Clinton could have taken out Bin Laden

• wkfan

  http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/07/31/bill-clinton-i-could-have-killed-osama-bin-laden/?hpt=hp_t2
  
  Should he have or not?
  
  discuss.
• TedSheckler

  

  Hindsight 20/20?
  
  Ummm, YES!
• Dr Winston O'Boogie

  

  I have never bought into Bin Laden's image. I think he was more figurehead than plotting genius. There is still an excellent chance 9/11 happens with him dead years before. He played zero part in the actual planning or execution.
• Commander of Awesome

  

  IQOTW nice fail
• HitsRus

  

  old news
• Tiernan

  Unless Bin Laden was gonna give Bubba a hummer Clinton would never got near him.
• ptown_trojans_1

  

  Very old news.
  
  Best book on the subject is Steve Coll's Ghost Wars:
  http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Wars-Afghanistan-Invasion-September/dp/1594200076/ref=la_B001H6OLII_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406987814&sr=1-2
• gut

  Old news...but is Clinton's logic/justification accurate or is he trying to spin and get aheaad of this resurfacing?
  
  I'd heard Clinton could have gotten him, but never really why he didn't. I always assumed it was simply that pre-9/11 we didn't run around assasinating terrorists.
• HelloAgain

  "He [Osama bin Laden] is a very smart guy, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about him – and I nearly got him once," Clinton said. "I nearly got him. And I could have killed him, but I would have to destroy a little town called Kandahar in Afghanistan and kill 300 innocent women and children, and then I would have been no better than him. And so I didn’t do it.”
  
  That could be revisionist history, but if not then it's tough for any thoughtful individual to disagree with the decision.
• gut

  HelloAgain;1641128 wrote:
  That could be revisionist history, but if not then it's tough for any thoughtful individual to disagree with the decision.

  Wouldn't disagree, but I am suspicious of the reason he gave - since when do we destroy an entire town to get 1 person? This is the same Bill Clinton that literally sent a cruise missle thru Gaddafi's front door. And based on the below, I'm going with Bill engaging in some revisionist history:
  
  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/25/cruise-missiles-missile_n_840365.html
  The Tomahawk, which is guided to its target by GPS, has tended to work well for fixed sites, like air defense systems, but perhaps less well for so-called fleeing targets, which depends on precise and up-to-date intelligence. In August 1998, President Bill Clinton ordered U.S. Navy vessels in the Arabian Sea to strike suspected Al Qaeda sites in Sudan and Afghanistan in retaliation for the Africa embassy bombings.
  
  "Though most of them hit their intended targets, neither Bin Ladin nor any other terrorist leader was killed," the 9/11 Commission wrote in its final report. "[Former National Security Advisor Sandy] Berger told us that an after-action review by [CIA] Director [George] Tenet concluded that the strikes had killed 20-30 people in the camps but probably missed Bin Ladin by a few hours."
• steubbigred

  ccrunner609;1640721 wrote:everyone has known this for years......the right is drumming up dirt about the clintons. The dirt will be more like mud come 2016

  There ya go 100%