Talk:1998 United States embassy bombings

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Source[edit]

here is a news item from january 2001 that might be of help for writing this article. [1] Kingturtle 06:26, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Point of view[edit]

"Along with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, the Embassy Bombing is one of the major anti-American terrorist attacks that preceded the September 11, 2001 attacks. The comparatively restrained response of the Clinton Administration, at the time embroiled in the Lewinsky scandal, which included the cruise missile strikes of Operation Infinite Reach and the arrest and prosecution of some of the perpetrators, has sometimes been cited as a factor in emboldening al Qaeda to undertake the September 11th terrorist attacks of 2001 and also raised political debate in the United States about whether to respond to terrorism with a military or law enforcement paradigm.[1]"

That paragraph doesn't make any sense. It is very clear it was just copied and pasted from the article it cites. Oh yeah, AND THE WHOLE PARAGRAPH IS TWO SENTENCES!!!!! And also the "comparatively restrained response" like the Clinton Administration should have truck bombed them back?

Why isn't this article about the bombing? This article is about how the Clinton administration emboldened terrorists. I read the siting of the paragraph and it sites terrorist attacks going back to 1983. How come the Reagan administration and first Bush administration aren't sited as well. How about Ronald Reagan pulling troops out of Beirut after the bombings there emboldened terrorists. If Clinton must be listed how come the previous administrations aren't. It wasn't because Clinton was distracted by Lewinsky, it was because Republicans were doing everything they could to ruin the country during the 1990s. STOP BLAMING THE TERRORIST ATTACKS ON AMERICANS. Everyone dropped the ball from the top all the way to the bottom, not just the Clinton Administration. Change the article or I will report it to Wikipedia.--Ganley894 17:18, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

USS Cole[edit]

The attack on the USS Cole was not "terrorism." The USS Cole (DDG-67) was a US Navy warship, a guided missile destroyer. Attacks on military targets do not fit the definition of "terrorism." It was a sneak attack, not a terrorist one, regardless of what press spinners in the White House chose to call it. Dick Kimball (talk) 20:19, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Expansion[edit]

what are we looking to expand? I am currently trying to find information on the members involved

Correction[edit]

The 100 foot standoff zone thing was as a RESULT of the embassy bombings. The state department did not implement that recommendation until after the bombings.

Suicide attacks?[edit]

Were the 1998 embassy bombings suicide bombings? GCarty 08:56, 17 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, they were - Blood red sandman 16:49, 20 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Relevance[edit]

Is it relevant what "many conservatives" feel about the attacks? Also it makes no sense to blame the Clinton Administration for the Lewinsky scandal. While the Republican (some conservatives) Congress was looking for any reason to have Bill Clinton removed from office al Queda ran amuck with little attention from Congress or the President. Maybe the article should say "if Bill Clinton was not preocupied by people who were obsessed with his personal life and the Republican Congress was not in a frenzy to find anything to get him in trouble, eg. White Water, Paula Jones, Vince Foster, Lewinsky, impeachment etc., maybe terrorism could have been focused on." So instead of blaming Bill Clinton for "emboldening" terrorists, maybe the article could start out with the fact that terrorists are going to do what they want regardless of retatliation. The article does not represent a neutral point of view with this statement.

Many conservatives feel that the comparatively restrained response of the Clinton Administration, at the time embroiled in the Lewinsky scandal, which included the cruise missile strikes of Operation Infinite Reach and the arrest and prosecution of some of the perpetrators, was a factor in emboldening al Qaeda to undertake the September 11th terrorist attacks of 2001.

---

Not only is it irrelevant, but does it make sense or is it even fair for that matter to include admitted speculation? That seems to completely poison the article's POV in my opinion. Wiki should be a source for FACTS and not SPECULATION about its articles.

