Clinton canceled 1999 bin Laden hit to protect sale of F16s to UAE

Source: http://boards.hbo.com/thread.jspa?threadID=800003550&start=75&tstart=0

The far left blasts Bush for not believing the August pdb, one of many ways al-queda might hit us, was the end all be all. Yet the al-queda version of the august pdb was ignored by Clinton. Al-queda attacked us in Somalia in the early 90's and Clinton cut and ran. Al-queda declared war on us in a 96 "fatwa" and clinton did nothing. Al-queda attacked our embassies in 1998 and Clinton did little, of consequence, about that. Al-queda attacked the cole in 2000 and Clinton did nothing about that.

Yet there were numerous iron clad opportunities for Clinton to get bin Laden and he turned them down. The Sudan offered to hand bin Laden over to us in 1996 and the Clinton admin turned the offer down, according to Clinton and others in the admin, because they didn't have enough to try him on, even though they knew he wanted to attack Americans. They were more worried about a law enforcement approach to terrorism than a military approach(kill him). There were numerous times when we were tracking bin Laden in the late 90's in real time by satellite, and they turned those offers down. The northern alliance offered to assassinate him for us but they turned that down because they didn't believe in assassinations(law enforcement approach).

But the worst IMO, Source: National Geograpic Channel "NGC Final Report: Osama's Escape" and Micheal Schuer(CIA Bin Laden Unit Chief), was that we had bin Laden at a camp and the Clinton admin called off an attack. They worried the Father in the UAE would cancel the billion dollar F16 purchase if his son, who was with bin Laden at the time, was hurt in the attack.

Now given the lefts outrage at Bush for thousands dying on 9/11 on his watch and their anger at wanting port security "outsourced" to the UAE, surely they would be furious about this as well as Clintons other canceled golden opportunities. If Clinton had acted on any of these warnings, incidents or opportunities, 9/11 may never have happened on anyones watch, especially since it was being planned during the Clinton admin.