Cheney and Rumsfeld were all over last Sunday's TV talk shows trying to eke out an iota of credit for the Bush administration in the capture and killing of bin Laden by way of talking about how the torture they espoused played a role in locating him. It was a pathetic attempt to exonerate themselves and at the same time claim a share of the credit. The fact of the matter is that waterboarding played no role in the killing of bin Laden whatsoever and all the credit should go to the Obama administration. However, Obama administration spokesmen will not come flat out and say that. Instead, they want to leave the door open to give Bush some kind of credit by saying that bits and pieces of the puzzle were gleaned from a variety of sources. Obama has bent over backward not to criticize Bush and his henchmen. What he should have done in my opinion was to come right out and say, "Torture played no role in the capture of bin Laden." But he is too nice a guy so he leaves the door open for Cheney and Rumsfeld to grasp at straws in an effort to vindicate their lack of competence.
Furthermore, I wouldn't be surprised if Bush had a secret agreement with Pakistan or some elements of the Pakistan government not to go after bin Laden. I make my case in terms of the close relationship between the bin Laden family and the Bush family. Here are three facts: 1) Osama bin Laden's brother, Salem bin Laden, financed George W Bush's oil company, Arbusto, which is Spanish for Bush. 2) On 9/11 as the planes were flying into the World Trade Center, Bush's father, George H W Bush, was sitting down to breakfast with another of Osama's brothers, Shafig bin Laden, at the Carlyle Group, a hedge fund that invests in defense contractors. 3) And the fact that other members of the bin Laden family were flown out of the country the next day after the 9/11 attacks at a time when no other planes were allowed to fly raises suspicions.
In the Boston Globe, March 11, 20004, Carl Unger, author of House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties, states that the 9/11 commission should ask who authorized the evacuation of 140 Saudi nationals on at least 8 aircraft making stops in 12 cities immediately following the attacks. "Many of the passengers were high-ranking members of the royal House of Saud. About 24 of them were members of the bin Laden family, which owned the Saudi Binladin Group, a multibillion-dollar construction conglomerate." Unger obtained passenger lists for 4 of the flights, which are posted on his website: www.houseofbush.com and includes the name of Prince Ahmed bin Salman.
"As reported last year by Gerald Posner in 'Why America Slept,' Prince Ahmed not only had alleged ties to Al Qaeda, but may also have known in advance that there would be attacks on 9/11. According to Posner, Abu Zubaydah, an Al Qaeda operative who was part of Osama bin Laden's inner circle and was captured in 2002, made these assertions when he was interrogated by the CIA. The commission should ask Mueller about Zubaydah's interrogation. They should also ask whether the FBI interrogated Prince Ahmed before his departure.
"But Prince Ahmed will never be able to answer any questions because not long after the CIA interrogation, he died of a heart attack at the age of 43. Yet we do know that he was on one of the flights."
Unger believes that this episode "raises particularly sensitive questions for the administration. Never before in history has a president of the United States had such a close relationship with another foreign power as President Bush and his father have had with the Saudi royal family, the House of Saud. I have traced more than $1.4 billion in investments and contracts that went from the House of Saud over the past 20 years to companies in which the Bushes and their allies have had prominent positions -- Harken Energy, Halliburton, and the Carlyle Group among them. Is it possible that President Bush himself played a role in authorizing the evacuation of the Saudis after 9/11? What did he know and when did he know it?"
So it wouldn't be out of the question that Bush might have made a secret deal with Pakistan not to come after bin Laden. Besides Bush needed a bogeyman out there to justify all his expenditures on defense and the War on Terror. If Bush wasn't in active collusion with Pakistan to harbor Osama, then at the very least he was totally incompetent in his capture. If they had such great evidence as Rumsfeld and Cheney said they had, that they obtained from waterboarding, why didn't they capture or kill bin Laden. Osama had been living in plain sight since 2005. So Bush had his chance to get him for the last three years of his administration. Instead he shut down the CIA unit, Alec Station, whose goal it was to find bin Laden. At the time Bush said publicly, "I don't know where he is. I just don't spend that much time on it." Of course not. When Bush took over as President in 2000 former members of the Clinton administration like Richard Clarke, Clinton's chief counter-terrorism advisor, were running around with their hair on fire trying to get the Bush administarion to take seriously the threat from bin Laden. On August 6, 2001 Bush was delivered his Presidential Daily Brief (PDF) which was titled "bin Laden determined to strike in US." Did he ignore it? Bush truly didn't seemed that concerned about terrorism when he first took office or about getting bin Laden after 9/11. He spent the entire month of August on vacation at his ranch in Texas.
On the other hand Obama reignited the CIA and told Leon Panetta, his CIA director, that it was his top priority to get bin Laden. President Obama's determination should be contrasted with Bush's listlessness and seeming indifference to whether or not bin Laden was captured or killed. In my opinion Obama deserves all the credit; Bush doesn't deserve even a smidgeon. Obama finally has the right strategy of surgical strikes against high value al Quaeda targets. The strike on bin Laden not only resulted in his killing but also resulted in minimal collateral damage in that most of Obama's wives and children lived through it. In addition a treasure trove of information was retrieved from bin Laden's house. It seems that Obama has all but wiped out al Quaeda while all Bush did was fart around and waste money on land invasions including lying us into war with Iraq which had nothing to do either with 9/11 or with weapons of mass destruction. Hey, but I bet the Carlyle Group made tons of money investing in defense contractors while Bush was President. And Bush's Daddy as well as some of the bin Laden brothers made plenty by investing in the Carlyle Group.
Finally, the fact that Pakistan is so righteously indignant about the fact that they weren't clued in about the pending attack on bin Laden would lead me to believe that there is something to the theory that they thought they had a secret agreement with the US not to come after bin Laden. However, that agreement, if there was one, was with the Bush administration. Obviously, it didn't carry over to Obama, and maybe that's why the Pakistanis are so pissed. After all their airspace has been violated many times before with drone strikes on al Quaeda targets and they didn't say a word in protest. It's a fact that Bush lied us into war with Iraq. Could it be that he lied about his efforts to get bin Laden too? Or was he just totally incompetent? At the very least Bush's incompetence has been shown off in sharp contrast compared to Obama's due diligence, determination and guts. President Obama stands head and shoulders above Bush both in intelligence and accomplishments. And this is why Cheney and Rumsfeld were trotted out in a pathetic attempt to claim some credit for Bush or at least to get the American public to take their eye off the ball and not question whether or not Bush even was trying to get Osama. They would like us to believe that their contribution to the War on Terror was "enhanced interrogation techniques." However, they don't mention the fact that the guy who didn't use these techniques was the guy who got the actual result of killing bin Laden.