The whole paragraph about what "many conservatives" speculate about should be removed. open_mind 17:20, 26 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Clarke's assertions about Hussein and bin Laden[edit]

This was previously included in the article:

"Richard Clarke, a top Clinton administration counterterrorism official, asserted that Saddam Hussein had offered bin Laden asylum after the embassy bombings."

I removed it, because it is flatly false. Clarke recounts in his book Against All Enemies that this was a claim that was made by others and discredited.

Someone re-posted it. I have fixed it again. Vordabois 07:38, 4 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Picture[edit]

Call me a skeptic, but that looks like quite the photoshopped picture, especially the smoke, which is remarkably similar to the photo doctoring done during the israeli-lebanon war.

New category suggestion[edit]

Maybe a new one should be a list of terrorists (by organization, indictment, or action) that are still at large, killed, imprisoned, etc.

Extradition of suspects allegation[edit]

The claim that the factory destroyed in Sudan made medicine necessary for the Sudanese and that its designation as a target was a failure of our military intelligence is well-founded. It has been widely reported, acknowledged by those in the Clinton Administration after the strike, and was mentioned specifically in the 9/11 Commission hearings and included in the report as an important development in the run-up to the big attack on 9/11.

The allegation that two suspects were offered up by Sudan but Albright blocked their extradition is not. Per WP:VERIFY, exceptional claims require exceptional sources. I don't think a single Guardian writer crafting a single article only 19 days after the 9/11 attacks is enough to merit a mention as fact -- particularly when the writer does not even identify his sources.Vordabois (talk) 09:23, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Rather than delete text, it is good to do a quick search of news sources that are better (ones you may like more) than the one you do not like posted.
ABC News 2/20/02 also has the story with exceptional sources on the text you deleted. http://web.archive.org/web/20020223060124/http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/DailyNews/missedsignals_2_020219.html
The washingtonpost.com also has reported on this.
Mansoor Ijaz reportedly tried to negotiate a deal between Sudan's president Omar al-Bashir and Clinton administration officials including Sandy Berger. Ijaz argued the U.S. should adopt a policy of "constructive engagement" with Sudan, in return for deporting Osama bin Laden. However bin Laden made his way to Afghanistan after the deportation from Sudan. According to Ijaz, that was a missed opportunity to capture bin Laden who has not even been indicted by US authorities.
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1997_hr/h970610i.htm
http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/568
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A61251-2001Oct2
Telecine Guy 22:33, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it's not a matter of liking a source, it's a matter of actual factual content and a reflection of reality.

Not a single source of any of those you provided even mentioned Albright blocking extradition of two suspects after the bombing. Recall that that was my main objection.

Moreover, yes, the sources you provided did mention that American officials would not accept information from Sudan. But look carefully at the dates... 1996 and 1997. Obviously, this information cannot be used in a section titled "Aftermath and international response" to a terrorist attack that happened in 1998.

Beyond that, and perhaps outside the purview of this article, the reasons American officials had for disregarding Sudan's offers for assistance were quite justified. Sudan was labeled a terrorist state in 1993, and were eager to take unorthodox measures to gain the favor of Western officials whilst still harboring extremists. Their desperation was shown in that they used private citizens (such as Ijaz) to appeal to American figures. And as the 9/11 Commission Report stated [2]:

"...though Sudan did eventually expel Bin Ladin, his al Qaeda network retained a presence in the country. (Susan Rice interview, Jan. 9, 2004) In addition, the CIA’s Africa Division, whose operatives had engaged the Sudanese on counterterrorism in early 1996, would conclude that “there is no indication that Sudanese involvement with terrorism has decreased in the past year.” They saw the Sudanese gestures toward cooperating as “tactical retreats” aimed at deceiving Washington in hopes of having sanctions removed. (CIA memo, Walter to Acting DCI, “Africa Division’s Recommendations Regarding Sudan,” Dec. 17, 1996) The CIA official who ran the Sudanese portfolio and met with the Sudanese on numerous occasions told us the Sudanese were not going to deliver, and the perceived moderates “were just flat-out lying.” (Mark interview May 12, 2004)"

So the fact remains that there was no reason to believe Sudan even had worthwhile information to begin with. The statement "The Sudanese also had piles of documentation on bin Laden and his network, but the U.S. refused to accept it" cannot be included using such vague terms and without elaboration in regards to its usefulness.

