CNN: U.S., Taliban bargained over bin Laden, documents show (1998)

[DeepModem Mom]

U.S., Taliban bargained over bin Laden, documents show
Declassified State Department papers detail 1998 meetings
Friday, August 19, 2005; Posted: 10:21 p.m. EDT


WASHINGTON (CNN) -- During secret meetings with U.S. officials in 1998, top Taliban officials discussed assassinating or expelling Osama bin Laden in response to al Qaeda's deadly bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa, according to State Department documents.

The newly declassified documents, posted Thursday on the National Archives Web site, provide a fascinating glimpse into U.S. diplomacy exerted on Afghanistan's ruling Taliban -- a regime officially unrecognized by Washington -- nearly three years before the September 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks on the United States.

According to the documents, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan, Alan Eastham Jr., met with Wakil Ahmed, a close aide to Taliban leader Mullah Omar, in November and December 1998. That was just months after the August al Qaeda attacks that killed more than 200 people at the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania....

***

Talk of assassination
During a meeting between Ahmed and Eastham on November 28, 1998, just days after the Taliban's supreme court cleared bin Laden of terrorist activities, Ahmed said one possibility "would be for the U.S. to kill him or arrange for bin Laden to be assassinated."...

***

Another alternative, Ahmed said, would be for the United States to provide the Taliban with cruise missiles to have "the situation resolved in this way." Ahmed also noted that expelling bin Laden likely would result in the Taliban regime being overthrown, according to the documents....


http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/08/19/taliban.documents/index.html

[Stand and Fight]

1. Old news....

I have read this somewhere before. CNN is just trying to deflect from George W. Bush being a miserable failure.

[dweller]

3. All Hail the Mighty Clenis ...

:eyes:

dp

[The Backlash Cometh]

4. Weren't parts of it debunked?

I remember someone said they would only release Osama to another Muslim country? And that the people we were "bargaining" with, weren't the most truthworthy?

If it's the same information of a few years back, CNN is really scraping the bottom of the barrel. Recycling the old "blame Clinton" crap.

[dweller]

10. of course, and back in the Garden of Eden

that really wasn't a snake...

dp

[The Backlash Cometh]

15. Hey, let me know when you start communicating with more than

metaphors and idioms.

[dweller]

17. _cough_ ...

what part of the usual 'blame Clinton' rhetoric that is spewed by the MSMCON, and then recognized by me do you have trouble with understanding?

excuse me for posting my opinion, but the last i looked, i had the right to speak my mind here. If it's beyond you to grasp that, my apology.

dp

[The Backlash Cometh]

18. I was hoping for a little more effort on your part.

Hard to tell exactly what you're opposed to when you resort to statements that may give me an idea of your state of mind, but little else.

So, how far are you willing to dismiss the "Blame Clinton" response? Will you deny that it was over-used by the right?

[dweller]

22. i've yet to deny a thing, not starting here

The corporate media will resort to whatever old news they have to project upon the masses that the problems we have today are just a result of not reacting in .. what 1998?

yesterday's news is fishwrap to most, some others have a memory.
I prefer to live in the present as bad as it is..

Clinton's response to Bin Ladin was continuously hamstrunged by the Repugs in Congress.

of course, everything changed Nov 2000.

jeez, is everyone this twitchy tonite?
dp

[Stand and Fight]

23. Sure Clinton is a scapegoat for the right...

You are the one who is a little "twitchy" by verbally demeaning people. You seem to have quite the chip on your shoulder, but you're projecting it onto everyone else. There is a very uncivil tone that is coming through in your messages. That's all I'm trying to say. Take it easy. No one here is trying to argue, but that doesn't mean we have to take your bullying tactics either.

[dweller]

24. dude

let's back up a few threads.


Stand and Fight pointed out it was old news.
I agreed. Blame it on Clenis.
You posted: "If it's the same information of a few years back, CNN is really scraping the bottom of the barrel. Recycling the old "blame Clinton" crap."

i agreed, only reiterating my point, but taking it back just a bit further for the fundy among us with the Garden of Eden ...take.


now, you had a problem i guess understanding my pov. okay, my apologies again. You asked for a clarification on my 'blame Clinton' position.

i answered.

i don't understand what the hell you have with my responses so far, but i have yet to 'bully' or argue with anyone.

take a look downthread. back to the original point of the thread.

no one buys this crap. nor am i buying yours.

peace out.
dp


on edit.

now i see that it was Stand and Fight who responded to my last post. I thought it was Backlash Cometh. Regardless, i will not change my post here, it still stands.

[Stand and Fight]

26. Right. I see now...

A good part of this stems from the use of obscure terms like "Clenis". I was not familiar with this being used as a euphemism for Clinton, so I thought you were being a smart-ass. As for the rest of your post, whatever. It's clear that we agree on what really matters here -- the media is trying to blame Clinton yet again for the fuck-ups of this mis-administration. Sorry about the miscommunication on my part. Nice to see that we are on the same team.

[dweller]

27. nothing like a good game of cutthroat, eh?

