9/11 ...

[SteyrAUG]

I did not. When/where did that happen? I know they claimed to have totally disconnected from him and he them, but I was not aware of any physical attacks. Still not our job to protect his family due their connections.

The Bin Laden's are connected to the Saudi Royal family which has also been subject to attacks. Basically the Taliban / Al Quida / Bin Laden would love to see them all die on fire. But it's a strange dynamic. The Saudi Royal family is also involved in promoting Wahhabi and according to some reports complicit in the 9-11 attacks. But because they play footsie with the US they are a target of the extremists.

I'm sure you are aware of the Truman accord and how the US supports the security of the Saudi royal family when hardliners would prefer a pure Islamic theocracy. And in return they are supposed to keep a lid on the radicals and provide us favorable oil prices, of course they haven't exactly been holding up their end of that deal since the 1970s.

It's all a mess where our enemies are technically allies and while parts of the Royal family are fighting terrorism other parts are funding and supporting terrorism all the while also being targeted by the same terrorists from time to time. The important thing is the Saudi Royal family and the Bin Laden's are a larger group of people than the Brady Bunch with many divergent interests.

Despite that complexity, I'd have been good with a low yield nuke strike on Riyadh once we confirmed the nationality of the 19 hijackers. Several areas of Yemen as well.

[SteyrAUG]

Iraq was not a lost cause. Reading this thread there's a profound lack of Obama blame for how the two wars turned out.

Honestly the fault lies with Bush (41) for failing to direct the UN to mediate the Iraq / Kuwait oil dispute and then suggesting to Saddam that he would be permitted to resolve the issue and then sorta back dooring him when he invaded Kuwait.

Now make no mistake, Saddam is a vicious, sadistic dictator but so was the Shah of Iran and we supported him as well. More importantly Saddam presided over the closest thing to a modern, secular arab state that has ever existed in the region and that is why Reagan spent years cultivating the alliance.

Then Bush (43) responded to a potential threat of Iraq providing chemical weapons to terrorists groups and rather than simply eliminate Iraqs ability to threaten the US, Bush decided to "fix Iraq" while he was there and it was already as stable and democractic as it was going to get. If the Iraqis wanted western democracy they could have had it a 1,000 years ago.

Bush should have simply eliminated the top Ba'th party leadership, moved the middlemen to the top and told them don't make us come back here again.

I'm no fan of Obama but quite honestly he inherited that shit show and looking at it realized we weren't doing anything that was going to solve the problem so he did the right thing and pulled our guys out. Obama of course did many things to make it worse, especially in Syria, but much like Nixon he at least got us out of there considering we had no end game plan.

[Belmont31R]

Honestly the fault lies with Bush (41) for failing to direct the UN to mediate the Iraq / Kuwait oil dispute and then suggesting to Saddam that he would be permitted to resolve the issue and then sorta back dooring him when he invaded Kuwait.

Now make no mistake, Saddam is a vicious, sadistic dictator but so was the Shah of Iran and we supported him as well. More importantly Saddam presided over the closest thing to a modern, secular arab state that has ever existed in the region and that is why Reagan spent years cultivating the alliance.

Then Bush (43) responded to a potential threat of Iraq providing chemical weapons to terrorists groups and rather than simply eliminate Iraqs ability to threaten the US, Bush decided to "fix Iraq" while he was there and it was already as stable and democractic as it was going to get. If the Iraqis wanted western democracy they could have had it a 1,000 years ago.

Bush should have simply eliminated the top Ba'th party leadership, moved the middlemen to the top and told them don't make us come back here again.

I'm no fan of Obama but quite honestly he inherited that shit show and looking at it realized we weren't doing anything that was going to solve the problem so he did the right thing and pulled our guys out. Obama of course did many things to make it worse, especially in Syria, but much like Nixon he at least got us out of there considering we had no end game plan.

Syria is/was much more diverse than Iraq. You can watch Frontline doc's on Syria where they're partying like its Europe in Damascus while ISIS has sex slaves 100 miles away.

Saddam went off the reservation attacking Kuwait, and I don't think that response was wrong. Saddam could have cooled off post Iran-Iraq war but he turned things inwards attacking the Kurds and Kuwaitis.

I mentioned Brennan because disbanding the Iraqi army was a mistake that set us back by years, and in some ways that can't be measured.

Pulling out in 2011 and Obama's handling of Afghanistan cemented how people view both wars now. Obama could have easily signed a SOFA for at least SOF and advisory roles but he sent Biden to tell the Iraqi's we were out but ISIS forced his hand anyways. Obama instituted the surge in Afghanistan that was ineffective because TIC's had to wait an hour for air support and combat troops with 2-3 deployments worth of experience got told to mentor instead of fight.

[Rogue556]

Which report?

It was a report from 2002. There were 28 pages declassified in 2016 that had quite a bit of info on Saudi ties to the hijackers.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_28_pages

There is an external link at the bottom of the wiki page to download the 28 pages in question, if anyone so desires.

There was a thread about it here on M4C at one point if I remembered correctly.

