Democrats were willing dupes...again

[billcoe]

Opps, some citations for my earlier post re: Condolisa's Chevron thing and Clinton's miss on Bin Laden.

 

 

Kevbone, I have a lot of respect for some of the things Clinton did, but his ineffectualness on this issue directly led to the attack on Afganistan and the thousands killed in New York on Sept 11, 2001. Read the last citation closely.

 

Link 1 (Concernig Condi job status pre-Bush admin)

 

 

"She was now taken under the wing of George P. Shultz (Ronald Reagan's Secretary of State from 1982-1989), who was a fellow at the Hoover Institution. Shultz included Rice in a "luncheon club" of intellectuals who met every few weeks to discuss foreign affairs.[20] In 1992, Shultz, who was a board member of Chevron Corporation, recommended Rice for a spot on the Chevron board. Chevron was pursuing a $10 billion development project in Kazakhstan, and as a Soviet specialist, Rice knew the President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev. She traveled to Kazakhstan on Chevron's behalf, and, in honor of her work, in 1993, Chevron named a 129,000-ton supertanker SS Condoleezza Rice.[20]"

 

-and the many many misses and bungling of the Clinton administration who could have prevented 9/11, and this link doesn't detail Janet Reno not allowing the FBI to read the hard drive of Mohammed Atta, which had the details of 9/11 on it and would have saved thousands of lives had they just check it out, and as he was not a US citizen, they should hv and could have easily done so.

 

Link 2

 

"Richard Miniter is a Brussels-based investigative journalist. His new book, Losing bin Laden: How Bill Clinton's Failures Unleashed Global Terror has just been released by Regnery. He spoke to NRO early today about the run-up to the war on terror.

 

 

 

 

Kathryn Jean Lopez: What did the Clinton administration know about Osama bin Laden and when did they know it?

 

Richard Miniter: One of the big myths about the Clinton years is that no one knew about bin Laden until Sept. 11, 2001. In fact, the bin Laden threat was recognized at the highest levels of the Clinton administration as early as 1993. What's more, bin Laden's attacks kept escalating throughout the Clinton administration; all told bin Laden was responsible for the deaths of 59 Americans on Clinton's watch.

 

President Clinton learned about bin Laden within months of being sworn into office. National Security Advisor Anthony Lake told me that he first heard the name Osama bin Laden in 1993 in relation to the World Trade Center attack. Lake briefed the president about bin Laden that same year.

 

In addition, starting in 1993, Rep. Bill McCollum (R., Fla.) repeatedly wrote to President Clinton and warned him and other administration officials about bin Laden and other Islamic terrorists. McCollum was the founder and chairman of the House Taskforce on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare and had developed a wealth of contacts among the mujihedeen in Afghanistan. Those sources, who regularly visited McCollum, informed him about bin Laden's training camps and evil ambitions.

 

Indeed, it is possible that Clinton and his national-security team learned of bin Laden even before the 1993 World Trade Center attack. My interviews and investigation revealed that bin Laden made his first attack on Americans was December 1992, a little more than a month after Clinton won the 1992 election. His target was 100 U.S. Marines housed in two towering Yemen hotels. Within hours, the CIA's counterterrorism center learned that the Yemen suspected a man named Osama bin Laden. (One of the arrested bombing suspects later escaped and was detained in a police sweep after al Qaeda attacked the USS Cole in 2000.) Lake says he doesn't remember briefing the president-elect about the attempted attack, but that he well might have.

 

So it is safe to conclude that Clinton knew about the threat posed by bin Laden since 1993, his first year in office.

 

Lopez: What exactly was U.S. reaction to the attack on the USS Cole?

 

Miniter: In October 2000, al Qaeda bombed the USS Cole in Aden, Yemen. Seventeen sailors were killed in the blast. The USS Cole was almost sunk. In any ordinary administration, this would have been considered an act of war. After all, America entered the Spanish-American war and World War I when our ships were attacked.

 

Counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke had ordered his staff to review existing intelligence in relation to the bombing of the USS Cole. After that review, he and Michael Sheehan, the State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, were convinced it was the work of Osama bin Laden. The Pentagon had on-the-shelf, regularly updated and detailed strike plans for bin Laden's training camps and strongholds in Afghanistan.

 

At a meeting with Secretary of Defense William Cohen, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Attorney General Janet Reno, and other staffers, Clarke was the only one in favor of retaliation against bin Laden. Reno thought retaliation might violate international law and was therefore against it. Tenet wanted to more definitive proof that bin Laden was behind the attack, although he personally thought he was. Albright was concerned about the reaction of world opinion to a retaliation against Muslims, and the impact it would have in the final days of the Clinton Middle East peace process. Cohen, according to Clarke, did not consider the Cole attack "sufficient provocation" for a military retaliation. Michael Sheehan was particularly surprised that the Pentagon did not want to act. He told Clarke: "What's it going to take to get them to hit al Qaeda in Afghanistan? Does al Qaeda have to attack the Pentagon?"

