun used
M249 light machine gun[SUP][137][/SUP]	Squad automatic weapon		United States
FN Minimi	Light machine gun		Belgium		Captured from Iraqi Army & Police
PKP Pecheneg	Light machine gun		Russia		Mostly from black markets or Chechen separatists.
NSV machine gun	Heavy machine gun	[SUP][129][/SUP]	Soviet Union
DShK	Heavy machine gun	[SUP][129][/SUP]	Soviet Union

[h=4]Pistols[edit][/h]

Name	Type	Quantity	Origin	Photo	Notes
Beretta 92	Semi-automatic pistol		Italy		Captured from Iraqi Army & Police
Glock 17	Semi-automatic pistol		Austria		Captured from Iraqi Army & Police
HS2000	Semi-automatic pistol		Croatia		Captured from Iraqi Army & Police [SUP][138][/SUP]
Makarov PM	Semi-automatic pistol		Soviet Union
Browning Hi-Power[SUP][139][/SUP]	Semi-automatic pistol		Belgium

[h=4]Explosives, anti-tank weapons, and anti-aircraft launchers[edit][/h]

Name	Type	Quantity	Origin	Photo	Notes
IED	Improvised explosive device		Islamic State		Most commonly used
M62 grenade	Hand grenade		United States	​	Multiple caches[SUP][140][/SUP]
Milkor MGL	Grenade launcher		South Africa
RPG-7	Rocket propelled grenade launcher		Soviet Union		Commonly used
M40 recoilless rifle	Recoilless rifle		United States		Possibly rarely used
FN-6[SUP][141][/SUP]	MANPADS		China		Reportedly used in 3 October 2014 in Baiji to shoot down an Iraqi Mi‑35M helicopter.[SUP][141][/SUP]
FIM-92 Stinger[SUP][142][/SUP]	MANPADS		United States
SA-7 Grail[SUP][141][/SUP]	MANPADS		Soviet Union		"limited, aging stock"
SA-16 Gimlet[SUP][142][/SUP]	MANPADS		Soviet Union
SA-24 Grinch[SUP][142][/SUP]	MANPADS		Soviet Union
BGM-71 TOW[SUP][143][/SUP]	Wire-guided anti-tank missile		United States
MILAN	Wire-guided anti-tank missile		France
HJ-8	Wire-guided anti-tank missile		China

[h=3]Vehicles[edit][/h][h=4]Logistics and utility vehicles[edit][/h]

Name	Type	Quantity	Origin	Photo	Notes
Nimr	Infantry Mobility Vehicle	small amount	United Arab Emirates		Captured from the Libyan National Army in takeover of Derna
HMMWV	Light Utility Vehicle	+500[SUP][144][/SUP][SUP][145][/SUP][SUP][146][/SUP][SUP][147][/SUP]	United States		Many captured
Ain Jaria-1	Infantry Mobility Vehicle	dozens	Poland
Cougar MRAP	Light Utility Vehicle	unknown	United States
Technicals	improvised fighting vehicles	varies	Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
M939 Truck	6×6 truck	unknown	United States		Capture in Camp Saqlawiyah and Camp Speicher
Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacement	6×6 truck	300+	United States		Captured during the Fall of Mosul.

[h=4]Tanks and armored fighting vehicles[edit][/h]

Name	Type	Quantity	Origin	Photo	Notes
BRDM-2	Amphibious Armoured Scout Car	a few hundred	Soviet Union		Captured from the Syrian Army
BMP-1	Armored personnel carrier	20[SUP][148][/SUP]	Soviet Union		Captured from the armies of Iraq and Syria
MRAP	Armored personnel carrier	13[SUP][148][/SUP]	United States		Captured from the Iraqi Army and Police
M1117 Armored Security Vehicle	Armored personnel carrier	47[SUP][148][/SUP]	United States		Captured from the Iraqi Army and Police
T-55/55MV/AM/AMV	Main battle tank	30[SUP][149][/SUP]	Soviet Union
MT-LB[SUP][150][/SUP]	Armored personnel carrier	~50	Soviet Union
T-62M/K	Main battle tank	100+	Soviet Union
T-72/72M/A/AV /TURMS-T/M1 TURMS-T	Main battle tank	5 to 10[SUP][149][/SUP]	Soviet Union
M113 APC	Armored personnel carrier	unknown number	United States		Captured from the Iraqi Army[SUP][149][/SUP]
M1A1M Abrams	Main battle tank	1-2 (rumored)[SUP][149][/SUP]	United States		Captured from the Iraqi Army[SUP][149][/SUP]

[h=4]Artillery[edit][/h]

Name	Type	Quantity	Origin	Photo	Notes
ZSU-23-4 Shilka[SUP][142][/SUP]	Self-propelled anti-aircraft gun	small numbers	Soviet Union		Captured from Syrian army
2S1 Gvozdika	Self-propelled artillery	3 (est.)[SUP][148][/SUP]	Soviet Union		Captured from the Syrian army
M198 Howitzer	Towed howitzer	Up to 52[SUP][151][/SUP]	United States
BM-21 Grad[SUP][148][/SUP]	Multiple Rocket Launcher		Soviet Union
ZU-23-2[SUP][148][/SUP]	Towed Anti-Aircraft Twin Autocannon		Soviet Union
AZP S-60[SUP][142][/SUP]	Anti-Aircraft Gun		Soviet Union
Type 59-1[SUP][148][/SUP]	Field gun		Soviet Union
122-mm howitzer D-30[SUP][148][/SUP]	Field gun		Soviet Union
BM-14	Multiple Rocket Launcher		Soviet Union		Captured from Syrian and Libyan National Army.
Scud	tactical ballistic missiles		Soviet Union Russia	​	Unknown number of captured Iraqi Scuds

[h=4]Aircraft[edit][/h]

Name	Type	Quantity	Origin	Photo	Notes
Mil Mi-28 orMil Mi-24	Attack helicopter	1[SUP][152][/SUP]	Soviet Union		Deployed in Samaraa according to some sources
MiG-21 orMiG-23	Interceptor/Fighter	3[SUP][153][/SUP][SUP][154][/SUP]	Soviet Union		The Syrian Air Force claimed to have shot down two of them.[SUP][124][/SUP]
Mohajer 4Drone and others	Drone (UAV)	6+[SUP][155][/SUP][SUP][156][/SUP][SUP][157][/SUP][SUP][158][/SUP][SUP][159][/SUP]	Iran		Some were captured from the Syrian Army and Iran. ISIL demonstrated the use of a reconnaissance drone in "Clanking of the Swords IV" (June 2014) and in October 2014 over Kobanî in the John Cantlie video and also in the Tabqah Air Base video. The three Drones in Syria were shot down over Kobanî by Kurdish forces defending the city,[SUP][160][/SUP][SUP][161][/SUP] and by the Syrian Army over an airbase.[SUP][159][/SUP]

 

[superbeets]

according to factcheck.org Clinton didn't really have a chance to kill bin laden and there was no crimes against America committed by bin laden at the time in question anyway.

Dont ever let those pesky facts get in the way!!

