[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 7031-7032]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1415
                  WE HAD OSAMA BIN LADEN IN OUR SIGHTS

  (Mr. PITTS asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, in the fall of the year 2000, a Predator 
drone captured Osama bin Laden on tape. At that time, the Predator 
could not be armed.
  But the tape is revealing. It was relayed in real time to CIA 
headquarters, and the CIA was watching bin Laden as he moved, when he 
moved. The tape proves that the Clinton administration had bin Laden in 
its sights, as it did several times during its 8 years in office, but 
did nothing.
  A former CIA station chief in Afghanistan said that the Clinton White 
House issued an ultimatum to the CIA, ``Capture bin Laden, don't kill 
him.'' They wanted to arrest bin Laden and send him to court. 
Unfortunately, since then we have learned that you cannot fight 
terrorism by filing legal papers.
  We cannot hesitate to act in defense of our national interests, even 
if that means acting alone or acting preemptively. We cannot wait for 
appropriate international committees to give us permission.
  Our national security is far too important to be left to the whims of 
world opinion, and it is far too important to wait for legal papers to 
be filed.

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