Sent from my SM-N910P using Tapatalk

[SteyrAUG]

Syria is/was much more diverse than Iraq. You can watch Frontline doc's on Syria where they're partying like its Europe in Damascus while ISIS has sex slaves 100 miles away.

Saddam went off the reservation attacking Kuwait, and I don't think that response was wrong. Saddam could have cooled off post Iran-Iraq war but he turned things inwards attacking the Kurds and Kuwaitis.

I mentioned Brennan because disbanding the Iraqi army was a mistake that set us back by years, and in some ways that can't be measured.

Pulling out in 2011 and Obama's handling of Afghanistan cemented how people view both wars now. Obama could have easily signed a SOFA for at least SOF and advisory roles but he sent Biden to tell the Iraqi's we were out but ISIS forced his hand anyways. Obama instituted the surge in Afghanistan that was ineffective because TIC's had to wait an hour for air support and combat troops with 2-3 deployments worth of experience got told to mentor instead of fight.

You really need to know what April Glaspie told Saddam when he inquired about solving the Iraq / Kuwait oil dispute himself and what the US response would be if any.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Glaspie

That is where everything truly went sideways. It happened because the UN didn't want to make a determination that slant drilling on the part of Kuwait into Iraqi oil reserves was theft of resources and the US didn't want to take a stand because Kuwait was using US slant drilling technology.

The entire fiasco could have been avoided if somebody was willing to tell Kuwait they couldn't slant drill across the border and everyone else was willing to pay the extra .05 cents a gallon. Also given the Iraq / Iran war that Saddam thought he was fighting on behalf the US as well as for himself, we probably should have ponied up for some Iraqi oil even though it was above market price just to show we appreciated the effort and to help him repair his economy after almost a decade of war that went nowhere.

If we did that, we wouldn't have had to go be Kuwait's errand boys and reclaim their country and we wouldn't have had to stage out of Saudi which was really one of the bigger problems for the Taliban / Al Quida guys. We could have avoided a metric shit ton of drama by just doing the right thing.

Iraq could still be a mostly secular, stable quasi democracy and Uday and Qusay could still be torturing soccer team members who failed to perform as expected. Not perfect but so much better than what we got and what we still have over there. With the money we saved by not getting into the first Persian Gulf War we could have sent Saddam to the moon to help establish a Chinese base camp.

[Sam]

Bin Laden's son was killed by US special ops.

[WillBrink]

The Bin Laden's are connected to the Saudi Royal family which has also been subject to attacks. Basically the Taliban / Al Quida / Bin Laden would love to see them all die on fire. But it's a strange dynamic. The Saudi Royal family is also involved in promoting Wahhabi and according to some reports complicit in the 9-11 attacks. But because they play footsie with the US they are a target of the extremists.

I'm sure you are aware of the Truman accord and how the US supports the security of the Saudi royal family when hardliners would prefer a pure Islamic theocracy. And in return they are supposed to keep a lid on the radicals and provide us favorable oil prices, of course they haven't exactly been holding up their end of that deal since the 1970s.

It's all a mess where our enemies are technically allies and while parts of the Royal family are fighting terrorism other parts are funding and supporting terrorism all the while also being targeted by the same terrorists from time to time. The important thing is the Saudi Royal family and the Bin Laden's are a larger group of people than the Brady Bunch with many divergent interests.

Despite that complexity, I'd have been good with a low yield nuke strike on Riyadh once we confirmed the nationality of the 19 hijackers. Several areas of Yemen as well.

That's not the same as direct attacks by OBL on his own family. I don't recall any such event and I personally have no doubt some in his family, as well some within the The Saudi Royal family, were/are sympathizers to OBL cause and directly or indirect supported him. I have no doubt personally at least some within the The Saudi Royal family, vai their intel services, knew where he was all along, as well as those useless "allies" in Pakistan ... Obviously his kid, likely kids, knew were he was and and now one of them dead. Hopefully via a face shooter from our fine SOF who had time to say something "that's for 9/11 you POS"

It's a start...

[WillBrink]

Bin Laden's son was killed by US special ops.

I have not seen mention of how it happened, but do hope it was a face to face meeting between our SOF people to make sure he knew who was delivering the note vs say, drone strike.

[SteyrAUG]

That's not the same as direct attacks by OBL on his own family. I don't recall any such event and I personally have no doubt some in his family, as well some within the The Saudi Royal family, were/are sympathizers to OBL cause and directly or indirect supported him. I have no doubt personally at least some within the The Saudi Royal family, vai their intel services, knew where he was all along, as well as those useless "allies" in Pakistan ... Obviously his kid, likely kids, knew were he was and and now one of them dead. Hopefully via a face shooter from our fine SOF who had time to say something "that's for 9/11 you POS"

It's a start...

Can't find it now but there were reports of a couple assassination attempts after members of the Bin Laden family condemned his actions prior to 9-11 when it became known he was part of the attack on the USS Cole.

[Sam]

I have not seen mention of how it happened, but do hope it was a face to face meeting between our SOF people to make sure he knew who was delivering the note vs say, drone strike.

When I read the Fox article more closely, it seems that the killing might have happened even as long ago as July. The administration is just confirming it. If that's the case, they sure can keep a secret when they wanted to.