THE9/11 COMMISSION REPORT


2.4BUILDING AN ORGANIZATION, DECLARING WAR
ONTHE UNITED STATES (1992–1996)


BinLadin began delivering diatribes against the United States before heleft
SaudiArabia. He continued to do so after he arrived in Sudan. In early1992,
theal Qaeda leadership issued a fatwa calling for jihad against theWestern
“occupation”of Islamic lands. Specifically singling out U.S. forces for attack,
thelanguage resembled that which would appear in Bin Ladin’s publicfatwa
inAugust 1996. In ensuing weeks, Bin Ladin delivered an often-repeatedlec-
tureon the need to cut off “the head of the snake.”
42
Bythis time, Bin Ladin was well-known and a senior figure amongIslamist
extremists,especially those in Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, and the
Afghanistan-Pakistanborder region. Still, he was just one among many diverse
terroristbarons. Some of Bin Ladin’s close comrades were more peers thansub-
ordinates.For example, Usama Asmurai, also known as Wali Khan, worked with
BinLadin in the early 1980s and helped him in the Philippines and inTajik-
istan.The Egyptian spiritual guide based in New Jersey, the Blind Sheikh,
whomBin Ladin admired, was also in the network.Among sympathetic peers
inAfghanistan were a few of the warlords still fighting for power andAbu
Zubaydah,who helped operate a popular terrorist training camp near the bor-
derwith Pakistan.There were also rootless but experienced operatives,such as
RamziYousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who—though not necessarily
formalmembers of someone else’s organization—were traveling around the
worldand joining in projects that were supported by or linked to BinLadin,
theBlind Sheikh, or their associates.
43
Innow analyzing the terrorist programs carried out by members of thisnet-
work,it would be misleading to apply the label “al Qaeda operations”too often
inthese early years.Yet it would also be misleading to ignore thesignificance
ofthese connections.And in this network, Bin Ladin’s agenda stoodout.While
hisallied Islamist groups were focused on local battles, such as thosein Egypt,
Algeria,Bosnia, or Chechnya, Bin Ladin concentrated on attacking the “far
enemy”—theUnited States.

AttacksKnown and Suspected


AfterU.S. troops deployed to Somalia in late 1992, al Qaeda leaders formu-
lateda fatwa demanding their eviction. In December, bombs exploded at two
hotelsin Aden where U.S. troops routinely stopped en route to Somalia,killing
two,but no Americans. The perpetrators are reported to have belonged to agroup from southern Yemen headed by a Yemeni member of Bin Ladin’sIslamic
ArmyShura; some in the group had trained at an al Qaeda camp in Sudan.
44
AlQaeda leaders set up a Nairobi cell and used it to send weapons andtrain-
ersto the Somali warlords battling U.S. forces, an operation directlysupervised
byal Qaeda’s military leader.
45
Scoresof trainers flowed to Somalia over the
ensuingmonths, including most of the senior members and weapons training
expertsof al Qaeda’s military committee.These trainers were later heardboast-
ingthat their assistance led to the October 1993 shootdown of two U.S.Black
Hawkhelicopters by members of a Somali militia group and to thesubsequent
withdrawalof U.S. forces in early 1994.
46
InNovember 1995, a car bomb exploded outside a Saudi-U.S. joint facil-
ityin Riyadh for training the Saudi National Guard. Five Americans andtwo
officialsfrom India were killed.The Saudi government arrested four perpetra-
tors,who admitted being inspired by Bin Ladin.They were promptly executed.
Thoughnothing proves that Bin Ladin or
deredthis attack, U.S. intelligence sub-
sequentlylearned that
alQaeda leaders had decided a year earlier to attack a
U.S.target in Saudi Arabia, and had shipped explosives to the peninsulafor this
purpose.Some of Bin Ladin’s associates later took credit.
47
InJune 1996, an enormous truck bomb detonated in the Khobar Towers
residentialcomplex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, that housed U.S.Air Force per-
sonnel.Nineteen Americans were killed, and 372 were wounded.The opera-
tionwas carried out principally, perhaps exclusively, by Saudi Hezbollah,an
organizationthat had received support from the government of Iran.While the
evidenceof Iranian involvement is strong, there are also signs that al Qaeda
playedsome role, as yet unknown.
48
Inthis period, other prominent attacks in which Bin Ladin’sinvolvement is
atbest cloudy are the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, a plotthat
sameyear to destroy landmarks in New York, and the 1995 Manila air plotto
blowup a dozen U.S. airliners over the Pacific. Details on these plotsappear in
chapter3.
Anotherscheme revealed that Bin Ladin sought the capability to kill on a
massscale. His business aides received word that a Sudanese militaryofficer who
hadbeen a member of the previous government cabinet was offering to sell
weapons-gradeuranium.After a number of contacts were made through inter-
mediaries,the officer set the price at $1.5 million, which did not deter Bin
Ladin.AlQaeda representatives asked to inspect the uranium and were shown
acylinder about 3 feet long, and one thought he could pronounce itgenuine.
AlQaeda apparently purchased the cylinder, then discovered it to bebogus.
49
Butwhile the effort failed, it shows what Bin Ladin and his associateshoped
todo. One of the al Qaeda representatives explained his mission: “it’seasy to
killmore people with uranium.”
50
BinLadin seemed willing to include in the confederation terrorists fromalmost every corner of the Muslim world. His vision mirrored that ofSudan’s
Islamistleader,Turabi, who convened a series of meetings under the label Pop-
ularArab and Islamic Conference around the time of Bin Ladin’s arrivalin that
country.Delegations of violent Islamist extremists came from all the groups
representedin Bin Ladin’s
IslamicArmy Shura. Representatives also came from
organizationssuch as the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hamas, and
Hezbollah.
51
Turabisought to persuade Shiites and Sunnis to put aside their divisionsand
joinagainst the common enemy. In late 1991 or 1992, discussions in Sudan
betweenal Qaeda and Iranian operatives led to an informal agreement to coop-
eratein providing support—even if only training—for actions carriedout pri-
marilyagainst Israel and the United States. Not long afterward, senior alQaeda
operativesand trainers traveled to Iran to receive training in explosives. Inthe
fallof 1993, another such delegation went to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanonfor
furthertraining in explosives as well as in intelligence and security. BinLadin
reportedlyshowed particular interest in learning how to use truck bombs such
asthe one that had killed 241 U.S. Marines in Lebanon in 1983.Therelation-
shipbetween al Qaeda and Iran demonstrated that Sunni-Shia divisions didnot
necessarilypose an insurmountable barrier to cooperation in terrorist opera-
tions.Aswill be described in chapter 7, al Qaeda contacts with Iran continued
inensuing years.
52
BinLadin was also willing to explore possibilities for cooperation withIraq,
eventhough Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, had never had an Islamist
agenda—savefor his opportunistic pose as a defender of the faithful against
“Crusaders”during the Gulf War of 1991. Moreover, Bin Ladin had in fact
beensponsoring anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan, and sought toattract
theminto his Islamic army.
53
Toprotect his own ties with Iraq,Turabi reportedly brokered anagreement
thatBin Ladin would stop supporting activities against Saddam. Bin Ladin
apparentlyhonored this pledge, at least for a time, although he continued to
aida group of Islamist extremists operating in part of Iraq (Kurdistan)outside
ofBaghdad’s control. In the late 1990s, these extremist groupssuffered major
defeatsby Kurdish forces. In 2001, with Bin Ladin’s help they re-formedinto
anorganization called Ansar al Islam.There are indications that by thenthe Iraqi
regimetolerated and may even have helped Ansar al Islam against the common
Kurdishenemy.
54
Withthe Sudanese regime acting as intermediary, Bin Ladin himself met
witha senior Iraqi intelligence officer in Khartoum in late 1994 or early1995.
BinLadin is said to have asked for space to establish training camps, aswell as
assistancein procuring weapons, but there is no evidence that Iraq responded
tothis request.
55
Asdescribed below, the ensuing years saw additional efforts to
establish
connections.






