Tuesday, March 23, 2004

The "Big News"

Here's the embargoed info that CNN keeps teasing us about (at least I assume so):

WASHINGTON (AP) - One day before the Sept. 11 attacks, senior Bush administration officials agreed that the United States would try to overthrow Afghanistan's Taliban rulers if a final diplomatic push to expel Osama bin Laden from the country failed, a federal panel reported Tuesday.

The independent commission reviewing the attacks said in a preliminary report that in the years before the attacks the Clinton and Bush administrations chose to use diplomatic rather than military options, which allowed bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders to elude capture.

...

Shortly before the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration was debating how to force bin Laden out of Afghanistan. At a Sept. 10, 2001, meeting of second-tier Cabinet officials, officials settled on a three-phase strategy. The first step called for dispatching an envoy to talk to the Taliban. If this failed, diplomatic pressure would be applied and covert funding and support for anti-Taliban fighters would be increased.

If both failed, "the deputies agreed that the United States would seek to overthrow the Taliban regime through more direct action," the report said. Deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley said the strategy had a three-year timeframe.


This isn't particularly big news.

...also


WASHINGTON (AP) - In a secret diplomatic mission, Saudi Arabia won a commitment from Afghanistan's Taliban rulers to expel Osama bin Laden in 1998, but the Taliban later reneged on the agreement, a federal panel said Tuesday.
The mission was among the most promising, yet ultimately fruitless, efforts by the United States to use diplomacy to stop al-Qaida in the years before the Sept. 11 attacks.

The independent commission reviewing the Sept. 11 attacks said in a preliminary report that the decision to use diplomatic rather than military options against al-Qaida allowed the Sept. 11 terrorists to elude capture years before the attacks.


So, it was all Clinton's fault even though Bush was going to do the same thing once he got around to it.