To this day, Sudan remains labeled a terrorist state and -- true to their reputation -- the government itself is known to materially support a faction in the Darfur conflict (the Janjaweed), yet denies it vehemently.

If anything (and I think something to this effect should be added), after the investigation of these bombings was in full swing and it became apparent that they were related to Al-Quaida, it inspired the Clinton Administration to consider it a tangible group and make a determined effort to focus on the threat they posed.Vordabois (talk) 07:30, 1 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Explosives used[edit]

User:Uruk2008 has repeatedly reinserted [3] [4] the phrase: " ...as an improvised shaped charge" into this paragraph in the bombs' descriptions:

In both Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Mohammed Odeh supervised construction of two massive, 2,000-pound destructive devices. The Nairobi bomb was made of 400 to 500 cylinders of TNT (about the size of soda cans),aluminum nitrate, aluminum powder and detonating cord. The explosives were packed into some twenty specially designed wooden crates that were sealed and then placed in the bed of the trucks. Abdel Rahman ran a wire from the bomb to a set of batteries in the back of the truck cab and then to a detonator switch beneath the dashboard. The Dar es Salaam bomb used a slightly different construction: the TNT was attached to fifteen oxygen tanks and gas canisters, and was surrounded with four bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and some sand bags to tamp and direct the blast as an improvised shaped charge.[1]

Mere use of tamping does not make the bombs into shaped charges, improvised or otherwise - see any explosives engineering textbook or Shaped charge for background. This statement should be removed and kept removed. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 11:06, 11 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Hamm, Mark S. (March 2007). Terrorism as Crime: From Oklahoma City to Al-Qaeda and Beyond. ISBN 9780814737453.

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Very questionable presentation of the origins of this terrorist event[edit]

The first line of the article in the Motivation and Preparation section says "The bombings are widely believed to have been revenge for American involvement in the extradition, and alleged torture, of four members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) who had been arrested in Albania in the two months prior to the explosions." The source for this assertion is American journalist Jane Mayer's book on post-9/11 counterterrorist policy. The paragraph in question in Mayer's book states the following: "On August 5, 1998, a month after the Albanian rendition, in what was beginning to take on the aura of a very personal vendetta, an Arab-language newspaper in London published a letter from Zawahiri threatening retaliation against the United States - in a 'language they will understand." He warned that America's "message has been received and that the response, which we hope they will read carefully, is being prepared." Two days later, the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were blown up, killing 224 people."

It is absolutely laughable to think that the African embassy bombings could have been conceived, planned and carried out in the space of a month. Peter Bergen, in his book The Long War, says that al Qaeda began planning African attacks back in 1993 (location 542 of 12572 of the Kindle edition - Chapter 2 in the printed edition). Apart from that it is far from established what role Zawahiri played in the embassy bombings. Either way, the wikipedia article says that 'it is widely believed' but as you can see from the actual passage, Mayers never explicitly states that the one produced the other. Most readers would see her mention of the embassy bombings as done for narrative effect, not to suggest that they were a direct response to the renditions. Even if she had said that, it would be her own personal opinion not backed up by any evidence she has provided in the text. And since when is one journalist's inferred opinion the justification for saying it is widely believed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.107.199.154 (talk) 14:32, 25 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Removed Red[edit]

File:The U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in the aftermath of the August 7, 1998, al-Qaeda suicide bombing.jpg

99.190.83.211 (talk) 06:30, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

File:Kenya bombing 1.jpg Nominated for Deletion[edit]

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Did Azzam drive the Toyota or the Mitsubishi?[edit]