SudanBecomes a Doubtful Haven
Notuntil 1998 did al Qaeda undertake a major terrorist operation of itsown,
inlarge part because Bin Ladin lost his base in Sudan. Ever since theIslamist
regimecame to power in Khartoum, the United States and other Western gov-
ernmentshad pressed it to stop providing a haven for terrorist organizations.
Othergovernments in the region, such as those of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and
evenLibya, which were targets of some of these groups, added their ownpres-
sure.At the same time, the Sudanese regime began to change.Though Turabi
hadbeen its inspirational leader, General Omar al Bashir, presidentsince 1989,
hadnever been entirely under his thumb.Thus as outside pressuresmounted,
Bashir’ssupporters began to displace those of Turabi.
Theattempted assassination in Ethiopia of Egyptian President Hosni
Mubarakin June 1995 appears to have been a tipping point. The would-be
killers,who came from the Egyptian Islamic Group, had been sheltered in
Sudanand helped by Bin Ladin.
56
Whenthe Sudanese refused to hand over
threeindividuals identified as involved in the assassination plot, the UNSecu-
rityCouncil passed a resolution criticizing their inaction and eventuallysanc-
tionedKhartoum in April 1996.
57
Aclear signal to Bin Ladin that his days in Sudan were numbered camewhen
thegovernment advised him that it intended to yield to Libya’s demandsto stop
givingsanctuary to its enemies. Bin Ladin had to tell the Libyans who hadbeen
partof his Islamic army that he could no longer protect them and thatthey had
toleave the country. Outraged, several Libyan members of al Qaeda andthe
IslamicArmy Shura renounced all connections with him.
58
BinLadin also began to have serious mone
yproblems. Inter
nationalpres-
sureon Sudan, together with strains in the world economy, hurt Sudan’scur-
rency.Some of Bin Ladin’s companies ran short of funds. As Sudanese
authoritiesbecame less obliging, normal costs of doing business increased. Saudi
pressureson the Bin Ladin family also probably took some toll. In any case,Bin
Ladinfound it necessary both
tocut
backhis spending and to control his out-
laysmore closely. He appointed a new financial manager, whom hisfollowers saw
asmiserly.
59
Moneyproblems proved costly to Bin Ladin in other ways. Jamal Ahmed al
Fadl,a Sudanese-born Arab, had spent time in the United States and hadbeen
recruitedfor the Afghan war through the Farouq mosque in Brooklyn. He had
joinedal Qaeda and taken the oath of fealty to Bin Ladin, serving as one ofhis
businessagents. Then Bin Ladin discovered that Fadl had skimmed about
$110,000,and he asked for restitution. Fadl resented receiving a salary ofonly
$500a month while some of the Egyptians in al Qaeda were given $1,200 a
month.He defected and became a star informant for the United States. Also
testifyingabout al Qaeda in a U.S. court was L’Houssaine Kherchtou, who told
ofbreaking with Bin Ladin because of Bin Ladin’s professed inabilityto pro-
videhim with money when his wife needed a caesarian section.
60
InFebruary 1996, Sudanese officials began approaching officials fromthe United States and other governments, asking what actions oftheirs might ease
foreignpressure. In secret meetings with Saudi officials, Sudan offered toexpel
BinLadin to Saudi Arabia and asked the Saudis to pardon him. U.S.officials
becameaware of these secret discussions, certainly by March. Saudiofficials
apparentlywanted Bin Ladin expelled from Sudan.They had already revoked
hiscitizenship, however, and would not tolerate his presence in theircountry.
AndBin Ladin may have no longer felt safe in Sudan, where he had already
escapedat least one assassination attempt that he believed to have been the
workof the Egyptian or Saudi regimes, or both. In any case, on May 19,1996,
BinLadin left Sudan—significantly weakened, despite his ambitions andorga-
nizationalskills. He returned to Afghanistan.
61



[COLOR=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)]THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT[/COLOR]

[COLOR=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)]THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT[/COLOR]

 

[JDeuce]

Fact check: probably not and had no grounds

9/11 commission report: no chance to kill him. Bin laden was not where they thought.

Or

clinton, acebb and Jdeucebag

who is more credible on this group? Lmao.

"Probably."

Uh huh. That's really conclusive. What are you suggesting, anyway...Bill just made up the whole claim? Because I'm not the one making any claim...it's Bill himself.

Remind me again how Bin Laden hadn't yet attacked America at that time again?


* February 26, 1993-- A bomb explodes at the World Trade Center in New York City, killing six and wounding hundreds. Six Muslim radicals, who U.S. officials suspect have links to bin Laden, are eventually convicted for the bombing. Bin Laden is later named along with many others as an unindicted co-conspirator in that case.

* October 1993 -- Eighteen U.S. servicemen, all of them part of a humanitarian mission to Somalia, are killed in an ambush in Mogadishu. Bin Laden later says that some Arab Afghans were involved in the killings and calls Americans "paper tigers" because they withdrew from Somalia shortly after the soldiers' deaths.

* 1995 -- A truck bombing at a military base in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, kills five Americans and two Indians.

* August 23, 1996 -- Bin Laden declares a holy war against U.S. forces. He signs and issues a declaration of jihad from Afghanistan titled, "Message from Osama bin Laden to his Muslim Brothers in the Whole World and Especially in the Arabian Peninsula: Declaration of Jihad Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Mosques; Expel the Heretics from the Arabian Peninsula."

* August 7, 1998 -- A pair of truck bombs explodes outside the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Some 224 people are killed.
* November 1998 -- Bin Laden is indicted in the United States on 224 counts of murder -- one for each death in the Kenya and Tanzania embassy bombings.

* October 12, 2000 -- Bin Laden is linked to the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, which left 17 U.S. sailors dead and another 39 injured.


And that isn't even a complete list.

Utter fucking moron who shows how little you know every time you waste time to make an inaccurate point.

 

[Enfuego]

I understand your point, but ignoring why they are what they are makes no sense and is counter productive. When you're trying to take down a belief, and hoping to stop it spreading in the future, you better learn everything you can about it's origins.

If you really think we can "take down a belief," we really don't have anything else to discuss.

 

[Acebb]

Because it wasn't a joint decision. More Dems opposed it then supported it. Unfortunately, too many supported it, and it passed, and Bush started the disastrous Wars that has the Middle East in the shambles it is today.

The entire leadership of the Democratic party supported OIF.

The Middle East was not "in shambles" in February 2009. The fact that you blame this on President Bush reminds everyone what a scumbag liar you are.

 

[Acebb]

Fact check: probably not and had no grounds

9/11 commission report: no chance to kill him. Bin laden was not where they thought.

Or

clinton, acebb and Jdeucebag

who is more credible on this group? Lmao.

Hey dipshit: I've already provided the indictment against Bin Laden. The fact that you keep referencing fact check is fucking hysterical. They are wrong, and it is easily demonstrated they are wrong.

Further, America doesn't operate on any principle where we have "grounds" to kill someone only if they "committed crimes against America" Examples of this would include trying to kill Hitler, trying to kill Castro, capturing Saddam and taking him to trial, and the recent killing of the #2 in ISIS.

You are so fucking dumb it is unreal.

 

[Acebb]

why did you leave out" intelligence later learned that bin laden had left the quarters and would not have been struck "

pretty important part.

The fact that you think an "intelligence assessment" = fact is fucking hilarious.

I mean, how many intelligence assessments stating Iraq had WMD's would you like me to post (like this one), dumb fuck?

It is beyond hilarious that you can't understand that what Clinton said may be true, yet an intelligence assessment exists saying the exact opposite.

Your tiny fucking brain literally can't critically think. At all.

