Posted on 07/02/2002 6:20:27 AM PDT by xsysmgr
Al Gore is revisiting an old strategy. Back in 1992, the then-vice presidential candidate led the charge against President Bush I's handling of foreign policy. National security was an area in which most thought the former U.N. ambassador, deposer of Noriega and victor of Desert Storm was immune from criticism. However, the Clinton team adroitly turned this supposed immunity into a liability, making charges that were difficult to respond to and impossible to disprove. One such accusation was that Bush in fact caused the Gulf War by coddling Saddam. Therefore, the (incomplete) victory was in fact just damage control, the product of an inept foreign policy. It was a smart tactical ploy, and may have convinced some impressionable people that the Clinton-Gore team would handle foreign affairs more wisely.
Now Gore is assailing another President Bush on a national-security issue by accusing him of failure in not having "gotten Osama bin Laden or the al Qaeda operation." Gore did not offer any helpful hints on how to achieve this goal, but it is nevertheless a clever gimmick. Who can argue with the sought after result? He tossed in a sop to the Left by mentioning that Bush had not provided enough peacekeepers to prevent resurgent warlordism in Afghanistan, but Gore is far ahead of other Democratic 2004 hopefuls in understanding that if they want to criticize the president on the war, they should do it from the right.
However, in so doing, Gore has legitimized an inquest into the role of the administration he served in "getting" bin Laden. Secretary of State Powell raised the issue in his response to Gore on Sunday by mentioning the failure of the Clinton-Gore team to close a deal with the Sudan in the mid-90s when the terrorist haven offered bin Laden up. The sometimes fluctuating details can be found in a series of articles dating back at least to David Rose's September 30, 2001 Observer report, "Resentful west spurned Sudan's key terror files." See also Barton Gellman's October 3, 2001 Washington Post article, "Sudan's Offer to Arrest Militant Fell Through After Saudis Said No," Mark Huband's November 30 Financial Times article, "US rejected Sudanese files on al-Qaeda: Clinton administration refused offer to share terror network intelligence" (posted here — scroll down a bit:, David Rose's expanded account in the December 2001 Vanity Fair, "The Osama Files," and Mansoor Ijaz's December 11, 2001 column (among others) "Clinton Let Bin Laden Slip Away."
Ijaz is the source for much of this information. He is a Pakistani American investor and Clinton fundraiser who claims to have been an important broker in the deal. Last May 20 on WOR Radio, DNC spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri said that Ijaz was lying, that he had "absolutely no credibility," which really only tends to confirm his status as a Clinton insider. However, even she would not deny that something was going on back then. Sandy Berger is quoted in the Gellman article saying "the FBI did not believe we had enough evidence to indict bin Laden at that time, and therefore opposed bringing him to the United States." The administration had wanted bin Laden to go someplace where justice was more "streamlined" like Saudi Arabia. Prince Turki al Faisal, former Saudi intelligence chief, confirmed negotiating inconclusively with Sudan, and later with Afghanistan, over bin Laden's extradition. Bin Laden himself has given various reasons for leaving Sudan, including threats from the United States, but is lately unavailable for comment.
As I have argued here before, second-guessing in these situations is not productive. No one knew in 1996 that bin Laden would perpetrate the 9/11 attacks six years later. However, neither can Al Gore be free to make such charges without an examination of his record on the bin Laden issue. Personally, I think such an exercise would be exhausting and distracting. We know how this will shake out, it will be the usual Clinton-Gore m.o., a series of carefully crafted, somewhat ambiguous statements designed to skip around perjury — technical evasions of truth designed primarily to shift blame — explanations worthy of overly clever adolescents that offend common sense (Osama? I recall Usama.) We've seen it before. Nevertheless, if this is the direction Gore wants to go, equity demands a thorough inquiry. In the process, perhaps we will learn more about the war that bin Laden began in 1996 (if not earlier). We will find out why he was not taken seriously sooner, and what gave him the confidence to undertake what he called "the Battles of New York and Washington." It is a New World since 9/11; the question is did the attacks signal the beginning of a new era, or the logical culmination of the old?
— James S. Robbins is a national-security analyst & NRO contributor.
Now ain't that the truth.
I wholly concur and a fat BUMP to that fact.For old times sake of course,LOL.
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