 

Instead of destroying bin Laden's terrorist infrastructure and capabilities, President Clinton phoned twice phoned the president of Yemen demanding better cooperation between the FBI and the Yemeni security services. If Clarke's plan had been implemented, al Qaeda's infrastructure would have been demolished and bin Laden might well have been killed. Sept. 11, 2001 might have been just another sunny day.

 

Lopez: When the World Trade Center was first bombed in '93, why was it treated at first as a criminal investigation?

 

Miniter: The Clinton administration was in the dark about the full extent of the bin Laden menace because the president's decision to treat the 1993 World Trade Center bombing as a crime. Once the FBI began a criminal investigation, it could not lawfully share its information with the CIA — without also having to share the same data with the accused terrorists. Woolsey told me about his frustration that he had less access to evidence from the World Trade Center bombing — the then-largest ever foreign terrorist attack on U.S soil — than any junior agent in the FBI's New York office.

 

Why did Clinton treat the attack as a law-enforcement matter? Several reasons. In the first few days, Clinton refused to believe that the towers had been bombed at all — even though the FBI made that determination within hours. He speculated a electrical transformer had exploded or a bank heist went bad.

 

More importantly, treating the bombing as a criminal matter was politically advantageous. A criminal matter is a relatively tidy process. It has the political benefit of insulating Clinton from consequences; after all, he was only following the law. He is not to blame if the terrorists were released on a "technicality" or if foreign nations refuse to honor our extradition requests. Oh well, he tried.

 

By contrast, if Clinton treated the bombing as the act of terrorism that it was, he would be assuming personal responsibility for a series of politically risky moves. Should he deploy the CIA or special forces to hunt down the perpetrators? What happens if the agents or soldiers die? What if they try to capture the terrorists and fail? One misstep and the media, Congress, and even the public might blame the president. So Clinton took the easy, safe way out, and called it a crime.

 

Lopez: Bill Clinton was actually offered bin Laden? Could you set the scene a little and clue us in on why, for heavens sakes, he would not take advantage of such opportunities?

 

Miniter: On March 3, 1996, U.S. ambassador to Sudan, Tim Carney, Director of East African Affairs at the State Department, David Shinn, and a member of the CIA's directorate of operations' Africa division met with Sudan's then-Minister of State for Defense Elfatih Erwa in a Rosslyn, Virginia hotel room. Item number two on the CIA's list of demands was to provide information about Osama bin Laden. Five days later, Erwa met with the CIA officer and offered more than information. He offered to arrest and turn over bin Laden himself. Two years earlier, the Sudan had turned over the infamous terrorist, Carlos the Jackal to the French. He now sits in a French prison. Sudan wanted to repeat that scenario with bin Laden in the starring role.

 

Clinton administration officials have offered various explanations for not taking the Sudanese offer. One argument is that an offer was never made. But the same officials are on the record as saying the offer was "not serious." Even a supposedly non-serious offer is an offer. Another argument is that the Sudanese had not come through on a prior request so this offer could not be trusted. But, as Ambassador Tim Carney had argued at the time, even if you believe that, why not call their bluff and ask for bin Laden?

 

The Clinton administration simply did not want the responsibility of taking Osama bin Laden into custody. Former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger is on the record as saying: "The FBI did not believe we had enough evidence to indict bin Laden at that time and therefore opposed bringing him to the United States." Even if that was true — and it wasn't — the U.S. could have turned bin Laden over to Yemen or Libya, both of which had valid warrants for his arrest stemming from terrorist activities in those countries. Given the legal systems of those two countries, Osama would have soon ceased to be a threat to anyone.

 

After months of debating how to respond to the Sudanese offer, the Clinton administration simply asked Sudan to deport him. Where to? Ambassador Carney told me what he told the Sudanese: "Anywhere but Somalia."

 

In May 1996 bin Laden was welcomed into Afghanistan by the Taliban. It could not have been a better haven for Osama bin Laden.

 

Steven Simon, Clinton's counterterrorism director on the National Security Council thought that kicking bin Laden out of Sudan would benefit U.S. security since "It's going to take him a while to reconstitute, and that screws him up and buys time." Buys time? Oh yeah, 1996 was an election year and team Clinton did not want to deal with bin Laden until after it was safely reelected.

 

Lopez: This amazes me every time I hear it: You write, "When a small plane accidentally crashed into the White House lawn in 1994, West Wing staffers joked that it was [Jim] Woolsey trying to see the president..." How could the CIA director have that bad a relationship with his president? And this, after the first WTC attack. Did no one in the West Wing get it?

 

Miniter: Never once in his two-year tenure did CIA director James Woolsey ever have a one-on-one meeting with Clinton. Even semiprivate meetings were rare. They only happened twice. Woolsey told me: "It wasn't that I had a bad relationship with the president. It just didn't exist."

 

One of the little scoops in the book is the revelation that Clinton froze Woolsey out because the CIA director refused to put a friend of Bill on the agency's payroll. This account was confirmed by both Woolsey and the Clinton's consigliore Bruce Lindsey.