 

[Acebb]

Great job Barry!

 

[Acebb]

Bill Clinton's own audio transcript, confessing he had a chance to get OBL and explains why he didn't.


Vtard has a perfect record, all right...of knocking his own sorry ass out. What a fucking retarded infant who has zero clue of how humiliatingly stupid he's made himself look.

Not only is he calling Clinton a liar (what is the motive for him to make this up?) but I actually quoted the indictment against Bin Laden that the Clinton Administration put together. The indictment proves fact check is 100% wrong, yet he can't stop quoting fact check.

COUNT ONE:CONSPIRACY TO KILL UNITED STATES NATIONALS --From at least 1991 until the date of the filing of this Indictment.

COUNTS TWO HUNDRED SEVENTY-SEVEN AND TWO HUNDRED SEVENTY-EIGHT:MURDER OF EMPLOYEES OF THE UNITED STATES IN DAR ES SALAAM, TANZANIA

Too bad that 277th count didn't make its way to the fact check Web site.

 

[vitterd]

The fact that you think an "intelligence assessment" = fact is fucking hilarious.

I mean, how many intelligence assessments stating Iraq had WMD's would you like me to post (like this one), dumb fuck?

It is beyond hilarious that you can't understand that what Clinton said may be true, yet an intelligence assessment exists saying the exact opposite.

Your tiny fucking brain literally can't critically think. At all.

You believe Clinton when it fits your narrative but I have the 9/11 commission report on my side and on your side is a proven liar jdeucebag

take your beating like a man and accept that you keep posting articles that blow up in your face. Start reading the articles you post and this will not happens again.

 

[vitterd]

Hey Acebb.....I logged in last night.....when I came back here today....I was still logged in. Guess I didn't "time out".

Lmao....another classic acebb blunder.

 

[JDeuce]

You believe Clinton when it fits your narrative but I have the 9/11 commission report on my side and on your side is a proven liar jdeucebag

take your beating like a man and accept that you keep posting articles that blow up in your face. Start reading the articles you post and this will not happens again.

I've never lied about one thing on this site. You, on the other hand...it's been proven in several instances that you were completely full of shit.

So tell us all why Slick Willie would lie that he had a chance to get OBL? What would be his motivation for doing so? This should be entertaining. And if you could avoid citing your rock solid "probably" verdict from fact check, all the better...

 

[vitterd]

I've never lied about one thing on this site. You, on the other hand...it's been proven in several instances that you were completely full of shit.

So tell us all why Slick Willie would lie that he had a chance to get OBL? What would be his motivation for doing so? This should be entertaining. And if you could avoid citing your rock solid "probably" verdict from fact check, all the better...

No idea why he lied....just like I have no idea why you lie. I choose to believe the 9/11 report that used the intelligence at that time. So why do you think intelligence community is lying?

" Vit was never 6-1 in nfl playoffs, mathematically impossible". Proven lie

" I never bet Denver -27" proven lie

you also constantly lied about my record in the tracker thread of my picks and still do so even now.

You continue to claim to have a bunch of winners here but nobody including you can find them.

 

[The Guesser]

Really, Liar??? So if I could PROVE that you have posted at least one article from Free Beacon, a website you claim to have never visited, nor know what it is, you would agree to leave this site forever, except for one last post apologizing to all the people and groups you've lied about and insulted and worse over the years? Of course since youre a shameless welcher who doesn't follow through on bets or agreements, proposing this is pretty meaningless, except it will AGAIN prove that you are a shameless, unrepentant, fake religious liar, but I'll propose it on the odd chance today is one of those very rare days when you actually have a conscience and a moral compass.

Of course the lying, fake religious, racist hateful Zit runs as far away from his obvious, blatant lie as possible. Showing, as usual, no integrity, no decency, no guts. Just a morally bankrupt Human being. Feel bad for his family and the Church he stains with his presence.

 

[superbeets]

Clinton's efforts to get Bin Laden as in the 9/11 Commission report.

[h=4]4.1 BEFORE THE BOMBINGS IN KENYA AND TANZANIA[/h]Although the 1995 National Intelligence Estimate had warned of a new type of terrorism, many officials continued to think of terrorists as agents of states (Saudi Hezbollah acting for Iran against Khobar Towers) or as domestic criminals (Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City).As we pointed out in chapter 3, the White House is not a natural locus for program management. Hence, government efforts to cope with terrorism were essentially the work of individual agencies.
President Bill Clinton's counterterrorism Presidential Decision Directives in 1995 (no. 39) and May 1998 (no. 62) reiterated that terrorism was a national security problem, not just a law enforcement issue. They reinforced the authority of the National Security Council (NSC) to coordinate domestic as well as foreign counterterrorism efforts, through Richard Clarke and his interagency Counterterrorism Security Group (CSG). Spotlighting new concerns about unconventional attacks, these directives assigned tasks to lead agencies but did not differentiate types of terrorist threats. Thus, while Clarke might prod or push agencies to act, what actually happened was usually decided at the State Department, the Pentagon, the CIA, or the Justice Department. The efforts of these agencies were sometimes energetic and sometimes effective. Terrorist plots were disrupted and individual terrorists were captured. But the United States did not, before 9/11, adopt as a clear strategic objective the elimination of al Qaeda.

 

[superbeets]

