How many times did Bush turn down Pentagon to get Zarqawi BEFORE Iraq war?

[flpoljunkie]

http://riffle.blogspot.com/2004/10/bush-didnt-target-zarqawi.html

(Article below is from the Wall Street Journal, no less).

Questions Mount Over Failure to Hit Zarqawi's Camp

Scot J. Paltrow. Wall Street Journal, Oct 25, 2004.

As the toll of mayhem inspired by terrorist leader Abu Musab al- Zarqawi mounts in Iraq, some former officials and military officers increasingly wonder whether the Bush administration made a mistake months before the start of the war by stopping the military from attacking his camp in the northeastern part of that country. The Pentagon drew up detailed plans in June 2002, giving the administration a series of options for a military strike on the camp Mr. Zarqawi was running then in remote northeastern Iraq, according to generals who were involved directly in planning the attack and several former White House staffers. They said the camp, near the town of Khurmal, was known to contain Mr. Zarqawi and his supporters as well as al Qaeda fighters, all of whom had fled from Afghanistan. Intelligence indicated the camp was training recruits and making poisons for attacks against the West.

Senior Pentagon officials who were involved in planning the attack said that even by spring 2002 Mr. Zarqawi had been identified as a significant terrorist target, based in part on intelligence that the camp he earlier ran in Afghanistan had been attempting to make chemical weapons, and because he was known as the head of a group that was plotting, and training for, attacks against the West. He already was identified as the ringleader in several failed terrorist plots against Israeli and European targets. In addition, by late 2002, while the White House still was deliberating over attacking the camp, Mr. Zarqawi was known to have been behind the October 2002 assassination of a senior American diplomat in Amman, Jordan.

But the raid on Mr. Zarqawi didn't take place. Months passed with no approval of the plan from the White House, until word came down just weeks before the March 19, 2003, start of the Iraq war that Mr. Bush had rejected any strike on the camp until after an official outbreak of hostilities with Iraq. Ultimately, the camp was hit just after the invasion of Iraq began.

Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, who was in the White House as the National Security Council's director for combatting terrorism at the time, said an NSC working group, led by the Defense Department, had been in charge of reviewing the plans to target the camp. She said the camp was "definitely a stronghold, and we knew that certain individuals were there including Zarqawi." Ms. Gordon-Hagerty said she wasn't part of the working group and never learned the reason why the camp wasn't hit. But she said that much later, when reports surfaced that Mr. Zarqawi was behind a series of bloody attacks in Iraq, she said "I remember my response," adding,"I said why didn't we get that <'son of a b-'> when we could."

[zbdent]

1. Simple - in June 2002, Bush still had to deal with the Repukes

being outnumbered - 50D, 49R, 1I.

[npincus]

2. Media Matters documents the few MSM reports of this under-reported story

http://mediamatters.org/items/200410270007

[flpoljunkie]

3. Thanks for the link.

[npincus]

4. you betcha

I wonder if, in this current shit-has-hit-the-fan climate for B*sh if there will be more appetite in the MSM to revisit this story and add it to the list of evidence of B*sh's incompetence.

You think? Now that al-Zarqawi has internationalized there is reason to go back to this story.

[flpoljunkie]

5. Good time to send these links to Olbermann. Perhaps Tweety, too.

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