Posted on 03/24/2004 8:05:53 AM PST by Carl/NewsMax
Announcing some of its preliminary findings on Wednesday, the 9/11 Commission has confirmed that President Clinton ordered the CIA to take Osama bin Laden alive or not at all - a directive that made the task of neutralizing the terrorist kingpin infinitely more difficult.
In a statement read at the beginning of Wednesday's session, 9/11 staffer Michael Hurley revealed:
"CIA senior managers, operators and lawyers uniformly said that they read the relevant authorities signed by President Clinton as instructing them to try to capture bin Laden.
"They believed that the only acceptable context for killing bin Laden was a credible capture operation. 'We always talked about how much easier it would have been to try to kill him,'" a former chief of the bin Laden station told the Commission.
"Working level CIA officers were frustrated by what they saw as the policy restraints of having to instruct their assets to mount a capture operation," the Commission statement said.
Commission staffer Hurley detailed one attempt to recruit indigenous Afghan forces in a bin Laden capture operation, explaining, "When Northern Alliance leader Massoud was briefed on the carefully worded instructions for him, the briefer recalled that Massoud laughed and said, 'You Americans are crazy. You guys never change.'"
The Commission found that at least two senior CIA officers would have objected to killing bin Laden even if Clinton had authorized the hit. "One of them, a former counterrorism center chief, said that he would have refused an order to directly kill bin Laden," the Commission statement said.
Last week NBC News quoted former CIA official Gary Schroen as saying that White House orders to spare bin Laden's life cut the chances of getting him in half, from 50 to 25 percent.
Schroen's revelation - now confirmed by the 9/11 Commission - was ignored by the mainstream press beyond its initial coverage by NBC.
As if we really need to wonder any more. The anti-Americanism that used to be a trait in liberals is now a pathology that completely overwhelms any sensibilities they may once have possessed.
(July, '99, almost a year after Clinton launched missiles at the Taliban on the eve of his testimony re. Monica Lewinski)
The Boston Globe, on the 25th, said, "The 6-year-old boy watched intently as his father dusted off his favorite possession, a leather-bound scrapbook of Osama bin Laden, pausing at a photo of the Saudi dissident with a semiautomatic rifle tucked in the folds of his trademark white robe. ''Osama!'' his son squealed excitedly. ''That's me!'' The boy, whose name was changed to Osama last year, is one of hundreds of Pakistani children named for bin Laden since Aug. 20, 1998 - the day the United States launched missile strikes against alleged terrorist camps run by the Saudi millionaire in eastern Afghanistan. The attack sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world. But the response was particularly heated in Pakistan, which sends thousands of Islamic guerrillas to similar training camps in Afghanistan. ''I love his bravery and gallantry,'' the boy's father, Niaz Ali Salar, said of bin Laden. ''He boosted the morale of Muslims throughout the world.'' The local leader of the radical Barelvi sect of Muslims, Salar said he hoped his son would ''live up to his name'' and lead the war against ''the enemies of Islam.'' In Mardan, a crumbling tobacco center 75 miles east of the Afghan border, Islamic priests deliver diatribes against ''evil America'' during Friday afternoon prayers.
In Pakistan, few buy Washington's vilification of bin Laden, whom it accuses of masterminding the Aug. 7, 1998, bombings of two US embassies in east Africa and several other terrorist attacks. ''He's a man on the run, whose only friends are the Taliban. How can he be a threat to the world's most powerful nation?'' said Sahib Zada Khalid Jan Binuri, head of Pakistan's most influential Islamic seminary. ''It's all spin control. If America tells me, `You are a terrorist,' what can I say?''
(character counts in a US President who's fighting evildoers!)
Creators Syndicate - www.creators.com 12/27/98 L. Brent Bozell III: "Bill Clinton's decision to unleash the dogs of war as he tip-toes on the precipice of impeachment conjures up a vision of White House defense lawyer Greg Craig appearing before Congress declaring: "The President's military action was evasive, incomplete, misleading, even maddening - but it's not impeachable." There's no dodging the suspicion that Clinton is seeking to save his bacon by dropping some megatonnage on Saddam Hussein. After all, it's just what he did when he bombed Osama bin Laden's alleged facilities in Sudan and Afghanistan this summer. Both actions were launched with little or no consultation with Congress, and with too little consultation with the service chiefs at the Pentagon. Oh my, how the talking heads like Alan Dershowitz and NBC anchor-in-training Brian Williams are going nuts over that suggestion. How vile! How unpatriotic! What hypocrites. How about the Democrats? In 1983, Clinton defender John Conyers called for Reagan's impeachment for invading Grenada. (For good measure, he earlier called for impeachment over the Gipper's alleged "incompetence" in dealing with unemployment.) In 1984, as he ran for President, and again in 1986, Jesse Jackson suggested Reagan should be subject to an impeachment probe over U.S. actions in Nicaragua. Rep. Henry Gonzalez called for impeachment in 1983 over Grenada and again in 1987 over Iran-Contra. The National Organization for Women and the American Civil Liberties Union advocated impeaching Reagan in 1987. The major media didn't thump the tub for impeachment, but did suggest forcefully that Reagan's actions were even worse than the Watergate offenses that got Richard Nixon impeached. For example, in the January 9, 1984 New York Times, then-Senior Editor John B. Oakes proclaimed: "President Reagan's consistent elevation of militarism over diplomacy creates a clear and present danger to the internal and external security of the United States. Presidents have been impeached for less." Oakes wasn't alone at the Times. On December 12, 1986, columnist Tom Wicker offered an echo: "Mr. Reagan probably won't be impeached or forced to resign - though the offenses resulting from his policy, or his somnolence on the job, are more serious than any charge the House Judiciary Committee approved against Mr. Nixon." So where are these noble folks today? Have you noticed how the words "War Powers Act" haven't been invoked much by the liberal media in the last, oh, six years, now that a President they favor is lobbing the bombs? Where are the calls for impeachment from John Conyers and Jesse Jackson? Where are the charges of abuse of power from the editorial pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post? Nothing but silence. Stinking dead silence.."
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