this is an editorial from my local paper, so the source should be treated rather skeptically, but it makes some interesting claims, and i've linked to the article in Le Monde which this editorial uses as its source material
quote: By November of that year a Taliban spokesman stated in Washington that the bin Laden problem might be solvable. Other sources report that from 1998 through the end of Clinton's term, the U.S. had two nuclear submarines stationed off the coast of Pakistan with their missiles targeted on bin Laden's installations in Afghanistan, just to force him to keep his head down.
During this period, Dick Cheney's company, Halliburton, together with Unocal, were trying to lock down a deal for construction of a pipeline from the huge oil-and-gas field to the east of the Caspian Sea.
...By the summer of 2000, the Taliban were close to agreeing to hand over bin Laden to us in return for financial aid for the reconstruction of their country. About six months before the 2000 presidential election, however, they put things on hold, wanting to see who would win the election.
When the Bush cabal "won" the presidential election, they immediately pulled away the two nuclear subs; they had Uzbek and Turkmen military units brought right to the north border of Afghanistan; they brought Uzbek special forces to the U.S. for training; they lined up Robert Oakley, former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, as a consultant with Unocal and they replaced Clinton's skilled negotiators with tough- talking Christina Rocca, who had cut her teeth in that part of the world in the 1980s working with Bill Casey during the Afghan war.
The Taliban didn't like Rocca's tone. Bin Laden, seeing all our military movements against Afghanistan, thought the Bush team was preparing for war.
And he knew that if Cheney succeeded in his pipeline scheme, the U.S. would have as firm a lock on oil in that part of the world as we now do in Saudi Arabia, and he wasn't about to let that happen. So in late July 2001, two weeks after the last discussion with Rocca blew up, bin Laden gave the order for the Sept. 11 attacks.
clearly the article is a bit biased, but that doesn't mean its ideas aren't worth investigating.
posted
Yeah it's a bit biased...heh. Anywho, I would agree with you though that the ideas are worth investigating. Either way the U.S. didn't declare war, so it was a terrorist attack upon the U.S.
posted
Good theory, except for the fact that Al Qaeda had been doing the groundwork for 9/11 long before Bush was elected, or even started campaigning.
If anything, the Bush administration's different stance toward the Taliban just pushed the Taliban to quit waving bin Laden like a carrot before us.
The blame for 9/11 lies squarely on the shoulders of a very determined and very inventive group of planners in the Al Qaeda network. We ca point at our lapses of security, or the Saudis or even the Taliban, but in so doing, we skitter away from the truth that a small group of very determined folks can make a huge impact on the world.
Osama bin Laden didn't mind, in my opinion, our invasion of Afghanistan. He can now point to the Taliban and proclaim them as martyrs and true defenders of the faith. In fact, he's used them as a pawn. He's a master chess player and is incredibly skilled at playing "Let's you and him fight."
I believe that is why so many of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis and Egyptians. It causes the US to put a glaring eye at two regimes that have been at least tacit supporters of our involvement in the Middle East. Had there been more Jordanians involved, he would have been even more thrilled. Notice that he did not include any Palestinians, Syrians, Iraqis or Iranians in the group. He also didn't bring in operatives from Pakistan, Indonesia, Libya, Algeria, countries we normally have few political dealings with.
He's hiding now, but something is brewing, that we can be sure. What it will be is anyone's guess, but it will be different from anything we've seen or expected so far.
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posted
what difference does that make? i get really nervous when people go out of their way to show that they have moral authority in a situation. it seems to me that preventing further problems is more important than punishment or retribution. Moral autority is quite useful in justifying retribution, but doens't really help preventing the same thing from happening; if anything it makes it more difficult.
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posted
Sopwith - good point. though (and maybe this is just ignorance on my part) i've never understood why 9/11 would have taken that much planning, i mean we've been told over and over again that this was an incredible feat of logistics and planning and coordination and all that, but it doesn't seem that difficult really. obviously you need some people who can fly really large airplanes, so that at least would require a great deal of preparation, but how difficult is it to get a few seats on a few jets which are all taking off about the same time on the same day?
anyway, the real issue here that worries me is the paranoia. I just can't help but feel that there are two possibilities which explain al qaeda; it is either much less sinister than it has been portrayed, or it is much more so. In the first case, i would say that as you said, it is frightening what a small group of very angry people can do. In the second case i can see al qaeda as basically a name which has been given to a virtually ubiquitous grassroots sentiment in the developing world. i guess what i'm getting at is that Bin Laden is starting to seem like Spectre in the old Bond movies, this sort of terrifyingly intelligent, manipulative, and powerful figure who is behind everything bad that ever happens, and i just have problems believing this image. i guess i feel like we as a nation are being fed this image of a supervillan for us to hate and fear, to distract us from the reality of the situation which is much more complex and morally hazardous.
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sorry about that Sopwith, you posted as i was writing, i was responding to the statement "the U.S. didn't declare war, so it was a terrorist attack upon the U.S."
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posted
I think the most important point, which has not yet been made, is that the WTC was attacked in 1993, and was followed by a series of attacks against US interests.
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quote:I think the most important point, which has not yet been made, is that the WTC was attacked in 1993, and was followed by a series of attacks against US interests.
this is actually the background of the article in Le Monde, that basically the early attacks caused Clinton's administration to start negotiations with the Taliban; whether those would have gone anywhere under a different president (or under a different course of action by the current one) is of course speculative.
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quote:My sister who is a communist was spewing this theory in December of 2001
do you not find it a bit convenient how well the bush administration and the companies which the member of that administration once worked for have profited from this new war on terrorism? i'm far from being communist myself, but even the paranoid are correct sometimes.
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posted
Actually, it really did take a lot of planning.
