Clinton went after OBL AND al Qaeda. The GOP was so wrapped up in him getting him impeached over some blow jobs that they sabotaged the most serious efforts.
www.makethemaccountable.com/myth/ClintonAndTerrorism.htm
Yeah old billy, blew up a pill factory, a bunch of tents meanwhile being blown himself. Yeah quite the warrior.
It wasn't just a pill factory. That is the same lame line used by the GOP to threaten Congressional investigations and neutralize military effort to take out OBL and al Qaeda assets. A "pill factory" is in fact a pharmaceutical facility with the necessary equipment and machinery need to produce chemical and biological weapons. The almost 100 cruise missiles launched at Bin Laden and al Qaeda were meant to be the beginning of a campaign to find him and kill him. The intelligence community feared that a wide open investigation(s) of the type being used by Republicans would endanger agents and informers in the field as well as methods of gathering information about al Qaeda.
You guys won't read the link I provided because it is a timeline of pesky facts that debunk you nonsense. You will scream and whine for links and when you get them you run away from them. Prove to you the sky is blue and you will deflect into a conversation about the sky at night.
What you have posted and what is in the link you provided has been so debunked I find it interesting that you keep repeating it. Seems to me that your sources are at fault. True, the Lewinsky sexual harassment by the president was a underlying cause of him walking the dog but never the less the pill factory was never proved to be anything else. And guess what, If we are to believe the supplied article, Clinton lied and people actually did die.
Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia
Evidence[edit]
The key piece of physical evidence linking the al-Shifa facility to production of chemical weapons was the discovery of EMPTA in a soil sample taken from the plant during a
CIA clandestine operation. EMPTA, or
O-Ethyl methylphosphonothioic acid, is classified as a Schedule 2B compound according to the
Chemical Weapons Convention and is a
VX precursor.
[4] Although several theoretical uses for EMPTA were postulated as well as several patented processes using EMPTA, such as the manufacture of plastic, no known industrial uses of EMPTA were ever documented nor any products that contained EMPTA. It is, however, not banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention as originally claimed by the U.S. government. Moreover, it does not necessarily follow from the presence of EMPTA near (but outside) the boundary of Al-Shifa that this was produced in the factory: EMPTA could have been "stored in or transported near al-Shifa, instead of being produced by it", according to a report by Michael Barletta.
[5]
Under-Secretary of State
Thomas Pickering claimed to have sufficient evidence against Sudan, including contacts between officials at Al-Shifa plant and Iraqi chemical weapons experts, with the Iraq chemical weapons program the only one identified with using EMPTA for VX production. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA), a Sudanese opposition in Cairo led by Mubarak Al-Mahdi, also insisted that the plant was producing ingredients for chemical weapons. According to Clinton Administration officials, the plant, moreover, was heavily guarded, and showed no signs of ordinary commercial activities. However, a British engineer, Thomas Carnaffin, who worked as a technical manager during the plant's construction between 1992 and 1996, stated that the plant was neither heavily guarded nor secret, and that he never observed evidence of the production of an ingredient needed for nerve gas. The group that monitors compliance with the treaty banning chemical weapons announced that Empta did have legitimate commercial purposes in the manufacture of fungicides and antibiotics, and the owner of the factory stated emphatically in interviews that the plant was not used for anything other than pharmaceuticals, and that there was no evidence to the contrary.
[6] Former Clinton administration counter terrorism advisor
Richard Clarke and former
national security advisor Sandy Berger also noted the facilities alleged ties with the former Iraqi government. Clarke also cited Iraq's $199,000 contract with al Shifa for veterinary medicine under the
UN's
Oil for Food Program. David Kay, a former UN weapons inspector also said that Iraq may have assisted in the construction of the Al-Shifa plant, noting that Sudan would be unlikely to have the technical knowledge to produce VX.
[7]
Officials later acknowledged, however, "that the evidence that prompted President Clinton to order the missile strike on the Shifa plant was not as solid as first portrayed. Indeed, officials later said that there was no proof that the plant had been manufacturing or storing nerve gas, as initially suspected by the Americans, or had been linked to Osama bin Laden, who was a resident of Khartoum in the 1980s."
[8]
However, a Clinton State Department official had stated that a money manager for Bin Laden had claimed that Bin Laden had, indeed, invested in Al Shifa. And that the Al Shifa manager even lived in the same Sudan house Bin Laden himself had previously lived in.
[9][10]
The U.S.
State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research wrote a report in 1999 questioning the attack on the factory, suggesting that the connection to bin Laden was not accurate; James Risen reported in the
New York Times: "Now, the analysts renewed their doubts and told Assistant Secretary of State Phyllis Oakley that the C.I.A.'s evidence on which the attack was based was inadequate. Ms. Oakley asked them to double-check; perhaps there was some intelligence they had not yet seen. The answer came back quickly: There was no additional evidence. Ms. Oakley called a meeting of key aides and a consensus emerged: Contrary to what the Administration was saying, the case tying Al Shifa to Mr. bin Laden or to chemical weapons was weak."
[11] The Chairman of El Shifa Pharmaceutical Industries, who is critical of the Sudanese government, more recently told reporters: "I had inventories of every chemical and records of every employee's history. There were no such [nerve gas] chemicals being made here."
[12]
Nonetheless, Clinton's Secretary of Defense
William Cohen testified to the
9/11 Commission in 2004, characterizing Al Shifa as a "WMD-related facility", which played a "chemical weapons role" such as to pose a risk that it, with the help of the Iraqi chemical weapons program connections he also testified to, might help Al Qaeda get chemical weapons technology.
[13]
Sudan has since invited the U.S. to conduct chemical tests at the site for evidence to support its claim that the plant might have been a chemical weapons factory; so far, the U.S. has refused the invitation to investigate. Nevertheless, the U.S. has refused to officially apologize for the attacks, suggesting that some privately still suspect that chemical weapons activity existed there.
[8]
Directly after the strike the Sudanese government demanded that the
Security Council conduct an investigation of the site to determine if it had been used to produce chemical weapons or precursors. Such an investigation was from the start opposed by the U.S. Nor has the U.S. ever let an independent laboratory analyze the sample allegedly containing EMPTA. Michael Barletta concludes that there is no evidence the al-Shifa factory was ever involved in production of chemical weapons, and it is known that many of the initial U.S. allegations were wrong.
[5]
