From Juan Cole at Informed Comment today comes a story that is just chilling. According to a French news documentary, French soldiers are claiming that they had Osama in their sights and could have either captured or killed him, but were called off by — you guessed it — the United States of Bush’s America.
If true this is either rank treason or gross negligence by President Bush and anyone in his administration that refused the French permission to get Osama bin Ladin, as Bush so famously stated back on September 17, 2001, “Dead or alive.” Osama Bin Ladin, the leader of the organization that killed 3000 people on September 11th. Osama, the sole reason a “War on Terror” supposedly was necessary. And yet, according to these French documentary filmmakers, we deliberately refused to let our ally eliminate him and the threat he posed.
Here’s some excerpts from Juan Cole’s post today translating the text of the Afghan newspaper report regarding the details of this alleged outrage which is scheduled to be broadcast as a documentary in France in the near future:
Afghan article says US Bin-Ladin hunt phoney
Text of article, “Bin-Ladin on the run? The rumour which was fact”, by Afghan independent secular daily newspaper Hasht-e Sobh on 29 September
So, the rumour was right: French soldiers trapped Usamah Bin-Ladin, but were not allowed by the Americans to arrest the apparent fugitive leader of Al-Qa`idah. A Bin-Ladin documentary just released by French documentary cinema examines this issue, an issue which has led to heated debate in the French media.
… [W]atching this revealing French documentary changes the rumours into disturbing facts.”Bin Laden, the failings of a manhunt”, produced by Emmanuel Razavi and Eric de Lavarene, two French filmmakers and reporters, assesses and confirms the claims of French soldiers that they could have killed Usamah within two operations, but the American forces prevented them. This film has not been broadcast publicly yet and is to be broadcast by Planet, a French network. […]
Facing the facts in this Usamah film is a bitter and disturbing experience and will make you nervous and wish that what it is that you are watching is just a baseless rumour, or a figment of Hollywood’s imagination. But it is not. The pictures are real and you are facing a debate in documentary form. The only justification for the bloody presence of America in Afghanistan is the ambiguous existence of Usamah Bin-Ladin and the Al-Qa’idah terrorist network. […]
(Description of Source: Kabul Hasht-e-Sobh in Dari Kabul Hasht-e Sobh in Dari – Eight-page secular daily launched in May 2007; editor-in-chief, Qasim Akhgar, is a political analyst and Head of the Association for the Freedom of Speech. )
Here’s a brief description of the claims made in the French documentary from a December 2006 Reuters article:
– A documentary says French special forces had Osama bin Laden in their sights twice about three years ago but their U.S. superiors never ordered them to fire. […]
“In 2003 and 2004 we had bin Laden in our sights. The sniper said ‘I have bin Laden’,” an anonymous French soldier is quoted as saying. […]
Razavi said the soldier told them it took roughly two hours for the request to reach the U.S. officers who could authorise it but the anonymous man is also quoted in the documentary as saying: “There was a hesitation in command.”
Razavi told Reuters several sources told them the sightings were six months apart and they declined to be more specific. […]
[France’s] special forces were deployed in 2003 to bolster Operation Enduring Freedom, a U.S.-led campaign against the Taliban and al Qaeda in response to the Sept. 11 attacks.
Afghans questioned in the documentary said they believed the United States was not interested in finding bin Laden, despite the $25 million price Washington has placed on his head.
The documentary stopped short of that conclusion but raised questions about the U.S. hunt for bin Laden, such as whether Washington is more concerned about preserving stability in Pakistan, where many support bin Laden, than in finding him.
So who is right? The French filmmakers? The Afghan newspaper that published this story? Or the American and French governments who have denied its veracity, and the mainstream media that has refused to investigate the allegations that the Bush regime called off attacks of Osama bin Laden by French special forces on two occasions. All I know is that Bin Laden (or someone claiming to be him is still threatening “spectacular” attacks against the United States and other Western countries seven long years after the Bush administration ignored the warnings of their own intelligence services and allowed the 9/11 attacks to occur.
OSAMA bin Laden is planning an attack against the United States that will “outdo by far” September 11, an Arab newspaper in London has reported.
And according to a former senior Yemeni al-Qaeda operative, the terrorist organisation has entered a “positive phase”, reinforcing specific training camps around the world that will lead the next “wave of action” against the West.
The warning, on the front page of an Arabic newspaper published in London, Al-Quds Al-Arabi – and widely reported in the major Italian papers – quotes a person described as being “very close to al-Qaeda” in Yemen. […]
The warning has emerged at the same time as publication of a report leaked to The Telegraph newspaper which reveals that a document drawn up by the intelligence branch of the Ministry of Defence says that thousands of extremists are active in the UK. […]
Security officials, The Telegraph reports, are convinced al-Qaeda cells will attempt another “spectacular” inside the UK with major transport centres, such as airports and train stations, the most likely targets. Other targets include the Houses of Parliament, Whitehall and Buckingham and St James’ palaces, with the threat level described as “severe”.
Of course, the right wing bloggers are all over the alleged terror threats by Al Qaeda, and naturally they are bemoaning the fact that Obama will be our president (but not theirs, of course) when such attacks may occur. Yet, do they report any word regarding these claims that Bush and/or the American military prevented the French from taking out Osama in 2003 — twice? That sound you hear is a thousand crickets chirping, my friends.
Now some may consider posting this story linking to the Afghan news report, and to the French documentary, as mere tin hat tomfoolery by a leftist moonbat. Yet I remember a similar reaction when the Italian press released a documentary about the Pentagon’s use of White Phosphorus as an incendiary weapon in Fallujah, Iraq, and as we all know, that story ultimately proved to be true, based on confirmation from official US military sources. So I wouldn’t dismiss this story out of hand just yet. Especially in light of the fact that it has been extremely convenient for the Bush administration (and its principal political operative, Karl Rove) to raise the specter of Al Qaeda and Bin Laden these last seven years to justify the actions they have taken in their “War on Terror” including, but not limited to, the ill founded and illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, the Pentagon plans to attack Iran with either conventional or nuclear weapons ordered by Vice President Cheney, the use of torture and unlawful detentions, the unlawful warrantless surveillance of American citizens, the murder of thousands of innocent Iraqi and Afghan civilians, and the use of imminent terrorist attacks as an election year smear tactic against Democratic candidates for national office.
How easy would have all that been for Bush, Rove and Cheney to accomplish if Bin Laden had been captured or killed back in 2003? By the French? How willing would Americans have been to keep troops in Iraq after Osama’s death? How effective would Republican claims that we would all die if a Democrat were elected as President in 2004 have gone over without those incredibly well timed Bin Laden videos to rachet up the fear level here in America? How many people would have been willing to sacrifice our nation’s honor, our moral integrity and our civil liberties if Osama wasn’t always there to use as justification for such extreme measures?
Just asking.
