A Gun to Bin Laden’s Head, But No Trigger Pull From Bush

I have to admit this is a dated story, but amidst all the spin about “who will make America safer,” there is this elephant in the room by the name of Kabir Mohabbat. Mr. Mohabbat is an Afghan-American businessman who at one time acted as a go-between for the U.S. government and the Taliban government of Afghanistan. This is a story about George Bush, our war-on-terror guy, giving up the opportunity to get Osama Bin Laden in a cage or a crater, his choice.

Here’s a link to the complete story by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair at Counterpunch.

Here is the summary: Back in 1999, the Taliban were feeling isolated. They were harboring Bin Laden and his people, despite various embassy bombings and other nasty acts. Their only real ally, Pakistan, was getting edgy about this, because General Musharrif was cozying up to the U.S. Osama was, as Mohabbat quotes the Taliban representative, “just a damned liability.” Through channels in the European Union, Mohabbat opened up negotiations between Kabul and Washington on how to dispose of Bin Laden. After the bombing of the USS Cole in October of 2000, the negotiations heated up. To quote the Counterpunch article:

“Mohabbat went to Kandahar and communicated the news of imminent bombing to the Taliban. They asked him to set up a meeting with US officials to arrange the circumstances of their handover of Osama. On November 2, 2000, less than a week before the US election, Mohabbat arranged a face-to-face meeting, in that same Sheraton hotel in Frankfurt, between Taliban leaders and a US government team.

After a rocky start on the first day of the Frankfurt session, Mohabbat says the Taliban realized the gravity of US threats and outlined various ways bin Laden could be dealt with. He could be turned over to the EU, killed by the Taliban, or made available as a target for Cruise missiles. In the end, Mohabbat says, the Taliban promised the "unconditional surrender of bin Laden" . "We all agreed," Mohabbat tells CounterPunch, "the best way was to gather Osama and all his lieutenants in one location and the US would send one or two Cruise missiles."

Up to that time Osama had been living on the outskirts of Kandahar. At some time shortly after the Frankfurt meeting, the Taliban moved Osama and placed him and his retinue under house arrest at Daronta, thirty miles from Kabul.”

So there you have it. As of mid-November, 2000, Osama Bin Laden was a dead man walking. So were all his closest associates. The Clinton administration handed over the package to the incoming Bush people. All that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their cohorts had to do was decide what mottos they would paint on the cruise missile nosecones.

Why didn’t they pull the trigger? It is inconceivable that they would have any twinge of conscience about dropping a bomb on the guy. They had the means and the opportunity. The answer has to lie in their motives.

The only thing that makes sense, and it is the obvious thing, is that Osama Bin Laden was more valuable to them alive and free than dead or captured. He was the poster boy for the continuing threat of terrorist attack, the bogeyman of militant Islam, the very face of world terrorism. Any scriptwriter will tell you that every movie needs a villain, an individual villain with a face and a personality. Bin Laden provided that at a time when the Bush/Cheney administration needed a frightened citizenry that would accept their wars and attacks on civil rights. With Bin Laden and his top men dead, the invasion of Afghanistan would have been unnecessary. Al Qaeda would have been decapitated. Much of the emotional justification behind the anti-constitutional offensive would have drained away. The attacks of 9-11 might have been disrupted.

As I said at the beginning, none of this is breaking news. It’s just that this story is the one that lays bare the power hungry immorality of the present administration. Their only excuse could be a level of incompetence beyond comprehension. It is the great, yet little known crime of the people who now run the country. It has yet to enter the general American consciousness, while sexual scandals and suicidal gunmen suck up airtime and column inches. It deserves a wider hearing. I have never asked my readers to forward a story, believing that a story should propagate by merit. I’ll break my rule this time and ask you to send it around.