Analysts: Military Draft Needed Within Year

[desflood]

Okay, it was Sudan, but I stand by the rest of my statement.

Clinton Let Bin Laden Slip Away and Metastasize
Sudan offered up the terrorist and data on his network. The then-president and his advisors didn't respond.



By MANSOOR IJAZ
President Clinton and his national security team ignored several opportunities to capture Osama bin Laden and his terrorist associates, including one as late as last year.
I know because I negotiated more than one of the opportunities.

From 1996 to 1998, I opened unofficial channels between Sudan and the Clinton administration. I met with officials in both countries, including Clinton, U.S. National Security Advisor Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger and Sudan's president and intelligence chief. President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, who wanted terrorism sanctions against Sudan lifted, offered the arrest and extradition of Bin Laden and detailed intelligence data about the global networks constructed by Egypt's Islamic Jihad, Iran's Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas.

Among those in the networks were the two hijackers who piloted commercial airliners into the World Trade Center.

The silence of the Clinton administration in responding to these offers was deafening.
As an American Muslim and a political supporter of Clinton, I feel now, as I argued with Clinton and Berger then, that their counter-terrorism policies fueled the rise of Bin Laden from an ordinary man to a Hydra-like monster.

Realizing the growing problem with Bin Laden, Bashir sent key intelligence officials to the U.S. in February 1996.

The Sudanese offered to arrest Bin Laden and extradite him to Saudi Arabia or, barring that, to "baby-sit" him--monitoring all his activities and associates.

But Saudi officials didn't want their home-grown terrorist back where he might plot to overthrow them.

In May 1996, the Sudanese capitulated to U.S. pressure and asked Bin Laden to leave, despite their feeling that he could be monitored better in Sudan than elsewhere.

Bin Laden left for Afghanistan, taking with him Ayman Zawahiri, considered by the U.S. to be the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks; Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, who traveled frequently to Germany to obtain electronic equipment for Al Qaeda; Wadih El-Hage, Bin Laden's personal secretary and roving emissary, now serving a life sentence in the U.S. for his role in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya; and Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Saif Adel, also accused of carrying out the embassy attacks.

Some of these men are now among the FBI's 22 most-wanted terrorists.

The two men who allegedly piloted the planes into the twin towers, Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi, prayed in the same Hamburg mosque as did Salim and Mamoun Darkazanli, a Syrian trader who managed Salim's bank accounts and whose assets are frozen.

Important data on each had been compiled by the Sudanese.

But U.S. authorities repeatedly turned the data away, first in February 1996; then again that August, when at my suggestion Sudan's religious ideologue, Hassan Turabi, wrote directly to Clinton; then again in April 1997, when I persuaded Bashir to invite the FBI to come to Sudan and view the data; and finally in February 1998, when Sudan's intelligence chief, Gutbi al-Mahdi, wrote directly to the FBI.
Gutbi had shown me some of Sudan's data during a three-hour meeting in Khartoum in October 1996. When I returned to Washington, I told Berger and his specialist for East Africa, Susan Rice, about the data available. They said they'd get back to me. They never did. Neither did they respond when Bashir made the offer directly. I believe they never had any intention to engage Muslim countries--ally or not. Radical Islam, for the administration, was a convenient national security threat.

And that was not the end of it. In July 2000--three months before the deadly attack on the destroyer Cole in Yemen--I brought the White House another plausible offer to deal with Bin Laden, by then known to be involved in the embassy bombings. A senior counter-terrorism official from one of the United States' closest Arab allies--an ally whose name I am not free to divulge--approached me with the proposal after telling me he was fed up with the antics and arrogance of U.S. counter-terrorism officials.

The offer, which would have brought Bin Laden to the Arab country as the first step of an extradition process that would eventually deliver him to the U.S., required only that Clinton make a state visit there to personally request Bin Laden's extradition. But senior Clinton officials sabotaged the offer, letting it get caught up in internal politics within the ruling family--Clintonian diplomacy at its best.
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.

