I _would_ bash Bush for this, but i'm not allowed.

[DrDeth]

@Starving Artist

Of course, arresting, capturing or killing bin Laden when we had the chance would have helped, too…but alas your leader’s advisors felt it wasn’t ‘politically expedient’ to do so at that time…and thus, given that political expediency was the very rudder that guided his administration, your leader passed up the opportunity to have taken an action that, as it turns out, would have avoided 9/11 and its subsequent events altogether…

Yes, and we could have hired the Mafia to kill Hitler in 1939 too. :rolleyes: The point being- that might not have been Osama, the attempt to kill Osama might have failed, actually assassinating him before we knew exactly what he had done (and before we knew what he would do) might well have backfired, and we had no idea then that he was going to organize 9/11. In fact, for quite some time here and elsewhere, many dudes doubted that Osama was behind 9/11, it was not until more facts came in and Osama’s public bragging about it that that now the vast majority are sure it was him. In any case, Clinton had a 3 month window of opportunity, Bush had 21 months. If Clinton was wrong to not try during those 3 months, GWB was 7 times as wrong, if not more (GWB had more time to gather info about Osama’s complicity). I don’t think either Clinton or Bush should have tried such far fetched assassination attempt before we knew what a 'clear and present danger" Osama was. Yes, sending in guys to *arrest him * might have been an idea, sure.

[Revenant_Threshold]

@Cheesesteak

In the first scenario, it was still a bad decision to go to war, even though Iraqis are happy. At best you managed not to fuck things up too much. In the second, it was a sound decision to go to war, even though Iraqis were made unhappy by it.

Security concerns however are not simply about whether or not the rationale was good; it’s about the way you actually implement that policy and then the results. In the first scenario, the rationale was wrong, but Iraqis are happy. In the second, the rationale was good, but now you’ve got insurgents running around shooting/blowing up your troops, greater instability in the region, and you’ve put even your allies off, let alone enemies. Merely because there is accurate rationale does not make a security policy good.

@Shodan

Actually, Revenant, I was wondering if you had any response to this: <snip> That seems to be something you made up.

I thought I had addressed that in my response to Martin Hyde. It’s sarcasm. Hyperbole. See, for Bush to disallow all foreign criticism, he’d have to either do a perfect job or kill every non-American. Alternatively, he could just send the F.B.I. out to…explain the situation to us. He can’t disallow it, because he has no control over it.

What he can do, though, is ignore all foreign criticism merely for being from a non-American source. He can suggest that all foreign criticism is bad criticism, foolish criticism, because an American didn’t think it up. He can suggest that 9/11 didn’t effect non-Americans in any way other than a “9/11? Pretty bad day” sentiment. And he can do it ironically by criticizing foreigners himself.

[RedFury]

@Starving Artist

I seriously doubt that there’s a poster on this board who could have done as good a job of protecting this country and its citizens from terrorist attack since 9/11 as Bush has done. It’s easy to cry, wail, moan and second-guess everything he has done, especially when when you aren’t the ones who bear responsibility for keeping this country and its citizens safe, but I’d far rather have Bush looking out for this country’s welfare than Clinton/Gore/Kerry any day.

Not your fault you’re dummer than a box of rocks.

For instance, let’s see what more than one hundred of America’s top foreign-policy experts—Republicans and Democrats alike., have to say on the matter:

@Sentient Beings

Participants include people who have served as secretary of state, national security advisor, retired top commanders from the U.S. military, seasoned members of the intelligence community, and distinguished academics and journalists. Nearly 80 percent of the index participants have worked in the U.S. government—of these more than half were in the executive branch, one third in the military, and 17 percent in the intelligence community.

Despite today’s highly politicized national security environment, the index results show striking consensus across political party lines.** A bipartisan majority (84 percent) of the index’s experts say the United States is not winning the war on terror. Eighty-six percent of the index’s experts see a world today that is growing more dangerous for Americans**. Overall, they agree that the U.S. government is falling short in its homeland security efforts. More than 8 in 10 expect an attack on the scale of 9/11 within a decade. These dark conclusions appear to stem from the experts’ belief that the U.S. national security apparatus is in serious disrepair. “Foreign-policy experts have never been in so much agreement about an administration’s performance abroad,” says Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and an index participant. “The reason is that it’s clear to nearly all that Bush and his team have had a totally unrealistic view of what they can accomplish with military force and threats of force.”

