Mullah Omar's 'Peace Plan'...

"... America's 17 intelligence agencies have spent more than half-a-trillion dollars - more than $500,000,000,000 - since Sept. 11, 2001, most of it on the global war on terror, and the Obama administration still believes that if Taliban supreme Mullah Mohammed Omar were to return to power in Kabul, al Qaeda would be back, too - "in a heartbeat." And this despite much evidence to the contrary....... 

UPI consultant Ammar Turabi, a Pakistan-born American, and this reporter, sat cross-legged on the carpeted mud floor of Mullah Omar's spartan adobe house on the west end of Kandahar and listened to the reclusive war leader's list of complaints about Osama bin Laden. The world's most wanted terrorist - and the scion of a wealthy Saudi family - was expelled from Sudan under Western pressure in 1996 and decided to return to the country of his wartime exploits against the Soviet Union. Mullah Omar, still consolidating his civil war victory, was paid handsomely by bin Laden, who then began setting up terrorist training camps. But it soon became apparent that bin Laden was overplaying his hand....

Mullah Omar and his immediate entourage made clear to Mr. Turabi, a multilinguist, and me that any fatwa issued by bin Laden declaring jihad, or holy war, was "null and void." He explained that bin Laden hadn't completed his 12 years of mandatory Koranic studies to qualify for the position of mufti...... The one-eyed, 6-foot-6-inch, five-times-wounded guerrilla leader against the Soviet occupation, made clear to us the Taliban regime would like to "resolve or dissolve" the bin Laden issue. In return, he expected the United States to establish a dialogue to work out an acceptable solution that would lead to "an easing and then lifting of United Nations sanctions that are strangling and killing the people of the emirate." Afghanistan, according to Mullah Omar's entourage, has suggested to the United States via the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad,  that international "monitors" keep bin Laden under observation pending a resolution of the case, "but so far we have received no reply.".....

It would be interesting to know whether President Obama ever read what Mullah Omar had to say three months before Sept. 11. In his interview with Mr. Zakaria on Sunday, it became clear Mr. Holbrooke hadn't. Unknown, too, is the Saudi link with Mullah Omar. Mr. Holbrooke, the diplomatic magician who engineered the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords, ending the Bosnia war, knows from personal experience nothing was possible without the hated Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic. This time, exchange Dayton for Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the late Milosevic for Mullah Omar. Add Pakistan and remove Afghan President Hamid Karzai. And you may get a peace deal that would enable 44 nations involved in Afghanistan to go home.

This was a direct message to this reporter from Mullah Omar...."