:rofl:


right.
dp

[Stand and Fight]

28. Chill, "dude."

I edited the message because I figured you wouldn't catch the sarcastic tone of agreement, dude. Read it again, dude. Sheesh, dude. You must have been hitting the refresh button in anticipation to attack, dude. :evilgrin:

[dweller]

30. ahh. i see .

you assumed i was a smartass, using obscure terms, refreshing to attack, being a freeper.

okay.


sorry Backlash Cometh for confusing the two of you. My mistake.

"I'm a member of no organized political party. I'm a Democrat" suddenly makes more sense.

dp

[The Backlash Cometh]

32. Yo, dweller. It's time to switch to decaf.

Here's a recap of what just went down: You dropped some acidic remarks without leaving clues to let us know what side you were taking. Sarcasm & exaggeration weren't my first guesses because, well, this is not a british newsgroup and for some cultural reason, only the brits seem to know how to do sarcasm right, without offending.

On the other hand, if it wasn't sarcasm, yah, you would have had a fight on your hand. That would have been grounds for a vigorous debate. The "Blame Clinton" strategy seems to be one that the media used because it paid so well back in the 90s. A lot of journalists and pundits put downpayments on their houses over that one, so we left Planet Reality Base, and we've never really plotted a course back.

My opinion is, that unless we manage to get those pundits to apologize for playing a very ugly role in a very ugly chapter in our country's history, we will forever be destined to be a divided country with two sets of historical versions of what just happened to us in the last ten years.

Otherwise, glad to see we're on the same side on this one.

[dweller]

34. no thanks

i like my coffee the way it is. The caffeine helps with keeping my BS detector primed, regardless what realm it comes from.

Good luck getting your apology from the press. Chances are you will never see one.

mine, on the other hand, was upthread.

cheerio,
dp

[fearnobush]

25. Oh, No Blood for Monica - I guess the Media won't remember that.

They, the media are if full, "Lets get Chimps numbers up." mode. You would think there is some real new damaging info on Chimp 911 soon to come out with all the Clinton did it chants coming from the Bush loving MSM.

[Pepperbelly]

13. I think you're thinking about the Sudan. nt

[Stand and Fight]

11. Okay....

:eyes:
Anti-intellectualism is apparently not exclusive to the FReepers I see.

[dweller]

19. nor is the opposite

exclusive to the realm of the apparently reading impaired.

dp

[jsamuel]

2. The Bush Admin is declasifying SOME documents trying to MAKE us think

something.

How many docs from their own time? None.

[mzmolly]

5. Actually, this bodes well for Clinton.

He wanted Bin Laden "dead" ... Bush on the other hand "isn't concerned with Bin Laden."

Clinton = tough on terror
Bush = cowardly inept idiot

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. Did you check the last line of the article:

"In October of 2001 a U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan toppled the Taliban regime."

Excuse me? Someone should get a screen shot of that sentence, because it's erroneous and shows the lack of objectivity of the writer. It won't be there in the morning if other people question it.

[mzmolly]

9. LOL. "Toppled" more like "emboldened"

Thanks for pointing that out. I didn't bother to read the article frankly. ;)

[lyonn]

16. Clinton did want Osama dead

The article also mentions the reward the U.S. had on Osama's head and that other? fellow.

[underpants]

31. The headlline (and CNN's coverage) is very disceptive

CNN shows CLinton getting into the POTUS limo.

The article itself is nothing new really and it shows that they were doing something ANYTHING about OBL unlike W&Co.

[Old and In the Way]

7. Meanwhile, what were the Republicans doing?

Were they interested in OBL? No, they were far more interested in really important business...like investigating Whitewater, Filegate, Travelgate.....they had hundreds of FBI agents roaming Arkansas tracking down every stupid rumor that the RW Slime machine could think up.

It's amazing how well Clinton managed to keep his eyes on terrorism, given the Inquistion he was undergoing on Capitol Hill.

[bilgewaterbill]

14. If the repugs hadn't been so hung up on someone else

getting a blowjob, Clinton could've focused on the information that was stumbled across. Does anyone believe that Pres. Clinton couldn't have solved this problem back in the '90's if it hadn't been for his need to protect himself from the incessant repug attacks?

[alfredo]

20. No, they had other objectives than getting Clinton impeached.

They wanted him to invade Iraq instead of focusing on Osama.

[Old and In the Way]

21. Really? I don't recall Iraq was a major topic with the Republicans

during Clinton's term...except after the alledged assassination attempt on Poppy in Kuwait.

[alfredo]

33. The neo conservatives,

the PNAC guys tried to convince Clinton that he should invade Iraq. He refused, saying Osama was his priority. It's been discussed here.

[daleo]

8. The process of rewriting history is continuous

As Winston Smith well knew.

[ChrisK]

12. Didn't Rumsfeld say it didn't matter if we caught bin Laden?

Something to the effect of "it would not have stopped the attacks on September the eleventh".

It's good for the public to see as much information relating to the attacks as possible but there seems to be something of a gap in the months before 911 that never seem to be addressed.

And why does it seem like the right has forgotten how rough they were on President Clinton during most of his term in office, making the chance to take REAL action to capture or kill bin Laden that much harder?

[patdem]

29. Damn, you mean Clinton did not capture bin Laden..good thing bush* has

or one might consider bush* incompetent.. Clinton did not spend enough time and effort to capture him before he brought down the towers, but bush* captured him with no effort aftward.........wait.....