This page (http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/profiles/azzam.htm) says he drove the Toyota, however Wiki says he drove Mitsubishi. I can't find a primary source though. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 183.179.239.175 (talk) 06:53, 28 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

does "http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/profiles/azzam.htm" count as a source? im changing the type of truck to toyota within the article.Gregory1132 (talk) 18:05, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

baku??[edit]

The FBI also connected the attack to Azerbaijan, as 60 calls were placed via satellite phone by bin Laden to associates in the country's capital Baku.[2]

this sounds very suspicious argument as there are no any more mention of azerbijan and baku; no further details ... --ArazZeynili (talk) 09:55, 18 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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Revenge for extradition and torture two months before the attacks?[edit]

The bombings are widely believed to have been revenge for U.S. involvement in the extradition, and alleged torture, of four members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) who had been arrested in Albania for an alleged series of murders in Egypt in the two months prior to the attacks.

Even though I really value Jane Mayer's work, this does not make sense. Al-Qaeda already prepared the attacks years ago. In fact, the first surveillance mission in Nairobi was already in December 1993.

Soufan, Ali; Freedman, Daniel (2020). The Black Banners (Declassified): How Torture Derailed the War on Terror after 9/11. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. p. 76–78. ISBN 978-0-393-54072-7.

Posing as tourists, in December 1993 Mohamed and his team conducted surveillance of different sites in Nairobi, including the U.S. Embassy and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The men also surveyed possible British, French, and Israeli targets. Khalid al-Fawwaz paid for the team’s expenses and equipment as they took pictures, monitored traffic and crowds, and learned where security cameras and guards were positioned. Kherchtou’s apartment in Nairobi often served as a makeshift darkroom, and when the team completed their surveillance they wrote up a report, which included their recommendations for where to strike. In their view, the best option was to attack the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi.
They traveled to al-Qaeda headquarters in Khartoum and briefed bin Laden on their findings. He agreed with their assessment, and after studying the map they had drawn of the U.S. Embassy, he pointed to a spot along the perimeter of the building and told everyone gathered, “Here’s where a truck can be driven in for a suicide attack.”

--Jo1971 (talk) 09:05, 16 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, haven't seen there's almost the same point some sections above. But that's just another proof that Jane Mayer's is wrong on this point. --Jo1971 (talk) 09:12, 16 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Were linked to local members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad?[edit]

The article also says “were linked to local members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad”. They were not linked the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, they were linked to al-Qaeda (Egyptian Islamic Jihad merged with al-Qaeda only in June 2001). Bin Laden personally green-lighted the operation and handpicked the suicide bombers.

Bergen, Peter (2021). The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden. New York: Simon & Schuster. pp. 112–114. ISBN 978-1-9821-7052-3.

An al-Qaeda member had surveyed the embassy in Kenya five years before the bombing. He then reported back to bin Laden, specifically noting that the embassy sat at the intersection of two of the busiest streets in downtown Nairobi, a city of some two million people.
Bin Laden enthusiastically green-lighted the operation. Al-Qaeda members described his leadership method as “centralization of decision and decentralization of execution.” Strategic targeting decisions were made by bin Laden, but the planning and execution of attacks were undertaken by his field commanders.
[...]
Abu Jandal asked bin Laden, “Did we need so many victims?”
Bin Laden laughed, saying, “We warned the whole world what would happen to the friends of America.” Bin Laden was referring to the fatwas he had issued against the United States in 1996 and 1998.

p. 92

In fact, there is no evidence that Zawahiri had a role in the planning of any of al-Qaeda’s major anti-American attacks against the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, and 9/11 itself.

p. 142

Bin Laden formally merged Zawahiri’s Jihad Group into al-Qaeda in June 2001. There is no evidence that bin Laden ever involved Zawahiri in the planning for the 9/11 operation, which was now in its final stages.

--Jo1971 (talk) 10:02, 16 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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