Exclusively in the new print issue of CounterPunch Give Him an
"F" in the War on Terror  How Bush Was Offered Bin Laden and
Blew It       By the end of 1999 US sanctions and near-world-
wide political ostracism were costing the Taliban dearly and
they had come to see Osama bin Laden and his training camps as,
in Mohabbat’s words, "just a damn liability". Mohabbat says the
Taliban leadership had also been informed in the clearest
possible terms by a US diplomat that if any US citizen was
harmed as a consequence of an Al Qaeda action, the US would hold
the Taliban responsible and target Mullah Omar and the Taliban
leaders.  In the summer of 2000, on one of his regular trips to
Afghanistan, Mohabbat had a summit session with the Taliban high
command in Kandahar. They asked him to arrange a meeting with
appropriate officials in the European Union, to broker a way in
which they could hand over Osama bin Laden . Mohabbat
recommended they send bin Laden to the World Criminal Court in
the Hague.  Shortly thereafter, i