Bush Tried to Negotiate with al Qaeda

According to these guys, Eric Schmitt a terrorism and national security correspondent for the New York Times. Thomas Shanker is a Pentagon and national security correspondent for the Times, Bush and co tried to directly contact Bin Laden following 9-11.

the months after the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush's national security staff, working through the intelligence agencies, made several attempts to get a private message to bin Laden and his inner circle.

The messages were sent through business associates of the bin Laden family's vast financial empire as well as through some of the al Qaeda leader's closest relatives, a number of whom were receptive to opening a secret dialogue to restrain and contain their terrorist kinsman, whom they viewed as a blot on their name. (To be sure, other relatives were openly hostile to the American entreaties.) According to a senior American intelligence officer with first-hand knowledge of the effort, the response from Osama bin Laden was silence. And the effort was suspended.

www.foreignpolicy.com...,1

If this is true, I am pretty surprised.

If the Bush administration were willing to be this pragmatic in regards to Bin Laden, why did they not take up the Taliban offer of handing Usama over if they were presented with evidence of his involvement in the 9-11 attacks?

Was attacking Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan simply a cover for putting boots on the ground in an area crucial to the world in the 21st Century?

What are we to make of the authors? They are 'guards' and insiders of the power centers in the U.S. What motivation to reveal this pretty shocking information now, 10 years later?

Anyone else surprised by this?

The party line was 'We do not negotiate with terrorists', 'Your'e either with us or against us', blah blah, etc.

President George Bush rejected as "non-negotiable" an offer by the Taliban to discuss turning over Osama bin Laden if the United States ended the bombing in Afghanistan.

Returning to the White House after a weekend at Camp David, the president said the bombing would not stop, unless the ruling Taliban "turn [bin Laden] over, turn his cohorts over, turn any hostages they hold over." He added, "There's no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty".

www.guardian.co.uk...

reply to post by Peruvianmonk

If this is true, I am pretty surprised.

You do realize this is the "official publication" of the Council on Foreign Relations, right?

Just checking...

reply to post by Ittabena


Yes I am. I have a subscription with them!

What a traitor I am.

I did question the motive of the publication and the authors in my opening post. Whoever has published it, it still seems worth discussing.

After all members discuss articles and some topics that are just beyond ridiculous!

Originally posted by Peruvianmonk
... Bush and co tried to directly contact Bin Laden following 9-11.

What, they actually held a séance?

st.

this vid says otherwise...



did anyone notice the following:

(i've never noticed this before)

George Bush: well.. deep in my heart i know the man is on the run if he's ALIVE at all...

NOTE:

this is just 6 months after 9-11 and Bush doesn't even know for sure if he's alive!?!

pretty big imo

reply to post by Peruvianmonk

I did question the motive of the publication and the authors in my opening post.

Whoever has published it, it still seems worth discussing, after all members discuss articles that are just beyond ridiculous!

Ok, just wanted to be sure. Thanks for the response. And no, you are not a traitor, though there is a fair chance that all the guys behind this publication are. I do see, however, the value of reading what the "bad guys" have to say.

Remember though the guys behind this publication also financed Hitler, Stalin, and were behind the attempted coup against FDR which General Smedley Butler exposed.

reply to post by kn0wh0w


The article states that the attempts to contact Bin Laden lasted months, following the 9-11 attacks.

In the months after the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush's national security staff, working through the intelligence agencies, made several attempts to get a private message to bin Laden and his inner circle.

www.foreignpolicy.com...,1

The Bush broadcast you posted is approximately 6 months after the attacks. Could the overlap between the two be due to the lack of response by Bin Laden, and the assumption that he would of course reply if he were alive?

Or something else?

reply to post by Peruvianmonk


that very well could be..

but he was the main target of the invasion, the so-called mastermind behind the attacks.

not knowing if OBL is alive, why still invade or occupy afghanistan?



something about this stinks very much.

why would he want to contact Bin Laden?

to state some ground rules for the war?
like they did in the cold war? according to the article...

absolutely sickening either way.

It was an attempt to replicate how the United States tried to sustain a dialogue with the Soviet Union, even during the darkest days of the Cold War, when White House and Kremlin leaders described in private and in public a set of acceptable behaviors -- and described with equal clarity the swift, vicious, even nuclear punishment for gross violations.

