Bush had the chance to kill Zarqawi and decided not to - here's why...

by redjade Tue Nov 02, 2004 16:49

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

http://www.counterpunch.com/cockburn11012004.html

George Bush, the man whose prime campaign plank has been his ability to wage war on terror, could have had Osama bin Laden's head handed to him on a platter on his very first day in office, and the offer held good until February 2 of 2002. This is the charge leveled by an Afghan American who had been retained by the US government as an intermediary between the Taliban and both the Clinton and Bush administrations.

Kabir Mohabbat is a 48-year businessman in Houston, Texas. Born in Paktia province in southern Afghanistan, he's from the Jaji clan (from which also came Afghanistan's last king). Educated at St Louis University, he spent much of the 1980s supervising foreign relations for the Afghan mujahiddeen, where he developed extensive contacts with the US foreign policy establishment, also with senior members of the Taliban.

[....]

In a lengthy interview and in a memorandum Kabir Mohabbat has given us a detailed account and documentation to buttress his charge that the Bush administration could have had Osama bin Laden and his senior staff either delivered to the US or to allies as prisoners, or killed at their Afghan base. As a search of the data base shows, portions of Mohabbat's role have been the subject of a number of news reports, including a CBS news story by Alan Pizzey aired September 25, 2001. This is the first he has made public the full story.

by Tony Tue Nov 02, 2004 06:17

Executive Order 12333 leaps to mind.

Since Zarqawi hadn't made any moves against the US to date, there was no legal basis.

by nothing changes. Mon Nov 01, 2004 15:24

Osama had the chance to kill Bush and didn't.

Bush had the chance to kill Osama and didn't.

Sharon had the chance to kill Arafat and didn't.

JFK had the chance to kill Castro but didn't.

Stalin had the chance to kill Trotsky and did.

Brutus had the chance to kill Julius and did.

Caligula had the chance to kill all his family and did his best.

Pontius Pilate had the chance to kill Jesus and did his best.

Collins had the chance to kill De Valera but didn't.

De Valera had the chance to kill Collins but didn't.

Muhumad had the chance to kill Mustafa but didn't.


Welcome to our world new born.
Every four years a monkey will be selected to be resonsible for reading the future and writing the past.

by redjade Thu Oct 28, 2004 15:12

White House officials reasserted yesterday that 380 tons of powerful explosives may have disappeared from a vast Iraqi military complex while Saddam Hussein controlled Iraq, saying a brigade of American soldiers did not find the explosives when they visited the complex on April 10, 2003, the day after Baghdad fell.

But the unit's commander said in an interview yesterday that his troops had not searched the site and had merely stopped there overnight.

The commander, Col. Joseph Anderson, of the Second Brigade of the Army's 101st Airborne Division, said he did not learn until this week that the site, Al Qaqaa, was considered sensitive, or that international inspectors had visited it before the war began in 2003 to inspect explosives that they had tagged during a decade of monitoring.

NY Times article at
http://booknotes.buzzword.com/2004/10/27#moreWhiteHouseLies

by Ray Tue Oct 26, 2004 17:54

NBC journos were with the troops when they reached the ammo dump, but are not the source for the claim that the explosives were no longer there. (You don't think the journalists carried out a stocktake, do you?)

NBC quotes a government official that says the explosives were already gone. It doesn't offer independent confirmation.

by Noel Tue Oct 26, 2004 17:43

NBC had reporters embedded with US forces when they reached Al Quaqaa.

Next.

by blah blah Tue Oct 26, 2004 17:34

'were missing before US forces arrived.'

the only way you could know this for a fact is if you were there.

which means you must be Saddam himself

btw why are you quoting the liberal NBC anyway?

by Noel Tue Oct 26, 2004 15:15

Drudge was reporting on what NBC news reported last night.

I'll repeat this for your benefit.
The explosives (material is a standard military term for differing ordnance) were missing before US forces arrived.

The story was circulated by Kerry's chief cheerleader to embarrass President Bush in the run up to the election.

by bunked Tue Oct 26, 2004 14:55

Noel certainly you can find a better source than ol drudge, no?

what exactly has been debunked? that the IAEA warned the Bush Admin about the explosives? no. That the explosives are now in the hands of terrorists? no. That the Bush Admin did little to secure the explosives? no.

the explosives - or 'material' as you like to call it - were known about and were or should have been monitored by satellite.

But Bush decided to guard the Oil Ministry instead of securing the weapons that could later be used against US/Coalition Troops.

we know what his priorities are.

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A Pentagon "official who monitors developments in Iraq" told the Associated Press today that "US-led coalition troops had searched Al-Qaqaa in the immediate aftermath of the March 2003 invasion and confirmed that the explosives, which had been under IAEA seal since 1991, were intact."
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1098677410357
======

Better analysis and reporting by Josh Marshall at:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_10_24.php

by Noel Tue Oct 26, 2004 14:22

The gist of the story claimed President Bush allowed 380 tons of HE to be stolen.

