Below is more proof that the 9/11 attacks were enabled by the Clinton administration. I won't say it's Clinton's fault, but he never helped with the insistence that this should be fought in the courts. That makes no sense, to fight a foreign enemy of our nation with our courts, which would of course have jurisdiction only in our country. Essentially, he wanted to fight bin Laden by proxy, expecting or hoping another country would give him up to us. It didn't work and won't ever work with this kind of enemy. We have to do it ourselves if we want it done and that means militarily.
So, how do you think Obama will approach this? He's already given us the answer. Just like Clinton did. By the way, what's going on with Russia right now is a huge test for Obama. We're watching and seeing what he says about it and contrasting him with McCain. He claims to be like Reagan and Lincoln... we'll see. We know how they responded.
From AP News:
Documents: US strike aided bin Laden-Taliban ties
WASHINGTON - The U.S. cruise missile strike on an al-Qaida training
camp in Afghanistan in 1998 was meant to kill Osama bin Laden. But he
apparently left shortly before the missiles struck, and newly
declassified U.S. documents suggest the attack cemented an alliance
with his Taliban protectors.
The State Department documents released Wednesday provide details of
the evolving relationship between Taliban leader Mullah Omar and al-
Qaida chief bin Laden over four month in 1998. The period begins Aug.
21, 1998, one day after the missile attack - retaliation for the
bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on Aug. 7 of that year.
Omar said publicly on Aug. 21 he would continue to protect bin Laden.
But the next day, he told a State Department employee in private that
he would be open to negotiating bin Laden's presence in Afghanistan,
giving U.S. officials faint but ultimately false hope the Taliban
might hand him over to Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden had been in Afghanistan
since he was expelled from Sudan in May 1996.
Those talks took place sporadically over the next few months in 1998,
according to documents obtained by the National Security Archive at
George Washington University through a Freedom of Information Act
request.
In the interim, however, bin Laden had traveled south in Afghanistan
to Kandahar. There, he would be close to Omar, who wanted to "keep a
watch on him," said a secret cable sent from Islamabad, the capital of
neighboring Pakistan, to U.S. diplomatic and military posts on Sept.
9, 1998.
By the end of that October, the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad was
concerned the tables had turned and Omar was falling under bin Laden's
political and philosophical sway. The U.S. once had believed the
Taliban's ambitions were confined to turning Afghanistan into a Sunni
Muslim theocracy. Now, however, there were signs that Omar's
association with bin Laden was driving him toward a greater goal - pan-
Islamism, the unification of all Muslims under a single Islamic state.
"I believe that bin Laden has been able to get into the good graces of
Omar - who is very poorly educated and unsure of foreign affairs - and
to influence him in his way of thinking," according to a cable from
Oct. 22. "The potential ramifications of a Mullah Omar who is drifting
toward pan-Islamism are grim. First and foremost, it could mean that
the Taliban would under no condition expel bin Laden because they see
his cause as theirs."
The rest of the documents detail months of unsuccessful U.S. attempts
to persuade the Taliban to expel bin Laden.
"Time for a diplomatic solution may be running out. Taliban brush-off
of our indictment and other evidence may indicate movement from
tolerance" of bin Laden's presence "to more active support," said a
Nov. 28 memo for then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
Bin Laden remained in Afghanistan until after the attacks of Sept. 11,
2001, when he apparently was driven out by the U.S. invasion of
Afghanistan. He is believed to be hiding in western Pakistan's
ungoverned border area.
After the bombings of the two American embassies, the U.S. launched 62
Tomahawk cruise missiles at two al-Qaida training camps in
Afghanistan. It was believed bin Laden was at one of them meeting with
several of his top men, but left shortly before the missiles struck.
---
By PAMELA HESS Associated Press Writer