 

Considering the Justice Department's experience with Webster Hubbell, another Friend of Bill, Woolsey's decision may have done the CIA a great deal of good. But Clinton's pique did not make America any safer from bin Laden.

 

Another Clinton intelligence failure involved a refusal to help the CIA hire more Arabic language translators. In 1993, Woolsey learned that the agency was able to translate only 10 percent of its Arabic intercepts and badly wanted more translators. But Sen. Dennis DeConcini refused to approve the funds unless Clinton phoned him and said it was a presidential priority. Despite entreaties, Clinton never phoned the Democratic senator and the CIA didn't get those translators for years.

 

Lopez: In sum, how many times did Bill Clinton lose bin Laden?

 

Miniter: Here's a rundown. The Clinton administration:

 

1. Did not follow-up on the attempted bombing of Aden marines in Yemen.

 

2. Shut the CIA out of the 1993 WTC bombing investigation, hamstringing their effort to capture bin Laden.

 

3. Had Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a key bin Laden lieutenant, slip through their fingers in Qatar.

 

4. Did not militarily react to the al Qaeda bombing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

 

5. Did not accept the Sudanese offer to turn bin Laden.

 

6. Did not follow-up on another offer from Sudan through a private back channel.

 

7. Objected to Northern Alliance efforts to assassinate bin Laden in Afghanistan.

 

8. Decided against using special forces to take down bin Laden in Afghanistan.

 

9. Did not take an opportunity to take into custody two al Qaeda operatives involved in the East African embassy bombings. In another little scoop, I am able to show that Sudan arrested these two terrorists and offered them to the FBI. The Clinton administration declined to pick them up and they were later allowed to return to Pakistan.

 

10. Ordered an ineffectual, token missile strike against a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory.

 

11. Clumsily tipped off Pakistani officials sympathetic to bin Laden before a planned missile strike against bin Laden on August 20, 1998. Bin Laden left the camp with only minutes to spare.

 

12-14. Three times, Clinton hesitated or deferred in ordering missile strikes against bin Laden in 1999 and 2000.

 

15. When they finally launched and armed the Predator spy drone plane, which captured amazing live video images of bin Laden, the Clinton administration no longer had military assets in place to strike the archterrorist.

 

16. Did not order a retaliatory strike on bin Laden for the murderous attack on the USS Cole.

 

Lopez: You sorta defend Clinton against "wag the dog" criticisms in regard to that infamous August 1998 (Monica times) bombing of a pharmaceutical factory in the Sudan and some bin Laden strongholds in Afghanistan. That wasn't the problem, was it — that we fired then?

 

Miniter: Certainly the timing is suspicious. The day before the East African-embassy bombings, Monica Lewinsky had recanted her prior affidavit denying a sexual relationship with Clinton. The sex scandals kicked into overdrive.

 

Still, the president wasn't doing too much in combating bin Laden because of his sex scandals — he was doing too little. He should have launched more missile strikes against bin Laden and the hell with the political timing. Besides, after the East African-embassy bombings, any president would have been negligent not to strike back. If he had not, it would be open season on Americans. He would have been as ineffectual as Carter was during the Tehran hostage crisis. Indeed, this was the mistake made following the attack on the USS Cole.

 

But Clinton was distracted by sex and campaign-finance scandals and his political support was already heavily leveraged to get him through those scandals. If he fought bin Laden more vigorously, the leftwing of the Democratic party might have deserted him — which could have cost him the White House.

 

Instead Clinton's token, ineffectual missile strikes that only emboldened bin Laden. He believed that America was too intimidated to fight back — and was free to plan one of the most-murderous terrorist attacks in history.

 

Lopez: How did George Tenet perform during the Clinton years vis-à-vis al Qaeda/bin Laden?

 

Miniter: Tenet seemed to take a too legalistic view of CIA operations. He was risk-averse, wanting almost absolute certainty before recommending action, focused on safeguards against error and unintended consequences. Tenet seemed more concerned with not getting in trouble rather than relentlessly pursuing results to safeguard Americans against terrorism, the focus of a warrior.

 

Each time U.S. intelligence pinpointed bin Laden, Tenet was against a missile strike on the grounds that the information was "single threaded" — a pet phrase of the director which means single source. The predator was armed and fitted with video cameras mostly to overcome Tenet's objections to taking out bin Laden.

 

Lopez: Madeline Albright — frequently called upon expert nowadays — what's her record vis-à-vis al Qaeda?

 

Miniter: Albright always insisted that diplomatic efforts would best yield results on bin Laden. Even after the Cole bombing, Albright urged continued diplomatic efforts with the Taliban to turn him over, even though that effort had been going on for two years with no progress. Two simple facts should have made Albright aware that the Taliban would never turn over bin Laden: Osama had married off one of his sons to Mullah Omar's daughter. The Taliban weren't about to surrender a member of the family — especially one that commanded thousands of armed fighters who helped maintain Omar's grip on power.

 

Lopez: What exactly is the Iraq-al Qaeda connection?

