Holy shit - US could have had Osama given to them

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2004-06-07 10:53am

Durandal wrote:
RedImperator wrote:TAnd by early 2001, the September 11 wheels were already in motion. Bin Laden could have been killed and it wouldn't have prevented the attacks.
Not if we'd been able to break him during questioning.

The problem with that being of course that they weren't going to hand him over to the US at all. Instead they wanted it to have been to The Hague or another similar body; if not an outright sympathetic Muslim state. The chances of them allowing him to be squeezed for intelligence are slim to nil.

Col. Crackpot · Post by **Col. Crackpot** » 2004-06-07 10:53am

Durandal wrote:I've made it clear in the torture thread in SLAM that I'd have no problem with torturing a known terrorist to extract vital information. Don't delude yourself into thinking that what happened at Abu Gharib is anywhere near analogous.

whatever helps you sleep at night.

spazkitten · Post by **spazkitten** » 2004-06-07 02:27pm

I think I heard of this. That shitty deal the Taliban tried to offer us for bin Laden's capture. They wanted our aid, military, to help bring him to justice. I guess they figured that we were the same government we were in the 80s when we made a similar deal with Saddam Hussein to bring down the Ayatollah. I'm sure since we did that a lot of illegal governments think we'll negotiate with them so long as there are more dangerous fish to fry.

Well, sorry, we didn't sell out this time. And the Taliban got what was coming to them.

FYI, Rumors that the Taliban has reorganized are misleading.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2004-06-07 02:45pm

spazkitten wrote:I think I heard of this. That shitty deal the Taliban tried to offer us for bin Laden's capture. They wanted our aid, military, to help bring him to justice. I guess they figured that we were the same government we were in the 80s when we made a similar deal with Saddam Hussein to bring down the Ayatollah.

The US never had a deal with Saddam with bring down the Ayatollah, though we probably would have if we'd thought he had the power to do it. US actions towards Iran and Iraq in that time period consisted mainly of trying to keep the war going on as long as possibul without one side becoming clearly superior, thus avoiding the victory becoming a local hegemony which would seriously threaten control of the flow of oil from the gulf.