“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
“On August 20 [1998], the United States retaliates against Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda [for the African embassy bombings on August 7, 1998], sending cruise missiles into al-Qaeda training camps. Two hours prior to the attacks, Osama, his sons, and commanders left one of the training camps near Khost [Afghanistan] to travel to Kabul to […]
8/20/1998
On August 20, 1998, 13 days after the African embassy bombings, “The US responded with a series of attacks on seven targets in Afghanistan and Sudan, which resulted in public-relations damage both at home and abroad. At a cost of more than $56,250,000 (the price alone of the seventy-five Tomahawk missiles deployed at £750,000 each) the […]
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
“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
” ‘Our target was terror,’ President [Bill] Clinton said in disclosing a near-simultaneous cruise missile attack against targets near Khost [Afghanistan] and in Khartoum, Sudan [on August 20, 1998]. Bin Laden had launched a ‘terrorist war’ against the United States, Clinton said, and ‘our mission was clear: to strike at the network of radical groups […]
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
From a New York Times article on August 20, 1998: “When pressed after the two African [embassy] bombings in [August 7] 1998 to turn him [bin Laden] over, [Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad] Omar refused: ‘Even if all the countries of the world unite, we would defend Osama with our own blood.’ “ – Bruce Riedel, […]
8/20/1998
Counterterrorism czar “Richard Clarke was the official…who told the Washington Post that the U.S. government was ‘sure’ Iraq was behind the VX [nerve gas] precursor produced at the al Shifa factory [in Khartoum, Sudan] destroyed [on August 20, 1998] in response to the [August 7] 1998 al Qaeda attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa. ‘Clarke […]
8/20/1998
Following the August 20, 1998, missile attack on a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan that was linked to Iraq and bin Laden, “Iraq denied any involvement. The political editor of Radio Iraq read a statement on the air, saying that ‘the Clinton government has fabricated yet another lie to the effect that Iraq had helped Sudan […]