A year before his death, Osama bin Laden warned that if Al-Qaeda* jihadists were successful in killing then-US President Barack Obama, Joe Biden replacing him for the remainder of the term was a good option, because the Democrat would become an ineffective president and "lead the US into a crisis."
The then-leader of Al-Qaeda wrote the 48-page letter to an assistant known only as "Brother Shaykh Mahmud," whose real name was Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, in May 2010, according to the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. In the text, the terrorist argued the need to divert resources away from terror activities in other Muslim countries and toward direct assaults on the US and its top officials.
On page 36, he expressed his wish to establish two murder squads, one in Pakistan and the other in Afghanistan, whose mission would be to prepare strikes against Obama and former CIA Director David Petraeus if they visit either nation.
According to bin Laden, Obama is "the head of infidelity" and his assassination would "automatically 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," bin Laden noted.
He warned his soldiers that targeting Obama and Petraeus' planes was a top priority, and they "are not to target visits by US Vice President Biden," due to the latter's lack of experience.
"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," he added.
The letter was discovered in a cache of documents inside the Pakistan compound where he was killed by a US special operations raid on May 2, 2011.
President Biden is currently under growing international criticism for an ill-planned withdrawal and abandoning Afghans to their fate, as it was recently revealed that his administration was warned last month that the Afghan capital would fall to the Taliban soon if the US left.
Nevertheless, back on July 8, Biden evaluated the possibility of the Taliban taking control of Afghanistan as "highly unlikely" and that there would be no turmoil in Kabul.
Friday's article by Politico described the events leading up to the fall of Kabul last Sunday, one administration official allegedly described the point when the need to evacuate the embassy and American citizens became apparent in light of the imminent Taliban seizure of power as an "oh sh*t" moment.
Expectedly, there are growing doubts about how the White House, Pentagon, and US intelligence services assessed the future of Afghanistan, the Taliban threat, and how soon control would shift.
The pullout was quickly followed by the collapse of the Afghan army, which has been trained and prepared for the fight by the Western coalition at the expense of 20 years and billions of dollars, allowing Islamists to stroll into Kabul largely unchallenged last week.
As a result, tens of thousands of people are fleeing the city to the airport in the hopes of catching one of the last evacuation planes out of the nation. Some have strapped themselves to the landing gear and clung to the wings of US Air Force cargo planes taking off, which has already resulted in the deaths of several Afghans.
* Terrorist organizations banned in Russia and many other states