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.
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.