 

Miniter: Osama bin Laden's wealth is overestimated. He had been financially drained during his years in Sudan and financing terrorist operations in dozens of countries, including training camps, bribes, etc., requires a large, constant cash flow. Saddam Hussein was unquestionably a generous financier of terrorism. Baghdad had a long history of funding terrorist campaigns in the bin Laden-allied region that straddles Iran and Pakistan known as Beluchistan. Documents found in Baghdad in April 2003 showed that Saddam funded the Allied Democratic Forces, a Ugandan terror group led by an Islamist cleric linked to bin Laden since the 1990s. Saddam openly funded the Iraqi Kurdish Group and its leader, Melan Krekar, admitted that he met bin Laden in Afghanistan. George Tenet testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee that Iraq had provided training in forging documents and making bombs. Farouk Harazi, a senior officer in the Iraqi Mukhabarat reportedly offered bin Laden asylum in Iraq. Salah Suleiman, an Iraqi intelligence operative, was arrested in October 2000 near the Afghan border, apparently returning from a visit to bin Laden. One of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers, Abdul Rahman Yasin, reportedly fled to Baghdad in 1994. Iraq ran an extensive intelligence hub in Khartoum; Sudanese intelligence officers told me about dozens of meeting between Iraqi Intel and bin Laden. Tellingly, reports that Mohamed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence agents in Prague several times in 2000 and 2001 have not been disproved. I have far more on this in Appendix A of Losing bin Laden.

 

Lopez: What most surprised you to learn about the Clinton years and terrorism?

 

Miniter: Three things:

 

1) That the Sept. 11 attacks were planned in May 1998 in the Khalden Camp in southeastern Afghanistan, according to American and British intelligence officers I interviewed. In other words, the 9/11 attacks were planned on Clinton's watch.

 

2) The sheer number of bin Laden's attacks on Americans during the Clinton years.

 

3) And how much senior Clinton-administration officials knew about bin Laden and how little they did about it.

 

Lopez: This sounds like this could all be right-wing propaganda. How can you convince readers otherwise?

 

Miniter: Most of my best sources were senior Clinton officials, including both of his national-security advisers, his first CIA director, Clinton's counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, Madeline Albright, and others. Plus, I interviewed scores of career federal officials. None of them are card-carrying members of the vast right-wing conspiracy.

 

And, while I shine the light on Clinton's shortcomings in dealing with bin Laden, I also give credit where it is due. Chapter nine is all about one of the greatest (and least-known) Clinton victories over bin Laden — the successful thwarting of a series of plots to murder thousands of Americans on Millennium night, 1999.

 

If anyone has any doubts about the credibility of this book, they should read the acknowledgements, which list many of my sources. Or peruse the more than 15,000 words of footnotes, that allow the reader to see exactly where information is coming from. Or examine the intelligence documents reproduced in Appendix B. Or pick a page at random and read it. Any fair-minded reader will see a carefully constructed and balanced account that attempts to lay out the history of Clinton and bin Laden.

__________________________________________________________

 

Thats about it. What were you saying about some Congressmen now? Probably doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things - does it Fairweather? It's funny how, in looking back, a different step here, or a slight nudge there, and things could have been radically different the world now. Does it make you, like it does me, wonder at how close to Nuclear annihilation we really are 24/7?

 

Regards to all

 

Bill

 

 

[mattp]

Bill:

 

The incoming Bush administration is famous for complaining that the Clinton folks were obsessed with terrorism and failing to even discuss the issue before 911. And don't forget the memo that Bush was read while on vacation in Crawford, a month before 911, that warned of an attack. He replied that the reporters were wasting his time.

 

We can point fingers at who dropped the ball, and those fingers may well point at Clinton, but they point at Bush too. 911 happened 9 months into the Bush administration, yet discussions such as yours want to blame Clinton without mentioning that Bush might have had some responsibility? And what about the clearly bungled response? Was that Clinton's fault, too?

 

I agree with your idea that the corrupt influences of business interest affect Democrats and Republicans alike but it was the Republican President and Congress that did this to us and, at worst, the Democrats were only willing dupes. Al Queda killed 3,000 Americans and destroyed 3 or 4 buildings. Bush and the Republican Congress have broken our defense capability and weakened our position in the world for a generation or more.

 

 

The terrorists were responsible for 911. I'm not sure that an essay such as yours really says anything but that somebody wants to convince themselves that the disaster that Bush has created is the fault of his predecessor. Too bad nobody listened to Baghdad Jim.

[Fairweather]

Some stuff I agree with--and much that I don't. A bit too cynical and a bit too much unattributed. At least it's well-thought out--unlike Matt's relentless and mindless Bush-hate. If you're going to write such long essays, I would suggest brushing up on the MLA formatting of your text and, of course, including a works cited page. This may help with your next post:

 

 

[Dechristo]

Thanks, Bill. Interesting.

[mattp]

OUCH. That really hurts, coming from you (Fairweather) the beacon of thoughtful writing around here.

[chucK]

Wow Bill that quote is pretty damning of Clinton, but also tough to swallow a lot of it.