They first had to find 19 (20 perhaps) people who were devoted to the cause, were capable of gaining entry to the US and a commercial flight school, who could learn the complex controls system and who spoke passable English (a requirement for the schools and also for anyone wanting to become an international pilot -- English is the universal aviation language).
They then had to find and develop contacts who could expedite visas for the people involved. They also had to set up an untraceable financing network for the volunteers.
They had to do it all in secrecy, too, so they had to weed out any member who couldn't keep their cool and keep their cover story going. They also had to be brave and commited enough to actually go through with the attacks in the planes, then direct them at their targets and then give up their lives for the cause.
It's a pretty complex set up and there were a lot of places they could have tripped up along the way. Had they chosen knives instead of box cutters, they could have lost it. Had one person in the team gotten into a raging religious argument, the cover could have been blown.
I hate these fellows, but I have to grudgingly admit that they exploited every weakness in the system, some we didn't even know about. Then they successfully pulled it off with complete surprise. And that was in the light that we knew the World Trade Center had already been a focus of their attention once before.
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posted
It's amusing that the title of the editorial in the Citizen Times claims that blaming the Clinton Administration for 9-11 is the height of ignorance, but blaming the Bush "cabal" makes good sense. The editorial is mistaken numerous times. Fact, the Clinton Administration did have numerous chances to "get" bin Laden, and did not. Fact: The Clinton Administration's policy of negotiating, over a period of years, for the extradition of someone such as bin Laden is, at the very least, of questionable effectiveness and at worst a complete failure. Clinton's policy of negotiating with a brutal and blood-soaked government such as the Taliban for the extradition of bin Laden simply did not work. Fact: the Bush "cabal" is lambasted when it negotiates with similar governments, but when the Clinton Administration does the same it is good sensible State Policy.
The editorial states that negotiations were ongoing for approximately a year and a half, with this as a result: a Taliban spokesman said that the bin Laden problem might be solveable. Makes you positively optimistic, don't it?
Frankly I'd say that when negotiations on such a serious matter (and it was of dire importance even before 9-11) with a hostile and brutal government fail to bear even the seeds of fruit after a year and a half, then a change of tactics is not only a good idea, but necessary. The Taliban had their chance to surrender bin Laden, but they decided to try and blackmail us for just a little bit too long. Ain't the Bush Administration's fault they got burned, it's their own.
I also find it pretty dirty that bin Laden's motives are suggested to be that he didn't want Afghanistan to be like Saudi Arabia. Like OBL's motives were, somehow, good. "He was just looking out for Afghanistan," after all. Oh, and let's not forget while we're subltly accusing Cheney of perfidy with the pipeline that for eight years, Clinton was content with the oil situation in Saudi Arabia.
All of this is aside from the idiotic-yes, idiotic-claim the editorial makes that it took just about two weeks to plan and execute the 9-11 attacks. Even the most amateur of obversers must know that it would take longer than two weeks to prepare for such a venture. If it took more than two weeks, then obviously some training was ongoining before bin Laden gave this order for the 9-11 attacks. Now what, praytell, would that indicate to people?
The editorial is not just "a little biased", it is stupid. It makes many absurd claims. One, that it only took two weeks to plan and execute then 9-11 attacks. Two, that the Clinton policy of negotiation was close to bearing fruit, fruit which the Bush "cabal" soured. Three, that bin Laden's motives for ordering the 9-11 attacks was simply to prevent a repeat of Saudi Arabia in Afghanistan. Those are just the biggest.
Edit: When I said "two weeks", I meant approximately a month. Slipup there.
posted
Sheesh, Joe. I saw he was back too, but wasn't going to destroy the seriousness of this thread. Derailing is not what Hatrack is all about, you know.
posted
I'm cynical about entire debates like this because coincidentally, everyone always seems to find compelling reasons to blame the people they already disagreed with before anything happened.
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posted
good theory, except that it's a horrible theory. If you ignore all of the bullshit, i guess its true.
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posted
I'd be lyin' if I said I wasn't flattered by the greeting, so thank y'all kindly:) *returns various greetings and tackle hugs, with an attached apology to anyone I flattened and / or offended*
Long story short, 4+ year old computer is...well, like Old Yeller in the end of the flick. Hard drive is possibly irreperable, and the ethernet card hasn't worked in any computer I've installed it in. *shrug* Time to start saving up for a new system, heh. I'm at the li-bary now, and pleased to be goofing off on Hatrack on a more limited basis:) I gather my phone number was the topic of conversation recently, so if anyone wants to gab more in depth, feel free to gimme a ring, or an email-actually checking it now, amazingly.
Doin' good aside from that, really. *shrug* Not much else to tell. No excitement in J4's life, heh.
Whew!
Oh, and I agree with Dog.
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posted
Joe: I'm guessin' that's you, Ic. Sure thing, I've never been to a Jai Lai game-heard they're as confusing as hell, but I'll give it a go sometime in the future, if you're up for it.
(And "Megachirops"?)
Becky: Ni! (I tried calling you back, but the number I had either wasn't yours-I got a machine and left a message. Mind emailing me with an updated number? Either you've changed numbers, or I wrote down the wrong one a long time ago)
Toni: Doin' good, workin' hard or hardly workin' as the case may be. UPS is kinder when the mercury ain't peggin' 95+ degrees in the trailer. How're you? Drop me a line, phone or email sometime, if you like:) I can apologize in more detail for my abrupt and unexpected Hatrack absence, or if over the phone stammer and sound like a twerp without the protection of my "brilliance" in the written word;)
Zan: Would you be into some Jai Lai too? Perhaps you, Joe, Bob, and I could booze and schmooze at a Denny's afterwards again;) How's the new chillun?
PS Apologies for the derailment, despite my obvious opinion on the validity of the theory;)
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