Bin Laden: Coming And Going

We know they didn't act against the top of al Qaeda when they could have under Clinton, seems that's true under Bush, as well. But I'm not prepared to just dump on the Prez for this:

WASHINGTON, July 7 — A secret military operation in early 2005 to capture senior members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas was aborted at the last minute after top Bush administration officials decided it was too risky and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan, according to intelligence and military officials.

The target was a meeting of Al Qaeda’s leaders that intelligence officials thought included Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy and the man believed to run the terrorist group’s operations.

The plan ballooned from a team, to hundreds of soldiers. Had they gone in and failed, the Left would probably be screaming to impeach Bush for invading Pakistan. The article places the decision at Rumsfeld's door, but it actually looks like a real split between the field and right on up the chain of command. The field guys wanted to go, as the plan went up the COC, they must have been increasingly hesitant, consequently they beefed up the force for safety.

The intelligence wasn't a lock, not a big surprise there. Given that they weren't considering a simple missile strike, I'm assuming this was a populated village, or they feel they needed the intelligence from capturing some top guys. We'll likely never know the whole story until after 08.

The officials acknowledge that they are not certain that Mr. Zawahri attended the 2005 meeting in North Waziristan, a mountainous province just miles from the Afghan border. But they said that the United States had communications intercepts that tipped them off to the meeting, and that intelligence officials had unusually high confidence that Mr. Zawahri was there.

Comments

[old trooper]

Opportunity knocks.
It is easier to request forgiveness than to get permission.

[old trooper]

If Zawahiri is still breathing and has vital signs, we did not do enough.

[Purple Avenger]

"i remember republicans and their supporters being outraged when clinton sent missiles into sudan."

All Clinton accomplished was to destroy an aspirin factory and kill the night watchman. I think that warrants a bit of irritation.

[narciso]

Anybody from Task Force 121; on this story; anybody commented on the record; I thought so.

[ivan]

This is the price we sometimes pay for "good international relations" and "diplomacy". I never thought the Bush administration would buckle to Democratic whinning about international relations and "America's image" when the price was this high. What a disgrace.

[PacNW]

>

Same tired false claim (and in this case, excuse/premise).

Here's a few reminders of the act supposedly untaken:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=/archive/1998/08/21/wemb21.html

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/clinton.htm

http://www.cnn.com/US/9808/20/us.strikes.01/

Those are just three of 1,810,000 Google hits at http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=clinton+afghanistan+strikes&meta=

Please join the reality based world. There's room for one more.

[Fred Beloit]

The learned critic LOL declares:

"i remember republicans and their supporters being outraged when clinton sent missiles into sudan. They argued that such force was excessive and was merely a distraction from clinton's lewinsky scandal. Now the conservatards have flip flopped arguing that we didnt do enough, and that they knew we didn't do enough!

Please." Of course LOL is spinning again. Here are a couple of links:
http://www.bowlingforcolumbine.com/library/wonderful/sudan.php http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1568/is_1998_Dec/ai_53260533 The argument isn't so much we "didn't do enough" as "what the hell was he shooting at"? Clinton was a worse shot than Cheney, wasn't he LOL?

[jong]

Yeah, Clinton should have gotten him. But after 9/11 - which happened when Bush was president, not Clinton, - it's inexcusable if they had a chance and didn't try.

[tally]

i just don't see a dozen former or current senior intel officials talking to the ny times about classified info.

[bloodrage bob]

no, idiotLOL, republicans were outraged because "clinton sent missiles into sudan" on the *very day lewinski was to testify* about him. launching the cruise missiles **just in time** to make the morning news cycle, in fact: thus driving the lewinski story out of the picture. what an amazing coincidence!

this after steadfastly refusing to consider such a harsh, unilateral, 'downright mean' action. "on'y repub'ican whoarmungers wood dew such a hawwhribul thang! ah ain't got no fight with them ol' soodanners!"

it was the TIMING that was outrageous, moron, not the act itself. the fact that - in typical bubba fashion - that no significant damage whatsoever was done is just yet another reason to despise bubba & his brain-dead supporters.