Sen. John Kerry has come to the conclusion that President George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and Gen. Tommy Franks could have captured Osama bin Laden if they had done a couple of things differently.
Staff members for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Democratic majority prepared the report at the request of the chairman, Sen. John Kerry, as President Obama prepares to boost U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, has long argued the Bush administration missed a chance to get the al-Qaeda leader and top deputies when they were holed up in the forbidding mountainous area of eastern Afghanistan only three months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
So, a bunch of Democrats looked at the past and came to the conclusion that the Republicans in charge didn’t fight the war correctly. That’s a surprise. This from the same man who concluded the Surge in Iraq was a failure while trying to justify his party’s stance against the war in Iraq. It wasn’t a stance against the war so much as it was a stance against anything Bush.
Which is what this report is.
What’s even more interesting is now Kerry is producing reports to justify an increase in troops in Afghanistan:
Although limited to a review of military operations eight years old, the report could also be read as a cautionary note for those resisting an increased troop presence there now.
Got it? If we don’t send more troops, we might not capture bin Laden. Kerry, the antiwar leftist from Massachusetts, is now creating talking points for an increase in soldiers in Afghanistan.
If that doesn’t show the political nature of the Democrats, I don’t know what it will take. To their credit, the Republicans are backing an increase in the military also, not because of politics, but because they believe the war should be won.
If they were playing politics, they would be against any increase. They aren’t. If anything, they want more troops sent.
Finally, if we are going to blame Bush and Co. for not capturing bin Laden, I think it’s fair to recall Bill Clinton’s refusal to accept custody of him when he was president:
Sudan offered to arrest and turn over bin Laden at this meeting, according to Erwa. He brought up bin Laden directly. “Where should we send him?” he asked. This was the key question. When Sudan turned over the infamous Carlos the Jackal to French intelligence in 1994, the CIA covertly provided satellite intelligence that allowed Sudanese intelligence to capture him on a pretext and escort him to the VIP lounge at the Khartoum airport. There, he was met by armed members of French intelligence and flown to Paris in a special plane. Would the CIA pick up bin Laden in Khartoum and fly him back to Washington,D.C.? Or would bin Laden go to a third country?
The CIA officer was silent. It was obvious to Erwa that a decision had not yet been made. Or perhaps his offer was not quite believed. Yet, the Sudanese official was still hoping for a repeat of the French scenario. Finally, the CIA official spoke. “We have nothing we can hold him on,” he carefully said.
Clinton refused the handover of bin Laden because — he said in taped remarks on Feb. 15, 2002 — “(bin Laden) had committed no crime against America, so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him.” Luckily, after 9/11, we can get him on that trespassing charge.
Although Clinton made the criminal justice system the entire U.S. counterterrorism strategy, there was not even an indictment filed after the bombing of either Khobar Towers (1996) or the USS Cole (2000). Indictments were not filed until after Bush/Ashcroft came into office.
“Clinton made the criminal justice system the entire U.S. counterterrorism strategy…”
Sounds like what is going on today. But this is all Bush’s fault.