The material was missing before US troops liberated Baghdad.

The New York Times was aware of this, but in election week, neglected to mention the significance of the dates.

Is that debunked enough?

by bunked Tue Oct 26, 2004 13:38

care to explain how the story has been debunked?

by Noel Tue Oct 26, 2004 12:54

The Washington Post has been a vocal supporter of John Kerry throughout this entire campaign. It never endorsed George Bush.

It is also very critical of the President's handling of the war in Iraq.
The Washington Times is more sympathetic to the President.

Obviously, the most partisan newspaper is the NYT which openly shills for Kerry.

The 380 ton missing explosive story (covered here) first appeared in the NYT.
It's been debunked since, the explosives went missing before the fall of Baghdad (18 months ago)
But no mention of this in the NYT.

The majority of the US mainstream media is viewed as pro-Democrat by Americans.

by redjade Mon Oct 25, 2004 17:47

i was wrong - WaPo didnt endorse Bush in 2000. (you'd think i'd look that one up to be sure, but nope)

but they certianly have been his cheerleader in this war.

by Noel Mon Oct 25, 2004 13:53

WaPo has always been a vocal cheerleader for the Democratic candidate in this election.
And, contrary to previous claims, endorsed Al Gore for President in 2000.

by redjade Mon Oct 25, 2004 13:36

Protesters Pay Tribute to Fallen Troops
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1024-03.htm

A small group of war protesters paid tribute to the troops who died in Iraq by setting up more than 1,100 flag-draped cardboard coffins in front of the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday.

The coffins stretched halfway down each side of the reflecting pool. At 1 p.m., members of the Iraq War Memorial Coalition read the names of the people who were killed and then played taps.

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news and discussion at
http://dc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/107362/index.php

by iosaf Mon Oct 25, 2004 13:08

help! we just cleaned out our kitchen cupboards, and a number of conventional spanish type bangers and fireworks (which may we stress are still freely available to youngsters over the age of 14 with parental consent) are MISSING!
We've also noticed that we're a bit short of fertilizer and someone has run off with the sugar.
THIS MATERIAL COULD BE USED TO DETONATE A FILTHY DIRTY UTTERLY UN-HYGEINIC NUCLEAR DEVICE.

be scared.
be very scared.

by redjade Mon Oct 25, 2004 13:02

NY Times:

The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, produce missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons - are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations.

The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no-man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Saturday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished after the American invasion last year [...]

American weapons experts say their immediate concern is that the explosives could be used in major bombing attacks against American or Iraqi forces: the explosives, mainly HMX and RDX, could be used to produce bombs strong enough to shatter airplanes or tear apart buildings. The bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 used less than a pound of the material of the type stolen from Al Qaqaa, and somewhat larger amounts were apparently used in the bombing of a housing complex in November 2003 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the blasts in a Moscow apartment complex in September 1999 that killed nearly 300 people.

The explosives could also be used to trigger a nuclear weapon, which was why international nuclear inspectors had kept a watch on the material. But the other components of an atom bomb - the design and the radioactive fuel - are more difficult to obtain. "This is a high explosives risk, but not necessarily a proliferation risk," one senior Bush administration official said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency publicly warned about the danger of these explosives before the war, and after the invasion it specifically told United States officials about the need to keep the explosives secured, European diplomats said in interviews last week.

NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/25/international/middleeast/25bomb.html?hp&ex=1098676800&en=61cf6e1aa29b7871&ei=5094&partner=homepage

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more info and commentary at
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/10/24/223637/75

by redjade Sun Oct 24, 2004 15:13

''These failings have a common source in Mr. Bush's cocksureness, his failure to seek advice from anyone outside a narrow circle and his unwillingness to expect the unexpected or adapt to new facts. These are dangerous traits in any president but especially in a wartime leader. They are matched by his failure to admit his errors or to hold senior officials accountable for theirs.''

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57584-2004Oct23.html

by - Sun Oct 24, 2004 12:32

read about it here-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1327904,00.html
if you don't have a TV or access to a kindly nieghbour who watches BBC, then it boils down to this-
the BBC documnetary crew are now at long last agreeing with what misfit protesters said before the war.

There is very little evidence that AlQ exists.

meanwhile in news today, no-one knows who has kidnapped the latest "morbidity" score "one of us" victim of the systematic undermining of the few civilised values that existed in Saddam's Iraq.

Of those few that did exist were included-
1. security of passage for aid workers, journalists and business people.
2. a scrupulously independent and authoritave international arabic news agency.

by redjade Sat Oct 23, 2004 17:50

The federal government has begun conducting background checks on all foreigners seeking to attend U.S. flight schools, the Transportation Security Administration said Friday.

[....]

Previously, only those training on aircraft weighing 12,500 pounds or more had their backgrounds checked.