Respondents sharply criticized U.S. efforts in a number of key areas of national security, including public diplomacy, intelligence, and homeland security. Nearly all of the departments and agencies responsible for fighting the war on terror received poor marks. The experts also said that recent reforms of the national security apparatus have done little to make Americans safer. Asked about recent efforts to reform America’s intelligence community, for instance, more than half of the index’s experts said that creating the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has had no positive impact in the war against terror. “Intelligence reform so far has been largely limited to structural reorganization that in most cases produced new levels of bureaucracy in an already overly bureaucratic system,” says index participant Bill Gertz, a journalist who has covered the intelligence community for more than 20 years.

The index’s experts were similarly critical of most of the policy initiatives put forward by the U.S. Congress and President George W. Bush since September 11. Eighty-one percent, for instance, believe the detention of suspected terrorists at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, negatively affects the war on terror. The index’s experts also disapprove of how America is handling its relations with European allies, how it is confronting threatening regimes in North Korea and Iran, how it is controlling the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and its dealings with failing states, to name just a few.** “We are losing the war on terror because we are treating the symptoms and not the cause,” says index participant Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. “Our insistence that Islamic fundamentalist ideology has replaced communist ideology as the chief enemy of our time … feeds al Qaeda’s vision of the world.”**

Bolding mine. Continued at source.

Now, I don’t expect you to A-learn a thing by reading what these people have to say, and/or B-even bother to read it at all.

For if there’s one thing that’s for sure is that your mind is like a steel-trap: nothing ever gets in.

You should feel very proud of said fact. Congrats.

[Shodan]

@DrDeth

In any case, Clinton had a 3 month window of opportunity, Bush had 21 months. If Clinton was wrong to not try during those 3 months, GWB was 7 times as wrong, if not more (GWB had more time to gather info about Osama’s complicity).

I thought Clinton was in office for eight years. And the first attack on the World Trade Center happened in 1993 (not to mention the embassy bombings).

Bush was in office for seven months before 9/11.

Your arithmetic is a little off. GWB decided that bin Laden was responsible almost immediately after the first terrorist attack on his watch, and attacked Afghanistan. Clinton had seven years and multiple opportunities to figure it out, and even when he had bin Laden in his sights, he didn’t do shit (except stall and hand the whole mess off to someone else, as RTFirefly’s cite mentions).

Of course, in 2000 Clinton didn’t need anything to distract from an impeachment vote, which is all he cared about anyway. So better (from his point of view) to do nothing and take the chance that more American deaths at the hands of bin Laden could be blamed on someone else.

Too bad nobody offered him campaign contributions to kill bin Laden before he left office. He might have done something then.

Regards,
Shodan

[Shodan]

@Revenant Threshold

I thought I had addressed that in my response to Martin Hyde. It’s sarcasm. Hyperbole. See, for Bush to disallow all foreign criticism, he’d have to either do a perfect job or kill every non-American. Alternatively, he could just send the F.B.I. out to…explain the situation to us. He can’t disallow it, because he has no control over it.

But the whole notion that Bush is “disallowing” criticism is false. He said no such thing.

That’s not sarcasm, it’s lying.

If you are comfortable with that, fine. Certainly most of the criticism of how Bush lied about Iraq is based on the same sort of thing. And it goes over pretty well with the Usual Suspects.

Reasonable people - not so much.

Regards,
Shodan

[DrDeth]

@Shodan

I thought Clinton was in office for eight years. And the first attack on the World Trade Center happened in 1993 (not to mention the embassy bombings).

Bush was in office for seven months before 9/11.

From http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/25/attack/main560293.shtml
*The Clinton administration ordered the arming of the unmanned aircraft after the drones spotted someone resembling bin Laden in Afghanistan three times in the aftermath of the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen. *

Yes, I did make a mistake- somehow I though 9/11 was 9/11/2002, not 2001. :smack: However, still Clinton had only three months. He turned over the plans for the entire thing to GWB, who also did nothing with it for 7 months. Note that it likely wouldn’t have worked- the 27# warhead was peanuts, and likely would not have done anything but made us look like incompetant wanna-be assassins.