 

IIRC in "The Looming Tower", a book JayB references frequently, nobody in the US intelligence knew anything of Bin Laden until after the Cole bombing (2000?). Your quote talks about how the Clinton admin knew he was around back in 1993 and somehow failed in the first WTC bombing. But the follow-up to the first WTC was actually considered a huge victory for the FBI, an arrest, and a conviction in a real court, something the Bush administration is having a lot of trouble doing.

 

Also if you do a Google search on Richard Minter the first link I found was an interview on CNN where he says

 

"We just never had eyes on bin Laden in the pre-9/11 situation. The 9/11 commission investigated this. The House and Senate joint committee investigated this and published a 1,000-page report. I looked into it extensively. Most of the sources for my book are Clinton administration officials. There’s just no basis for this at all, none."

 

That seems to contradict a lot of the above statements, where he lists a bunch of times that we supposedly had our hands right on Bin Laden's throat.

 

Anyway, thanks for bringing this to our attention. It makes the Clinton admin. seem much worse than I understood, and I'll be interested in finding out more where this may lead, but on it's face, your article does seem too one-sided to be credible.

[billcoe]

Thanks for that Chuck.

 

BTW Matt, I was citing others stories there, I didn't write those. I don't unnecessarily disagree with you, however, the thread was about a few democratic congressmen being dupes, and the tenor of the thread was on discussion of these issues as it related to the Taliban, so my post was trying to stay on that subject.

 

The fact of the matter is that our country had a pretty good reputation (thanks to Clinton and even elder Bush) with the rest of the world before the Geo W. Bush admin showed up and totally, recklessly, and foolishly tossed it in the toilet, and that is difficult to bear and witness. The Clinton admin did a horrible job as they totally rolled over and let North Korea pound sand up our asses, but thats for another day, and neither here nor there.

[mattp]

Bill, I've paid attention to other posts of yours and I realize you are not one of those blame-it-all-on-Clinton types. Still, it astounds me when I read stuff like your essay here and when I see someone post that they'd still vote for Bush an endorse an Iraq invasion, even knowing what they know now.

 

Wringing their hands over whether Saddam may have thought he could benefit from a McDermott publicity stunt (if you believe that is what it was), these folks witness and even occasionally acknowledge that "mistakes were made" but they want to blame Clinton for Bush's failings and they argue that Bush's failure somehow means that a Democratic president starting in 2009 is going to do worse.

[billcoe]

Bill, I've paid attention to other posts of yours and I realize you are not one of those blame-it-all-on-Clinton types. Still, it astounds me when I read stuff like your essay here and when I see someone post that they'd still vote for Bush an endorse an Iraq invasion, even knowing what they know now.

 

On the first part, plenty of blame to go around. I thought Clinton did a much better job than most Presidents, much better in many ways. Ronald Reagan also positively surprised me, I was all ready to hate the guy and what I thought he believed in, now I find, long after the time, I was wrong in much that assessment....

 

On the second part, I totally agree. I was shocked and pissed that they prosecuted the war in the manner which they did, and angry that they ran in there at all, but especially entering it without even many of our allies support. Much like 4 year old kids running into a room yelling loudly and waving fake swords, slashing everywhere. I imagine that the old pros in the State dept were just nashing their teeth to nubs in shock and disbelief. Bush and co really took their eyes off what is important to our countries security IMO. I seemed to be a rare person who felt that way as the successes were being reported early on, the public was behind it 90 percent at least.

 

Now I find myself again in the minority with my now unpopular thoughts on this. We have squandered our national treasure and goodwill, the bulk of the costs have been incurred, and I think we need to finish the job, so as to leave some strong stable institutions in place so Iraq doesn't fall apart when we leave, and leave we must. Wish they hadn't gone in, but they did, and that's my take on it. I do not think Obama can do the job frankly, but I hope I am wrong. Of course, thats just an opinion, and you know what they say about opinions....

 

Take care all

 

I got a head cold so I'm not doing much today

[glassgowkiss]

Um, Glassgow dishes out more name calling than I could ever give. He's an hysterical tool, and the fact that you are willing to support his "incorrect" claims with nothing more than a weak-knee suggestion to 'Google it' based solely on your hatred of Bush says a lot. Next time you make or wish to support a claim, try giving it some teeth with a fact-based link...and a reality check.

 

now 9/11 happened under bush- didn't it? the fact of the matter is it happened over 9 months after taking the office, hence blaming previous administration is absurd!. and his administration included people directly negotiating pipeline with taliban. coincidence? use your brain!

[Serenity]

9/11 was a follow on attack to several probes that occurred in the 90's, personally I think it's absurd to blame former President Clinton, as this act was the result of foreign elements intent of killing Americans and disrupting our way of life. Former President Clinton didn't invite these people to kill Americans, any more than President Bush did on 9/11. It is a failure of our nation to be so open and trusting of people who hate us, and encasing ourselves in bureaucracy so mind numbing we can't even arrest and deport known criminals right under our noses.

