The 9/11 Decade : The Intelligence War | Al Jazeera World

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I have a message for our military be ready behind the scenes in the war on terror another far more clandestine war was being fought Philadelphia New Hampshire in Capitola from Allah al Qaeda we were authorized to use lethal force against al-qaeda in this secret war both sides would make mistakes mistakes that would prove fatal with exclusive testimony from both sides this is the story of that war everything changed nothing will ever be the same name eleven rocker chick Olajuwon Oh muta Petacci davekeli ki the moon up nine eleven Mahalo Mahalo amudha ala sugar ah hello J do hot milk yogurt Marisa happy over to the school Reseda I'll either may well have celebrated on 9/11 inside the United States's intelligence community the reaction was entirely different shock what do we do meaning we because we are the unit we are the squad that's supposed to stop this this is what we were paid to do we were paid to stop this from happening and not only did it happen but it happened on American soil and it killed 3,000 people and that feeling of anger of loss is an was overwhelming our grief has turned to anger and anger to resolution whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies justice will be done beyond the anger and the rhetoric one thing was very clear this can never happen again and we have to be the ones to ensure that it doesn't six days after 9/11 George Bush signed a unique presidential finding granting unprecedented powers to the CIA it removed many of the restraints that previously had been there in terms of going after al-qaeda as an organization legal authority to kill the al-qaeda leadership and that's exactly what we set out to do for the United States the gloves were coming off buildings down will hear all of us soon the question was how to find the perpetrators it's uniquely difficult to hunt a terrorist group you're looking for a handful of individuals looking for weapons that are very small the whole nature of the intelligence target changes the answer for the CIA was to focus on the unique nature of the attacks themselves cell phones satellite phones the internet on September the 11th L buyer had hijacked the instruments of globalization and turned them against their inventors if the United States was to respond effectively it would have to infiltrate the terrorists main strength their use of communications technology you're always looking for vulnerabilities in an organization to see if you can get to their leadership for them to run the organization they've got to talk to each other how do they do it and how do we get in feel of Akhilesh deca Varnado the CIA had had a degree of success monitoring and why those communications in the years prior to 9/11 in 93 and 94 and 95 al Qaeda including bin Laden was very much on a learning curve they were new to this so they used communications devices perhaps less carefully than they should have it became apparent to us that he represented the kind of direct threat to us that other terrorist groups might not have in November 1996 the US National Security Agency received a tip bin Laden was using a new satellite telephone the NSA traced the phones number to its ultimate destination Kandahar Afghanistan it was very helpful in targeting or at least locating different cells of al-qaida around the world but he was very careful about what he said on it so careful that US intelligence was to remain in the dark regarding plans for bin Laden's most ambitious attack yet on August the 7th 1998 Alki the struck US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania hundreds were killed thousands injured for the NSA there was another crucial casualty its access to al-qaeda the fact that we were following Osama bin Laden because he was using a certain type of telephone made it into the press as a result of a leak and guess what happened well sama bin Laden changed his behavior phone went dead phone went dead that was a singular most stupid thing for anybody to do or say to talk about that how realistic are fear army al Qaeda had learned an important lesson it now started instructing its operatives how to stop the Americans from monitoring their course yeah okay fighters most dangerous weapon but used incorrectly it can get you killed oppa and from Nana and the communications of al Qaeda was much more difficult to collect your nominal data luckily I never reveal your true name always he was our code name but for the CIA there was an unexpected boon two days after the bombing Kenyan authorities picked up a suspect in Nairobi Dawood Rashid Al Ahly was an operative suicide bomber that didn't die who basically chickened out and ran confronted by the FBI Allah wali immediately caved in and answered one key question would you do that day after the bomb would you do you should call anybody oh yeah I call this number what's the number the NSA traced alle Wally's number two son Yemen and a longtime al-qaeda suspect mohamed al hada hello was the gatekeeper for al-qaeda's communication system his house was the switchboard it's like terrorists : central it's your central hub ur communications is calling home calling base US intelligence immediately tapped