The statement you made is not entirely true. I have heard the statements of the Afghan representative post 9/11. What he said was very logical and if only people had listened to what he was saying the invasion could have been avoided.
He said the following:
A. The Afghan Governement has no extradition agreement with the US. As such the US option could be to put up a case against OBL in an afghan court and let the court of a SOVEREIGN NATION decide whether this was indicated. It is a simple case of innocent unless proven guilty.
B. The islamic iddology prevents a muslim being handed over to a non muslim governement and this was even more pertinent as OBL was not a US but Saudi citizen. The Afghan Government is happy to hnd OBL to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as they are muslims and he is their citizen.
C. The Afghqn Govenment is happy for the ICJ to conduct a trial of OBL in Afghanistan.
Most of these suggestions were blunderbusted by the US administration who wanted OBL to be handed over unconditionally to them.
It is important to understand that whether one agrees with them or not they were a Sovereign agovernment and the response put forward was a reasonable one coming from a Government responsible for its residents.
To this date we have had no proof shown to the world of irrevocable evidence against OBL although I strongly feel that if he was involved in 9/11 he should have paid for it with his life. However this was never proven convincingly in a court of law and as such the requirements of justice were not met.
I think thhere is a lot more to this than has come out into the open. The Afghan incursion was never required and intermediation from the house of Saud would have resulted in an extadittion and subsequent arrest and trial of OBL. This was never done as the house of Saud abandoned OBL like hot potato and refused to accept him. Does anyone here think that the US could not have cajoled the Saudis into extraditing OBL if it was just about one person? They torture enough of their own what difference would it havs made to them if they had committed one more misdemeanor.
A
I think people should know some things and none of the following is classified.
I happened to be working outside a USAF airbase in 2001 and a few months after Bush was elected, starting in May (I believe), the nearby Army base as well as others around the country were locked down for training soldiers to fight and survive in a hostile environment.
My air force colleagues were told that it was very hush hush and maybe they were being trained to go back to Bosnia (probably seemed far-fetched to them also because of the ground reality in Serbia-Bosnia at that time).
Then after September 11, mobilization ensued quickly and Afghanistan was attacked. I was shocked by the 9/11 bombings and did not pay much heed to the timing of everything then.
Later, I thought maybe everything was pre-planned but quickly the US lost interest in Afghanistan and the case (which turned out to be false later) was made for getting rid of Saddam.
With Dick Cheney and Haliburton's pecadilloes that transpired later, I now believe that the plan in 2001 was for Bush's ego to be stoked to finish his "father's war" (whom I admire greatly specially his Second World War service, his trauma at seeing the blood spilt there, and his refusal in Desert Storm to allow the Army to push towards Baghdad because the war objectives had been met and only civilian and US casualties were likely to follow from that point on).
Karl Rove worked on the "Armageddon" angle and Cheney was happy Haliburton could fleece the American people and Bush probably pleased that his Texan (and Saudi?) oil friends could get a handle on the Middle Eastern oil supply and control things to their benefit.
The Osama confession video was such a bad case of video footage splice-in with awful costume and lighting, and bad Arabic that I lost any respect I might have had for the CIA's professionalism. The real parts of the video do not prove anything. Anyway, Osama or Bush or anybody being behind the 9/11 attacks is not my concern and I have no views on the matter.
What I do know is what I read in General Chuck Horner's excellent book "Every Man A Tiger" about the air war during Desert Shield/Desert Storm.
The general was out on F-16 training maneuvers when he was called to Washington exactly one month before Saddam's attack on Kuwait and he and the other chiefs were told to prepare plans for the exact scenario that would unfold later.
Seemed fishy to me at the time. Later, I learned about Saddam apprising the US ambassador to Iraq about his intentions at just about the same time as this calling of chiefs to the capital. The dear lady and her government are supposed to have not offered great protestations and dire warnings of reprisals by the US or NATO at that time. All that seems to have been left to a more opportune time.
All this is public knowledge and apart from a slight analysis, I offer no judgments since I do not really know what was in the hearts of all the actors in this Theater of The Absurd.
Apologies if any of this is inappropriate here.
this time with even less territory
never heard that before. Lol