 

Clinton would have willingly pulled the trigger on Bin Laden, but had been let down several years earlier by then Secretary of Defense Les Aspin (appointed by Former President Clinton), who's failure to follow on then Chairman of the Joint Chief's Colin Powell's call for armor, and armored infantry support, in Operation Restore Hope (Somalia) led to the largest firefight American servicemen had engaged in since Vietnam.

 

"In September General Powell asked Aspin to approve the request of the U.S. commander in Somalia for tanks and armored vehicles for his forces. Aspin turned down the request. Shortly thereafter Aideed's forces in Mogadishu killed 18 U.S. soldiers and wounded more than 75 in attacks that also resulted in the shooting down of three U.S. helicopters and the capture of one pilot."

 

http://www.defenselink.mil/specials/secdef_histories/bios/aspin.htm

 

After the media roasting, the Joint Chiefs were extremely hesitant to commit to any military operation, including clandestine operations targeting Bin Laden. The C.I.A led the charge in that regard.

 

This failed reliance on modern battlefield strategy to produce quick surgical victories (in this case a small Special Operations task force) was later reintroduced by Sec. Of Def. Donald Rumsfeld against the advice of his the COJC.

 

Anyway, most of the key criminals are traceable to Afghan Jihadists, and virtually none Afghans, but foreign fighters primarily Saudi's and Iranian backed agents from various locations.

 

Reading Ghost Wars is a good place to start, then tie that into Charlie Wilson's War, dig deeper by reading declassified CIA material, then "The Bear Came Over The Mountain", anything you can find by Artyom Borovik (The Hidden War), "Not A Good Day to Die", Marcus Luttrel's book "Lone Survivor"(Reno A. is my boss), "Jaw Breaker, "Hot Steel" by Terence White.

 

Bin Laden was under an intelligence radar as far back as the late eighties, where he had gained some amount of notoriety for his Jihadist activities with the Muj.

 

Many of the intel failures are directly linked to the Clinton administration, this is well documented, and after having spent most of my adult life immersed in government service, I can, and have previously mentioned the fall-out Clinton's presidency had within certain aspects of the federal systems (Military, Intelligence, and Federal LE) I witnessed firsthand. He lied before congress under oath, and should have been impeached. If he had been an F.B.I. agent and lied under oath he would have gone to jail.

 

I find neither party to exemplify the standards I believe taxpaying Americans deserve. Being polarized and placing blame hasn't really gotten us to where we need to be.

 

I do think we need to finish the job we started and try and put the genie back in the bottle. Turning tail, and hoping the whole thing goes away isn't really the answer. Maybe a determined and honorable effort to either win through evidence of power and resolve, or a willingness to dialog and compromise might solve some aspects, but the hardcore Jihadists will have to be eradicated like a virus.

[olyclimber]

Great post Serenity. I think the topic is well worth the time researching. It gives you not only a good idea as to what we are up against as far as the people who see fit to run our own jet planes into our buildings, but also how US clandestine foreign policy has played out in recent years. it definitely isn't something you can blame on a particular administration or party...all presidents have been willing to do the right thing in this case.

 

I have no idea what the answers are, but I'm don't think we want to be putting ourselves into a situation where we are occupying and subjecting ourselves to never ending attacks. With out genocide it may not be possible to "win". In the end we may just need to have the dialogue that we have definitely not been having for recent (7 years or so) history...but then again it may just be an "oil and water" situation.

[mattp]

I agree with your second paragraph there, Porter, and I agree too that the rise in incidents of terrorism directed toward the U.S. is probably not something you can blame on a particular administration or party, but

 

all presidents have been willing to do the right thing in this case.

 

Say what? Bush and the Republicans have done absolutely the WRONG thing in Iraq and it doesn't look as if they've done well in Afghanistan either (the Democrats went along with it, but Bush and the Republican led Congress were in charge).

 

Probably a more accurate statement would be

 

our presidents have really never known what to do about terrorism and there may be no easy answer

 

One thing is for sure, though, Baghdad Jim was right. The French were right. General Eric Shinseki was right. Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson was right.

 

Simply because they spoke against the war in whatever media or with whatever opportunities were available to them, they were all branded as cowards and traitors except maybe Shinseki who was merely sacked.

[mattp]

Reflecting on the case of McDermott and his trip to Baghdad, I'd like to know what those who condemn him here would say he or any other Senator should do if they believe there is a delusional push to war being promoted by the NEXT administration?

[JayB]

Wow Bill that quote is pretty damning of Clinton, but also tough to swallow a lot of it.

 

IIRC in "The Looming Tower", a book JayB references frequently, nobody in the US intelligence knew anything of Bin Laden until after the Cole bombing (2000?).

 

Your recollections aren't correct on this point. Have you read the book?

[JayB]

I agree with your second paragraph there, Porter, and I agree too that the rise in incidents of terrorism directed toward the U.S. is probably not something you can blame on a particular administration or party, but

 

all presidents have been willing to do the right thing in this case.