the houses phone lines and discovered two unusually frequent callers the first was a young Palestinian Abu Zubaydah Abu Zubaydah was very important person not a fighter or a bomber but someone who was running with gistic all affairs for several training camps in Afghanistan the second caller was a more mysterious character known only as multi we had no idea what Mukhtar was use of code names what makes the trail go a little stray makes investigation that much more difficult the coolest codename was itself a clue most are the brain in Arabic was the head of al Qaeda's operational planning unit two years later US intelligence is failure to identify or locate him was to have apocalyptic consequences freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward the United States will hunt down and punish those responsible punishing those responsible was to prove easier said than done the CIA knew that their main target was in Afghanistan but had no idea where I'll tell finished up wearables attack kilometer Dafa Oh Dino cooling side so we not know you're already with each other will wash away Delta of no Erica lady his Afghan hosts the Taliban now found themselves in the firing line delivered to United States authorities all the leaders of al-qaeda who hide in your land was through Pakistan that we were dealing trying to resolve this issue of Osama bin Laden being in Afghanistan we were dealing with malama and we were telling him to hand over or to send him out over the area if there is no evidence in proof given to us that a woman was not Verity - okay whoa sama bin Laden without any proof with the likelihood of a deal with the Taliban diminishing America now went firmly on a war footing really good on in secret the CIA explored one last option for peace contacting the number two in the Taliban leadership mullah Osmani I try make it very clear to my lost mind that the Americans were going to come and that whatever else might happen that this was gonna be very bad for the Taliban the CIA made Osmani an extraordinary offer if mullah omar will not do what is required to save the country it's up to you i basically talk him through the elements of a coup but osmani wasn't buying it and on October the 7th time finally ran out on my orders the United States military has begun strikes against al Qaeda terrorist training camps and military installations of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan we used about a hundred and ten strike aircraft including about 90 tactical aircraft launched from sea based platforms in Jalalabad the response to the onset of hostilities was immediate no water dear mutter were cashed a levy she knows worried oh watch it a hundred nika's employee achieving more vegetables and up we do Jota Jota tamale Dora Khanna the al-qaeda convoy moved south west out of Jalalabad towards the border with Pakistan and the mountains of Tora Bora said we think we know in general we're bin Laden and some of his senior leadership are hiding we think that's in this so-called Torah or area but getting him was going to prove harder than anyone expected bin Laden was not new to Tora Bora in the 1980s he and the Afghan mujahideen had fought the Soviets there the Tora Bora mountains were not ideal terrain for the Americans to operate in these are very forbidding peaks the passes through them are typically at a minimum 12,000 feet to 18,000 feet very very difficult terrain indeed and al-qaeda held the high ground US aircraft bombed the mountains relentlessly there is a psychological effect of having ammunition of 15,000 pounds of explosive capability that's brought into a very narrowly defined area the reverberation effect that goes up in those caves should have sometime a negative effect the other but here the u.s. faced a dilemma the Pentagon afraid of getting bogged down in Afghanistan refused to deploy large numbers of US troops on the ground most of the fighting and Tora Bora would have to be done by someone else Afghans to Pentagon Chiefs Afghan X Mujahideen were the perfect choice to hunt bin Laden not only where they battled hardened fighters they knew the terrain inside out from the outset the CIA thought this was a serious mistake in their view Afghan warlords were less than professional some were highly untrustworthy one of them turned out to be someone who can Loudon had fought alongside of during the war against the Soviet they're not going to go after bin Laden they're not going to kill bin Laden they'll take our money they'll shoot up some bullets they're not going to destroy somebody they regard as a hero the Pentagon senior commander disagreed we liked the arrangements that we have with the opposition from until we will to continue the work with his opposition America had a secret weapon good evening Pakistan immediately after 9/11 the United States had requested assistance from Pakistan's presidents Musharraf would agree to help with the war on terror the US now asked its new friend to help a Tora Bora we would task to a trace the al-qaeda terrorist and stop their entry into Pakistan Pakistan military moved up to a positions high up in the mountains and that the hope was that these units would be able to capture any fighters who came through but covering hundreds of miles of the