NOTE: The Los Angeles Times ran this story in December of 2001, so some might argue that it is not a "current" example of media propaganda enabling the Bush-Republican portrayal of Democrats as USELESS or even TREASONOUS in fighting the war on terror. BUT, note as well, THE EXTREMELY INFLAMMATORY HEADLINE, "Clinton Let Bin Laden Slip Away and Metastasize," which, in context of AN LA Times HEADLINE can be used by tens of thousands of Clinton-HATING Righties as 'documenting' 'a gospel fact.'
THE REFUTATION of Mr. Mansoor Ijaz's editorial is literally as simple as a single click away: Simply SEARCH for "Sudan-BASHIR-genocide" and you will find that the regime of Sudan President Omar El Bashir IS AT THE VERY HEART AND SOUL of the ON-GOING SUDAN GENOCIDE of the non-Arab Black Africans in the South Sudan... and he has been since well before Mr. Ijaz makes the claim of "being offered bin Laden" in 1998 or even back to 1996... indeed, GENOCIDAL ethnic-cleansing policies have been a hallmark of the Khartoum regime dating all the way back to the coup which established the Presdent Omar al Bashir and Hasan al Turabi regime in June of 1989.
-------------------------------------------------
For those who haven't performed that three-word search, here is the About.com's results for SUDAN-GENOCIDE-BASHIR, documenting Bashir's CENTRAL ROLE in the tens-of-thousands-killed on behalf of Radical Arab Islamist GENOCIDE...
http://worldnews.about.com/od/sudan/ig/Darfur/Sudan-President-Omar-El-Bashir.htm
- and here is another link documenting that Bashir/Turabani's genocidal policies, funded by oil-state Arabs, were indeed being executed as far back as 1989.
<
http://home.earthlink.net/~drbettyh/Sudanpage.htm
-------------------------------------
HARDLY the kind of Arab-Islamist leader(s) who are going to ENRAGE al QAIDA (and thereby earn an eternal FATWAH or death sentence from the accomplished assassins of that terrorist organization) by capturing Al Qaida's leader and shipping him off to Bill Clinton!
(Not to overlook mention, bin Laden is STILL a scion of the second most powerful family in Saudi Arabia.. and the Saudis JUST HAPPEN TO BE the Bashir-Northern-Sudan murderous regime's BIGGEST SUPPORTERS!)
YET THIS BIT OF EDITORIAL HOKUM, "Clinton TURNED DOWN bin Laden capture," is being distributed ACROSS THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE by Hate-Clinton Righties, with the blessings of the LA Times' official, presented-as-dogma-and-fact headline, "CLINTON LET bin Laden SLIP AWAY."
NO! It was PRESIDENT BUSH who "LET bin Laden SLIP AWAY" at Tora Bora.
It was PRESIDENT BUSH who stated "I'm NOT THAT CONCERNED ABOUT HIM (bin Laden) ANYMORE."
[Note: OFFICIAL US government, WhiteHouse.gov website, Bush's "not that concerned about bin Laden" comments about 1/3rd from top of official transcript.]
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/03/20020313-8.html
It IS President Bush who RENEGED on his "GET OSAMA DEAD OR ALIVE!" pledge, in order to RUSH IN TO THE IRAQ INVASION that Bush, Cheney, & PNAC neo-cons so lusted for.
And it IS indeed President Bush who is behind the "SMEAR CLINTON AS AN INCOMPETENT and/or TRAITOR!" Rove/Right-Wing SMEAR CAMPAIGN, just 7 weeks from election 2006.
-----------------------------------------
But in America media/cultural land, the MOST LOUDLY SHOUTED NARRATIVE becomes 'ESTABLISHED TRUTH." Or, as Goebbels said "repeat a lie BIG ENOUGH and OFTEN ENOUGH, and the public will accept it as truth."
In this case, the Right-Wing will SHOUT "CLINTON LET bin Laden SLIP AWAY" to the moon, 1,000,000 times PER DAY!
And the LIE is CERTAINLY BIG enough - it was President Bush who IGNORED CIA, FBI, Mossad, Egyptian, Russian, and even Italian security police WARNINGS that "Bin Laden was DETERMINED TO STRIKE IN AMERICA," AND IT WAS PRESIDENT BUSH who ALLOWED bin Laden to ESCAPE FROM TORA BORA!