Do you have any cites that show we had proof Osama was responsible for the 1993 WTC attack as early as 2000?

[Guinastasia]

@Starving Artist

I seriously doubt that there’s a poster on this board who could have done as good a job of protecting this country and its citizens from terrorist attack since 9/11 as Bush has done. It’s easy to cry, wail, moan and second-guess everything he has done, especially when when you aren’t the ones who bear responsibility for keeping this country and its citizens safe, but I’d far rather have Bush looking out for this country’s welfare than Clinton/Gore/Kerry any day.

If he’s done such a good job, then why did we abandon Afghanistan and the search for Bin Laden-you know, the guy behind 9/11? Why did we go after Iraq, and do a half-assed job, only to create a breeding ground for MORE terrorists, and give the people of that region a valid reason to hate our guts?

Why did Bush declare “Mission Accomplished?” Unless, of course, said “Mission” was to totally fuck up Iraq and the war on terror. IF that was his intention, then yeah, he did do a good job.

[Clothahump]

@Revenant Threshold

New rule, everyone! Only Americans can question the American government!

Nothing new about it in the slightest. It’s called Election Day, and only Americans get to participate in it.

[Ludovic]

Yeah, Clinton should have invaded Afghanistan. No one would have been crying “wag the dog” during the impeachment proceedings, nosiree bob :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

[Jackknifed_Juggernaut]

@Shodan

Of course, in 2000 Clinton didn’t need anything to distract from an impeachment vote, which is all he cared about anyway.

You’ve described the possibility that Clinton was politically handcuffed to the point where he couldn’t do anything. If you recall, the Republicans cried “wag the dog” in 1998 when he went after terrorists in Africa.

So how do you explain Bush ignoring terrorism for the first 1/6 of his term? Did he forget about the 1993 WTC attack, and the USS Cole bombing, etc.? Oh, I forgot, he doesn’t read newspapers. He should’ve been reminded by the ample warnings that the Clinton administration left for him.

It just so happens that 9/11 occurred 8 months after Bush’s inauguration. Does anyone honestly believe that Bush would have started taking terrorism seriously on
September 11th if the attacks didn’t occur on that day? If not, when do you think that war on terror would’ve begun? How about…never? For further proof, look at GWB’s record vacation days in 2001.

[Syntropy]

@Jackknifed Juggernaut

So how do you explain Bush ignoring terrorism for the first 1/6 of his term? Did he forget about the 1993 WTC attack, and the USS Cole bombing, etc.? Oh, I forgot, he doesn’t read newspapers. He should’ve been reminded by the ample warnings that the Clinton administration left for him.

Well, be fair. In order for them to heed those warnings, he and Condi would’ve had to show up for the meetings with Richard Clarke.

[RTFirefly]

@Shodan

I thought Clinton was in office for eight years. And the first attack on the World Trade Center happened in 1993 (not to mention the embassy bombings).

The connection, please?

Bush was in office for seven months before 9/11.

But since he wasn’t President before 1/20/01, he hadn’t heard of the Embassy bombings, or the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, so he had no reason to believe that the warnings his people got from Berger, Clarke, etc. were serious.

GWB decided that bin Laden was responsible almost immediately after the first terrorist attack on his watch

And pulled our Special Forces units off his trail just six months later, so they could do Iraq recon instead. Five years later, bin Laden remains a free man.

Clinton had seven years and multiple opportunities to figure it out

To figure out what, exactly?

[gonzomax]

Truth is when Clinton sent missles after the camps , I had no idea what that was about. It was not a front burner item. Shooting missles into a soverign country struck me as a huge rampup on something Americans realy had no knowledge of at that time. I wondered about the justification, but first reaction was it couldn’t be right. Now the experts on this board all knew he should have done much more. Did he have control of the Senate and Congress? Could he have gotten permission from congress. I think not.Don’t rewrite the history.

[Shodan]

@RTFirefly

The connection, please?

I was addressing his arithmetic. Did you notice the mention of “your arithmetic”?

