--- "J. van Baardwijk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> If at the time the US government believed they > didn't have enough evidence > to put Osama bin Laden on trial, then refusing the > offer was a sensible > approach. Why bother to have someone handed over to > you, if you know you're > going to have to release him anyway? He would have > been a security risk > while in custody, and his release would have been > exploited as a PR stunt > for and by the Taliban: "See, even the evil USA > cannot touch us!". > Jeroen "Political Observations" van Baardwijk
We had enough evidence to know that he was launching terrorist attacks against the United States, and was planning on doing so again. We should, of course, have had Sudan hand him over, interrogated him, found out everything he knew about his organization, and killed him. Better _before_ 9/11 than after it, because 9/11 was an inevitability as long as he was free. The fact that it happened didn't surprise anyone I knew in the field - in fact, as Graham Allison said a few days later, in a real sense we were very lucky. The first act of catastrophic terrorism against the US killed 3000 people. Had it been what he - and I - expected it would be, an attack with a WMD, it could have killed 3 million. Most people think it's important to prevent things like that from happening. Gautam __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more http://taxes.yahoo.com/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
