Iraq war was exactly what Osama wanted

Abdul Bari Atwan, one of the few western journalists who interviewed Osama bin Laden, spoke to the Australian Broadcasting Company about a discussion he had with the terrorist leader back in 1996.  Osama bin Laden's ultimate plan, Atwan told ABC, was to get the Americans to take the fight onto Muslim soil.  Osama expressed sadness when Bill Clinton pulled troops out of Somalia:

TONY JONES: When you met bin Laden, he told you that his long-termplan was to "bring the Americans into a fight on Muslim soil". Thatmust have sounded like madness at the time, but now we have Iraq.

ABDUL BARI ATWAN: It seems Osama bin Laden had a long-term strategy.He told me personally that he can't go and fight the Americans andtheir country. But if he manages to provoke them and bring them to theMiddle East and to their Muslim worlds, where he can find them or fightthem on his own turf, he will actually teach them a lesson. It seemsthe invasion of Iraq fulfilled Osama bin Laden's wish. That's why theAmericans are losing in Iraq, financially and on a human basis, andeven their allies, including Australia, are really losing patience,losing money, losing personnel, losing reputation in that part of theworld.

TONY JONES: When bin Laden told you this back in 1996, the onlything he had that was close to what he was talking about was [former USpresident] Bill Clinton's intervention in Somalia. Bin Laden wasevidently extremely disappointed the Americans had pulled out?

ABDUL BARI ATWAN: Yes. He told me, again, that he expected theAmericans to send troops to Somalia and he sent his people to thatcountry to wait for them in order to fight them. They managed actuallyto shoot down an American helicopter where 19 soldiers were killed andhe regretted that the Clinton Administration decided to pull out theirtroops from Somalia and run away. He was so saddened by this. Hethought they would stay there so he could fight them there. But for hisbad luck, according to his definition, they left, and he was planninganother provocation in order to drag them to Muslim soil.

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And the rest is history.

Of course, the Bush Administration had its own motivations: profits for the contractors; oil; cornering Iran (didn't really work); increased spending for Pentagon projects (falls into the profits category as well); and furthering the myth about spreading democracy by militarily occupying another country.

Comments

[libhomo]

When are the corporate media going to acknowledge the fact that war is aiding and abetting Al Qaida?