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06/24/2003 Archived Entry: "Go ahead and try to blame 9/11 on Clinton."
Go ahead and try to blame 9/11 on Clinton.
The Thug Cabal has gone and pissed off the spooks - and the spooks are getting their revenge by leaking reports like this one. This sure reads like another vindication of Bill Clinton.
Though Predator drones spotted Osama bin Laden as many as three times in late 2000, the Bush administration did not fly the unmanned planes over Afghanistan during its first eight months and was still refining a plan to use one armed with missiles to kill the al-Qaida leader when Sept. 11 unfolded, current and former U.S. officials say. The military successfully tested an armed Predator throughout the first half of 2001, and top administration officials discussed such a mission at a White House meeting just one week before the suicide attacks. But they failed to resolve a debate over whether the CIA or Pentagon should operate the armed Predators and whether the missiles would be sufficiently lethal, officials told The Associated Press.
The months-long disappearance in 2001 of U.S. Predators from the skies over Afghanistan is discussed in classified sections of Congress' report into pre-Sept. 11 intelligence failures and is expected to be examined by an independent commission appointed by the president and Congress, officials said.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, the CIA put the armed drones into the sky within days - and they soon played an important role in one of the early successes of the war on terror.
Didn't Poppy fill the kid in on staying friends with the intel agencies?
Update: CNN goes one better, stating outright that Clinton's people told the incoming Thug Cabal about the OBL sightings and urged them to develop the armed drones - and they were ignored.
(Just a note - I fully expect this CNN story to be scrubbed or re-worded - they've got a history of doing this - so I saved the entire page, just in case. If anyone sees the scrubbing take place, notify me and I'll put the CNN page up on the server.)
