What are we doing to find Osama Bin Laden?

What does that have to do with anything? See my other post.

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=17585&highlight=

No one in the Administration wants bin Laden caught or dead, for without this Bush-created figurehead and bogeyman, there would be no serious justification for continuing their War On Terrorism and using him as an excuse to invade other nations in future.

He is also needed by the security agencies to justify their huge budgets, now that the former Soviet Union cannot be used for that purpose.

U.S. repeatedly asked Taliban to expel bin Laden
Declassified cable details years of negotiations
From Henry Schuster CNN
Friday, January 30, 2004 Posted: 5:59 PM EST (2259 GMT)

(CNN) -- The U.S. government asked the Taliban regime in Afghanistan to expel or hand over Osama bin Laden more than two dozen times between September 1996 and summer 2001, according to a recently declassified State Department cable.

Three of those attempts were made after the Bush administration came into office in late January 2001.

Despite the various efforts, "these talks have been fruitless," the cable said.

The cable was written in July 2001 and was obtained recently by the National Security Archive at George Washington University through the Freedom of Information Act. The National Security Archive posted the document to its Web site Friday.

Sajit Gandhi, research associate at the NSA, said there are indications that the Taliban were approached more than 30 times during the time period.

The Taliban religious militia ruled much of Afghanistan from the mid-1990s until a coalition of U.S. and allied forces drove them from power in November 2001.

The Taliban had given haven to al Qaeda before the attacks of September 11 2001. Remnants of the group remain active, and bin Laden is still at large.

The State Department held its first meeting with a Taliban official September 18, 1996, when the political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, asked that bin Laden be made "unwelcome" in Afghanistan.

According to the document, the U.S. official was told by the Afghani deputy foreign affairs adviser that "the Taliban do not support terrorism and would not provide refuge to bin Laden."

Gandhi said he was particularly struck by a U.S. request in early 1997 that it be allowed to visit "militant training camps in eastern Afghanistan," and that a Taliban official initially agreed. But the Afghan government kept delaying the visit and finally rescinded the offer in April.

The cable recounts, in chronological order, a series of attempts to get bin Laden out of Afghanistan that continued before and after the U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, which the United States linked to al Qaeda. The U.S. government warned the Taliban, for example, in September 1998, that they would be held accountable for any future terrorist actions by bin Laden.

The Taliban offered a series of responses, most of which were made public at the time. First, the Afghan government told the United States that to oust bin Laden "would violate Taliban rules of hospitality," then later said they would put bin Laden on trial. However, the Taliban rejected the evidence linking bin Laden to the embassy bombings.

At one point, a Taliban spokesman also told a U.S. official that his government could not expel bin Laden because it "would result in the downfall of the Taliban."

The Bush administration continued the warnings, with contacts February 8, March 19 and July 2, 2001. In the last communication, the Taliban deputy foreign minister told the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan that bin Laden had not been convicted and that officials of his government "still consider him innocent."

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/01/30/taliban.talks/index.html

I am just curious why there are so many Saddam lovers here. You wish he was still in power and torturing and killing the Iraqi people. I don't understand why you want that.

I still strongly suspect that another terrorist strike will occur within the US before the election. It's the only thing that will keep the Neo Fascists in power.

Fishin, this is old stuff. Anyone who read the news knew about all this when it was going on.

The point you miss is that the Clinton bunch warned the Bush bunch about the terroists but the bush bunch decided that tax cuts were more important than protecting us expendable citizens. The government had been warned for years that some group might use planes for bombs and the excuse that noone in government knew about it is garbage. They might not have been able to stop 9/11 but on the other hand if they had spent as much time watching terroist groups as they spent on tax cuts they might have been able to stop it.

Federal prosecutor sues Ashcroft

Lawsuit alleges Justice Dept. interfered with terrorism case

The Associated Press
Updated: 6:34 p.m. ET Feb. 17, 2004

WASHINGTON - A federal prosecutor in a major terrorism case in Detroit has taken the rare step of suing Attorney General John Ashcroft, alleging the Justice Department interfered with the case, compromised a confidential informant and exaggerated results in the war on terrorism.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Convertino of Detroit accused the Justice Department of "gross mismanagement" of the war on terrorism in a lawsuit filed late Friday in federal court in Washington.

Justice officials said Tuesday they had not seen the suit and had no comment.

The suit is the latest twist in the Bush administration's first major post-Sept. 11 terrorism prosecution, which is now in danger of unraveling over allegations of prosecutorial misconduct. [..]

The lawsuit states Convertino first complained to his superiors more than a year ago about the Justice Department's interference in the Detroit terrorism trial, saying Washington supervisors "had continuously placed perception over reality to the serious detriment of the war on terror."

The lawsuit includes excerpts of an e-mail from another prosecutor in the case that Convertino says "identified some of the gross mismanagement which was negatively impacting the ability of the United States to obtain convictions in a major terrorist case." [..]

Convertino also accused Justice officials of intentionally divulging the name of one of his confidential terrorism informants to retaliate against him.

The leak put the informant at grave risk, forced him to flee the United States and "interfered with the ability of the United States to obtain information from the (informant) about current and future terrorist activities," the suit alleges. [..]

I am writing this because I'm pissed, quite frankly. 9/11 happened right in my backyard. I saw the smoke from the buildings when I walked out on the street that day, and I remember George Bush telling us all that the people who did this would be brought to justice. So we invaded Iraq. What the Hell does that have to do with catching Osama Bin Laden? Couldn't we have used the billions of dollars worth of time and effort to find the guy who actually did it!!!??? And the funny thing is that people actually believe that this is a good tactic! I'll remember that if I ever get mugged, and I'll just go and beat the hell out of some other random guy. That's justice, Dubya style! What the f--- are these corrupt war-mongers that are running our country doing to find Osama Bin Laden?