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Thursday, July 31, 2014

Bill Clinton admits on September 10, 2001 that he could have killed Osama Bin Laden but choose not to do so to avoid civilian casualties



Ace and Hot Air are reporting on this.   If the choice was really killing Osama Bin Laden, but having to kill 300 civilians to do so (and remember this is before 9/11) it is hard to criticize this (in hindsight). This is Bill Clinton framing it that way. 

How did this manage not to become news before now? How bizarre that this admission was made just hours before 9/11 unfolded?

[A]ccording to Michael Scheuer, Clinton’s administration had “about 10 chances” to kill Bin Laden in 1998 and 1999 and passed on all of them because the intelligence supposedly wasn’t good enough. I’d also like to know more specifics of what Clinton says here about his best shot at OBL. He says he could have taken him out in a “little town” called Kandahar in Afghanistan but would have killed 300 people in the process. But Kandahar’s not a little town; it’s a city, population 500,000. Is he thinking, perhaps, of … Tarnak Farms? Tarnak Farms was located near Kandahar but it wasn’t a “little town.” It was Bin Laden’s training camp for terrorists. There may have been women and children there, but you could have cut a swath through AQ by bombing it at the time. In fact, the CIA might have had Osama himself onscreen from drone surveillance in 2000; drones weren’t equipped with missiles at the time, but an airstrike could have been called in. Is that what Clinton’s thinking of here? Any enterprising reporters out there want to ask him?
More at Lem's Place 

1 comment:

  1. " If the choice was really killing Osama Bin Laden, but having to kill 300 civilians to do so (and remember this is before 9/11) it is hard to criticize this (in hindsight). "

    Not really.

    Remember, we'd already had one attack on the WTC and attacks on embassies in Africa, the Khobar Towers, and the USS Cole.

    Sooner or later, they were going to get it right, thanks to Jamie Gorelick, the Typhoid Mary of politics, and her "impenetrable wall".

    After Mog, all his phony bravado evaporated.

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