Remember The Cole…

“We long ago realized that if the American government had not let the Cole attack go unanswered, and if our investigation had not been so constrained, we could have undermined Al Qaeda and perhaps even averted the 9/11 attack,” writes former FBI agent Ali H. Soufan in today’s New York Times.

How true. Unfortunately, at the time we had a president who was much more interested in pursuing bad girls than he was in pursuing bad guys.

Soufan was an honorable FBI agent who sought to act in accordance with the law and generated actionable intelligence and prosecutable evidence by not crossing the line to torture.

But I have a hard time with his categorical statement that a more strenuous military response to the Cole bombing would have prevented 9/11. Let’s be honest and admit that short of stopping the perpetrators in the act, we don’t know what would have prevented 9/11.

There was a terrific story yesterday on Here and Now.
They don’t have a separate audio link, but it is on the rundown linked below..

http://www.hereandnow.org/2010/10/rundown-1011/#4

Tomorrow is the 10th anniversary of the al Qaida attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole in Yemen. In the bombing, 17 sailors died and dozens were critically wounded. For three days following the attack, crew members fought tirelessly to free their shipmates from the wreckage and keep the ship from sinking. America Abroad’s Jordana Gustafson talked with some of the surviving crew and brings us the story of how they kept the ship afloat.

And 3 months after the Cole bombing, when the new guy got sworn in, he did what, exactly?

‘And 3 months after the Cole bombing, when the new guy got sworn in, he did what, exactly?’
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Since groenhagen2 seems reluctant to answer, I will.
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Bush didn’t do a damn thing about it. Nothing at all.
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And, in what may have been the first truly foolish misstep of the early Bush administration (with many more to follow, of course), Ashcroft demanded that they stop talking about terrorism in his daily DOJ briefings so they could concentrate on pornography instead!

Hey, pinheads, when you retaliate, you do it immediately. You don’t want until three months later. The USS Cole was bombed with three months left in the Clinton administration. It occurred on his watch and it was his responsibility as president to go after those who were responsible. He failed to do so, and, as noted above, that made 9/11 possible.

So that August ’01 CIA/FBI memo, “al-Qaida Prepared to Strike in U.S.”, was just confetti??

What was done about the USS Liberty?

groaner: How many American military personnel were killed in Lebanon and how did Reagan retaliate?

Clinton made threats and didn’t follow through. Guess he was busy doing somebody else.

http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Exec.htm

During 2000, President Bill Clinton and his advisers renewed diplomatic efforts to get Bin Ladin expelled from Afghanistan. They also renewed secret efforts with some of the Taliban’s opponents-the Northern Alliance-to get enough intelligence to attack Bin Ladin directly. Diplomatic efforts centered on the new military government in Pakistan, and they did not succeed. The efforts with the Northern Alliance revived an inconclusive and secret debate about whether the United States should take sides in Afghanistan’s civil war and support the Taliban’s enemies. The CIA also produced a plan to improve intelligence collection on al Qaeda, including the use of a small, unmanned airplane with a video camera, known as the Predator.
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After the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole, evidence accumulated that it had been launched by al Qaeda operatives, but without confirmation that Bin Ladin had given the order. The Taliban had earlier been warned that it would be held responsible for another Bin Ladin attack on the United States. The CIA described its findings as a “preliminary judgment”; President Clinton and his chief advisers told us they were waiting for a conclusion before deciding whether to take military action. The military alternatives remained unappealing to them.

‘Hey, pinheads, when you retaliate, you do it immediately. You don’t want until three months later.’
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Really? You think the statute of limitations on retaliation had expired? You think Al-Qaeda gets a free shot if they attack during the transition between administrations? You think attacks that happened during the previous administration don’t count?
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And you go around calling other people pinheads?!?

October 23, 1983 US military barracks in Lebanon bombed, 299 killed. No retaliation.
October 25, 1983 US, at the order of President Reagan, invades Grenada.

nflfoghorn:

“So that August ’01 CIA/FBI memo, “al-Qaida Prepared to Strike in U.S.”, was just confetti??”

The August 6 PDB was a historical document that contained no specific information concerning an imminent al Qaeda attack. The portion concerning a possible hiijacking was from an uncorroborated report in the December 4, 1998 PDF noting that bin Laden could hijack a plane to win the release of Islamic extremists in the U.S. All action on that PDF was concluded prior to February 1999.

apr2563:

“groaner: How many American military personnel were killed in Lebanon and how did Reagan retaliate?”

I was in Marine Corps intel at the time and know that the number was 241 in the barracks attack. Remember that the French were also attacked on the same day. According to Reagan in his autobiography, “Although several air strikes were planned against possible culprits, I canceled them because our experts said they were not absolutely sure they were the right targets. I didn’t want to kill innocent people. While our intelligence people resumed their efforts to confirm that we had the right targets, Israeli and French forces, convinced they had sufficient information, raided the same Shiite Muslim redoubts in the mountains that we had considered attacking.”

Retaliation did occur.

It was not necessary for Clinton to wait on confirmation regarding al Qaeda and the USS Cole since there was already confirmation that al Qaeda was involved in the bombing of two U.S. embassies in August 1998. Clinton’s retaliation later that month was limp-wristed, and then he moved on to a preemptive attack on Iraq and a war of choice on Kosovo. There was no expiration date on retaliating for that terrorist attack, so there is not reason that Clinton could not have struck al Qaeda during the last three months of his administration.

But not the Americans. By the way I think that was a wise decision on Reagans part. I am sure Kristol and the other neo-cons were very disappointed.
However, invading Grenada was hardly a breathtaking military move.

groen,

“I was in Marine Corps intel at the time and know that the number was 241 in the barracks attack.”

You were? Where? When (from/to)? The 241 number was well known at the time, due to media reports.

You quote Reagan:
“While our intelligence people resumed their efforts to confirm that we had the right targets, Israeli and French forces, convinced they had sufficient information, raided the same Shiite Muslim redoubts in the mountains that we had considered attacking.”

Since you were in intel at the time, can you tell us what the French and Israelis’ operations were named, and what the results were of their raids – in the mountains of Lebanon? How many al Quaeda troops did they kill or capture? What info did they acquire through interrogation, documents, audio/video files, etc.? What was shared with US intel? What did US intel do with the info, if any, obtained by the (supposed) French and Israeli raiders?

Were the French and Israeli raiders less concerned with causing “innocent people” casualties than the US president, whose military garison suffered 241 murdered troops?

(I don’t expect an answer.)