RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Clinton Spared Bin Laden?

Quote:

---

In December 1998, intelligence suggested bin Laden was at a location in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Missile strikes were prepared, but Clinton's advisers decided not to recommend a launch because no one had seen bin Laden for a couple of hours.

---

Quote:

---

Again in Kandahar, in May 1999, sources reported bin Laden's location over five nights - but there was no attack because of doubts about intelligence and the "risk of collateral damage."

---

Quote:

---

In a fourth instance, in July 1999, the intelligence was too sketchy to support a strike.[/LIST]

---

Quote:

---

The revelations about U.S. inaction sparked charges at yesterday's hearing of the Sept. 11 commission that several golden opportunities were blown to nail the world's terror mastermind.

Clinton's defense secretary, William Cohen, defended the White House.

"I just don't think it was feasible," he said.

"Better to have tried and failed than not to have tried at all," replied Kerrey, who faulted both Clinton and President Bush for failing to go after bin Laden.

An effort that actually was undertaken to kill bin Laden failed in August 1998, two weeks after al Qaeda thugs bombed U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The cruise-missile assault on a camp in Afghanistan came up empty as bin Laden and others fled before the bombs hit.

Federal investigators yesterday revealed that after that attack, at least one top Pakistani general promised to alert the Taliban to missile assaults on Afghanistan.

Gen. Hamid Gul, a retired chief of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency, contacted Taliban leaders in 1999 and said he'd provide three or four hours' warning of a U.S. missile attack, according to a report by the commission.

Any heads-up from Gul would have given bin Laden plenty of time to change locations.

But Kerrey still insisted that the failure by the Clinton and Bush White Houses to effectively strike when they could have created the impression the United States was timid and lacked resolve.

"From 1993, when the World Trade Center was hit the first time, through September 2001, al Qaeda never suffered a military response from us, other than Aug. 20th," said Kerrey, referring to the missile strikes against Sudan and Afghanistan in 1998.

After the hearing, the commission chairman, former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean, told The Post he was especially interested in the blown opportunity that arose in February 1999, when bin Laden and others were hunting houbaras, desert birds.

"That was too bad," Kean said.

Speaking at the White House yesterday, President Bush said he would have acted more quickly against al Qaeda if he had information before Sept. 11, 2001, that a terror attack against New York City was imminent.

In his first response to criticism raised in a new book by his former counterterrorism adviser, Richard Clarke, Bush denied that he ignored bin Laden and al Qaeda before the attacks while focusing on Saddam Hussein.

"The facts are these. [CIA Director] George Tenet briefed me on a regular basis about the terrorist threat to the United States of America, and had my administration had any information that terrorists were going to attack New York City on Sept. 11, we would have acted," Bush said.

The startling 9/11 commission report released at yesterday's hearing also faulted Clinton and Bush for sitting on plans for dealing with Taliban-run Afghanistan. It also hit Clinton for never asking Sudan to turn over bin Laden when he lived there, and for allowing two detailed plans for going after bin Laden to sit on the shelf.

Although there's no evidence that killing bin Laden would have prevented the terror hijackings of 9/11, several commission members were angry that bureaucratic bungling allowed the counterterrorism efforts to stall for years.

Yesterday's hearing provided some evidence that the Bush administration was more focused on Iraq and on military "transformation" than on international terrorism.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld admitted that he received a terror briefing from Cohen but couldn't remember any details.

Rumsfeld also echoed Cohen yesterday, arguing that missile strikes against bin Laden terror training camps might have been interpreted as "a sign of weakness."

Cohen and other military leaders have ridiculed those camps as "jungle gyms" not worthy of the cost of "expensive bombs."

The commission's report also notes that Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy Berger, had defended the lack of action against bin Laden, arguing that in each case, military force was shelved because there were too many doubts about missing bin Laden or killing innocent people around him.

"If the shot missed bin Laden, the United States would look weak and bin Laden would look strong," Berger said in an interview with panel investigators.

Berger is slated to testify today, along with Clarke.

Clinton has agreed to talk privately with commission leaders, but hasn't done so yet. He and President Bush refuse to testify before the commission publicly.

---