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This television image broadcast by Qatari TV channel Al-Jazeera was broadcast on Friday, October 5, 2001 in an undisclosed location. On the left, Bin Laden's senior lieutenant, Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahri. (Al-Jazeera via APTN) (Associated Press)
WASHINGTON – Echoing his campaign speeches, President Donald Trump is again called on to present himself as the Paul Revere of the age of terrorism – the one who announced that the country, Osama Bin Laden, was coming. There was less to his image than he said.
Trump's tweet about Monday about bin Laden has something truthful: "I stated it in my book just BEFORE the attack on the World Trade Center."
But the book, with only a passing mention of bin Laden, does nothing more than highlight the al-Qaeda leader as one of the many threats to US security. Trump's book, "The America We Deserve," appeared more than a year and a half before the deadly Al-Qaida attack on the United States on September 11, 2001, and not before.
The reason why Trump has resurfaced the issue is the persistent criticism of retired Admiral William McRaven, who described Trump's laceration of the media as "the greatest threat to democracy" in his lifetime. As commander of the Pentagon's Joint Special Operations Command in 2011, he oversaw the raid that killed bin Laden in Pakistan.
Trump accused McRaven in an interview with Fox News broadcast on the weekend of being "Hillary Clinton's support and Obama's backing". McRaven said he had not approved anyone in 2016 and told CNN that he was a fan of both former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, having served under their orders. "I admire all the presidents, regardless of their political party, who defend the dignity of the office and who use it to bring the country closer to difficult times," he said.
TRUMP's tweet: "Of course, we should have captured Osama Bin Laden well before us. I stated it in my book just BEFORE the attack on the World Trade Center. President Clinton missed his shot. We paid billions of dollars to Pakistan and they never told us that he lived there. Fools!
THE FACTS: There is nothing original or clairvoyant in the reference to bin Laden in Trump's book in 2000. As part of his criticism of what he saw as a messy approach to US security as president, Bill Clinton said, "One day we were told that a mysterious character with no fixed address named Osama bin Laden was the number one public enemy and that American fighter jets spoil his camp in Afghanistan. He escapes under a rock and, a few cycles later, he faces a new enemy and a new crisis. "
Trump's book did not call for the continuation of US action against bin Laden or al-Qaida in response to Clinton's orderly attacks in Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998 after al-Qaeda bombed US embassies in Kenya. and in Tanzania. The US attacks were aimed at disrupting Bin Laden's network and destroying some of Al-Qaida's infrastructure, such as a factory in Sudan associated with the production of a gaseous ingredient. They "missed" in the sense that bin Laden was not killed, and Al-Qaida was able to launch September 11 three years later.
During the campaign, Trump has boasted even more of the power of divination. He said his book talked about bin Laden, "you better take him outside," which was not said, and that he "predicted Osama bin Laden" at "Time when" nobody really knew who he was. " Bin Laden was well known by the CIA, other national security operations, experts and the public well before 9/11; the debate is about whether Clinton and his successor Bush could have done enough against al-Qaida to prevent the 2001 attacks.
In passages on terrorism, Trump's book rightly predicted that the United States was at risk of a terrorist attack that would make the 1993 World Trade Center bomb blush. This was a widespread concern in the United States. time, as suggested by Trump stating that "no reasonable analyst rejects this possibility". Trump did not explicitly link this threat to al-Qaida and thought that an attack could come from the use of a miniaturized weapon of mass destruction. , like a nuclear machine in a suitcase or coal.
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Associated Press editor Hope Yen contributed to this report.
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EDITOR'S NOTE _ Look at the veracity of statements by political figures
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