Originally posted by Peruvianmonk
Anyone else surprised by this?

The party line was 'We do not negotiate with terrorists', 'Your'e either with us or against us', blah blah, etc.

President George Bush rejected as "non-negotiable" an offer by the Taliban to discuss turning over Osama bin Laden if the United States ended the bombing in Afghanistan.

Returning to the White House after a weekend at Camp David, the president said the bombing would not stop, unless the ruling Taliban "turn [bin Laden] over, turn his cohorts over, turn any hostages they hold over." He added, "There's no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty".

www.guardian.co.uk...

Actually governments have and DO negociate and conceed to terrorist demands.

Just look at the UK and them giving the run of the country to the PIRA/Sinn Fein.

Ofcourse they give in to terrorists, if they are bombed often enough in the right place enough to cause financial damage. That is exactly how to get the UK to cave, hit London. Worked then and it will work now.

Now, where would one have to hit in America to get the same? NYC?

I thought Bush WAS offered Bin Laden?

Bush Offered Bin Laden !

reply to post by kn0wh0w


Well clearly UBL and the attacks had nothing to do with Iraq, it was just a pretext to take on any perceived threat to U.S. full spectrum dominance in the Middle East.

Example from November 2000.

Europe's dream of promoting the euro as a competitor to the U.S. dollar may get a boost from SADDAM HUSSEIN. Iraq says that from now on, it wants payments for its oil in euros, despite the fact that the battered European currency unit, which used to be worth quite a bit more than $1, has dropped to about 82[cents]. Iraq says it will no longer accept dollars for oil because it does not want to deal "in the currency of the enemy." Read more: www.time.com...

However with Afghanistan, it was pretty much accepted at the time by the Left, Right and everyone in between that it was a justifiable response to the attacks.

If the Bush administration did indeed try and contact UBL, I can understand why they kept it secret. Imagine if a Democratic president had come out with that, he would have been impeached!

Still a triple strategy of refusing to accept the Taliban deal on handing over UBL, invading Afghanistan and overthrowing the Taliban whilst trying to contact UBL and his organisation directly is either extremely confused or very pragmatic and intelligent!

I cannot believe I just used those words in regards to the Bush administration.

reply to post by Anonymouth


Of course I know many governments do negotiate with terrorists. That is the whole point of acts of terrorism, to force concessions from the centers of power, 'politics by any other means' as Clausewitz would say.

As a British citizen, I back the successive U.K. governments strategy of both negotiating with the IRA whilst degrading their offensive lust or capabilities.

It just seemed with the Bush administration were so ideologically blinded by the neo-conservative mindset that they would not be capable of such a multi faceted strategy.

Negotiate?



Bush was the

Leader

of Al CIAeda, now Obama is....

There is some truth to this. The Bush administration did attempt to contact Bin Laden after 9/11 for two reasons.

1. On 9/11, Bin Laden released a tape claiming he had nothing to do with the attack. But he was a connected man. They wanted to contact him, cut a deal and maybe find out who WAS responsible.

2. If you can make contact with an intended target, you can begin to track that target. Otherwise, they had nothing to go on. When the decision was made to point the finger at Bin Laden, they wanted to contact him so they could try to find him. And most likely keep tabs on him until they needed him.

Now the US was originally granted permission to enter Afghanistan by the Taliban in order to conduct a search for Bin Laden. But this was a ruse. The intelligence community was convinced that as soon as the US entered Afghanistan, Bin Laden would move to Pakistan, which he did.

However, during the early 90's the plans to remove the Taliban from power in Afghanistan and the Hussein family from power in Iraq were drawn up. The 9/11 attack was the perfect excuse to implement these plans. Bin Laden was never the real target during the Bush administration.

reply to post by allenidaho

2. If you can make contact with an intended target, you can begin to track that target. Otherwise, they had nothing to go on. When the decision was made to point the finger at Bin Laden, they wanted to contact him so they could try to find him. And most likely keep tabs on him until they needed him.

That is a good point.

I agree that the plans were already in place for the invasion of both Afghanistan & Iraq. The war with the Saddam state never ended, what with the sanctions and no fly zones, as for Afghanistan.

It is at the center of the new 'Great Game', and the rush for the vast energy resources both in Central Asia ans South China Sea.