Millions of Messages Sent, but Only Handful Mention Al Qaeda Leader
By Margie Burns

Missing” White House emails retrieved from Bush administration records indicate that top Bush Justice Department officials had little interest in the pursuit of Osama bin Laden or Mullah Mohammed Omar, head of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), prolonged correspondence has pursued “missing” emails between the Bush White House and Bush’s attorney general, deputy attorney general, associate attorney general, Office of Public Affairs, Office of Legal Counsel and Office of the Inspector General, in the Justice Department.

After a lengthy search, President Obama’s Office of Information Policy, which handles FOIA requests, found emails pertaining to Osama bin Laden or to Mullah Omar only in Attorney General and Office of Public Affairs records from the Bush administration. Alberto Gonzales, previously Bush’s White House counsel and then Attorney General, did not use email.

Robert Burns, AP

WASHINGTON — Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden may periodically slip back into Afghanistan from his remote hideout in neighboring Pakistan, a senior White House official says, adding a new twist to the mystery of the elusive terrorist's whereabouts.

President Barack Obama's national security adviser, James Jones, said bin Laden, believed hiding mainly in a rugged area of western Pakistan, may be spending some time in Afghanistan, where he was based while plotting the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

But Obama's Pentagon chief, Robert Gates, said the U.S. has lacked good intelligence on bin Laden for a long time – "I think it has been years" – and did not confirm that he'd slipped into Afghanistan.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/06/no-good-osama-bin-laden-i_n_381647.html

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the United States has not had good intelligence on the whereabouts of terrorist Osama bin Laden in years.

Gates made the comment in an interview to be aired Sunday on ABC's "This Week."

Asked whether he could confirm recent reports that bin Laden had been seen recently in Afghanistan, Gates said "no." Media reports late this week mentioned accounts of unconfirmed bin Laden sightings in recent weeks.

Bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaida, is believed to be hiding on the Pakistan side of the border with Afghanistan.

http://foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Tora_Bora_Report.pdf

TORA BORA REVISITED: HOW WE FAILED
TO GET BIN LADEN AND WHY
IT MATTERS TODAY
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

On October 7, 2001, U.S. aircraft began bombing the training
bases and strongholds of Al Qaeda and the ruling Taliban across
Afghanistan. The leaders who sent murderers to attack the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon less than a month earlier and the
rogue government that provided them sanctuary were running for
their lives. President George W. Bush’s expression of America’s desire
to get Osama bin Laden ‘‘dead or alive’’ seemed about to come
true.

Two months later, American civilian and military leaders celebrated
what they viewed as a lasting victory with the selection of
Hamid Karzai as the country’s new hand-picked leader. The war
had been conceived as a swift campaign with a single objective: defeat
the Taliban and destroy Al Qaeda by capturing or killing bin
Laden and other key leaders. A unique combination of airpower,
Central Intelligence Agency and special operations forces teams
and indigenous allies had swept the Taliban from power and ousted

Senate report: Bin Laden was 'within our grasp'

By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 41 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Osama bin Laden was unquestionably within reach of U.S. troops in the mountains of Tora Bora when American military leaders made the crucial and costly decision not to pursue the terrorist leader with massive force, a Senate report says.

The report asserts that the failure to kill or capture bin Laden at his most vulnerable in December 2001 has had lasting consequences beyond the fate of one man. Bin Laden's escape laid the foundation for today's reinvigorated Afghan insurgency and inflamed the internal strife now endangering Pakistan , it says.

Staff members for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Democratic majority prepared the report at the request of the chairman, Sen. John Kerry , as President Barack Obama prepares to boost U.S. troops in Afghanistan .

Put Osama bin Laden on trial
By Paul Cruickshank, Special to CNN

Editor's note: Paul Cruickshank, a Fellow at the NYU Center on Law and Security, regularly contributes to CNN's coverage of al Qaeda terrorism.

New York (CNN) -- The announcement that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other men accused of the 9/11 attacks will soon be moved to New York to face trial in a federal court will be welcomed by some Americans as finally starting the process of bringing the perpetrators of these attacks to justice.

To date, not one person has been convicted for the attacks. But it also will be a reminder that their boss, the man most responsible for killing 3,000 civilians -- the majority of them Americans but many from all around the world -- is still at large.

http://surgeeditorials.typepad.com/surge-editorials/2009/10/why-its-impossible-to-support-the-war-in-afghanistan-.html

10/31/2009
Why it's impossible to support the war in Afghanistan

It's been eight years since the United States invaded Afghanistan. After all these years many Americans have lost sight of the alleged purpose of our invasion - to hunt for Osamabin Laden and al Qaeda.

What has also been lost is any government inquiry whatsoever into the accuracy of the "smoking gun" evidence that the Bush Administration presented as the final justification for invading Afghanistan - the peculiar "Osama bin Laden confession video".

Released on December 13, 2001, the videotape of bin Laden and associates taking pleasure in the 9/11 attack was seen around the world - over and over again. I remember the 24 hour news channels playing the same scenes practically non-stop while the talking heads told their audiences that this was absolute proof that the United States invasion of Afghanistan a few months earlier on October 7, 2001 was the right action.

