Is Osama bin Laden a red herring?

The decision that the Taliban had to go was made (by the CFR) circa 1998. It was shortly after that the "demonization" of Osama bin Laden began in earnest. Although the U.S. has not recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, other countries have and the U.N. treats it as the de facto government (otherwise how could sanctions be imposed).

A case had to be made for the removal of the Taliban (for obstructionism on the oil and gas pipelines) that most of the countries would accept.

OBN thus became the focal point in making the case for removal of the Taliban. There are other organizations and individuals just as deadly as OBL but there is no immediate reason for deposing the governments of the countries that harbor and/or sponsor them.

I will believe the U.S. war against terrorism is real only when Citibank is shut down.

The following is an excerpt of the testimony of John J. Maresca, vice president of International Relations for Unical and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The testimony was before the House Committee on International Relations Subcommittee on Asia and Pacific. The date was Februry 12, 1998.

"A second option is to build a pipeline south from Central Asia to the Indian Ocean.

One obvious potential route south would be across Iran. However, this option is foreclosed for American companies because of U.S. sanctions legislation. The only other possible route option is across Afghanistan, which has its own unique challenges.

The country has been involved in bitter warfare for almost two decades. The territory across which the pipeline would extend is controlled by the Taliban, an Islamic movement that is not recognized as a government by most other nations. From the outset, we have made it clear that construction of our proposed pipeline cannot begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments, lenders and our company (emphasis added).

In spite of this, a route through Afghanistan appears to be the best option with the fewest technical obstacles. It is the shortest route to the sea and has relatively favorable terrain for a pipeline. The route through Afghanistan is the one that would bring Central Asian oil closest to Asian markets and thus would be the cheapest in terms of transporting the oil.

Unocal envisions the creation of a Central Asian Oil Pipeline Consortium. The pipeline would become an integral part of a regional oil pipeline system that will utilize and gather oil from existing pipeline infrastructure in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Russia."

http://www.house.gov/international_relations/105th/ap/wsap212982.htm

This is all arm chair quarterbacking. The author is pointing out generalities the intelligence community knew before the attack and saying they should have figured out specifics. The problem is nobody has shown where the intel folks had any real info. Yeah we knew Al Qaeda, along with probably 2 dozen other terrorist groups wanted to kick us in the jimmy. We knew that thought WTC looked a lot like our jimmy. And we knew they like planes. The problem is how do you get from all that general knowledge down to: they're going to hijack these 4 planes on this date and start running them into buildings? You don't. There's two ways the intel folks stop attacks: just plain dumb luck (like the Millenium Celebration Space Needle bombing they stopped at the Canadian border because the guy was sweating), or intel detailed enough to at least tell you where to put cops and when to have them there (who to arrest helps).

As had been said before: they stop a lot of attacks on us every year, problem is the law of averages is with the bad guys. We have to get lucky every time, the bad guy only has to get lucky once. We get lucky a lot, we didn't in September. The folks who's job it is to stop terrorists are losing enough sleep over this already without people on the sidelines with the added comfort of hindsight pointing fingers at them. Let's energize from this, focus on getting rid of terrorists and making it so we don't HAVE to get lucky anymore.

Luck has nothing to do with it.

Despite the denials of top public officials, evidence is accumulating that they knew, if not the time and targets, at least the methods that would be used to effect the attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC) and the Pentagon. They also knew that suspected terrorists were taking lessons in the U.S. to obtain commercial pilot licenses.

In 1995, one of bin Laden’s men (Abdul Hakim Murad) was arrested in the Philippines. On his laptop computer was found a plot that called for hijacking U.S. airliners and crashing them into targets. It even had a code name, "Project Bojinka." The FBI and CIA were notified. Murad was later convicted of participating in the first WTC bombing in 1993. Space does not permit going into an in depth analysis of the FBI’s complicity in that plot other than to note that their man on the inside had the opportunity to substitute a harmless powder in the bomb but was instructed not to by the FBI.

Over the period of five years, from 1996 to 2001, the FBI made numerous inquiries about suspected bin Laden associates taking pilot training in at least four flight schools in Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma and Florida. The last inquiry took place at the Airman Flight School in Norman Oklahoma just three weeks before the Sept. 11 disaster.

In short, the FBI knew of the plan, knew of the methodology, and was actively monitoring (just standing by and watching) as "Bojinka" was put into effect.

One of the Phillipine officers involved in the 1995 arrest is said to have exclaimed after the second plane hit the second tower, "My God, it's Bojinka!"

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