by Joseph Carlson
Last week I talked about the money being raised in terrorist organizations. Today I wanted to talk about relationships. Not only with the one's Al Qaeda was making either pulling in young men to be warriors for the cause but also within our own government.
Several times during the mid 90's The State Department and other agencies within the government had the chance to kill Osama bin Laden, but never agreed on the time and place. Also, there was believed to someone working very closely with Mr. bin Laden and they were able to tip him off.
One of those time came when Mr. bin Laden was meeting with some people in Pakistan and at the last minute Osama bin Laden pulled out of the meeting, because he was told that if he showed up to the meeting he would be killed.
The inside info, many believe, came from Pakistan.
We have always had a strange relationship with Pakistan. Even though we give them aid we have a lot of evidence that points to them being very close with many of these terrorist organizations. So this makes any kind of info we give them very dangerous. So what do we do?
Well, interestingly enough there were people inside Al Qaeda that didn't care for Osama bin Laden and we were working with them and giving them weapons to take him out. Of course that weren't able to complete their task, which made the events of 9/11 so tragic.
All in all, during this section of the 9/11 report it is amazing to me how far we had come in building relationships within Al Qaeda and other governments and how in the blink of an eye those relationships could crumble. And also, how again, agencies within our own government could come to any agreement on who to trust or who to go after and when ultimately lead to the tragedy of 9/11
The 9/11 Commission Report is available in bookstores and digitally.
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