Opinion Columnist Bush ties to bin Laden haunt grim anniversary
By Cindy Rodriguez | The Denver Post PUBLISHED: September 11, 2006 at 9:17 AM MDT | UPDATED: August 3, 2022 at 5:17 AM MDT
Why, indeed, did this happen? For many of us, it sparked the beginning of our education on the collusion between government and multinational corporations. On the surface it seemed that the federal government, under both the Clinton and Bush administrations, was asleep at the wheel – very much the way the Bush administration was when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. Bush claimed we’d bring back Osama bin Laden “dead or alive.” But the more we learn about the ties between the Bush family and the bin Ladens, questions like this one pop up: Did Bush really want to capture him? With fewer than 50 ground troops surrounding the massive Tora Bora region in the mountains of Afghanistan where bin Laden was hiding, ground commanders pleaded for 800 more soldiers, according to Gary Berntsen, the CIA field commander whose book “Jawbreaker” goes into amazing detail about the botched paramilitary operation. Berntsen and other ground commanders said the U.S. let Osama bin Laden get away. Was this because of President George Bush’s close ties to the bin Laden family? In 1978, Bush and Osama bin Laden’s brother, Salem bin Laden, founded Arbusto Energy, an oil company based in Texas. Several bin Laden family members invested millions in The Carlyle Group, a private global equity firm based in Washington, DC. The company’s senior advisor was Bush’s father, former President George H.W. Bush. After news of the bin Laden-Bush connection became public, the elder Bush stepped down from Carlyle.