---------------------------------------
Contrast the use of this LAT EDITORIAL by the Right-Wing MEDIA JUGGERNAUT, with the Ambassador Joe Wilson editorial in the New York Times which stated "President Bush KNEW the 'Niger yellowcake uranium ore for Iraq's WMD program" was FALSE when he, President Bush, included it in his Jan. 2003 State of the Union (SOTU) speech.
IN that case, the Cheney-Rove-Libby White House SMEARED Ambassador Wilson and ILLEGALLY "OUTED" the undercover CIA identity of his wife.
TO THIS DAY, the Right-Wing media juggernaut claims that #1.) Ambassador Wilson was lying; #2.) that he was only given his "junket" trip to Niger at the behest of his wife, as if going to Niger was a case of nepotism/favoritism; #3.) that she had already been 'outed' previously; #4.) that she wasn't even "undercover" or covert anyways; #5.) that "SOMEBODY ELSE DID IT FIRST!" - that Valerie Plame was outed by a State Dept. official or some journalists unrelated to the Libby-Rove-Cheney White House efforts to "shop around" the Valerie Plame identity; and etc.
ON top of all that, the lying NEW YORK TIMES, which SAT ON THE STORY that KARL ROVE had INDEED, PERSONALLY "shopped around" the story of Valerie Plame's identity - even though that very same New York Times published as truth his DENIAL of same - claims that it was some sort of 'forgetfulness' or 'journalistic oversight' that the NY Times ALLOWED Rove's PRE-MEDITATED LIE to remain undisclosed UNTIL AFTER the 2004 presidential elections!
Compare the ABOVE Rove/NY TImes/major media LIES and DISINFORMATION on a case that has now been practically FORGOTTEN, excused as "too complex" to condemn the Rove/Bush White House, with this LA Times EDITORIAL that portrays the Clinton White House as REFUSING an offer to CAPTURE bin Laden.
IN TIME OF WAR, this MEDIA MESSAGE BECOMES FACT... just as the whore-iffic media TURNED THE WHITE HOUSE TRASHING "scandal'", the "Lincoln bedroom 'scandal,'" and the "Travel-gate 'scandal'" into scandals or even CRIMES... even though THERE WAS NO SCANDAL or WRONGDOING THERE!
This is an ANCIENT propaganda technique, one that is more familiar to those who care to pay attention, by looking at the rhetoric of the Deep South on the eve of the Civil War, when White Southerners claimed loudly (and convinced themselves) that "SLAVERY WAS FOR THE GOOD OF THE SLAVES!", and "we treat them to harsh punishment out of 'COMPASSION,'" and of course "We can not permit the education of slaves FOR THEIR OWN GOOD!"
The difference between 2006 and 1860? In 1860 a significant portion of America was dedicated to the containment of slavery. In 2006, the AIPAC/neo-con lobby is dedicated to the EXPANSION of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld WARS in the Middle-east, and if SMEARING President Bill Clinton, ALLOWING New Orleans poor citizens TO DROWN, LOOTING Enron investors and California consumers, OUTSOURCING American jobs, and turning huge chunks of America's former prosperity INTO ENDLESS DEFICITS is the price America will have to pay....
[national debt and trade deficits FAR WORSE THAN REPORTED,
the TRUE 2005 deficits were $760 billion, NOT the $318 billion bushCo reported...
a full 6.2% of US GDP, vs 2.6% as reported by BushCo and regurgitated by whoreiffic media]
http://www.fms.treas.gov/fr/index.html
....(not to mention torture, backdoor drafts, systematic vote fraud, and police-state "Patriot' acts).... IT IS A PRICE THAT THE MEDIA, DLC DEMOCRATS, AIPAC neo-cons, and the Bush-Rove-Republican Party ARE MORE THAN WILLING TO push on to ordinary Americans.
(Hell, HILLARY CLINTON is so clueless, or so corrupted as the DLC Senator from AIPAC, that SHE IS IN ON THE CON that seeks to portray her own husband as either criminally negligent, at best, or as traitorous for "ALLOWING" bin Laden to "get away," as this bogus "SUDAN OFFERED HIM ON A SILVER PLATTER! after bin Laden orchestrated the bombing attacks on US embassies" propaganda story would have it.
