Taliban tried to give up Osama?
Very interesting story at
Junkyard Blog
B. Preston links to a
Reuters article that says:
bq. U.S. and Taliban officials met secretly in Frankfurt almost a year before the Sept. 11 attacks to discuss terms for Afghanistan to hand over Osama bin Laden, according to a German television documentary.
But no agreement was reached and no further negotiations took place before the suicide hijackings in 2001.
bq. ZDF television quoted Kabir Mohabbat, an Afghan-American businessman, as saying he tried to broker a deal between the Americans and the purist Islamic Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, who were sheltering bin Laden and his al Qaeda network.
bq. He quoted the Taliban foreign minister, Mullah Wakil Ahmed Mutawakil, as saying: "You can have him whenever the Americans are ready. Name us a country and we will extradite him."
B. Preston's comment is spot-on:
bq. November 2000. Before you lefties get all excited about this, I should point out that in November 2000, your boy Clinton was still President. The nation was embroiled in all that Gore-inspired putsch activity in Florida. And apparently the Clinton administration let Osama get away one more time. Where is "documentary" producer Michael Moore to ask the hard but necessary questions about that, huh?
bq. By my count that's at least three times that somebody stepped forward to offer up Osama bin Laden prior to 9-11, and that's three times the Clinton bunch refused to seriously entertain the offer. That's roughly 1,000 dead for each failure.
bq. And you people want the White House again? Why, so you can open up the gates at Gitmo and flood the world with terrorists anew?
Nothing more needs to be added...
Posted by DaveH at June 8, 2004 9:52 AM