Does Bush Really Care about National Security?

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=4&u=/ap/20050322/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/bin_laden_afghanistan

By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer

WASHINGTON - A terror suspect held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was a commander for Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (news - web sites) in the 1980s and helped the al-Qaida leader escape his mountain hide-out at Tora Bora in 2001, according to a U.S. government document.

The document, provided to The Associated Press in response to a Freedom of Information request, says the unidentified detainee "assisted in the escape of Osama bin Laden from Tora Bora." It is the first definitive statement from the Pentagon (news - web sites) that bin Laden was at Tora Bora and evaded U.S. pursuers.

The detainee is not identified by name or nationality. He is described as being "associated with" al-Qaida and having called for a jihad, or holy war, against the United States.

In an indication that he might be a higher-level operative, the document says he "had bodyguards" and collaborated with regional al-Qaida leadership. "The detainee was one of Osama bin Laden's commanders during the Soviet jihad," it says, referring to the holy war against Soviet occupiers.

The events at Tora Bora were a point of contention during last year's presidential race, and Bush as well as Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) asserted that commanders did not know whether bin Laden was there when U.S. and allied Afghan forces attacked the area in December 2001.

Cheney said last Oct. 26 that Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, had "stated repeatedly it was not at all certain that bin Laden was in Tora Bora. He might have been there or in Pakistan or even Kashmir (news - web sites)," the Indian-controlled Himalayan region.

Franks, now retired, wrote in an opinion column in The New York Times last Oct. 19, "We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001." He added that intelligence assessments of his location varied, but bin Laden was "never within our grasp."

On several occasions in the days following publication of that column, Bush cited it on the campaign trail as evidence that bin Laden could have been in any of several countries in December 2001. "That's what Tommy Franks, who knew what he's talking about, said," Bush said on Oct. 27.

Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites), the Democratic presidential nominee, lambasted Bush during the campaign for having missed a chance to capture or kill bin Laden at Tora Bora, a mountainous area along the Pakistan border that became al-Qaida's last stand in Afghanistan. U.S. warplanes bombarded the area in December 2001, and Franks had Afghan soldiers lead the ground assault, backed by several thousand U.S. ground troops, including Special Forces, in a cave-to-cave search.

The newly revealed statement is contained in a document the Pentagon calls a "summary of evidence" against one of 558 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. It was provided to the AP this week.

The evidence was summarized last December 14 for a Guantanamo Bay hearing to determine whether the prisoner was correctly held as an "enemy combatant."

The assertion about his efforts and bin Laden's escape is made as a statement of fact; it does not indicate how the information was obtained.

Navy Lt. Cmdr. Daryl Borgquist, a spokesman for the Combatant Status Review Board for which the document was prepared, said Tuesday he could not elaborate on the Tora Bora statement, or its sources, because the statement was derived from classified information.

Bin Laden, whose al-Qaida terrorist organization was behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, had operated from Afghanistan until the U.S. invasion in October 2001.

He remains at large. For many months, officials have said they believe bin Laden probably is hiding in the Afghan-Pakistan border region, although last week Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declined to endorse that view, saying bin Laden's whereabouts were unknown.

In mid-December 2001, a spokesman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, told reporters there had been "indicators" of bin Laden's presence at Tora Bora in early December.

"And now indicators are not there," Stufflebeem said. "So maybe he still is there, maybe he was killed, or maybe he's left."



The document does not elaborate on the detainee's U.S. connection, but says he arrived in Afghanistan via Bahrain and Iran (news - web sites). He was "present at Tora Bora," crossed the Afghan border into Pakistan in December 2001, and surrendered to Pakistani authorities, the document says.

The detainee also was arrested by Saudi authorities for questioning in the 1996 terrorist bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 members of the U.S. Air Force, the document says.

Bush cares about Bush and little else.

They've all gone bonkers. God help us!

Although North Korea signed the U.S.-North Korea nuclear pact 1994, Kim Duk Hong, one of the regime's most senior defectors, says that North Korea resumed the development of its nuclear weapon program as soon as the treaty was signed. Hong also stated that North Korea gained much of its expertise from Pakistan, and that only the death of Kim Jong Il and the destruction of his regime will stop North Korea's nuclear weapons program. [1]

On March 12, 1993, North Korea said that it planned to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and refused to allow inspectors access to its nuclear sites. By 1994, the United States believed that North Korea had enough reprocessed plutonium to produce about 10 bombs with the amount of plutonium increasing. Faced with diplomatic pressure and the threat of American military airstrikes against the reactor, North Korea agreed to dismantle its plutonium program as part of the Agreed Framework in which South Korea and the United States would provide North Korea with light water reactors and fuel oil until those reactors could be completed. Because the light water reactors would require enriched uranium to be imported from outside North Korea, the amount of reactor fuel and waste could be more easily tracked making it more difficult to divert nuclear waste to be reprocessed into plutonium.

North Korea Nukes Clinton Legacy

Charles R. Smith
Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2003

Asian Arms Race Result of Appeasement Policy

The leftist media spin is that the current crisis in North Asia is the result of George W. Bush calling Pyongyang a member of the 'axis of evil.' In reality, the soft-line appeasement policy taken by Clinton against North Korea and China is what has led us to this point.

