(...)After the Nairobi and Dar es-Salam terrorist attacks in 1998, the Justice Department wanted to stop Bin Laden, while the State Department considered that nothing should be done to hurt Saudi Arabia, and that the Bin Laden case had to be solved by the Saudis themselves. Until 30 August 2001, the person who was dealing with the capture of Bin Laden was Turki Al-Faysal, the Chief of the Saudi Secret Services, and he is the very same man who recruited and trained Bin Laden during the war in Afghanistan against the soviets. That's why John O'Neill had no illusions as far as the Bin Laden case was concerned. He knew he might be able to arrest his lieutenants on American or Egyptian soil. Certain authors of the Nairobi and Dar es-Salam terrorist attacks had been captured in Saudi Arabia. But when the FBI had arrived to interrogate them, they had just been beheaded. (...)
So we owe S11 as much to Madeleine K. Unbright as to The Shrub. Let's remember what strategic genius Maddy said about Iraq:
"We have heard that half a million children have died," [CBS's Lesley] Stahl said. "I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And you know, is the price worth it?" "I think this is a very hard choice," Albright answered, "but the price–we think the price is worth it."
Was she trying to debunk the maternal instinct myth or to out-Kissinger the repug hawks, show them she had bigger cojones? We'll never know what went on in the murky shallows of her spinal marrow. Maddy's appointment to State in the name of equal opportunity and payback for women voters was probably Clinton's worst self-inflicted woman problem. Clinton's record with ObL shows he woke up and smelled the coffee after the embassy bombings. But the dismally untalented and lazy Maddy? Not on your life.
Hakki