Early Efforts against Bin Ladin
Until 1996, hardly anyone in the U.S. government understood that Usama Bin Ladin was an inspirer and organizer of the new terrorism. In 1993, the CIA noted that he had paid for the training of some Egyptian terrorists in Sudan. The State Department detected his money in aid to the Yemeni terrorists who set a bomb in an attempt to kill U.S. troops in Aden in 1992. State Department sources even saw suspicious links with Omar Abdel Rahman, the "Blind Sheikh" in the New York area, commenting that Bin Ladin seemed "committed to financing 'Jihads' against 'anti Islamic' regimes worldwide." After the department designated Sudan a state sponsor of terrorism in 1993, it put Bin Ladin on its TIPOFF watchlist, a move that might have prevented his getting a visa had he tried to enter the United States. As late as 1997, however, even the CIA's Counterterrorist Center continued to describe him as an "extremist financier."[SUP]1[/SUP]
In 1996, the CIA set up a special unit of a dozen officers to analyze intelligence on and plan operations against Bin Ladin. David Cohen, the head of the CIA's Directorate of Operations, wanted to test the idea of having a "virtual station"-a station based at headquarters but collecting and operating against a subject much as stations in the field focus on a country. Taking his cue from National Security Advisor Anthony Lake, who expressed special interest in terrorist finance, Cohen formed his virtual station as a terrorist financial links unit. He had trouble getting any Directorate of Operations officer to run it; he finally recruited a former analyst who was then running the Islamic Extremist Branch of the Counterterrorist Center. This officer, who was especially knowledgeable about Afghanistan, had noticed a recent stream of reports about Bin Ladin and something called al Qaeda, and suggested to Cohen that the station focus on this one individual. Cohen agreed. Thus was born the Bin Ladin unit.[SUP]2[/SUP]
In May 1996, Bin Ladin left Sudan for Afghanistan. A few months later, as the Bin Ladin unit was gearing up, Jamal Ahmed al Fadl walked into a U.S. embassy in Africa, established his bona fides as a former senior employee of Bin Ladin, and provided a major breakthrough of intelligence on the creation, character, direction, and intentions of al Qaeda. Corroborating evidence came from another walk-in source at a different U.S. embassy. More confirmation was supplied later that year by intelligence and other sources, including material gathered by FBI agents and Kenyan police from an al Qaeda cell in Nairobi.[SUP]3[/SUP]
By 1997, officers in the Bin Ladin unit recognized that Bin Ladin was more than just a financier. They learned that al Qaeda had a military committee that was planning operations against U.S. interests worldwide and was actively trying to obtain nuclear material. Analysts assigned to the station looked at the information it had gathered and "found connections everywhere," including links to the attacks on U.S. troops in Aden and Somalia in 1992 and 1993 and to the Manila air plot in the Philippines in 1994-1995.[SUP]4[/SUP]
The Bin Ladin station was already working on plans for offensive operations against Bin Ladin. These plans were directed at both physical assets and sources of finance. In the end, plans to identify and attack Bin Ladin's money sources did not go forward.[SUP]5[/SUP]
In late 1995, when Bin Ladin was still in Sudan, the State Department and the CIA learned that Sudanese officials were discussing with the Saudi government the possibility of expelling Bin Ladin. U.S. Ambassador Timothy Carney encouraged the Sudanese to pursue this course. The Saudis, however, did not want Bin Ladin, giving as their reason their revocation of his citizenship.[SUP]6[/SUP]
Sudan's minister of defense, Fatih Erwa, has claimed that Sudan offered to hand Bin Ladin over to the United States. The Commission has found no credible evidence that this was so. Ambassador Carney had instructions only to push the Sudanese to expel Bin Ladin. Ambassador Carney had no legal basis to ask for more from the Sudanese since, at the time, there was no indictment out-standing.[SUP]7[/SUP]
The chief of the Bin Ladin station, whom we will call "Mike," saw Bin Ladin's move to Afghanistan as a stroke of luck. Though the CIA had virtually abandoned Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal, case officers had reestablished old contacts while tracking down Mir Amal Kansi, the Pakistani gunman who had murdered two CIA employees in January 1993.These contacts contributed to intelligence about Bin Ladin's local movements, business activities, and security and living arrangements, and helped provide evidence that he was spending large amounts of money to help the Taliban. The chief of the Counterterrorist Center, whom we will call "Jeff," told Director George Tenet that the CIA's intelligence assets were "near to providing real-time information about Bin Ladin's activities and travels in Afghanistan." One of the contacts was a group associated with particular tribes among Afghanistan's ethnic Pashtun community.[SUP]8[/SUP]
By the fall of 1997, the Bin Ladin unit had roughed out a plan for these Afghan tribals to capture Bin Ladin and hand him over for trial either in the United States or in an Arab country. In early 1998, the cabinet-level Principals Committee apparently gave the concept its blessing.[SUP]9[/SUP]
On their own separate track, getting information but not direction from the CIA, the FBI's New York Field Office and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York were preparing to ask a grand jury to indict Bin Ladin. The Counterterrorist Center knew that this was happening.[SUP]10[/SUP] The eventual charge, conspiring to attack U.S. defense installations, was finally issued from the grand jury in June 1998-as a sealed indictment. The indictment was publicly disclosed in November of that year.
When Bin Ladin moved to Afghanistan in May 1996, he became a subject of interest to the State Department's South Asia bureau. At the time, as one diplomat told us, South Asia was seen in the department and the government generally as a low priority. In 1997, as Madeleine Albright was beginning her tenure as secretary of state, an NSC policy review concluded that the United States should pay more attention not just to India but also to Pakistan and Afghanistan.[SUP]11[/SUP] With regard to Afghanistan, another diplomat said, the United States at the time had "no policy."[SUP]12[/SUP]
In the State Department, concerns about India-Pakistan tensions often crowded out attention to Afghanistan or Bin Ladin. Aware of instability and growing Islamic extremism in Pakistan, State Department officials worried most about an arms race and possible war between Pakistan and India. After May 1998, when both countries surprised the United States by testing nuclear weapons, these dangers became daily first-order concerns of the State Department.[SUP]13[/SUP]
In Afghanistan, the State Department tried to end the civil war that had continued since the Soviets' withdrawal. The South Asia bureau believed it might have a carrot for Afghanistan's warring factions in a project by the Union Oil Company of California (UNOCAL) to build a pipeline across the country. While there was probably never much chance of the pipeline actually being built, the Afghan desk hoped that the prospect of shared pipeline profits might lure faction leaders to a conference table. U.S. diplomats did not favor the Taliban over the rival factions. Despite growing concerns, U.S. diplomats were willing at the time, as one official said, to "give the Taliban a chance."[SUP]14[/SUP]
Though Secretary Albright made no secret of thinking the Taliban "despicable," the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Bill Richardson, led a delegation to South Asia-including Afghanistan-in April 1998. No U.S. official of such rank had been to Kabul in decades. Ambassador Richardson went primarily to urge negotiations to end the civil war. In view of Bin Ladin's recent public call for all Muslims to kill Americans, Richardson asked the Taliban to expel Bin Ladin. They answered that they did not know his whereabouts. In any case, the Taliban said, Bin Ladin was not a threat to the United States.[SUP]15[/SUP]
In sum, in late 1997 and the spring of 1998, the lead U.S. agencies each pursued their own efforts against Bin Ladin. The CIA's Counterterrorist Center was developing a plan to capture and remove him from Afghanistan. Parts of the Justice Department were moving toward indicting Bin Ladin, making possible a criminal trial in a New York court. Meanwhile, the State Department was focused more on lessening Indo-Pakistani nuclear tensions, ending the Afghan civil war, and ameliorating the Taliban's human rights abuses than on driving out Bin Ladin. Another key actor, Marine General Anthony Zinni, the commander in chief of the U.S. Central Command, shared the State Department's view.[SUP]16[/SUP]

 

[superbeets]