world's most treacherous border at high altitude was a formidable task USSR with their resources and they were unlimited resources they could not seal this model you can't put people on the whole mountains for that you need armies of two three countries because you just can't plug every hole worse rumors soon began to circulate that the Afghan warlords were taking bribes to allow al-qaeda fighters to escape this country you know has a history built on bartering and the allegiances can be bought and so we suspect that that has in fact been happening as time went by the Pentagon realized that its hold on the Warlord's allegiance was temporary and the time was running out whence it went on for a day and then two days and then three days and then a week and then ten days I think with every passing day we were pretty sure that they weren't going to be able to get him in mid-december after a month of bombardments Alki the senior leaders finally slipped the net US intelligence assumed they had crossed the border from Tora Bora directly south into para cenar some did of those many were captured recent evidence however suggests that the organization senior leadership took a different route on their way into Pakistan east say Universal Cassano gotcha heels observers are falsely oh sorry bishop ah he's our boss you're sorry lira Serra da ricotta gnudi Rosario moschini me no tiara DC movie de la Roble du loup garou no mongrels attach our Tabas to republic ahora de la mancha lasagna las islas an LA Paribas no Avignon LaSalle camaraderie solo Bogart okay la ilaha more personal from the moment they crossed the Kabul River at Lau poor I'll either and at senior leadership were lost to the Americans what is the latest thinking now about where bin Laden might be anybody's guess is the latest thinking entirely predictable entirely predictable it ran into Pakistan the al-qaida and Taliban they ran into the mountains and cities of Pakistan the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks escaped and the United States was left to rue the loss of its best opportunity to kill bin Laden yet it was a serious setback that bin Laden got across the border at Tora Bora no question about it bin Laden himself was left to gloat what's happened to either next is a matter of some speculation many fighters simply went home others stayed along the border in Waziristan or the Northwest Frontier Province where it's very very difficult in many cases impossible for the u.s. to operate or even for central government Pakistani forces to operate once there and once establishing themselves there I think they began to realize that they were if not completely beyond the reach of the government of Pakistan that they had a relatively secure safe haven instead of eliminating al-qaeda the United States had pushed the organization out of reach this was to cause serious problems later on Osama bin Laden had taken on the greatest military force on earth and had survived to tell the tale US intelligence was to suffer one final humiliating setback the bad path above HIPPA we heard the noise and we thought of how it exploded this man says we went to find out what happened man found a man laying on the ground didn't know the reason in February 2002 unaware that it was under surveillance by the CIA Yemeni authorities visited the had a house Mohamed el hada escaped his son Samir cornered by Yemeni authorities blew himself up with a hand grenade at a house went down we kind of lost her well we lost our ability to monitor what was going on who was calling by the spring of 2002 al Qaeda was gone and the CIA's main means of intercepting their communications was gone with them the future for Osama bin Laden looked good that was to change Christmas 2001 al I the senior leadership had fled from Afghanistan into Pakistan out of the reach of the CIA even in the mr. war we pray for peace on earth and goodwill to men within months the agency's access to the organization's communications network gained by bugging the had a house in Yemen would be gone too not much room for celebration and certainly not in Pakistan where the cia's trail had gone cold we probably had just as good a chance of seeing bin Laden sitting at a cafe somewhere drinking a cup of coffee as we did putting together an operation to go out and catch him but bin Laden was not the only possible target logistics chief for al Qaeda's training camps Abu Zubaydah all the CIA had to go on was a single passport photograph from which they created a series of photo fit images but in February 2002 intelligence came in that shot him up the targeting list one of his main jobs was to get people through Pakistan and out of Pakistan to places where they could find safe haven but moving al-qaeda members meant a lot of phone calls and US intelligence was listening in they are susceptible to detection when they do two things when they move and when they communicate Abu Zubaydah was doing both so as he was trying to shepherd those individuals his his vulnerability if you will was was far greater by late February the CIA had narrowed Abu Zubaydah's location down to the city of Faisal Abad and the network of fourteen possible safe houses said that we had to hit all of them at once and capture as many of these people as