Osama bin Laden BANNED al Qaeda from trying to assassinate Joe Biden because he believed he would be an incompetent president and 'lead the US into a crisis'
Osama bin Laden banned al Qaeda from assassinating Joe Biden because the Democrat would become an incompetent president and 'lead the US into a crisis' if jihadists were successful in killing Barack Obama.
Bin Laden made the remark in a 2010 letter that was found in a trove of documents at the Pakistan compound where he was killed by US special forces in 2011.
The document was first made public in 2012 but has been brought back to light and given new significance amid the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan that has gifted the country back to the Taliban.
Osama bin Laden banned al Qaeda from killing Joe Biden because he wanted the Democrat to become president - believing he was 'unprepared' and would 'lead the US into a crisis'
Joe Biden has been widely condemned for his withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan which has gifted control of the country back to the Taliban
Bin Laden - then-leader of al Qaeda, and the man that America went to Afghanistan to kill - penned the 48-page missive in May 2010 to an aide identified as 'Brother Shaykh Mahmud', real name Atiyah Abd al-Rahman.
In it, he discusses the need to direct resources away from terror attacks in other Muslim countries and instead focus on direct attacks against the US.
On page 36, he outlines his desire to form two hit squads - one in Pakistan and another in Afghanistan - whose job it will be to plot attacks against then-US President Barack Obama and ex-CIA director David Petraeus, should they visit either country.
Giving his reasoning for attacking Obama, he says: 'Obama is the head of infidelity and killing him automatically will make Biden take over the presidency for the remainder of the term, as it is the norm over there.
'Biden is totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the US into a crisis.'
He the adds: 'As for Petraeus, he is the man of the hour in this last year of the war, and killing him would alter the war's path.'
US intelligence analysts who first revealed the existence of the document to the Washington Post in 2012 said neither of the plots against Obama or Petraeus were realistic or amounted to anything.
But bin Laden's attack on Biden's abilities and his forewarning of an American 'crisis' rings truer now than it did back then.
Biden is facing mounting fury across the world for abandoning Afghans to their fate - and yesterday it emerged that his administration was warned last month that the Afghan capital would quickly fall to the Taliban after an American withdrawal.
A dozen diplomats sent a confidential memo in a dissent channel to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on July 13 that the Taliban was rapidly gaining ground and the city was vulnerable to collapse, the Wall Street Journal reported.
On July 8, President Biden said it was 'highly unlikely' the Taliban would take control of Afghanistan and denied there would be chaos in Kabul.
There are mounting questions over how the White House, the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence services were evaluating the future of Afghanistan, the threat of the Taliban and how quickly power would change hands.
Afghan security forces were collapsing, they said, and offered ways to mitigate the advancing insurgents.
But it may have been too late to stop them.
The State Department memo, according to the report, also called for the government to use tougher language on the violence in the past from the Taliban and urged them to start collecting information for Afghan allies who qualified for Special Immigrant Visas after working with US forces.
The Journal reported that 23 Embassy staffers signed the cable and rushed to deliver it considering the deteriorating situation in Kabul.
Blinken reviewed the cable, a personal familiar with it told the paper.
State Department spokesman Ned Price told the Journal: 'He's made clear that he welcomes and encourages use of the dissent channel, and is committed to its revitalization. We value constructive internal dissent.'
The memo urged the administration to start flights evacuating people out of the country no later than August 1st.
A former CIA counter-terrorism chief also advised the president's campaign Kabul would crumble within days with a depleted American presence.
But in an interview released on Thursday morning, President Biden claimed that he was never told that such a rapid collapse was possible.
And a day earlier, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he never saw any intelligence warning that the Afghan government could fall so quickly.
'There was nothing that I or anyone else saw that indicated a collapse of this army and this government in 11 days,' Milley said.
Their claims were disputed in a detailed account describing the state of understanding at the CIA written by Douglas London, the agency's former counter-terrorism chief for south and south-west Asia, which offered a very different assessment.
He said the rapid collapse was one of a number of possible scenarios.
'Ultimately, it was assessed, Afghan forces might capitulate under the circumstances we witnessed, in projections highlighted to Trump officials and future Biden officials alike,' he wrote on the Just Security website.
Tens of thousands of Afghans are currently trying to flee the country on mercy flights from Kabul, with babies passed over barbed wire to US soldiers
Taliban fighters swept into Kabul almost unopposed last week, and have since assumed control of the country
London, who also served as a volunteer adviser to the Biden campaign after leaving the CIA in 2019, scoffed at the president's claim that events in Afghanistan unfolded more rapidly than expected.
'That's misleading at best,' he said. 'The CIA anticipated it as a possible scenario.'
Biden has been accused of 'humiliating' America on the world stage by committing himself to Trump's plan to withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan this year.
The rapid withdrawal was followed by the equally rapid collapse of the Afghan army - which the west spent 20 years and billions of dollars training and equipping - allowing the Islamists to walk into Kabul virtually unopposed last week.
That has sparked a desperate rush to get out of the country, with tens of thousands of people gathering at the airport each day in a bid to get on one of the last evacuation flights.
Meanwhile the Taliban has started going house-to-house in a hunt for anyone who collaborated with the west, so they can be tortured and killed.
Each day brings more horrifying scenes from the airport including men falling from US planes, a teenager whose body was crushed in landing gear, women being whipped by Taliban guards and children who have been trampled.
Western nations have pledged to take more than 100,000 Afghan refugees between them but have now been forced to admit that they may not even be able to evacuate their own citizens before the air bridge is cut off.
Biden has said US troops will stay past his August 31 date for withdrawal in order to get all US passport holders out of the country - but with the Taliban now firmly in control, it remains to be seen whether he can keep that promise.
UK defence sources have said they are contingency planning for withdrawal of their own forces with as little as 24 hours notice if the Americans suddenly decide to abandon ship - a scenario they fear will put troops in danger.