The CIA Develops a Capture Plan
Initially, the DCI's Counterterrorist Center and its Bin Ladin unit considered a plan to ambush Bin Ladin when he traveled between Kandahar, the Taliban capital where he sometimes stayed the night, and his primary residence at the time, Tarnak Farms. After the Afghan tribals reported that they had tried such an ambush and failed, the Center gave up on it, despite suspicions that the tribals' story might be fiction. Thereafter, the capture plan focused on a nighttime raid on Tarnak Farms.[SUP]17[/SUP]
A compound of about 80 concrete or mud-brick buildings surrounded by a 10-foot wall, Tarnak Farms was located in an isolated desert area on the outskirts of the Kandahar airport. CIA officers were able to map the entire site, identifying the houses that belonged to Bin Ladin's wives and the one where Bin Ladin himself was most likely to sleep. Working with the tribals, they drew up plans for the raid. They ran two complete rehearsals in the United States during the fall of 1997.[SUP]18[/SUP]
By early 1998, planners at the Counterterrorist Center were ready to come back to the White House to seek formal approval. Tenet apparently walked National Security Advisor Sandy Berger through the basic plan on February 13. One group of tribals would subdue the guards, enter Tarnak Farms stealthily, grab Bin Ladin, take him to a desert site outside Kandahar, and turn him over to a second group. This second group of tribals would take him to a desert landing zone already tested in the 1997 Kansi capture. From there, a CIA plane would take him to New York, an Arab capital, or wherever he was to be arraigned. Briefing papers prepared by the Counterterrorist Center acknowledged that hitches might develop. People might be killed, and Bin Ladin's supporters might retaliate, perhaps taking U.S. citizens in Kandahar hostage. But the briefing papers also noted that there was risk in not acting. "Sooner or later," they said, "Bin Ladin will attack U.S. interests, perhaps using WMD [weapons of mass destruction]."[SUP]19[/SUP]
Clarke's Counterterrorism Security Group reviewed the capture plan for Berger. Noting that the plan was in a "very early stage of development," the NSC staff then told the CIA planners to go ahead and, among other things, start drafting any legal documents that might be required to authorize the covert action. The CSG apparently stressed that the raid should target Bin Ladin himself, not the whole compound.[SUP]20[/SUP]
The CIA planners conducted their third complete rehearsal in March, and they again briefed the CSG. Clarke wrote Berger on March 7 that he saw the operation as "somewhat embryonic" and the CIA as "months away from doing anything."[SUP]21[/SUP]
"Mike" thought the capture plan was "the perfect operation." It required minimum infrastructure. The plan had now been modified so that the tribals would keep Bin Ladin in a hiding place for up to a month before turning him over to the United States-thereby increasing the chances of keeping the U.S. hand out of sight. "Mike" trusted the information from the Afghan network; it had been corroborated by other means, he told us. The lead CIA officer in the field, Gary Schroen, also had confidence in the tribals. In a May 6 cable to CIA headquarters, he pronounced their planning "almost as professional and detailed . . . as would be done by any U.S. military special operations element." He and the other officers who had worked through the plan with the tribals judged it "about as good as it can be." (By that, Schroen explained, he meant that the chance of capturing or killing Bin Ladin was about 40 percent.) Although the tribals thought they could pull off the raid, if the operation were approved by headquarters and the policymakers, Schroen wrote there was going to be a point when "we step back and keep our fingers crossed that the [tribals] prove as good (and as lucky) as they think they will be."[SUP]22[/SUP]
Military officers reviewed the capture plan and, according to "Mike," "found no showstoppers." The commander of Delta Force felt "uncomfortable" with having the tribals hold Bin Ladin captive for so long, and the commander of Joint Special Operations Forces, Lieutenant General Michael Canavan, was worried about the safety of the tribals inside Tarnak Farms. General Canavan said he had actually thought the operation too complicated for the CIA-"out of their league"-and an effort to get results "on the cheap." But a senior Joint Staff officer described the plan as "generally, not too much different than we might have come up with ourselves." No one in the Pentagon, so far as we know, advised the CIA or the White House not to proceed.[SUP]23[/SUP]
In Washington, Berger expressed doubt about the dependability of the tribals. In his meeting with Tenet, Berger focused most, however, on the question of what was to be done with Bin Ladin if he were actually captured. He worried that the hard evidence against Bin Ladin was still skimpy and that there was a danger of snatching him and bringing him to the United States only to see him acquitted.[SUP]24[/SUP]
On May 18, CIA's managers reviewed a draft Memorandum of Notification (MON), a legal document authorizing the capture operation. A 1986 presidential finding had authorized worldwide covert action against terrorism and probably provided adequate authority. But mindful of the old "rogue elephant" charge, senior CIA managers may have wanted something on paper to show that they were not acting on their own.
Discussion of this memorandum brought to the surface an unease about paramilitary covert action that had become ingrained, at least among some CIA senior managers. James Pavitt, the assistant head of the Directorate of Operations, expressed concern that people might get killed; it appears he thought the operation had at least a slight flavor of a plan for an assassination. Moreover, he calculated that it would cost several million dollars. He was not prepared to take that money "out of hide," and he did not want to go to all the necessary congressional committees to get special money. Despite Pavitt's misgivings, the CIA leadership cleared the draft memorandum and sent it on to the National Security Council.[SUP]25[/SUP]
Counterterrorist Center officers briefed Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis Freeh, telling them that the operation had about a 30 percent chance of success. The Center's chief, "Jeff," joined John O'Neill, the head of the FBI's New York Field Office, in briefing Mary Jo White, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and her staff. Though "Jeff" also used the 30 percent success figure, he warned that someone would surely be killed in the operation. White's impression from the New York briefing was that the chances of capturing Bin Ladin alive were nil.[SUP]26[/SUP]
From May 20 to 24, the CIA ran a final, graded rehearsal of the operation, spread over three time zones, even bringing in personnel from the region. The FBI also participated. The rehearsal went well. The Counterterrorist Center planned to brief cabinet-level principals and their deputies the following week, giving June 23 as the date for the raid, with Bin Ladin to be brought out of Afghanistan no later than July 23.[SUP]27[/SUP]
On May 20, Director Tenet discussed the high risk of the operation with Berger and his deputies, warning that people might be killed, including Bin Ladin. Success was to be defined as the exfiltration of Bin Ladin out of Afghanistan.[SUP]28[/SUP] A meeting of principals was scheduled for May 29 to decide whether the operation should go ahead.
The principals did not meet. On May 29, "Jeff" informed "Mike" that he had just met with Tenet, Pavitt, and the chief of the Directorate's Near Eastern Division. The decision was made not to go ahead with the operation. "Mike" cabled the field that he had been directed to "stand down on the operation for the time being." He had been told, he wrote, that cabinet-level officials thought the risk of civilian casualties-"collateral damage"-was too high. They were concerned about the tribals' safety, and had worried that "the purpose and nature of the operation would be subject to unavoidable misinterpretation and misrepresentation-and probably recriminations-in the event that Bin Ladin, despite our best intentions and efforts, did not survive."[SUP]29[/SUP]
Impressions vary as to who actually decided not to proceed with the operation. Clarke told us that the CSG saw the plan as flawed. He was said to have described it to a colleague on the NSC staff as "half-assed" and predicted that the principals would not approve it. "Jeff " thought the decision had been made at the cabinet level. Pavitt thought that it was Berger's doing, though perhaps on Tenet's advice. Tenet told us that given the recommendation of his chief operations officers, he alone had decided to "turn off" the operation. He had simply informed Berger, who had not pushed back. Berger's recollection was similar. He said the plan was never presented to the White House for a decision.[SUP]30[/SUP]
The CIA's senior management clearly did not think the plan would work. Tenet's deputy director of operations wrote to Berger a few weeks later that the CIA assessed the tribals' ability to capture Bin Ladin and deliver him to U.S. officials as low. But working-level CIA officers were disappointed. Before it was canceled, Schroen described it as the "best plan we are going to come up with to capture [Bin Ladin] while he is in Afghanistan and bring him to justice."[SUP]31[/SUP] No capture plan before 9/11 ever again attained the same level of detail and preparation. The tribals' reported readiness to act diminished. And Bin Ladin's security precautions and defenses became more elaborate and formidable.
At this time, 9/11 was more than three years away. It was the duty of Tenet and the CIA leadership to balance the risks of inaction against jeopardizing the lives of their operatives and agents. And they had reason to worry about failure: millions of dollars down the drain; a shoot-out that could be seen as an assassination; and, if there were repercussions in Pakistan, perhaps a coup. The decisions of the U.S. government in May 1998 were made, as Berger has put it, from the vantage point of the driver looking through a muddy windshield moving forward, not through a clean rearview mirror.[SUP]32[/SUP]

 

[superbeets]