we possibly could I said we've never hit 14 sites simultaneously before the most we'd ever done was to undercover officers visited the sites and discovered that one was an empty field with a telegraph pole in it the young Technical Officer climbed the pole he went through the wires found the one that we were interested in followed it down the pole and then literally followed it down an alley pointed at a house in the distance and said it's that house right there the raids commenced at 2:00 a.m. the next day within 45 minutes the CIA was in possession of a wealth of new intelligence bomb makers jihadis suicide bombers and at last Abu Zubaydah himself not that all had gone entirely according to plan he had been shot in the thigh the groin and the stomach with an ak-47 he was clearly bleeding to death need to get him the best medical attention that we possibly could so that among other things that you could be appropriate interrogate but killing him was not a part of the plan we had to take him alive after 12 hours of emergency surgery Abu Zubaydah was finally stabilized he woke to an unpleasant surprise I went over to him and I moved his his oxygen mask and I said to him should have smacked what is your name and then he said to me in English I will not speak to you in God's language and I said that's a cab as a Bader we know who you are the other day and hauled in a guy named Abu Zubaydah he's one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States he's not plotting and planning anymore he's where he belongs Abu Zubaydah was the most significant al-qaeda member US intelligence had captured since 9/11 such an important player as far as knowing who's in the organization he sent the people to the camps he had their names he had everything down about them the CIA needed to know what Abu Zubaydah knew the agency had something special in store for him being a very senior al-qaeda official who has been intimately involved in a range of activities for the al-qaeda there's no question but that having an opportunity to visit with him is helpful sometimes I understate for emphasis several CIA officers dressed completely in black with black hoods got off the plane and then we loaded him on the plane and I never saw him again where was that was it had taken where was Abu Zubaydah taking me after Pakistan that was there was someone else's responsibility and it's not something that I can talk about in fact Abu Zubaydah was flown to Thailand where his interrogation revealed a key fact the identity of the mysterious Matar who had been calling the had a house in Yemen Moctar the brain was harlot Sheikh Mohammed when a loser beta identified the picture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as Mukhtar then it made sense it's all these fragmented pieces of circumstantial evidence now became evidence Khalid Sheikh Mohammed the top operational planner the top killer of the al Qaeda Network the man who masterminded the September the 11th attacks is no longer a problem to the United States of America there was a darker side on September the 17th 2001 George Bush had delegated special authorities to the CIA one of these was the authority to interrogate from a high-tech signals intelligence war the CIA now employed less surgical techniques waterboarding is is where a prisoner is tied to a board or a gurney the feet are slightly elevated and then water is poured on the face from a bladder above it's very very painful the United States called the technique enhanced interrogation others had a different word for it torture here's a man who knows about additional terrorist acts here's a man who trained people to do this and all this concern about that individual as opposed to concern about the terrorist acts that that individual has tried to commit has in fact participated in who has trained people to do it and who has knowledge of additional people who are located around the world it seems to me that I've got it exactly right I've got first things first and anything else comes a a clear tenth eleventh or twelve Abu Zubaydah's treatments raised more troubling issues much of his questioning had nothing to do with al-qaeda training camps America had its eyes on a new target there are clearly links between Iraq and terrorism and there are all kind of been spotted in Baghdad Saddam Hussein is offering now $25,000 per family if they can persuade their youngsters to go out and kill themselves and kill innocent people this is a regime that has hostile intent toward the United States it is a is a fact it just didn't make any sense at all we hadn't cut bin Laden we hadn't caught Zoe we knew that most of these guys were in Pakistan and here we were moving everybody to focus on Iraq Operation Iraqi Freedom commenced on March the 20th 2003 initially the Iraqi response to the invasion was ambivalent Philby Delhomme takuna Jamaat masala 1/2 lemon with leather colonel Amal a super here and read one of them Captain America will be day let me study moving us Jannik are you a teacher rumba she killed Bobby Ray you have alone and kubinashi no I'm a hollow and juji juji swarm in the theta beta home Rodya Tina's Philby daya Lilou doodle America who identical major combat operations in Iraq have ended in the Battle of Iraq the United