[mookie2001]

desflood
have you even heard any recent news at all about bin laden
it seems that the search for him, has been somewhat..., abandoned
bush made a promise to catch that er
i hope he does,
he's always got an excuse that he's fighting terrorism in iraq
and searching for wmds
and liberating them
and setting up a foothold of democracy in the middle east
are people that dumb that theyd take
---liberating the people of iraq, who a large number, dont want to be liberated, and whos strict adherance to their religion makes it nearly impossible for them to be free, and to set up a "foothold of democracy", finding out for sure they have no wmds, and killing MORE than 100,000 innocent people and the deaths of thousand of americans
---i'm sure a VAST majority would trade all that crap for 1 osama

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

Manny - Afghanistan proper? No.

Grab and go of Osama and his leadership clan, yes.

[Nbadan]

President Clinton and his national security team ignored several opportunities to capture Osama bin Laden and his terrorist associates, including one as late as last year.

Capture Osama for what and from what? At the time Sudan was willing to 'turn Osama over to the Saudi's' he wasn't yet connected with the African embassy bombings nor any other act of international terrorism. , Osama was on the CIA payroll till as late as 1991.

The Sudanese never offered to turn Osama over to the U.S., nor was Osama wanted by the U.N., but Osama was wanted in Saudi Arabia for sedition.

[Nbadan]

The two men who allegedly piloted the planes into the twin towers, Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi, prayed in the same Hamburg mosque as did Salim and Mamoun Darkazanli, a Syrian trader who managed Salim's bank accounts and whose assets are frozen.

Important data on each had been compiled by the Sudanese.

But U.S. authorities repeatedly turned the data away, first in February 1996; then again that August, when at my suggestion Sudan's religious ideologue, Hassan Turabi, wrote directly to Clinton; then again in April 1997, when I persuaded Bashir to invite the FBI to come to Sudan and view the data; and finally in February 1998, when Sudan's intelligence chief, Gutbi al-Mahdi, wrote directly to the FBI.

Actually, Muhammed Atta was being trailed by the FBI up until he left the country around 2000(?) and returned in early 2001 for preparations for the 911 attacks and living the high life with his adult dancer girlfriend in Private Clubs where Atta and his co-conspirators would drink beer like Westerners and brag about attacking the WTT to dancers and Club Managers. German authorities had the Hamburg cell covered like stink on . This is why, despite not having anything resembling the Patriot Act, the Germans have captured more actual Al-Queda suspects than the U.S..

[desflood]

Capture Osama for what and from what? At the time Sudan was willing to 'turn Osama over to the Saudi's' he wasn't yet connected with the African embassy bombings nor any other act of international terrorism. , Osama was on the CIA payroll till as late as 1991.

The Sudanese never offered to turn Osama over to the U.S., nor was Osama wanted by the U.N., but Osama was wanted in Saudi Arabia for sedition.

"For what?" Go back to the article. In 2000, when they had their last chance, he was known to have been involved in the embassy bombings.

[MannyIsGod]

Manny - Afghanistan proper? No.

Grab and go of Osama and his leadership clan, yes.

And you think it was militarily possible to do #2 without doing #1?

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

Special Forces do all kinds of grab and go missions without a full military invasion all the time.

[MannyIsGod]

And the infrastructore would have been the same! We can't find the man now, what makes you think it was possible then?

Look, I'm not a big fan of Clinton at all, but this is ridiculous.

[Nbadan]

"For what?" Go back to the article. In 2000, when they had their last chance, he was known to have been involved in the embassy bombings.

The Feds were never even interested in Usama until 1996 and even then it was just an investigation, not an indictment

The U.S. State Department issues a dossier on bin Laden that claims he is a financier of radical Islamic causes and connects him to the 1992 hotel bombing in Aden, Yemen and the training of the Somalis who attacked U.S. troops in Mogadishu. At the same time, a grand jury investigation of Osama bin Laden is initiated in New York.

Source:PBS.org

But it wasn't till June 8th 1998 that a U.S. grand jury issues an indictment of Bin Laden..

A U.S. grand jury issues a sealed indictment charging bin Laden with conspiracy to attack “defense utilities of the United States.” The indictment alleges bin Laden is involved in the October 1993 attack on U.S. soldiers in Somalia.

Source:PBS.org

Unfortunately for the U.S., Bin Laden had fled Sudan under U.S. pressure in May 1996..

Under international pressure, Sudan expels bin Laden. He and his followers return to Afghanistan.

Source:PBS.org

Needless to say, After Bin Laden fled Sudan in 1996, the Afghanis under the Taliban never offered to turn Bin Laden over to the U.S. for any price.