How Bush Was Offered Bin Laden and Blew It
Here’s the buried story of Afghanistan.
How Bush Was Offered Bin Laden and Blew It
BY JEFFREY ST. CLAIR - ALEXANDER COCKBURN
CounterPunch.org, NOVEMBER 1, 2004
George Bush, the man whose prime campaign plank has been his ability to wage war on terror, could have had Osama bin Laden’s head handed to him on a platter on his very first day in office, and the offer held good until February 2 of 2002. This is the charge leveled by an Afghan American who had been retained by the US government as an intermediary between the Taliban and both the Clinton and Bush administrations.
Kabir Mohabbat is a 48-year businessman in Houston, Texas. Born in Paktia province in southern Afghanistan, he’s from the Jaji clan (from which also came Afghanistan’s last king). Educated at St Louis University, he spent much of the 1980s supervising foreign relations for the Afghan mujahiddeen, where he developed extensive contacts with the US foreign policy establishment, also with senior members of the Taliban.
After the eviction of the Soviets, Mohabbat returned to the United States to develop an export business with Afghanistan and became a US citizen. Figuring in his extensive dealings with the Taliban in the late 1990s was much investment of time and effort for a contract to develop the proposed oil pipeline through northern Afghanistan.
Snip…
By the end of 1999 US sanctions and near-world-wide political ostracism were costing the Taliban dearly and they had come to see Osama bin Laden and his training camps as, in Mohabbat’s words, “just a damn liability”. Mohabbat says the Taliban leadership had also been informed in the clearest possible terms by a US diplomat that if any US citizen was harmed as a consequence of an Al Qaeda action, the US would hold the Taliban responsible and target Mullah Omar and the Taliban leaders.
In the summer of 2000, on one of his regular trips to Afghanistan, Mohabbat had a summit session with the Taliban high command in Kandahar. They asked him to arrange a meeting with appropriate officials in the European Union, to broker a way in which they could hand over Osama bin Laden . Mohabbat recommended they send bin Laden to the World Criminal Court in the Hague.
Continues…
https://www.counterpunch.org/2004/11/01/how-bush-was-offered-bin-laden-and-blew-it/
Link to marquee photo story: https://californianewstimes.com/oakland-grand-lake-theater-marquee-says-afghanistan-iraq-is-bush-cheney-war-criminals-legacy-oakland-news-now/491220/
Bottom line: Afghans offered to turn over bin Laden and Bush-n-Cheney declined.
= new reply since forum marked as read
By Dan Christensen
August, 2021 FloridaBulldog.org
During his 22 years as Saudi Arabia’s top diplomat in Washington, His Royal Highness Prince Bandar bin Sultan was a powerful influencer in the U.S., dealing with five presidents, 10 secretaries of state, 11 national security advisors and 16 sessions of Congress. He was close enough to both Presidents Bush that he earned the nickname Bandar Bush.
Bandar was ambassador on Sept. 11, 2001 when 15 of his countrymen and four other al Qaeda terrorists hijacked four California-bound commercial airliners from airports in Boston, Newark and suburban Washington, D.C. and crashed them into New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon and, after passengers intervened, a field near Shanksville, PA. Two days later, Bandar was photographed relaxing on the Truman Balcony at the White House with President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.
Today, Bandar’s American-bred daughter, Her Royal Highness Princess Reema bint Bandar bin Sultan, is the kingdom’s ambassador to the U.S.
Bandar is media savvy. Both before and after the attacks, he appeared frequently on U.S. television to deflect criticism of Saudi Arabia. Here’s what Bandar told CNN’s Larry King Live just three weeks after the attacks:
“Well, it broke my heart when I found that there are some Saudis with them. I must say that we now are sure that at least half of what we thought, who we thought were Saudis are actually not. Stolen passports, it is stolen identities,” Bandar said.
Continues…
https://www.floridabulldog.org/2021/08/former-saudi-ambassador-prince-bandar-bin-sultan-refuses-to-testify-about-9-11/
And thus, like all those trillions in petrodollars, property.
PS: A hearty welcome to DU, DickKessler!
Al Jazeera remembered the history and brought it up a decade back.
Taliban ‘offered bin Laden trial before 9/11’
Former minister says group was prepared to see bin Laden put on trial prior to 9/11, but US was not interested.
By Mujib Mashal
Al Jazeera, 11 Sep 2011
The Taliban government in Afghanistan offered to present Osama bin Laden for a trial long before the attacks of September 11, 2001, but the US government showed no interest, according to a senior aide to the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar.
Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, Taliban’s last foreign minister, told Al Jazeera in an exclusive interview that his government had made several proposals to the United States to present the al-Qaeda leader, considered the mastermind of the 2001 attacks, for trial for his involvement in plots targeting US facilities during the 1990s.
“Even before the [9/11] attacks, our Islamic Emirate had tried through various proposals to resolve the Osama issue. One such proposal was to set up a three-nation court, or something under the supervision of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference [OIC],” Muttawakil said.
“But the US showed no interest in it. They kept demanding we hand him over, but we had no relations with the US, no agreement of any sort. They did not recognise our government.”
Snip…
Robert Grenier, the CIA station chief in Pakistan at the time of 9/11, confirmed that such proposals had been made to US officials.
Grenier said the US considered the offers to bring in Bin Laden to trial a “ploy”.
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https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2011/9/11/taliban-offered-bin-laden-trial-before-9