States and our allies have prevailed President Bush may have thought the war was over but in reality it was just beginning friend Emma Ozma an invader of cavaletti palette Bobby do you he know a nurse by the way - Joe is a photo - amorality yeah an elephant which terminal lrp Laden which them enough show Minamata 'the human toes of Afiya rocket i'll film is lucky but a clump of Jamaat masala habitat - not good enough sir there was a far greater threat than Iraqi insurgents some in the CIA had seen it coming from the beginning you invade Iraq we will be an infidel country invading a Muslim country without provocation what you're doing is giving al-qaeda the qur'anic predicates for justifying a defensive jihad lovino you Nadine a hiatal an conceive and Benin podemos Lottie Veronica mulatto tmtb lithography Dane very early in the Iraq war we began to perceive and communicate that al Qaeda had infiltrated the country Phoebe Dayton Elfie a new concept Interpol Tila from Allah al Qaeda Barbara Milioti he iconic Amelia thought that fell yoga dijah yeah immediately militia Oh tomorrow sucks intro cumin at this point that al-qaeda's superior knowledge of bomb maker began to take hold I'll either bombed and bombs and bond Allah Akbar Isabella the group trapped the United States into fighting and ever more uncontrollable counterinsurgency meanwhile the chaos in Iraq allowed it to resume the kinds of international operations at which it excelled well know what you've done to deserve this you're those who are vote in your government who turn up and still continue to this day continue to oppress our mothers children brothers and sisters from the east to the west in Palestine Afghanistan Iraq the West had miscalculated far from neutralizing al Qaeda the invasion of Iraq had invigorated it it really began a process which bin Laden may never have been able to pull off by himself and that was moving al-qaeda from being a man in a group to being a philosophy in a movement and without our help without America's help that may never have happened and then for al-qaeda everything went wrong Alice curry one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam in Iraq I know what I've done in a literature you tell our been it with money or no stuff a little bit aside I thought I thought I'd love a similar talk at Bobby I know I had read it with Jeffrey him mo da da da da da ba da Matta calcio padova point Zelda hain Yan Zi are scary love scene Kelly Ayotte catapult your table rd n dr. Alan an empanada feel of a variable America no banana Michelle Dehaene God's safely immobilized the intruder set about their business destroying one of their own country's most sacred shrines al-qaida had come to Iraq to fight Americans but his bombing of the UH Ascari shrine turned the fighting against its own allies and the man behind it Abu Musab al-zarqawi akari was a extremely vicious individual there was literally nothing that he would not do to further his ends and murder and mayhem were his tools Jordanian by birth al Zarqawi was one of a new generation of jihadis who gravitated to Iraq to fight the Americans once there he appointed himself head of al-qaeda in Iraq and set about doing something completely different so our cowls goal was to drive a wedge between Sunni and Shia elements in Iraq I think he was attempting to create a massive uprising and essentially a civil war al Zarqawi laid down his thoughts on Iraq Shia Muslims in a letter to the senior leadership in Pakistan in 2004 er are the unsurmountable obstacle the lurking snake the crafty and malicious copy and he went on to explain exactly what he was planning to do about them targeting the Shias religious political and military symbols will make them show the rage against the Sunnis fighting the Shia is the way to take the nation to battle bombing one of the holiest Shia shrines in Iraq was the perfect way to start that battle within 24 hours iraq exploded into sectarian violence this just led to a paroxysm of violence and it was after that that you really saw ethnic cleansing taking place al-zarqawi had brought about the Civil War he was seeking all along but the Jordanian had made a fatal miscalculation destroying shrines killing Iraqis and especially killing Muslims was not the way to gain recruits in Iraq let me know Malcolm fatale American lucky man and I still if Malcolm he had a hill career they are nenebene now were being a Shiraki Thurmond across America so an Iranian Waddell Mustafa bail terry kathira manila mortage mana jealous anonymous take alumina if he miss la costura a shiritori dune and cup of him in our table alaikum and kapooya el masala Haley had in monopoly stay defend America matanza are we was in no mood for listening LMU are people hassle at Amelia after bath liashko smarted Lila home portaloo Holocaust they made this a civil war to the point where the Iraqi said well we might not necessarily like the Americans but we sure as heck don't light it like a bunch of foreign fighters coming here and killing us as the body counts spiraled many who had fought alongside the group now decided to ally themselves with the United States and fought al Qaeda itself what Jill mr. Mac Baren cool Baraka still Mia Neffe that Medina fella McCullen eyelid alcapurrias hat can