New Evidence: Bush Had No Plan to Catch Bin Laden after 9/11

[Hissyspit]

Source: Inter Press Service

Bush Had No Plan to Catch Bin Laden after 9/11
By Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Sep 29 (IPS) - New evidence from former U.S. officials reveals that the George W. Bush administration failed to adopt any plan to block the retreat of Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders from Afghanistan to Pakistan in the first weeks after 9/11. That failure was directly related to the fact that top administration officials gave priority to planning for war with Iraq over military action against al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

As a result, the United States had far too few troops and strategic airlift capacity in the theatre to cover the large number of possible exit routes through the border area when bin Laden escaped in late 2001. Because it had not been directed to plan for that contingency, the U.S. military had to turn down an offer by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in late November 2001 to send 60,000 troops to the border passes to intercept them, according to accounts provided by former U.S. officials involved in the issue.

- snip -

But U.S. Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin, who accompanied Franks to the meeting with Musharraf, provided an account of the meeting to this writer that contradicts DeLong's claim.

Chamberlin, now president of the Middle East Institute in Washington, recalled that the Pakistani president told Franks that CENTCOM had vastly underestimated what was required to block bin Laden exit from Afghanistan. Musharraf said, "Look you are missing the point: there are 150 valleys through which al Qaeda are going to stream into Pakistan," according to Chamberlin.

Read more: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=44054

[mediaman007]

1. Why would Bush*/Cheney/Rove want to catch the cash cow?

[Ian David]

2. Is IPS Inter Press Service a legitimate source for LBN? n/t

[Hissyspit]

3. Yes.

Wikipedia:

Inter Press Service (abbreviated: IPS) is a global news agency. Its main focus is the production of independent news and analysis about events and processes affecting economic, social and political development.
The agency has established a niche in the international mediascape, not only by providing professional reporting on the so-called global South, civil society, and globalization, but also by covering topics in a more in-depth way than is common in the mainstream news.

Inter Press Service was set up in 1964 as a non-profit international cooperative of journalists. Its founders were the Italian journalist Roberto Savio and the Argentine political scientist Pablo Piacentini. Initially, the primary objective of IPS was to fill the information gap between Europe and Latin America after the political turbulence following the Cuban revolution of 1959 (Giffard in Salwen and Garrison, 1991).
Later, the network expanded to include all continents, and extended its editorial focus. In 1994, IPS changed its legal status to that of a ‘public-benefit organization for development cooperation’.

IPS’s stated aims are to give prominence to the voices of marginalized and vulnerable people and groups, report from the perspectives of developing countries, and to reflect the views of civil society. The mainstreaming of gender in reporting and the assessment of the impacts of globalization are a priority. In order to reach this aim, IPS does not lay claim to providing “spot news”, but instead to producing well-researched features and reports that give background information, and covering processes rather than events.

- snip -

In recent cases, IPS exercised direct influence on the mainstream media agenda:
When a federal building in Oklahoma was attacked in 1995, the U.S. media blamed Arab terrorists. IPS was the first news outlet to maintain that white U.S. Americans from the ultraright had in fact committed the bombings. The assertion was finally confirmed and accepted by the mainstream media.
IPS was the first to announce that the existence of asbestos worsened the contamination related to the 9/11 destruction of the World Trade Center in New York and the clearance works of Ground Zero. It led the way in consistently informing about the resulting health risks as well as the fact that most clearance workers were undocumented immigrants, who were not entitled to health compensation and got paid inadequately.

[natrat]

4. i'm shocked

[Chulanowa]

8. You should be shocked. It's shocking!

Just imagine my shock!

[fascisthunter]

5. And He.... Impeachment Was "Off the Table"

Bush could do anything, he still wouldn't be impeached.....

[babylonsister]

6. I wish there way some way to let the freepers know the truth so they'd

believe it. They've been had!

[EFerrari]

12. They'll just call you a "DU trool". n/t

[babylonsister]

13. Ha!

:spray:

[Octafish]

7. Why would George Bush want to kill his longtime family business partner?

Warnings of bin Laden's intentions from before Sept. 11, 2001:

Why would Osama bin Laden want to kill Dubya, his former business partner?
By James Hatfield

Editor's note: In light of last week's horrific events and the Bush administration's reaction to them, we are reprising the following from the last column Jim Hatfield wrote for Online Journal prior to his tragic death on July 18:

July 3, 2001—There may be fireworks in Genoa, Italy, this month, too.

A plot by Saudi master terrorist, Osama bin Laden, to assassinate Dubya during the July 20 economic summit of world leaders, was uncovered after dozens of suspected Islamic militants linked to bin Laden's international terror network were arrested in Frankfurt, Germany, and Milan, Italy, in April.

German intelligence services have stated that bin Laden is covertly financing neo-Nazi skinhead groups throughout Europe to launch another terrorist attack at a high-profile American target—his first since the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen last October.

According to counter-terrorism experts quoted in Germany's largest newspaper, the attack on Dubya might be a James Bond-like aerial strike in the form of remote-controlled airplanes packed with plastic explosives.

Why would Osama bi Laden want to kill, Dubya, his former business partner?

I knew that bombshell would whip your heads around. So here's the straight scoop, folks.

In June 1977, Dubya formed his own drilling company, Arbusto Energy ("arbusto" means "bush" in Spanish), in Midland, Texas. Like his father before him, Dubya founded his oil business with the financial backing of investors, including James R. Bath, a Houston businessman whom Dubya apparently first met when they were in the same Texas Air National Guard unit. (Interestingly, both Dubya and Bath were both suspended from flying in August and September 1972, respectively, for "failure to accomplish annual medical examination.")

Tax documents and other financial records show that Bath, an aircraft broker with controversial ties to Saudi Arabia sheiks, had invested $50,000 in Arbusto, granting him a 5 percent interest in two limited partnerships controlled by Dubya.

CONTINUED...

http://onlinejournal.org/Special_Reports/Hatfield-R-091901/hatfield-r-091901.html

The author of the above was "suicided" a couple weeks after the article's publication.

A curse upon our nation, they are.

[Pete2069]

9. Bush has done exactly what Bin Laden

Wanted to do to our country but could not do.....He has
destroy our economy , democracy , freedom , social programs ,
free election process and out military.

[HopeHoops]

10. You can't get the children to go to bed if you tell them the BOOGIE MAN is dead!

Why do you think Bush wimped out at Tora Bora?

"We can't risk Amurkin' lives - send in tha locals."

The Marines could have knocked bin Laden's entire operation out in one short blow, but that would have eliminated Bush's "terrah" strategy.

[Deny and Shred]

11. The only planes that flew 9/12 were whisking Bin Ladens overseas

They can build Gitmo to 'interrogate', but the FBI and other agencies are allowed a single question to the dozens of family members? Nope.
OBL was an excuse to do what they wanted, and demonized for the purposes of good press and tough talk.
Wanted Dead or Alive? That went nowhere.

[olddad56]

14. what if, Bush and Bin Laden have always been on the same team?

The CIA did train him, perhaps they stil employ him.

[BulletproofLandshark]

15. He had no intention of trying either n/t.

[Alexander]

16. Ya think?