But since he wasn’t President before 1/20/01, he hadn’t heard of the Embassy bombings, or the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, so he had no reason to believe that the warnings his people got from Berger, Clarke, etc. were serious.

Considering that the Clinton administration did not take any action for the several months since the Cole attack, and the several years since the first WTC attack and the embassy bombings, yes, it is reasonable to conclude that the Clinton adminstration were not serious about terrorism. Since they had a perfect chance to take out bin Laden, and decided to shuffle off the responsibility to someone else. Like I said, Clinton’s primary motive for his actions had nothing to do with threats - he used the threat from Iraq to try to distract from his impeachment. It didn’t work, he got away with his misconduct, and so Clinton had no further interest besides trying to shift the blame.

To figure out what, exactly?

That bin Laden was responsible.

Having trouble with your reading again? No prob, I’m here to help.

@Jackknifed Juggernaut

You’ve described the possibility that Clinton was politically handcuffed to the point where he couldn’t do anything.

Well, if by this you mean “it became screamingly obvious to everyone that everything Clinton ever did was motivated entirely by politics and he could care less about terrorism”, and call it 'being politically handcuffed", then yes, but the blame for that lies with Slick Willie himself.

The point is that it is untrue that “he couldn’t do anything”. Here we have a situation in which (supposedly) the Clinton administration cares deeply about the threat of terrorism. And they have a perfect opportunity to do something that, in retrospect, would have prevented 9/11 as well as the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. But they didn’t do it.

If they were so fucking serious about terrorism, why did they [list=A][li]do nothing about killing bin Laden, and [*]expect anyone else to believe them about what the major threats were when they spent the last part of their tenure ignoring the major threat and trashing the White House?[/list]Pardon me while I giggle at the notion that Clinton was prevented by a fear of the political fall out from taking out a terrorist. He was never going to run for office again. [/li]
And what he chose to do, once he was freed from a fear of the political consequences, was sell pardons for money - not concentrate on something he had been ignoring for the last several years.

Clinton was a slimeball. His only consideration for any of his actions during his political career was, “How will this affect my chances for re-election?” Once that question no longer applied, he hardly turned into a statesman - he started acting like the slimeball he had been all along - just in a more unrestricted way.

Regards,
Shodan

[Otto]

Don’t the Bush drones ever get tired of the “Clinton did it too” meme? Assume for a moment that during his entire presidency Bill Clinton did absolutely nothing about the issue of terrorism, international or domestic. How, exactly and with small easy-to-understand words please, does this absolve or excuse or in any other way vitiate what Bush may or may not have done? Clinton could have spent his entire presidency on the roof of the White House doing hand stands adn that doesn’t lessen Bush’s responsibility one whit.

[Revenant_Threshold]

@Shodan

But the whole notion that Bush is “disallowing” criticism is false. He said no such thing.

That’s not sarcasm, it’s lying.

If you are comfortable with that, fine. Certainly most of the criticism of how Bush lied about Iraq is based on the same sort of thing. And it goes over pretty well with the Usual Suspects.

“if you are comfortable with that, fine”? Nice to see you’re looking to have a reasonable debate here, instead of suggesting that i’m a big fan of dishonesty.

Let’s look at what I said again, shall we? I said it was sarcasm, and hyperbole - oh, I notice you didn’t mention that word, did you? Gosh, I guess that since hyperbole is the perfect word to use for this situation it didn’t fit in with your “he’s a big liar” attack. And I think you’ll find it was sarcasm, seeing as how I was seemingly presenting it as a good idea whilst in fact mocking him. That’s sarcasm, baby.

If you’re going to pick and choose which words you’d like to hang me by, at least do me the favour of not picking my words - you know, the ones i’m familar with - in order to do so, mkay? Kinda makes it easy to point out where you’re pouncing and where you’re ignoring.

Oh, and look here; I’m not going to make a pointless attack on either conservatives or liberals at the end of my post! I realise that’s a surprise for most people who talk politics on the boards, but hey, it can be done.

[Jackknifed_Juggernaut]

@Shodan

…Well, if by this you mean “it became screamingly obvious to everyone that everything Clinton ever did was motivated entirely by politics and he could care less about terrorism”, and call it 'being politically handcuffed", then yes, but the blame for that lies with Slick Willie himself.