 

Say what? Bush and the Republicans have done absolutely the WRONG thing in Iraq and it doesn't look as if they've done well in Afghanistan either (the Democrats went along with it, but Bush and the Republican led Congress were in charge).

 

Probably a more accurate statement would be

 

our presidents have really never known what to do about terrorism and there may be no easy answer

 

One thing is for sure, though, Baghdad Jim was right. The French were right. General Eric Shinseki was right. Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson was right.

 

Simply because they spoke against the war in whatever media or with whatever opportunities were available to them, they were all branded as cowards and traitors except maybe Shinseki who was merely sacked.

 

There were many opponents of entering WWII, who were inspired by various sentiments and who used various means to communicate their message. Not all of them are remembered in the same way, or were thought of in the same way at the time.

 

Do you think that Charles Lindbergh was treated unfairly for the manner in which he spoke out against US involvement in WWII?

[olyclimber]

 

all presidents have been willing to do the right thing in this case.

 

Say what? Bush and the Republicans have done absolutely the WRONG thing in Iraq and it doesn't look as if they've done well in Afghanistan either (the Democrats went along with it, but Bush and the Republican led Congress were in charge).

 

Probably a more accurate statement would be

 

our presidents have really never known what to do about terrorism and there may be no easy answer

 

One thing is for sure, though, Baghdad Jim was right. The French were right. General Eric Shinseki was right. Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson was right.

 

Simply because they spoke against the war in whatever media or with whatever opportunities were available to them, they were all branded as cowards and traitors except maybe Shinseki who was merely sacked.

 

 

matt i was referring to a specific task, i probably should have been more clear about that. that task was how we were dealing with radical islam and the taliban pre-9/11. i think that any president who could have foreseen 9/11 accurately and fully would have done all they could. instead both parties had their chances and didn't act, and we all finally did something when poked in the eye hard enough. i'm not referring to the iraq situation at all.

[olyclimber]

I agree with your second paragraph there, Porter, and I agree too that the rise in incidents of terrorism directed toward the U.S. is probably not something you can blame on a particular administration or party, but

 

all presidents have been willing to do the right thing in this case.

 

Say what? Bush and the Republicans have done absolutely the WRONG thing in Iraq and it doesn't look as if they've done well in Afghanistan either (the Democrats went along with it, but Bush and the Rep ublican led Congress were in charge).

 

Probably a more accurate statement would be

 

our presidents have really never known what to do about terrorism and there may be no easy answer

 

One thing is for sure, though, Baghdad Jim was right. The French were right. General Eric Shinseki was right. Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson was right.

 

Simply because they spoke against the war in whatever media or with whatever opportunities were available to them, they were all branded as cowards and traitors except maybe Shinseki who was merely sacked.

 

There were many opponents of entering WWII, who were inspired by various sentiments and who used various means to communicate their message. Not all of them are remembered in the same way, or were thought of in the same way at the time.

 

Do you think that Charles Lindbergh was treated unfairly for the manner in which he spoke out against US involvement in WWII?

 

Ha Jay, I almost posted about Lindbergh earlier in this thread. His wife wrote a great autobiography. Its amazing the Lindbergh is still viewed as a national hero after what he went through pre-WWII. However, given what he accomplished after the war was underway changed things. The comparison with the current situation sort of ends after the WWII starts. Lindbergh went on to make contributions that helped win the war. He was definitely an "anti-war hero", but in the end he saw that there was nothing to do but end it as soon as possible. We're fighting a different kind of enemy now. There is no tactical nuke to drop to end it all in one day.

[Fairweather]

 

Do you think that Charles Lindbergh was treated unfairly for the manner in which he spoke out against US involvement in WWII?

 

Some good info on CL:

http://www.traces.org/charleslindbergh.html

 

1: McDermott was never a national hero. 2: McDermott never tempered beliefs or his mouth for the sake of our efforts in Iraq.

[glassgowkiss]

 

Do you think that Charles Lindbergh was treated unfairly for the manner in which he spoke out against US involvement in WWII?

 

Some good info on CL:

http://www.traces.org/charleslindbergh.html

 

1: McDermott was never a national hero. 2: McDermott never tempered beliefs or his mouth for the sake of our efforts in Iraq.

 

1. you are missing the point

2. republicans are in no position to issue any judgments at this moment. as the matter of fact one could hope for a lot of investigations about republicans and their activities. particularly about no bid contracts and presenting forged documents prior to going to war.

3. i wonder what do you say to personal involvement of gwb and saudis. remember it was saudis, who directly attacked US on 9/11. i did not see list of iraqi citizens entering hijacked planes.

 

so my advice would be to pipe down your rhetorical bullshit and look more carefully into your own yard. because might turn out that a lot of your idols will be doing a lot of time after it's all set and done.

[mattp]

Jay, I don't know enough about Mr. Lindberg to form a judgment as to whether he was unfairly treated.

