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Quagmire
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Bin Laden’s 6th
Well, there’s a new video soon to be out of Bin Laden celebrating his 6th year anniversary of U.S. incompetance, and he’s dyed his beard for the occasion.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jF-I3mpEsoYVjKQpyZgEH-BxV5Qw
Of course, we found out soon after the 9/11 attacks that when the administration said they had no prior warning of the attacks, that was a lie. On August 6, 2001, there was a presidential daily briefing titled, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike the U.S.” In it it said:
“We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a —- service in 1998 saying that Bin Laden wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to gain the release of “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman and other U.S.-held extremists.
Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.”
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/10/august6.memo/index.html
And according to the Washington Post, the U.S. government concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the battle of Tora Bora, Afghanistan in late 2001, and according to civilian and military officials with first-hand knowledge, failure by the U.S. to commit U.S. ground troops to hunt him led to his escape and was the gravest failure by the U.S. in the war against al Qaeda. Intelligence officials have assembled what they believe to be decisive evidence, from contemporary and subsequent interrogations and intercepted communications, that bin Laden began the battle of Tora Bora inside the cave complex along Afghanistan’s mountainous eastern border.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A62618-2002Apr16
However, the ironic thing is, Bin Laden has never been formally charged with any crimes linked to 9/11. Even the F.B.I. Wanted Posters of him fail to say anything about 9/11 but only link him to the 1998 African Embassy bombings. Of course we know he was involved because the World Trade Center towers were hit at the same time. He was first inspired to bring down the towers after watching some towers in Lebanon fall in it’s 1982 war with U.S.-backed Israel. But the truth is we never gained any hard evidence for it.
But what I would really like explained to me is the details behind why we can’t get Bin Laden without setting off a nuclear war with Pakistan.
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Bin Laden in Hell
I wish people would just get over 9/11. 3,000 people died. Compare this to the 40,000 Americans who die every year from traffic accidents. Tens of thousands of people are estimated to have died because Clinton bombed Sudan’s Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant on flimsy evidence that it was making nerve gas for Bin Laden. Hundreds of thousands have died in Latin America from brutal dictators who received support from the Reagan Administration. Around 1,700 died from Hurricane Katrina and another 200,000 people lost their homes. Over 30,000 people have died in the Iraq war, 3,700 of them Coalition troops. Far more people have died because of the American alliance with the Baath party that went long past the Cold War, the Iraq-Iran War, and even the Gulf War, after which Bush Sr. authorized Saddam to put down a Shi’ite rebellion that may have otherwise toppled him. Mispoken words by Bush Sr. also triggered a Kurdish rebellion, one in which he also allowed Saddam to put down, killing somewhere around 50,000 to 100,000. The U.N. Estimates that 450,000 people have died in the Darfur conflict, perpetuated by a country that gave Bin Laden sanctuary in the early 90’s (something Saddam never did) until we bribed them to send him to Afghanistan.
All that gets forgotten until we got hit and then suddenlly its we, the poor disenfranchized Americans who need “Infinite Justice.” The same slaughters that we bankrolled are now used as proof that we’re good and he’s evil. Almost half of Americans think that the civil liberties of Muslim-Americans should be restricted. We seem to talk about going after Muslim leader in the Middle East, except of course Bin Laden.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6729916/
McCain got cheers at the Jack Bauer-Ronald Reagan commemeration ceremony known as the Republican debate after saying he would “follow Bin Laden into hell,” but when Obama said he would follow Bin Laden to where he actually resides, Pakistan, both Hillary and the Republicans jumped all over him! How dare he actually suggest that he might go after the perpetrator of 9/11 if he received “actionable intelligence”! Doesn’t he know that Bin Laden’s name can only be used with empty rhetoric? I mean, following Bin Laden into HELL is one thing, but Pakistan??
Now, I realize it’s not all that easy. Pakistan does have the bomb, and invading might indeed cause enough instability to depose Musharraf and put some Islamic radical up in his place, but this is the kind of debate that we should have had 6 years ago. Back then we had an army that wasn’t completely broken and could have done something about it.
Now we’re debating over whether we should stay in Iraq for an unmentionable amount of time. And yes, I realize that the Bush Administration should not themselves be discussing time tables, but that gives absolutely no excuse for all Neo-Cons to follow suit and refuse to even talk about the future. I would have a lot more respect for people who think we should stay in Iraq if they just gave some kind of number, like, Iraq is worth x number of years and y amount of dollars, and base these ideas off of what we can realistically do.
After hearing Cheney talk about America getting into a “quagmire” if it invaded Iraq in ’94, I started to have the sneaking suspicion that the Bush Administration knew all along that the war would go on a lot longer than “six weeks,” as Rumsfeld suggested. That would explain why Bush, almost at the same time, finally brought out the Vietnam comparison that people had been using so long. (His take on it? We should have stayed. “We” being those who didn’t dodge the draft by joining the National Guard and then going AWOL.) But if that was the case — if they knew the war was going to be 5+ years in the making — why did they pay so little attention to important details like disbanding the Iraqi army?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/21/wcheney121.xml
http://www.forbes.com/leadership/managing/2007/08/28/iraq-vietnam-nato-biz-cz_0828oxford.html
But the truth is, the people defending the war are pure idealists. They don’t want to even consider things like troop levels or time tables. To even suggest we should have benchmarks and accountability is cowardly. They just want to “win” as if one day everything will change and we can leave. This simplistic worldview has ensured that the soliders dying for us in Iraq have not died in vain, but rather, have died to help bring Al Qaida into Iraq and provide a diversion for the war on the Afghanistan/Pakistan front.