Read this and ask whether we've lost the ability to defend
ourselves. I wonder whose our real enemy?
Kelvin
XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX SAT OCT 13, 2001 15:29:42 ET
XXXXX
MAG: U.S. MILITARY FAILED TO KILL TALIBAN LEADER WHEN HE WAS
IN SIGHT DURING FIRST NIGHT OF WAR; RUMSFELD FURIOUS
The U.S. military failed to kill Taliban leader Mullah Omar
when he was in its sights during the first night of the war, the NEW YORKER is
planning to report on Monday.
According to publishing sources, Seymour Hersh has filed a
story quoting top intelligence-community members claiming to be 'crestfallen'
about the incident.
Reaction in Washington to the failure to strike immediately
was fierce, Hersh reports. Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld was "kicking a lot of glass and breaking doors," one military
official said. An unmanned Predator
reconnaissance aircraft operating in the Kabul area identified a convoy carrying
Mullah Omar as he fled the capital.
The Predator is armed with two anti-tank missiles, but under
the rules of engagement in effect Sunday night the C.I.A. could not order such a
strike. Although the precise sequence of events could not be fully learned,
Hersh reports, General Tommy R. Franks, the commander in charge at the United
States Central Command in Florida reported that 'Judge
Advocate General, a legal officer', doesn't like this, so we're not going to
fire.' [Shakespeare was right - get rid of all the
lawyers]
It was decided to target a few cars in front of the building
to perhaps scare Mullah Omar out of the building to take a look. Omar did leave
the building, but not immediately. Soon after he left, Hersh reports, the
building was targeted and destroyed by F-18s, too late to kill Omar.
Hersh also reports that a number of conversations between
members of the Saudi Arabian royal family that were electronically intercepted
by the National Security Agency, beginning as early as 1994, "demonstrated to analysts that by 1996 Saudi money was supporting
Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda and other extremist groups."
[What the heck are doing in Saudi Arabia then?]
The intercepts, Hersh writes, "depict a regime increasingly
corrupt, alienated from the country's religious rank and file, and so weakened
and frightened that it has brokered its future by channelling hundreds of
millions of dollars in what amounts to protection money to fundamentalist groups
that wily members, and the funding of fundamentalist groups through charities.
The intelligence official tells Hersh that asfar as bankrolling fundamentalist
groups goes, the Saudis had "gone to the dark side."
Current and former intelligence officials suggest, Hersh
reports, that the instability of the Saudi regime is "the most immediate threat
to American economic and political interests in the Middle East," and that "the
Bush Administration, like the Clinton Administration, is refusing to confront
this reality." Impacting Monday...
END
