But The Swing Set Bothered Clinton

Perhaps the best opportunity to kill Osama bin Laden prior to the 9/11 attacks came in 1998 when credible intelligence placed the terrorist leader at Tarnak Farm (image above), a compound on the arid plains near Kandahar in Afghanistan.

With the aid of real-time video imagery transmitted by a Predator drone, U.S. intelligence agents half way around the world were able to watch Bin Laden as he walked through the primitive and undefended compound were he and his associates and their families then lived.

The imagery was so detailed that a lone child's swing hanging in the compound could be seen. Yet despite this irresistible target the swing haunted President Clinton, suggesting that innocent children lived there, so he refused to approve a missile strike.