Looking for Other Options
The Counterterrorist Center continued to track Bin Ladin and to contemplate covert action. The most hopeful possibility seemed now to lie in diplomacy- but not diplomacy managed by the Department of State, which focused primarily on India-Pakistan nuclear tensions during the summer of 1998.The CIA learned in the spring of 1998 that the Saudi government had quietly disrupted Bin Ladin cells in its country that were planning to attack U.S. forces with shoulder-fired missiles. They had arrested scores of individuals, with no publicity. When thanking the Saudis, Director Tenet took advantage of the opening to ask them to help against Bin Ladin. The response was encouraging enough that President Clinton made Tenet his informal personal representative to work with the Saudis on terrorism, and Tenet visited Riyadh in May and again in early June.[SUP]33[/SUP]
Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, who had taken charge from the ailing King Fahd, promised Tenet an all-out secret effort to persuade the Taliban to expel Bin Ladin so that he could be sent to the United States or to another country for trial. The Kingdom's emissary would be its intelligence chief, Prince Turki bin Faisal. Vice President Al Gore later added his thanks to those of Tenet, both making clear that they spoke with President Clinton's blessing. Tenet reported that it was imperative to get an indictment against Bin Ladin. The New York grand jury issued its sealed indictment a few days later, on June 10.Tenet also recommended that no action be taken on other U.S. options, such as the covert action plan.[SUP]34[/SUP]
Prince Turki followed up in meetings during the summer with Mullah Omar and other Taliban leaders. Apparently employing a mixture of possible incentives and threats, Turki received a commitment that Bin Ladin would be expelled, but Mullah Omar did not make good on this promise.[SUP]35[/SUP]
On August 5, Clarke chaired a CSG meeting on Bin Ladin. In the discussion of what might be done, the note taker wrote, "there was a dearth of bright ideas around the table, despite a consensus that the [government] ought to pursue every avenue it can to address the problem."[SUP]36[/SUP]

 

[superbeets]

[h=4]4.2 CRISIS:AUGUST 1998[/h]On August 7, 1998, National Security Advisor Berger woke President Clinton with a phone call at 5:35 A.M. to tell him of the almost simultaneous bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Suspicion quickly focused on Bin Ladin. Unusually good intelligence, chiefly from the yearlong monitoring of al Qaeda's cell in Nairobi, soon firmly fixed responsibility on him and his associates.[SUP]37[/SUP]
Debate about what to do settled very soon on one option: Tomahawk cruise missiles. Months earlier, after cancellation of the covert capture operation, Clarke had prodded the Pentagon to explore possibilities for military action. On June 2, General Hugh Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had directed General Zinni at Central Command to develop a plan, which he had submitted during the first week of July. Zinni's planners surely considered the two previous times the United States had used force to respond to terrorism, the 1986 strike on Libya and the 1993 strike against Iraq. They proposed firing Tomahawks against eight terrorist camps in Afghanistan, including Bin Ladin's compound at Tarnak Farms.[SUP]38[/SUP] After the embassy attacks, the Pentagon offered this plan to the White House.
The day after the embassy bombings, Tenet brought to a principals meeting intelligence that terrorist leaders were expected to gather at a camp near Khowst, Afghanistan, to plan future attacks. According to Berger, Tenet said that several hundred would attend, including Bin Ladin. The CIA described the area as effectively a military cantonment, away from civilian population centers and overwhelmingly populated by jihadists. Clarke remembered sitting next to Tenet in a White House meeting, asking Tenet "You thinking what I'm thinking?" and his nodding "yes."[SUP]39[/SUP] The principals quickly reached a consensus on attacking the gathering. The strike's purpose was to kill Bin Ladin and his chief lieutenants.[SUP]40[/SUP]
Berger put in place a tightly compartmented process designed to keep all planning secret. On August 11, General Zinni received orders to prepare detailed plans for strikes against the sites in Afghanistan. The Pentagon briefed President Clinton about these plans on August 12 and 14.Though the principals hoped that the missiles would hit Bin Ladin, NSC staff recommended the strike whether or not there was firm evidence that the commanders were at the facilities.[SUP]41[/SUP]
Considerable debate went to the question of whether to strike targets outside of Afghanistan, including two facilities in Sudan. One was a tannery believed to belong to Bin Ladin. The other was al Shifa, a Khartoum pharmaceutical plant, which intelligence reports said was manufacturing a precursor ingredient for nerve gas with Bin Ladin's financial support. The argument for hitting the tannery was that it could hurt Bin Ladin financially. The argument for hitting al Shifa was that it would lessen the chance of Bin Ladin's having nerve gas for a later attack.[SUP]42[/SUP]
Ever since March 1995, American officials had had in the backs of their minds Aum Shinrikyo's release of sarin nerve gas in the Tokyo subway. President Clinton himself had expressed great concern about chemical and biological terrorism in the United States. Bin Ladin had reportedly been heard to speak of wanting a "Hiroshima" and at least 10,000 casualties. The CIA reported that a soil sample from the vicinity of the al Shifa plant had tested positive for EMPTA, a precursor chemical for VX, a nerve gas whose lone use was for mass killing. Two days before the embassy bombings, Clarke's staff wrote that Bin Ladin "has invested in and almost certainly has access to VX produced at a plant in Sudan."[SUP]43[/SUP] Senior State Department officials believed that they had received a similar verdict independently, though they and Clarke's staff were probably relying on the same report. Mary McCarthy, the NSC senior director responsible for intelligence programs, initially cautioned Berger that the "bottom line" was that "we will need much better intelligence on this facility before we seriously consider any options." She added that the link between Bin Ladin and al Shifa was "rather uncertain at this point." Berger has told us that he thought about what might happen if the decision went against hitting al Shifa, and nerve gas was used in a New York subway two weeks later.[SUP]44[/SUP]
By the early hours of the morning of August 20, President Clinton and all his principal advisers had agreed to strike Bin Ladin camps in Afghanistan near Khowst, as well as hitting al Shifa. The President took the Sudanese tannery off the target list because he saw little point in killing uninvolved people without doing significant harm to Bin Ladin. The principal with the most qualms regarding al Shifa was Attorney General Reno. She expressed concern about attacking two Muslim countries at the same time. Looking back, she said that she felt the "premise kept shifting."[SUP]45[/SUP]
Later on August 20, 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.[SUP]46[/SUP]
The air strikes marked the climax of an intense 48-hour period in which Berger notified congressional leaders, the principals called their foreign counterparts, and President Clinton flew back from his vacation on Martha's Vineyard to address the nation from the Oval Office. The President spoke to the congressional leadership from Air Force One, and he called British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak from the White House.[SUP]47[/SUP] House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott initially supported the President. The next month, Gingrich's office dismissed the cruise missile attacks as "pinpricks."[SUP]48[/SUP]
At the time, President Clinton was embroiled in the Lewinsky scandal, which continued to consume public attention for the rest of that year and the first months of 1999. As it happened, a popular 1997 movie,Wag the Dog, features a president who fakes a war to distract public attention from a domestic scandal. Some Republicans in Congress raised questions about the timing of the strikes. Berger was particularly rankled by an editorial in the Economist that said that only the future would tell whether the U.S. missile strikes had "created 10,000 new fanatics where there would have been none."[SUP]49[/SUP]
Much public commentary turned immediately to scalding criticism that the action was too aggressive. The Sudanese denied that al Shifa produced nerve gas, and they allowed journalists to visit what was left of a seemingly harmless facility. President Clinton, Vice President Gore, Berger, Tenet, and Clarke insisted to us that their judgment was right, pointing to the soil sample evidence. No independent evidence has emerged to corroborate the CIA's assessment.[SUP]50[/SUP] Everyone involved in the decision had, of course, been aware of President Clinton's problems. He told them to ignore them. Berger recalled the President saying to him "that they were going to get crap either way, so they should do the right thing."[SUP]51[/SUP] All his aides testified to us that they based their advice solely on national security considerations. We have found no reason to question their statements. The failure of the strikes, the "wag the dog" slur, the intense partisanship of the period, and the nature of the al Shifa evidence likely had a cumulative effect on future decisions about the use of force against Bin Ladin. Berger told us that he did not feel any sense of constraint.[SUP]52[/SUP] The period after the August 1998 embassy bombings was critical in shaping U.S. policy toward Bin Ladin. Although more Americans had been killed in the 1996 Khobar Towers attack, and many more in Beirut in 1983, the overall loss of life rivaled the worst attacks in memory. More ominous, perhaps, was the demonstration of an operational capability to coordinate two nearly simultaneous attacks on U.S. embassies in different countries. Despite the availability of information that al Qaeda was a global network, in 1998 policymakers knew little about the organization. The reams of new information that the CIA's Bin Ladin unit had been developing since 1996 had not been pulled together and synthesized for the rest of the government. Indeed, analysts in the unit felt that they were viewed as alarmists even within the CIA. A National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism in 1997 had only briefly mentioned Bin Ladin, and no subsequent national estimate would authoritatively evaluate the terrorism danger until after 9/11. Policymakers knew there was a dangerous individual, Usama Bin Ladin, whom they had been trying to capture and bring to trial. Documents at the time referred to Bin Ladin "and his associates" or Bin Ladin and his "network." They did not emphasize the existence of a structured worldwide organization gearing up to train thousands of potential terrorists.[SUP]53[/SUP]
In the critical days and weeks after the August 1998 attacks, senior policy-makers in the Clinton administration had to reevaluate the threat posed by Bin Ladin. Was this just a new and especially venomous version of the ordinary terrorist threat America had lived with for decades, or was it radically new, posing a danger beyond any yet experienced?
Even after the embassy attacks, Bin Ladin had been responsible for the deaths of fewer than 50 Americans, most of them overseas. An NSC staffer working for Richard Clarke told us the threat was seen as one that could cause hundreds of casualties, not thousands.[SUP]54[/SUP] Even officials who acknowledge a vital threat intellectually may not be ready to act on such beliefs at great cost or at high risk.
Therefore, the government experts who believed that Bin Ladin and his network posed such a novel danger needed a way to win broad support for their views, or at least spotlight the areas of dispute. The Presidential Daily Brief and the similar, more widely circulated daily reports for high officials-consisting mainly of brief reports of intelligence "news" without much analysis or con-text-did not provide such a vehicle. The national intelligence estimate has often played this role, and is sometimes controversial for this very reason. It played no role in judging the threat posed by al Qaeda, either in 1998 or later.
In the late summer and fall of 1998, the U.S. government also was worrying about the deployment of military power in two other ongoing conflicts. After years of war in the Balkans, the United States had finally committed itself to significant military intervention in 1995-1996. Already maintaining a NATO-led peacekeeping force in Bosnia, U.S. officials were beginning to consider major combat operations against Serbia to protect Muslim civilians in Kosovo from ethnic cleansing. Air strikes were threatened in October 1998;a full-scale NATO bombing campaign against Serbia was launched in March 1999.[SUP]55[/SUP]
In addition, the Clinton administration was facing the possibility of major combat operations against Iraq. Since 1996, the UN inspections regime had been increasingly obstructed by Saddam Hussein. The United States was threatening to attack unless unfettered inspections could resume. The Clinton administration eventually launched a large-scale set of air strikes against Iraq, Operation Desert Fox, in December 1998. These military commitments became the context in which the Clinton administration had to consider opening another front of military engagement against a new terrorist threat based in Afghanistan.