=================================
Clinton Let Bin Laden Slip Away and Metastasize
Sudan offered up the terrorist and data on his network. The then-president and his advisors didn't respond.
By MANSOOR IJAZ
December 5, 2001
http://www.infowars.com/saved%20pages/Prior_Knowledge/Clinton_let_bin_laden.htm
President Clinton and his national security team ignored several opportunities to capture Osama bin Laden and his terrorist associates, including one as late as last year.
I know because I negotiated more than one of the opportunities.
From 1996 to 1998, I opened unofficial channels between Sudan and the Clinton administration. I met with officials in both countries, including Clinton, U.S. National Security Advisor Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger and Sudan's president and intelligence chief. President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, who wanted terrorism sanctions against Sudan lifted, offered the arrest and extradition of Bin Laden and detailed intelligence data about the global networks constructed by Egypt's Islamic Jihad, Iran's Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas.
Among those in the networks were the two hijackers who piloted commercial airliners into the World Trade Center.
The silence of the Clinton administration in responding to these offers was deafening.
As an American Muslim and a political supporter of Clinton, I feel now, as I argued with Clinton and Berger then, that their counter-terrorism policies fueled the rise of Bin Laden from an ordinary man to a Hydra-like monster.
Realizing the growing problem with Bin Laden, Bashir sent key intelligence officials to the U.S. in February 1996.
The Sudanese offered to arrest Bin Laden and extradite him to Saudi Arabia or, barring that, to "baby-sit" him--monitoring all his activities and associates.
But Saudi officials didn't want their home-grown terrorist back where he might plot to overthrow them.
In May 1996, the Sudanese capitulated to U.S. pressure and asked Bin Laden to leave, despite their feeling that he could be monitored better in Sudan than elsewhere.
Bin Laden left for Afghanistan, taking with him Ayman Zawahiri, considered by the U.S. to be the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks; Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, who traveled frequently to Germany to obtain electronic equipment for Al Qaeda; Wadih El-Hage, Bin Laden's personal secretary and roving emissary, now serving a life sentence in the U.S. for his role in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya; and Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Saif Adel, also accused of carrying out the embassy attacks.
Some of these men are now among the FBI's 22 most-wanted terrorists.
The two men who allegedly piloted the planes into the twin towers, Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi, prayed in the same Hamburg mosque as did Salim and Mamoun Darkazanli, a Syrian trader who managed Salim's bank accounts and whose assets are frozen.
Important data on each had been compiled by the Sudanese.
But U.S. authorities repeatedly turned the data away, first in February 1996; then again that August, when at my suggestion Sudan's religious ideologue, Hassan Turabi, wrote directly to Clinton; then again in April 1997, when I persuaded Bashir to invite the FBI to come to Sudan and view the data; and finally in February 1998, when Sudan's intelligence chief, Gutbi al-Mahdi, wrote directly to the FBI.
Gutbi had shown me some of Sudan's data during a three-hour meeting in Khartoum in October 1996. When I returned to Washington, I told Berger and his specialist for East Africa, Susan Rice, about the data available. They said they'd get back to me. They never did. Neither did they respond when Bashir made the offer directly. I believe they never had any intention to engage Muslim countries--ally or not. Radical Islam, for the administration, was a convenient national security threat.
And that was not the end of it. In July 2000--three months before the deadly attack on the destroyer Cole in Yemen--I brought the White House another plausible offer to deal with Bin Laden, by then known to be involved in the embassy bombings. A senior counter-terrorism official from one of the United States' closest Arab allies--an ally whose name I am not free to divulge--approached me with the proposal after telling me he was fed up with the antics and arrogance of U.S. counter-terrorism officials.
The offer, which would have brought Bin Laden to the Arab country as the first step of an extradition process that would eventually deliver him to the U.S., required only that Clinton make a state visit there to personally request Bin Laden's extradition. But senior Clinton officials sabotaged the offer, letting it get caught up in internal politics within the ruling family--Clintonian diplomacy at its best.
Clinton's failure to grasp the opportunity to unravel increasingly organized extremists, coupled with Berger's assessments of their potential to directly threaten the U.S., represents one of the most serious foreign policy failures in American history.
*
Mansoor Ijaz, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, is chairman of a New York-based investment company.
No comments:
Post a Comment