On August 7th of 1998 al Qaeda bombed a U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. These bombings killed 213 people including 12 americans, while over 4000 more were injured in some way. President Clinton was notified at 5:35 of these bombings after they had happened. After two weeks of consideration and thought by the president, he sent the order to proceed with Operation Infinite Reach.
Infinite Reach was an attempt to kill bin Laden in August of 1998 that failed. As another objective, to impact the al Qaeda forces and take out a factory that was supposedly working with bin Laden and was presumably making VX nerve gas for him. In a later investigation it was revealed that the info on this was false and is still under debate if the factory was making VX nerve gas or not because the main chemical in the gas was found in the dirt around the compound before the strike, O-Ethyl methylphosphonothioic acid. Yet the factory was just recently bought by a new owner in March of that year. The strike was considered a failure on the count of bin Laden still living through it and destroying a Pharmaceutical factory that wasn’t proven to be helping any terrorist organization.
The entire idea of the strike and unofficial goal was to get al Qaeda to realize that the U.S. will not tolerate any act against them and to get the terrorist organization to fear, or at least acknowledge that the U.S. is a foe not to be taken lightly. While there was intel that was provided from within the organization, this was considered false info after the events of Operation Infinite Reach were a failure and resulted in a lawsuit against the U.S. government. Though the factory was not proven to be in league with bin Laden or to be making nerve gas, soil samples taken from around the site almost a year before showed the main component in nerve gas, and when the U.S. government tried to go to their website there was nothing that they were selling available or even listed. Unfortunately, the compound is very similar to a compound used in many pesticides and can be easily be confused between one another.
The strike was approved by president Clinton at 3:00 AM on August 20th to use Tomahawk missiles to bomb the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, Sudan and an al Qaeda training camp in Khost, Afghanistan. The objective was originally to kill Osama bin Laden, as the info they were given told them he would be in one of those two places. bin Laden was, at the time of the strike, driving from the training camp to another facility and was not injured in the strike. While the training camp was proven and had been for a while, the factory in Sudan had no hard proof about the suspicions that gotten it bombed, and while there was no proof, there was a strange amount of coincidences that made it all look a bit suspicious.
Infinite Reach was an attempt to kill bin Laden in August of 1998 that failed. As another objective, to impact the al Qaeda forces and take out a factory that was supposedly working with bin Laden and was presumably making VX nerve gas for him. In a later investigation it was revealed that the info on this was false and is still under debate if the factory was making VX nerve gas or not because the main chemical in the gas was found in the dirt around the compound before the strike, O-Ethyl methylphosphonothioic acid. Yet the factory was just recently bought by a new owner in March of that year. The strike was considered a failure on the count of bin Laden still living through it and destroying a Pharmaceutical factory that wasn’t proven to be helping any terrorist organization.
The entire idea of the strike and unofficial goal was to get al Qaeda to realize that the U.S. will not tolerate any act against them and to get the terrorist organization to fear, or at least acknowledge that the U.S. is a foe not to be taken lightly. While there was intel that was provided from within the organization, this was considered false info after the events of Operation Infinite Reach were a failure and resulted in a lawsuit against the U.S. government. Though the factory was not proven to be in league with bin Laden or to be making nerve gas, soil samples taken from around the site almost a year before showed the main component in nerve gas, and when the U.S. government tried to go to their website there was nothing that they were selling available or even listed. Unfortunately, the compound is very similar to a compound used in many pesticides and can be easily be confused between one another.
The strike was approved by president Clinton at 3:00 AM on August 20th to use Tomahawk missiles to bomb the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, Sudan and an al Qaeda training camp in Khost, Afghanistan. The objective was originally to kill Osama bin Laden, as the info they were given told them he would be in one of those two places. bin Laden was, at the time of the strike, driving from the training camp to another facility and was not injured in the strike. While the training camp was proven and had been for a while, the factory in Sudan had no hard proof about the suspicions that gotten it bombed, and while there was no proof, there was a strange amount of coincidences that made it all look a bit suspicious.