Following the August 7, 1998, African embassy bombings, “…the simultaneous cruise missile reprisals against Afghanistan and Khartoum that [President Bill] Clinton ordered thirteen days later, on August 20 [1998], and their unintended consequences coincided with the lowpoint of his presidency. The missiles struck with sophisticated military efficiency, but proved to be embarrassments for the administration. […]
Category: quotes
8/20/1998
In his Address to the Nation on August 20, 1998, President Clinton said: ” ‘Today I ordered our armed forces to strike at terrorist-related facilities in Afghanistan and Sudan because of the imminent threat they presented to our national security. …Our target was terror, our mission was clear–to strike at the network of radical groups […]
8/20/1998
“Just after the American air strike on Khowst [Afghanistan] in August [20] 1998, according to Pakistani journalist Rahimullah Yusufzai, ‘three men financed by the Saudi government’ were arrested by the Taleban before they could attack bin Laden. From his talks with bin Laden and [Egyptian Islamic Jihad leader Ayman] al-Zawahiri, Yusufzai learned that the team’s […]
8/20/1998
“After the outcry over the [unsuccessful] missile strikes [on August 20, 1998], [President Bill] Clinton directed that the campaign against al Qaeda be a covert one conducted by the CIA, with an emphasis on disrupting their operations. He also authorized lethal force only if they found bin Laden or other top al Qaeda leaders.” – […]
8/20/1998
“…Pakistani officials, aware of the timing of the strike [President Bill Clinton’s retaliatory effort on August 20, 1998, for the African embassy bombings], had warned key Taliban and al Qaeda allies, even sending a senior ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] operative to personally tell bin Laden of the impending attack.” – Gerald Posner, Why America Slept, Page […]
8/20/1998
“Earlier, on August 20, 1998, as special prosecutor Ken Starr’s investigation of the president’s alleged indiscretions with Monica Lewinsky was reaching a climax, cruise missiles had been fired at the Sudan and Afghanistan, aimed at punishing Osama bin Laden for the bombing of U.S. embassies in East Africa on August 7. They failed to hit […]
8/20/1998
“The offer of Sudanese assistance [to arrest bin Laden] evaporated in August 1998 when President [Bill] Clinton ordered US military forces [on August 20, 1998] to destroy the pharmaceutical plant in Sudan that was suspected of being a chemical arms factory. …The Clinton administration turned down an official government offer of cooperation against terrorism in […]
8/20/1998
Following President Bill Clinton’s attacks on al Qaeda compounds in Afghanistan on August 20, 1998, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar “called an Afghan news agency in Peshawar [Pakistan] to denounce the American intervention as ‘a demonstration of enmity’ for the Afghan people. He declared defiantly, ‘We can never hand over Osama to America.’ “ – […]
8/20/1998
“The destruction of the al Shifa [pharmaceutical] plant [in Sudan, on August 20, 1998] was not a near miss but a genuine blunder. The decision to target it was based on a single soil sample collected by a CIA operative across the road from the plant (which supposedly revealed traces of EMPTA, a precursor chemical […]
8/20/1998
“The Clinton administration has been criticized for not following up on its first missile attack [on August 20, 1998] with an all-out effort to get bin Laden. But former officials said that they lacked the ‘actionable intelligence,’ or precise information about bin Laden’s whereabouts, to launch another attack. ‘The main focus was location, location, location,’ […]