 

But what about McDermott? Have you expressed an opinion on his trip to Baghdad here? (You could have, somewhere in this thread, and if so I apologize for not simply referring to it rather than asking again). I think he was one of very few members of Congress who spoke against the war, and for that I am proud of him. I also think he was pandering to a Seattle electorate. I don't have any impression of him as particularly bold or effective and I doubt he would have pulled such a move had he not thought he'd win some political points at home.

 

And what would you have a Congressman do when President Hilary Clinton or Barak Obama wants to start a misguided war based on a misleading premise three years from now? If they draw attention to such misgivings, will you call them a traitor?

[JayB]

Jay, I don't know enough about Mr. Lindberg to form a judgment as to whether he was unfairly treated.

 

But what about McDermott? Have you expressed an opinion on his trip to Baghdad here? (You could have, somewhere in this thread, and if so I apologize for not simply referring to it rather than asking again). I think he was one of very few members of Congress who spoke against the war, and for that I am proud of him. I also think he was pandering to a Seattle electorate. I don't have any impression of him as particularly bold or effective and I doubt he would have pulled such a move had he not thought he'd win some political points at home.

 

And what would you have a Congressman do when President Hilary Clinton or Barak Obama wants to start a misguided war based on a misleading premise three years from now? If they draw attention to such misgivings, will you call them a traitor?

 

There's a saying out there that I generally agree with "It's not so much what you believe as why you believe it."

 

When it comes to evaluating the choices that people made concerning the US invasion of Iraq, I think the reasons that people based their support or opposition to the invasion on are at least as important as their final decisions.

 

I don't think - by any means - that opposing US entry into WWII, for example, was an immoral act, much less treasonous or worthy of contempt or being labeled as a traitor. I do think it's possible, though, to evaluate the reasons why a person either supported or opposed US entry into the conflict, and to use that evaluation as a basis for determining whether the person under consideration is commendable or contemptible. I personally think that Lindbergh falls into the latter category, but there are doubtless many millions who opposed the war for reasons - and in a manner- that it would be difficult to find fault with.

 

I'm not terribly familiar with why McDermott opposed the war, or the manner in which he chose to communicate his opposition to it. What in particular about how McDermott's arrived at his decision, and the manner in which he chose to communicate it, praiseworthy in your eyes? Is it possible for you to envision coming to the same conclusions about a politician who supported the war - depending on his arguments and his motives - even if the conclusion that he arrived at is the polar opposite of your own?

[mattp]

Jay, I already stated that McDermott was one of a small handful of American politicians who spoke against the war and I am proud of the fact that he did so. Despite even Hilary Clinton's assertions to the contrary, I bet she and most of them knew that Bush was lying. But most did the math and figured they'd lose votes because they be branded a traitor or coward or they just didn't want to face the political attacks that would follow.

 

I said at the time that we should have been talking about how "Saddam is a bad guy and we are going to have to do something sooner or later." I would have had some respect for them had, in THIS context, somebody spoken in favor of the war while acknowledging that there was no present urgency except or unless we thought it tactically advantageous.

 

I don't recall a single member of Congress putting it that way. They were all afraid to call the liar in chief a liar - except McDermott and a half dozen others who spoke AGAINST the war, not for it.

 

I find it interesting that you would care to comment on Lindberg but not McDermott.

 

[STP]

"It's not what you believe but why you believe it."

 

Seems that why you believe something is part and parcel of what you believe. And, if you're talking about something all encompassing as a worldview then it gets rather complex to dissect. Maybe you could say it boils down to Lindburgh's alleged anti-Semitism and that if he held those beliefs then there were no legitimate reasons to hold them.

 

There is disinformation all around. Too bad we can't just awake and rise above the cultural milieu. Why do we always have to be backwards looking to see the error of our times?

[JayB]

Jay, I already stated that McDermott was one of a small handful of American politicians who spoke against the war and I am proud of the fact that he did so. Despite even Hilary Clinton's assertions to the contrary, I bet she and most of them knew that Bush was lying. But most did the math and figured they'd lose votes because they be branded a traitor or coward or they just didn't want to face the political attacks that would follow.

 

I said at the time that we should have been talking about how "Saddam is a bad guy and we are going to have to do something sooner or later." I would have had some respect for them had, in THIS context, somebody spoken in favor of the war while acknowledging that there was no present urgency except or unless we thought it tactically advantageous.

 

I don't recall a single member of Congress putting it that way. They were all afraid to call the liar in chief a liar - except McDermott and a half dozen others who spoke AGAINST the war, not for it.

 

I find it interesting that you would care to comment on Lindberg but not McDermott.

 

I don't take as much interest in McDermott's political career as you do, but if you'll compile a series of links where one can discern the rationale for his stand, and review the actions that he took while making it - then I'll be happy to review them and render a judgment while I have time.

 

*I* find it interesting that you are bemoaning the fact that everyone who opposed the war is - in your imagination - uncritically branded as a "traitor," (Zinni, Obama {look how his political career has suffered}, etc -? Really),while simultaneously maintaining that everyone who supported the war is a naif, a dupe, or a participant in a nefarious cabal or conspiracy.

 

You are free to do so, but realize that you're engaging in the very practice that you're bemoaning.