Wag the Dog

So its been a little while since I've made a post. I've basically been dedicating most of my time to getting the McCain review out, but its going slowly as I try to find the free time to do it. Besides that, during my commute I've been reading the 9/11 Commission's Report and found something very interesting.

Apparently, there were two organized plans formed by the Clinton administration in 1997 and then again in 98 to apprehend, and take out Usama Bin Laden, respectively. The first was shot down due to low success rate and for political reasons, but did come very close to being executed. The second took place during the Whitewater Scandal and inspired the movie "Wag the Dog." Which people. This attack was executed specifically to launch cruise missiles at a meeting being held by Bin Laden and Bin Laden himself was the primary target. Its amazing how much slack Clinton took for launching this attack, that if happened today, regardless of any national politics would have received nothing but praise.

Why did it fail? Well shortly before this was the almost simultaneous nuclear weapons tests done by both India and Pakistan. The cruise missiles, in order to reach their target in Afghanistan, had to fly over Pakistan and as such the US wanted to inform Pakistan that these were our missiles and not India's to avoid a potentially disastrous situation. We know today that almost certainly, that Bin Laden had many friends in Pakistan and he was likely informed and able to leave the premises in time to avoid the attack. Sadly, before 9/11 not many people knew exactly how much influence Al-Qaeda had around the middle east.