The point is that it is untrue that “he couldn’t do anything”. Here we have a situation in which (supposedly) the Clinton administration cares deeply about the threat of terrorism. And they have a perfect opportunity to do something that, in retrospect, would have prevented 9/11 as well as the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. But they didn’t do it.

If they were so fucking serious about terrorism, why did they [list=A][li]do nothing about killing bin Laden, and [*]expect anyone else to believe them about what the major threats were when they spent the last part of their tenure ignoring the major threat and trashing the White House?[/list]Pardon me while I giggle at the notion that Clinton was prevented by a fear of the political fall out from taking out a terrorist. He was never going to run for office again. [/li]
And what he chose to do, once he was freed from a fear of the political consequences, was sell pardons for money - not concentrate on something he had been ignoring for the last several years.

Clinton was a slimeball. His only consideration for any of his actions during his political career was, “How will this affect my chances for re-election?” Once that question no longer applied, he hardly turned into a statesman - he started acting like the slimeball he had been all along - just in a more unrestricted way.

Regards,
Shodan

I’m going to ignore most of the bullshit in your response and address the very simple point that it seems you’re making. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounds as if you’re saying that the Bush administration did not take terrorism seriously because they believed that the Clinton administration didn’t take it seriously (even though the memos told them that they should take terrorism VERY seriously). So Clinton’s warnings to Bush were simply ignored. I guess that Clinton, the US, and the 9/11 victims’ families should expect an apology from Bush any day now.

[RTFirefly]

@Shodan

I was addressing his arithmetic. Did you notice the mention of “your arithmetic”?

Yes, but just because you can add or subtract numbers, doesn’t mean it means anything when you do.

[/quote]
Considering that the Clinton administration did not take any action for the several months since the Cole attack,
[/quote]
All three of them? When they were trying to ascertain that bin Laden was indeed behind the attack?
[/quote]
and the several years since the first WTC attack
[/quote]
That’s news to me. And to the people who planned and executed it, including the “blind cleric,” Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, who are in prison.

and the embassy bombings

So you’re saying Clinton didn’t try to kill bin Laden after the embassy bombings? That’s news to the rest of us.

yes, it is reasonable to conclude that the Clinton adminstration were not serious about terrorism.

So much for that.

Since they had a perfect chance to take out bin Laden, and decided to shuffle off the responsibility to someone else.

Oh really? Cite, please.

Like I said, Clinton’s primary motive for his actions had nothing to do with threats - he used the threat from Iraq to try to distract from his impeachment.

Cite, please.

It didn’t work, he got away with his misconduct, and so Clinton had no further interest besides trying to shift the blame.

Which explains his response to the millennium plot.

That bin Laden was responsible.

Having trouble with your reading again? No prob, I’m here to help.

No, I’m just having problems with your attributions. You seem to be claiming that bin Laden was responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

[quote]
If they were so fucking serious about terrorism, why did they [list=A][li]do nothing about killing bin Laden, and [*]expect anyone else to believe them about what the major threats were when they spent the last part of their tenure ignoring the major threat and trashing the White House?[/list][/li][/quote]

A time capsule from April 2000:

Central to Clarke’s strategy was a major disruption effort, orchestrated by the CIA and implemented by friendly intelligence agencies around the world, aimed at harassing members of bin Laden’s al Qaeda organization and forcing them onto the defensive. Other moves included putting the FBI on a heightened state of alert, dispatching counterterrorism teams to Europe and having the State Department issue an informal ultimatum to Afghanistan to keep bin Laden under control.

U.S. officials credit these countermeasures–and what many acknowledge was sheer “good luck”–with a peaceful start to the new year. But the millennium alert–initially triggered by reports of a plan to attack American and Israeli tourists in Jordan–also underlined the influence of one of the least known but most controversial members of Clinton’s national security team.

Operating from an Old Executive Office Building suite once inhabited by Col. Oliver North, Clarke has played a key role both in defining the new post-Cold War security threats to the United States and coming up with a response. But he also has come to personify what some critics, particularly abroad, view as an unhealthy American obsession with high-tech threats and a “Fortress America” approach to dealing with them.