For example, former Clinton adviser Paul Begala, now serving as a talking head on CNN, claimed that the Clinton administration contained the threat from North Korea. Clearly, Mr. Begala missed the 1990s.

Of course, Mr. Begala simply forgot that Clinton's military chief of staff testified in 1998 that North Korea did not have an active ballistic missile program. One week later the North Koreans launched a missile over Japan that landed off the Alaska coast.

During the early Clinton years, hard-liners and so-called conservative hawks advocated a pre-emptive strike to halt North Korea's nuclear weapons development before it could field an atomic bomb. Instead of taking the hard line, President Clinton elected to rely on former President Jimmy Carter and decided to appease the Marxist-Stalinist dictatorship.

Carter met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang and returned to America waving a piece of paper and declaring peace in our time. Kim, according to Carter, had agreed to stop his nuclear weapons development.

The Clinton appeasement program for North Korea included hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, food, oil and even a nuclear reactor. However, the agreement was flawed and lacked even the most informal means of verification.

In return, Kim elected to starve his people while using the American aid to build uranium bombs. The lowest estimate is that Kim starved to death over 1 million of his own people, even with the U.S. aid program.

Axis of Evil and Friends

North Korea was not left all alone in its effort to obtain nuclear weapons. North Korea relied heavily on China, its closest ally, to assist in its all-out effort to obtain the atomic bomb.

Beijing elected to covertly aid its North Asian ally by proliferation. China allowed Pakistan to send nuclear technology purchased from Beijing to North Korea in exchange for No Dong missile technology.

Beijing provided Pakistan with its nuclear weapons technology, including an operational atomic bomb design. Pakistan is now providing North Korea with equipment and engineering to assist in its bomb-making efforts.

The fact remains that North Korea acquired some key equipment for its nuclear weapons program from Pakistan in 1998. The key equipment, including a working gas centrifuge used to enrich uranium, was shipped to Pyongyang in the coffin of the murdered wife of a North Korean diplomat.

Beijing's indirect assistance includes allowing Pakistani C-130 cargo flights over China to Pyongyang that carry key equipment for nuclear weapons production. The flights return to Pakistan with North Korean No Dong missile parts.

Missiles for Nukes

Pakistan also benefited from the trade in weaponry. The missiles-for-nukes trade gave Pakistan an operational means to deliver its atomic bombs.

Pakistan has since successfully test-fired and deployed its own version of the No Dong missile, called the Ghauri. The North Korean-designed missile has a range of nearly 900 miles and can cover virtually all of India, Pakistan's rival in Southwest Asia.

The ultimate irony here is that the North Korean No Dong and Tae Po Dong missiles are based on technology given to Pyongyang by China. In 1994, the Wall Street Journal revealed that Chinese-made CSS-2 missile technology had found its way into North Korean hands.

China has also allowed North Korea to ship SCUD missiles through its territory for Middle Eastern customers. According to a Canadian undercover operative, North Korean agents moved dismantled SCUD missiles through China into Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran.

The allegations proved to be correct because U.S. satellites were able to follow Chinese-made M-11 missiles bound for Pakistan over the same land route in 2000. The illegal export of M-11 missiles brought swift sanctions against Beijing by the Bush administration.

In recent months China has been much more overt about assisting Pyongyang with its nuclear weapons program. In 2002, China sold Pyongyang a large shipment of tributyl phosphate, a key chemical used to extract plutonium and uranium from spent fuel rods for atomic bombs.

U.S. Pressure on Asian Allies

In contrast, the U.S. repeatedly told India, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan that they should not develop nuclear weapons. The U.S. position was that the no one had the right to bring a new arms race to Asia.

The U.S. also backed up this policy by placing severe restrictions on the export of nuclear and ballistic missile technology to India, Taiwan, Korea and Japan. The trade agreements also had teeth built into them in case U.S. technology was abused.

For example, when India developed and tested its nuclear bomb, the U.S. responded with hefty sanctions and a diplomatic freeze that is just now beginning to thaw.

Compared to the strict U.S. policy, China did not discourage its client states, North Korea and Pakistan, from developing nuclear weapons. Instead, China has overtly and covertly assisted both nations to develop and deploy active weapons upon working delivery systems.

Nature abhors a vacuum, especially in the case of nuclear weapons. The whole equation of Asian defense has changed overnight. As a result of China's nuclear proliferation, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan may now have to follow Pyongyang's lead and begin their own atomic weapons programs. That decision will be made in Tokyo, Seoul and Taipei, not in Washington.

It should shock no one, including the China lobby and DNC apologists, that Beijing will continue to support North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

However, some fools continue to be suckered by Beijing's obvious ploy to dominate Asia. The fools' hope that China will restrain Pyongyang continues to echo off the lips of the leftist media, as if by simply wishing it were true will make it so.

The fact remains that Bill Clinton's legacy is an unstable world filled with hungry dictators and nuclear weapons. The result of the Clinton appeasement policy toward China is a new arms race.

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http://www.cdi.org/nuclear/nk-fact-sheet.cfm