 

[superbeets]

A Follow-On Campaign?
Clarke hoped the August 1998 missile strikes would mark the beginning of a sustained campaign against Bin Ladin. Clarke was, as he later admitted, "obsessed" with Bin Ladin, and the embassy bombings gave him new scope for pursuing his obsession. Terrorism had moved high up among the President's concerns, and Clarke's position had elevated accordingly. The CSG, unlike most standing interagency committees, did not have to report through the Deputies Committee. Although such a reporting relationship had been prescribed in the May 1998 presidential directive (after expressions of concern by Attorney General Reno, among others), that directive contained an exception that permitted the CSG to report directly to the principals if Berger so elected. In practice, the CSG often reported not even to the full Principals Committee but instead to the so-called Small Group formed by Berger, consisting only of those principals cleared to know about the most sensitive issues connected with counterterrorism activities concerning Bin Ladin or the Khobar Towers investigation.[SUP]56[/SUP]
For this inner cabinet, Clarke drew up what he called "Political-Military Plan Delenda." The Latin delenda, meaning that something "must be destroyed," evoked the famous Roman vow to destroy its rival, Carthage.The overall goal of Clarke's paper was to "immediately eliminate any significant threat to Americans" from the "Bin Ladin network."[SUP]57[/SUP]The paper called for diplomacy to deny Bin Ladin sanctuary; covert action to disrupt terrorist activities, but above all to capture Bin Ladin and his deputies and bring them to trial; efforts to dry up Bin Ladin's money supply; and preparation for follow-on military action. The status of the document was and remained uncertain. It was never formally adopted by the principals, and participants in the Small Group now have little or no recollection of it. It did, however, guide Clarke's efforts.
The military component of Clarke's plan was its most fully articulated element. He envisioned an ongoing campaign of strikes against Bin Ladin's bases in Afghanistan or elsewhere, whenever target information was ripe. Acknowledging that individual targets might not have much value, he cautioned Berger not to expect ever again to have an assembly of terrorist leaders in his sights. But he argued that rolling attacks might persuade the Taliban to hand over Bin Ladin and, in any case, would show that the action in August was not a "one-off" event. It would show that the United States was committed to a relentless effort to take down Bin Ladin's network.[SUP]58[/SUP]
Members of the Small Group found themselves unpersuaded of the merits of rolling attacks. Defense Secretary William Cohen told us Bin Ladin's training camps were primitive, built with "rope ladders"; General Shelton called them "jungle gym" camps. Neither thought them worthwhile targets for very expensive missiles. President Clinton and Berger also worried about the Economist's point-that attacks that missed Bin Ladin could enhance his stature and win him new recruits. After the United States launched air attacks against Iraq at the end of 1998 and against Serbia in 1999, in each case provoking worldwide criticism, Deputy National Security Advisor James Steinberg added the argument that attacks in Afghanistan offered "little benefit, lots of blowback against [a] bomb-happy U.S."[SUP]59[/SUP]
During the last week of August 1998, officials began considering possible follow-on strikes. According to Clarke, President Clinton was inclined to launch further strikes sooner rather than later. On August 27, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Walter Slocombe advised Secretary Cohen that the available targets were not promising. The experience of the previous week, he wrote, "has only confirmed the importance of defining a clearly articulated rationale for military action" that was effective as well as justified. But Slocombe worried that simply striking some of these available targets did not add up to an effective strategy.[SUP]60[/SUP]
Defense officials at a lower level, in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, tried to meet Slocombe's objections. They developed a plan that, unlike Clarke's, called not for particular strikes but instead for a broad change in national strategy and in the institutional approach of the Department of Defense, implying a possible need for large-scale operations across the whole spectrum of U.S. military capabilities. It urged the department to become a lead agency in driving a national counterterrorism strategy forward, to "champion a national effort to take up the gauntlet that international terrorists have thrown at our feet." The authors expressed concern that "we have not fundamentally altered our philosophy or our approach" even though the terrorist threat had grown. They outlined an eight-part strategy "to be more proactive and aggressive." The future, they warned, might bring "horrific attacks," in which case "we will have no choice nor, unfortunately, will we have a plan." The assistant secretary, Allen Holmes, took the paper to Slocombe's chief deputy, Jan Lodal, but it went no further. Its lead author recalls being told by Holmes that Lodal thought it was too aggressive. Holmes cannot recall what was said, and Lodal cannot remember the episode or the paper at all.[SUP]61[/SUP]