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=317
The Real Intelligence Failure
By Philip Giraldi
Published 11/04/09

Most Americans believe that we are in a terrible dilemma. An increasing number are uncomfortable with the continuing carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan and fearful of the consequences of yet another Middle East war, this time against Iran, but most also believe that our country is threatened by dark forces that seek to destroy us and that extreme measures are justified. Few realize that fear alone is bringing about our transformation into a country driven by constant warfare to the detriment of our constitutional liberties.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1932318,00.html
By Andrew Lee Butters
Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2009

For Omar Bin Laden, the fourth eldest of Osama bin Laden's 20 known children, the awful realization that his own father was a terrorist mastermind plotting a global conspiracy that would destroy the lives of thousands of innocent people and even his own family came gradually. Of course, there were warning signs: Omar's childhood was marked by regular beatings and survivalist training; there was the growing army of ruffians and retainers who called his father "Prince"; and then there was that Afghan mullah who had given his father an entire mountain in Tora Bora.

[This Muckraker Report article is apparently not online:

Taking the fat out of the fat bin Laden confession video
http://www.muckrakerreport.com/id372.html

A PDF version was found here:

http://nuke.crono911.org/Portals.../ muckracker.pdf]

This is a response to Dr. Griffin's article:

Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23691.htm

Oh Dr. Griffin--

You keep making avoidable mistakes and sabotaging your own credibility.

This article has two serious mistakes, that shouldn't be repeated ignorantly. They both go back to the "confession tape."

1) Griffin should know by now that the video was converted and so the aspect ratio was changed. The PAL (European standard) to NTSC (American standard) conversion squishes the vertical by 17%. This is the reason the "actor" did not appear to be Osama bin Laden. Once the video frames are converted back to their proper ratio, they appear to be exactly Osama bin Laden. This was while he was still alive in September or October of 2001.

Study this article carefully:

http://nuke.crono911.org/Portals.../ muckracker.pdf

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/6262491/MI5-warned-that-bin-Laden-was-planning-attacks-on-morni...

MI5 warned the government that Osama bin Laden was planning an attack in the weeks leading up to September 11, including the morning itself, a new history of the Security Service discloses.

By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent
Published: 4:49PM BST 05 Oct 2009

Newly published memos disclose an escalating concern about the terrorist leader right up until the moment he launched his attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington killing nearly 3,000 people.

But the files also reveal that MI5 discounted the threat from Islamic extremism just six years before the attacks and did not believe that America was vulnerable.

The author of the book, Defence of the Realm, has been given access to all of MI5’s files dating back to its foundation in October 1909 in the first authorised history of an intelligence service anywhere in the world.

NO LIES NEWS EDITOR: It has been shown elsewhere that Bin Laden is likely deceased, so can we assume that this so called Islamic website mentioned in the main stream newspaper article below is actually run by some intelligence agency that is keeping Bin Laden alive for some false flag purpose? See David Ray Griffin's interview Osama Bin Laden, Dead or Alive?

Reuters Sunday, September 13, 2009 washingtonpost.com
Bin Laden warns U.S. on Israel ties: website
DUBAI (Reuters) - Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden warned the American people over their government's close ties with Israel in an apparently new audio tape posted on an Islamist website on Monday.

"The time has come for you to liberate yourselves from fear and the ideological terrorism of neo-conservatives and the Israeli lobby," Bin Laden's latest tape said.

"The reason for our dispute with you is your support for your ally Israel, occupying our land in Palestine."

This is a personal view of the attacks of 9/11 from the perspective of a UK national.

A Sorry Indictment by Nick Mollo

The first time I came to believe that something might be suspect about the horrendous events of September 11th was with a live on-site report by Channel 4 News in England. The journalist stated that the downed plane (Flight 93) in Shanksville could conceivably have been shot down by an American fighter plane. This assumption was made by the reporter because the wreckage of Flight 93 was spread over what appeared to be a large area. This live report, to my knowledge, was not aired again and the official version of the passengers bringing down the plane to save further lives started to emerge and subsequently became the established unquestionable truth.

Other than my own controversial opinion, that Flight 93 was shot down by an American fighter, I never questioned the official version of events; that 19 terrorists masterminded by Osama Bin Laden had attacked America. The shock and awe of that terrible day was so convincing and the images so powerful that any alternative to the official version was out of the question.

An interesting article someone sent me. - Jon

The Washington Post - Washington, D.C.
Author: Pamela Constable
Date: Jul 8, 2001
Start Page: A.16
Section: A SECTION
Text Word Count: 995

The car windows were blackened to hide the route and destination. The house was heavilyguarded, and the visitor could see only the mud-walled room around him, with several bearded, turbaned men sitting on low cushions. Oneof them was Osama bin Laden.

Bakr Atiani, a TV reporter with the Saudi-owned, London-based Middle East Broadcasting Center, received a phone call last month inviting him to Afghanistan to meet bin Laden, the Saudi fugitive wanted by U.S. officials on charges of planning the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa and suspected of involvement in the attack on a U.S. warship in Yemen.

By Daniel Tencer
Published: September 9, 2009

Nawaz Sharif, a two-time former prime minister of Pakistan and current head of one of the country’s major political parties, has met with Osama bin Laden on numerous occasions, and it was in fact the al Qaeda leader who developed the relationship between Sharif and the Saudi royal family, says a former Pakistani intelligence official.

Full article on Raw Story

More at The Times of India here and here.