and manufactured a case for war with Iraq.
Sen. John Kerry: "I have no doubt in my mind it's Osama bin Laden," he told CNN. "It's very much in keeping with the threats he has made."
A number of attempted attacks, or plans for attacks, have been "thwarted" this summer, said Kerry. CIA Director George Tenet briefed him on the failed efforts a few weeks ago, he said.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/investigation.terrorism/The involvement of both a bin Laden family affiliate, the Saudi Investment Company (SICO), and of the bin Mahfouz family National Commercial Bank, with the Bank of New York - Inter Maritime Bank of Geneva, owned and managed by Bruce Rappaport. The Kerry-Brown Report gave details of the involvement in the 1980s of Rappaport, and of his bank's Vice President, Alfred Hartmann, with BCCI, with former CIA Director William Casey, and with the National Bank of Oman which forwarded Arab money to the Afghan mujahedin (Beaty and Gwynne, The Outlaw Bank, 311-12; Kerry-Brown Report, 318-20; cf. 69).
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/11intel.htm The bin Laden family have tried to depict Osama as a renegade, and more recently the bin Mahfouz family have tried to say the same of Khalid. The details of this nexus make both claims highly unlikely. It would appear that the main reason we do not get the whole truth about this nexus is the involvement of Saudi, British, and US intelligence, not just before 1991, but today.
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~pdscott/q4b.html . . . destroying al Qaeda and other anti-American terror groups must remain our top priority. While the Administration has largely prosecuted this war with vigor, it also has made costly mistakes. The biggest, in my view, was their reluctance to translate their robust rhetoric into American military engagement in Afghanistan. They relied too much on local warlords to carry the fight against our enemies and this permitted many al Qaeda members, and according to evidence, including Osama bin Laden himself, to slip through our fingers. Now the Administration must redouble its efforts to track them down. And we need to pressure Pakistan to get control of its territories along the Afghanistan border, which have become a haven for terrorists.
http://www.vote-smart.org/speech_detail.php?speech_id=M000003082&keyword=&phrase=bin+laden&contain="A bold President would have sent American forces, not Afghan warlords, into Tora Bora to attack and capture Osama bin Laden and the leaders of Al Quaeda."
http://www.vote-smart.org/speech_detail.php?speech_id=M000007305&keyword=&phrase=bin+laden&contain=And in the war against terrorism, let me state clearly what we all know in our hearts to be true: two years after the tragic events of 9/11 we have not made our nation safe enough. Overseas, our Commander-in-Chief turned to Afghan warlords for the assault on Tora Bora; Osama Bin Laden got away and today the Taliban and Al Qaeda are regrouping.
And here on the home front, every investigation, every commission, every piece of evidence we have tells us that this President has failed to make us as safe as we should be.
http://www.vote-smart.org/speech_detail.php?speech_id=M000018587&keyword=&phrase=bin+laden&contain=This is now a golden opportunity. It's a huge opportunity. I hope the president will fully seize it. We can bring other countries to the table, reduce the burden and, frankly, turn our attention to the real war on terror, which is the effort to capture Osama bin Laden and to focus on al Qaeda around the world.
http://www.vote-smart.org/speech_detail.php?speech_id=M000025910&keyword=&phrase=bin+laden&contain=Americans won't be fooled into confusing the War on Terror with the capture of Saddam Hussein. I think most Americans would agree that having Saddam Hussein behind bars has made us safer. It's George Bush who tries to trick the American people into confusing Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. And Democrats owe it to America to be better than that.
Americans deserve a candidate for President who Americans can trust to protect our security both at home and abroad.
http://www.vote-smart.org/speech_detail.php?speech_id=M000026317&keyword=&phrase=bin+laden&contain=MATTHEWS: One of your arguments made by your competitors is we could have gotten Saddam Hussein, and we didn't have to get Saddam Hussein right away. We did have to get Osama bin Laden. We still haven't gotten him because we were diverted by going after Saddam Hussein.
Do you believe in that prescription?
KERRY: Absolutely. No question about it. I agree that there was no rush there.
I also believe that this administration failed when it had an opportunity, and it failed because the civilian leadership made decisions that held our own troops back. And they were unwilling to commit to the kind of daring necessary to capture Osama bin Laden.
The military mission of Tora Bora, I was the first person in the country to point out publicly that that was a failed mission. And it was a failed mission because they went in; they had him cornered in the mountains. They knew it, and they didn't deploy the troops necessary to kill him.
In fact, what they wound up doing was breaking up the beehive. They didn't kill the killer bees; they didn't kill the queen bee. They dispersed them.
Now we're living, in fact, in a more dangerous world where this administration is not even building the levels of cooperation that they need to on a global basis.
The real war on terror, Chris, is not Iraq; it is not military. It is an intelligence gathering and law enforcement operation. And the real war on terror requires the president to deal with Pakistan more effectively so we can do what we need to do in the northwest corner of the country and on the border, which is where Osama bin Laden is.
And until you deal with the radical Islamic issue, the nuclear weapons that might fall in their hands, you are not making the United States of America as safe as we ought to be.
MATTHEWS: If you were president today, how would you pressure Musharraf, the president of Pakistan, to get tough on his own Islamist fundamentalist dangerous people and at the same time a second front in capturing Osama bin Laden, and at the same time survive?
KERRY: I think the most important thing, Chris, that we need to do is make certain that there's a fail safe mechanism for the protection of the nuclear weapons in Pakistan. That's the danger.
There have been two attempts on his life in recent days. And if those weapons were to fall into the hand of radical Islamic, then you have an entirely different situation particularly with Osama bin Laden in the country. That's the first order of business.
And the second order of business is to work through whatever is necessary to strengthen and empower the capacity for democracy for him to be able to hold on. That is important to us.
But you can't do it halfway and you can't do it the way they've done it without even completing the task of Afghanistan itself. We haven't moved rapidly enough to do the reconstruction there.
The opium-the opium sales and the amount of the crop coming out of Afghanistan has grown enormously under the Bush administration, and that's what's funding now some of the warlords and some of the radical Taliban efforts in the north part of the country.
We sent our troops to Afghanistan to kill Osama bin Laden. And it is not difficult for somebody to say yes, he's guilty. Yes, we ought to try him, but I believe he's guilty. I mean, that's a simple matter of belief that is reasonable, it seems to me.
http://www.vote-smart.org/speech_detail.php?speech_id=M000026827&keyword=&phrase=bin+laden&contain=We need a candidate for president who can stand up, as I believe I can, and take on Karl Rove and the Republicans and remind them that they're not the only ones who know something about aircraft carriers. I know something about aircraft carriers. And we're not going to let them hide the fact that they lost 3.1 million jobs, walked away from their responsibilities to the country. We need to hold them accountable on domestic affairs, on foreign affairs. We need to go right at them.
Remember, they thought that was their strong suit. They can't find Osama bin Laden. They can't find Saddam Hussein. They can't even find a leaker in the White House, and they probably don't want to be able to. (Cheers/applause.) And we need to take that away.
So I have confidence—I have confidence that we will win next year if we deserve to win. And I ask all of you, the backbone of the Democratic Party, the DNC, I say to you and I say to activists all across this country, have faith in who we are and what we believe. Stand up for our values.
Have the courage to make the choices that are right for our nation. Let's go out and do the work. Let's put America back to work by putting George Bush and Dick Cheney out of work. Let's go get it done.
http://www.vote-smart.org/speech_detail.php?speech_id=M000020623&keyword=&phrase=bin+laden&contain=(Cheers/applause.)
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