The Taliban made repeated offers to hand over bin Laden to the Americans

Rewriting History on the

Taliban and Bin Laden

Former US Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker rewrote history

in a New York Times op-ed

(8/21/21). “The message from the

Bush administration to the Taliban

after 9/11,” he wrote, was: “If you

hand over Al Qaeda leadership, we

will leave you alone. The Taliban

chose to fight instead.”

As a Guardian headline (10/14/01)

put it at the time: “Bush Rejects

Taliban Offer to Hand Bin Laden

Over.” Or as the Pakistani paper

Dawn (9/21/10) reported, based on

documents uncovered by the National

Security Archive at George Washington

University: “The Taliban made repeated offers to hand over the Al Qaeda chief to the Americans, and Pakistan continued to try to convince the Americans to accept the offers.”

Extra! The Newsletter of FAIR—The Media Watch Group October 2021 Vol. 34, No. 8