Thanks for those links, thoughtomator. I don’t see them the same way you do, I guess.
To me, this is the offer by the Taliban after several weeks of intensive bombing by the US to either try him in an islamic court or turn him over to some third country (who wouldn’t care what we think) in order to stop the bombing campaign, nothing more, IMO. I don’t see where either of those options would be palatable or acceptable to any American. I certainly wouldn’t have bit on it.
I just don’t see anything in those efforts that could be construed as acceptable.
When you consider that 16 years later, we still lack public domain proof that Osama bin Laden was the organizer of the attacks, and that the Bush admin deliberately covered up Saudi intelligence involvement (the infamous “28 pages”), it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Iraq was the second war, not the first, that GWB lied in order to get the US involved in.