Comment by jmyeet | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmyeet | Hacker News Reader

From the NSA, this seems like historical revisionism as it contradicts the bin Laden story widely accepted.

The short version is: 9/11 happens. The Taliban offer to hand over bin Laden and George W. Bush refuses [1]. Bin Laden escapes into Pakistan. We then start a completely pointless war in Iraq against someone who played no part in 9/11. There was a letter from many conservative leaders prior to 9//1 calling for the invasion of Iraq [2]. Interestingly, then Senator Biden predicted in 1998 he'd vote to topple Saddam Hussein in 1998 [3].

There is no partisan divide on US foreign policy.

Anyway, bin Laden builds a massive compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, about a half mile from the ISI (Pakistan's intelligence agency). Like, it stood out like a sore thumb. It was so much larger than the surrounding houses. And there he sat for years. He had no Internet access. He communicated with the outside world via couriers. Those couriers would take USB drives and travel to distant Internet cafes and such to communicate on bin Laden's behalf.

One of those couriers was identified through torture ("interrogation") of people held at Guantanemo Bay. The CIA followed said courier and found the compound in Abbottobad and, well, the rest is history.

So where does the NSA fit into this? It seems like good ol HUMINT (human intelligence) to me.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.te...

[2]: https://www.militarist-monitor.org/images/uploads/PNAC_Lette...

[3]: https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4842886/user-clip-1998-biden-...

They don't claim that NSA found Bin Laden. They say that they were part of a multi-agency effort that took 9 years to find him. And they say that human intelligence led them to who the courier was.

> 9 years

Given all the resources, I guess we all need to keep our expectations low.

This is a massive understatement of how difficult finding someone like that actually is.

> The short version is: 9/11 happens. The Taliban offer to hand over bin Laden and George W. Bush refuses [1]

I looked at your link. It seems you missed a huge asterisk on that from your own article:

> the third most powerful figure in the ruling Taliban regime told reporters that the Taliban would require evidence that Bin Laden was behind the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US

So how did the alternative course of action work out?

EDIT: instead of rejecting the Taliban's offer outright and, say, negotiating and acceptable outcome, we chose to go to war, spend trillions of dollars, kill countless people and ultimately still leave the Taliban in power.

The Taliban saying they need proof is a negotiation. There is no court of law. We could've simply bribed them. Imagine how much cheaper and how many lives would've been saved if we'd simply given them $1 billion to hand over bin Laden.

But no, instead we started a war we could never possibly win. And again, that's not hindisght being 20/20. The US has not won a war since 1945. We watched the USSR, who had far more tolerance for losses, lose a war in Afghanistan. Like in what world did we think we would ever "win"? The outcome was entirely predictable and foreseeable. Irony of ironies, it was our material support to Afghanistan in the Soviet invasion that quite literally created bin Laden.

I don't fully understand your question...

I'm not here to support (or oppose) the war. I'm just noting that you left out a detail in your comment that a lot of people would feel is rather critical to the point.

Inconcievable. We live in a binary world. They didn’t deliver him hogtied on the Resolute Desk at 8am, so Land War In Central Asia was the only option.

>The Taliban saying they need proof is a negotiation. There is no court of law. We could've simply bribed them. Imagine how much cheaper and how many lives would've been saved if we'd simply given them $1 billion to hand over bin Laden.

They wouldn't have taken a monetary bribe or other obvious quid pro quo. That would be offensive and bad optics. It's just culturally a non-starter.

A good solution likely would have looked like your typical Bannana republic playbook where the tin pot dictator (taliban) gets the US's help quashing any opposition part of that is people the US doesn't like make it onto that list.

Irony of ironies, it was our material support to Afghanistan in the Soviet invasion that quite literally created bin Laden.

Irony of ironies, this is actually a deeply Western-centric point of view which assumes that everything that happens in the world does so as a result of actions performed by its own hand -- and that the people in affected countries have no agency, goals or vision of their own.

George W. Bush did plenty of bad things, so much so that your misleading point about him not accepting the surrender of Bin Laden was unnecessary to fabricate and only serves to destroy the credibility of everything else you wrote. Sometimes you need to let peoples' misdeeds speak for themselves, not embellish to add to your narrative.

Iraq was never about 9/11. The error of Iraq happened because the US followed one HUMINT source Saddam was developing WMD. Considering bin Laden was in Pakistan, it would presumably require a multi-source confirmation.

The invasion of Iraq was sold in part by manufacturing a connection to 9/11. This is confirmed by public opinion [1]:

> In the months leading up to the war, sizable majorities of Americans believed ... that Iraq was closely tied to terrorism – and even that Hussein himself had a role in the 9/11 attacks.

Believing one source is simply looking for justification for what you were going to do anyway. There was plenty of evidence to the contrary, not th eleast of which was the UNSCOM inspections.

Also, it's just plain illogical for Saddam to have WMDs. Let's say he has WMDs. If the US invades, would he use them? Probably not because it wouldn't change the outcome and it would invite further retaliation. So if he's not going to use them, why not give them up to save his regime?

This isn't historical 20/20 hindsight either. These discussions were being had prior to the invasion.

[1]: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/03/14/a-look-back-...

Error!

Bless your heart.

> The Taliban offer to hand over bin Laden and George W. Bush refuses

A bit disingenuous to say that and leave out that the most generous version of that offer was to hand Bin Laden over to a third country.

So what's the goal here? To exact vengeance on one individual? To remove his ability to further act in this capacity?

Because what we chose instead was to spend $8 trillion on a 20 year war killing millions in Iraq and Afghanistan and still to objectively lose militarily, politically and in terms of the ability for the US to project power in the region. The Taliban control Afghanistan once again.

All while doing absolutely nothing agains the actual regime that provided material support to the 9/11 hijackers, the same regime from which the majority of the 19 hijackers (and bin Laden himself) actually came from.

None of that has anything to do with what I said.

You can make a damning case that the Bush administration's actions were pointless and self-destructive without the very misleading characterization of what the Taliban was offering, so why be disingenuous?

20 year war killing millions in Iraq and Afghanistan

Are you sure about the "millions" part? In you know, the factual sense?

Or does it just feel like something neat to say, to get your point across?

Do you doubt that a million iraquis died in the war that lasted almost a decade? How many people died in Ukraine or Gaza in a couple years?

He'd still be in custody. How is what we have now better because he wasn't held by a third country?

Would he? Any tips on sports gambling this week!?

> From the NSA, this seems like historical revisionism as it contradicts the bin Laden story widely accepted.

You just described counterintelligence propaganda.

Sorry can you elaborate on this? What part is propaganda?

I’d basically quote your whole post. You said that NSA contradicted a widely accepted story. Where did that story come from?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com