As the national coordinator for infrastructure protection and counterterrorism, Clarke has presided over a huge increase in counterterrorism budgets over the past five years to meet a wide array of new–and some would argue, still hypothetical–challenges, such as cyber warfare or chemical or biological attacks in New York or Washington. Last month, the administration submitted an $11.1 billion request to Congress to strengthen “domestic preparedness” against a terrorist attack. In the meantime, by contrast, security assistance to the former Soviet Union to tackle proliferation problems has been stuck in the region of $800 million a year.

“In America, there is a morbid fascination with greater-than-life technological threats, which you don’t see in other countries,” says Ehud Sprinzak, a terrorism expert at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. “Clarke has an ax to grind. It makes him big. If nobody talked about catastrophic terrorism, what would people like Dick Clarke be doing?”

Such talk irritates national security adviser Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger, Clarke’s direct supervisor, who insists that the threat of large-scale terrorist attacks on U.S. soil is “a reality, not a perception.” “We would be irresponsible if we did not take this seriously,” he says. “I hope that in 10 years’ time, they will say we did too much, not too little.”

Clarke’s warnings about America’s vulnerability to new kinds of terrorist attack have found a receptive ear in Clinton. With little fanfare, the president has begun to articulate a new national security doctrine in which terrorists and other “enemies of the nation-state” are coming to occupy the position once filled by a monolithic communist superpower. In January, he departed from the prepared text of his State of the Union address to predict that terrorists and organized criminals “with increasing access to ever more sophisticated chemical and biological weapons” will pose “the major security threat” to the United States in 10 to 20 years.

And:

The U.S. budget to fight terrorism has grown by more than 90 percent over the past six years in response to a series of terror attacks at home and abroad. New programs have been launched to counter the threat of terrorists using nuclear, chemical or biological agents. But critics question how dangerous the threat remains.

1993: No budget figures for counterterrorism programs available
1994: No budget figures for counterterrorism programs available
1995: $5.7 billion (GAO estimate)
1996: $6.7 billion
1997: $7.7 billion
1998: $10.2 billion
1999: $10.1 billion
2000: $11.1 billion

Yeah, the Clinton administration didn’t give a flip about terrorism.

The fact remains that when Bush came into office, he knew about the 1998 embassy bombings. He knew about the Cole. It’s not like he had to receive secret briefings to know these things were going on in the world. And it’s not like there’s some rule that says that anything that happens in the first eight months of a President’s first term doesn’t count, that he isn’t expected to be ready for it. Like it or not, a President has to be the President from the moment he’s sworn in. The world won’t always wait indefinitely for the new guy to ramp up. Clinton got a lot of flak from the right for the “Black Hawk Down” episode in Somalia, which happened at essentially the same point in his Administration. Nobody tried to say that wasn’t his fault, he’d only been President for eight months.

Bush knew that there had been a string of terrorist incidents in the 1990s when he took office. He knew that the 1998 embassy bombings and the Cole were attributed to bin Laden. He was warned that terrorists might fly planes into buildings in Genoa in July 2001. He received the PDB on August 6, 2001 that said bin Laden was determined to strike here. And he dismissed the briefers, telling them they’d covered their asses.

We can argue about whether Bush could have prevented the events of 9/11 if he’d reacted to the PDB in anything remotely like the manner that the Clinton administration reacted to the millenium plot. But the fact is that Bush did nothing, when doing nothing was totally unjustifiable.

[Guinastasia]

@Shodan

Well, if by this you mean “it became screamingly obvious to everyone that everything Clinton ever did was motivated entirely by politics and he could care less about terrorism”, and call it 'being politically handcuffed", then yes, but the blame for that lies with Slick Willie himself.

Oh, and Bush is just a selfless, tireless public servant, caring only about the good of the people, no matter their political affiliation, eh?

:rolleyes:

Pull the other one, it’s got bells on it.

[Starving_Artist]

@Guinastasia

Oh, and Bush is just a selfless, tireless public servant, caring only about the good of the people, no matter their political affiliation, eh?

:rolleyes:

Yeah, pretty much.

I have no doubt whatsoever that Bush wants (and feels it’s his responsibility) to protect the entire population from terrorist attack regardless of their political affiliation.