read home alarm oh yeah any an Oklahoman manitoc night al-zarqawi's death the results of a u.s. airstrike in 2006 failed to repair the damage to untie this image the only strategic threat to al-qaeda since 9/11 was Abu Musab al-zarqawi if we had not killed him al-qaeda would have killed him themselves because he came closest to ruining al-qaeda there are lessons to be learned from Iraq bloody decade the United States got it wrong I'll either got it wrong but the most costly lesson was reserved for Iraqis themselves the true price of embracing al-qaeda today Iraqis have had enough of their former guests the wave of pro-democracy uprisings currently sweeping the Middle East provides further evidence of al-qaeda's increasing irrelevance the Arab Spring is a serious negative for the al Qaeda organization they talked about overthrowing corrupt regime now those corrupt regimes are gone their ability to recruit people based on that message is gone images of the protesters show a further disparity without either and its goals men and women of different faiths marching together calls not for Taliban led Emirates but liberal democracies evidence too many that Al Qaeda's appeal may finally have waned yes al Qaeda is weakened yes it's back on its heels you know the worst may be over but it I think would be a mistake to breathe too easy yet in the midst of the protests one event drove even the Arab Spring from the front pages good evening tonight I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden the leader of al-qaeda since his escape from Tora Bora bin Laden had been laying low in Pakistan safely out of reach of the United States America wanted him but to get him it needed Pakistan's assistance immediately after September the 11th 2001 it ain't mica Stan had agreed I see a dawn of a new era of relationship between Pakistan and United it was not to prove the era anyone was hoping for enraged at the government's deal with the u.s. indigenous militants Taliban and al Qaeda United and identified a new target Pakistan itself more hostile gorillas Shangai or hung gorilla Carter hey hood say Franny geekish cotton or dushman Poe target Carnegie koshish cotton Peshwa home road maybe Passat a mondo Guerra become karta hoon seonggi gari or deity Dussehra NK de l'homme Fajardo yaku yes each is a home our demerit a long Xia chuan you didn't use to counter the attacks along the Afghan border Pakistan deployed its military and the war on terror began to look like a real wall the dead tal mounting by the day now according to official figures more than 700 fighters have been killed Alki then the Taliban responded the only way they knew how if you put pins on a map showing al-qaeda attacks in Pakistan you see them moving gradually over the last five years from the border area deep into the interior of the country to Karachi to face al-abaad to Islamabad into this volatile situation one final ingredient American Predator drones bombing alaka'i the suspects inside Pakistan the Predators have been quite perfective the obvious downside however is that they they have generated a tremendous amount of political opposition when you use a drone and you fire a missile who doesn't need any intelligence to know that they will be collateral damage the collateral damage part is the serious part because a lot of civilians a lot of women and children sometimes also get killed they added to the increasing radicalization if you will a Pakistan the results disaffection destabilization new recruits for al-qaida more violence since 2001 some 30,000 Pakistanis have been killed as a result of the war on terror bin Laden may be dead but in Pakistan all is far from well a decade after September the 11th what have we learned we know how the United States fought its intelligence war we know how al-qaeda fought back but where the war on terror will lead in the next decade is anyone's guess the only thing that seems relatively certain it won't end soon dodge opprotunity come Muslim Salman and Akshay become decays alum America Israel ruse India chicken combine Cunha haha demo Salman he lofty the heikkila Tonga occasionally a hawkish Bambara harmed our clinic was pahala giegi to come ha ha the 911 machi shadaloo Sarah all the 911 fast America Saroja you

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Channel: Al Jazeera English

Views: 1,667,023

Rating: 4.0969372 out of 5

Keywords: 9/11, US war on terror, cia, george bush, water-boarding, intelligence war, al-qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, 9/11 decade, Iraq's Shias, Tora Bora, aljazeera, Iraq War, terrorism, united states, us terrorism, jazeera, documentary, al jazeera 9/11, al jazeera, al jazeera english, al jazeera world, september 11, world trade center, twin towers, The 9/11 Decade | The Intelligence War | Al Jazeera World, Intelligence, War, 9/11 Decade, nine eleven attack, nine eleven

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Length: 47min 12sec (2832 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 31 2011

Reddit Comments

Nice one, I caught this on AlJazeera when it aired, but only saw the first one The Intelligence War, kept meaning to watch the rest but unfortunately completely forgotten about them.

👍︎︎ 2 👤︎︎ u/TheFrin 📅︎︎ Jan 02 2013 🗫︎ replies