A Nation Remembers...

[midnight Target]

Lets look at the records...

1. More Americans were killed by Islamic terrorists during REAGAN's term, than during Clinton and Bush Sr.'s combined.

2. Reagans only military response was to send a couple planes over Libya. (well there was the Grenada invasion too... gotta give him that)

3. Bush Sr. - No terrorist attacks (although the first WTC attack was surely planned during his watch.) When he completely ingnored Afghanistan after the Russian retreat it surely lead to a Taliban takeover.

4. Clinton was President for 38 days when the 1st WTC attack occured.  - His response? The guilty have been caught, tried and convicted.  

5. The same people in prison for the 1st WTC attack were also plotting - to kill the Pope and blow up 12 jetliners simultaniously.

6. Clinton tripled the counterterrorism budget of the FBI, and doubled spending on counterterror overall.

7. Orrin Hatch (on Clinton's request for more more antiterrorism funding in 1996) - "The Administration would be wise to utilize the resources Congress has already provided before it requests additional funding."

8. After Oklahoma City Clinton asked for an expansion of the wiretap authority. Congress turned him down. Newt Gingrich - "When you have an agency that turns 900 personnel files over to people like Craig Livingstone.... its very hard to justify giving that agency more money."

9. 1998 after the Tomahawk missle attack on Sudan and Afghanistan in retaliation for the attacks on Kenya and Tanzanian Embassies Gingrich said "The President did exactly the right thing. By doing this we are sending the signasl that there are no sanctuaries for terrorists."

10. Immediately after the embassy bombings Clinton issued a directive authorizing the assasination of Bin Laden.

11. Clinton invented the position of National antiterrorism coordinator.

12. The Clinton administrations last act against terror was to commision a strategy paper by Richard Clark (1st antiterror coordinator) - This paper issued on 12-20-2000 included the following:
       A. Break up Al queda cells and arrest their members
       B. Attack financial support for terror, freeze assets, stop funding through fake charities.
       C. Give aid to governments fighting Al Queda
       D. Scale up covert action in Afghanistan including support for the Northern Alliance.
       E. Place special forces on the ground in Afghanistan to clear out the terrorist camps and "get Bin Laden".

(Sounds familiar don't it?)

[muckmaw]

Originally posted by midnight Target

10. Immediately after the embassy bombings Clinton issued a directive authorizing the assasination of Bin Laden.

11. Clinton invented the position of National antiterrorism coordinator.

12. The Clinton administrations last act against terror was to commision a strategy paper by Richard Clark (1st antiterror coordinator) - This paper issued on 12-20-2000 included the following:
       A. Break up Al queda cells and arrest their members
       B. Attack financial support for terror, freeze assets, stop funding through fake charities.
       C. Give aid to governments fighting Al Queda
       D. Scale up covert action in Afghanistan including support for the Northern Alliance.
       E. Place special forces on the ground in Afghanistan to clear out the terrorist camps and "get Bin Laden".

(Sounds familiar don't it?)

EXCELLENT POST TARGET!!!

Can you tell me where this was compiled from? I'd like to read the page first hand and take a closer look at it. (I know you cut and pasted it, there's no misspellings!:D )

Excellent post, now if I can check the sources, I'll be throughly impressed.

Thanks.

[midnight Target]

not cut and pasted.. but thanks for the compliment.

All are verifyable facts paraphrased from written material.

[rc51]

What written material?

[midnight Target]

I could give you a fish, and you would eat for a day.

I choose to teach you to fish.....

(try to disprove any of it)

[Martlet]

Originally posted by midnight Target
not cut and pasted.. but thanks for the compliment.

All are verifyable facts paraphrased from written material.

then verify it.

[Gadfly]

The loch ness monster exists- disprove it.

[midnight Target]

1. More Americans were killed by Islamic terrorists during REAGAN's term, than during Clinton and Bush Sr.'s combined.

wimps... OK

Marines in Lebanon - 241
Pan Am flight 103 - 173 (Americans)

You can figure out the rest.

[midnight Target]

4. Clinton was President for 38 days when the 1st WTC attack occured. - His response? The guilty have been caught, tried and convicted.

Any argument here? For confirmation visit Ramzi Yousef in the Federal pen.

10. Immediately after the embassy bombings Clinton issued a directive authorizing the assasination of Bin Laden.

http://www.thenewmexicochannel.com/news/960269/detail.html

President Clinton signed a secret directive in 1998 authorizing U.S. efforts to capture or disrupt Osama bin Laden and his terrorism network, and several unsuccessful attempts were made, a person familiar with the effort said Sunday.

Non-Americans in Afghanistan, promised a bounty if they succeeded, had an "active, constant and unsuccessful effort to capture bin Laden or take him out," the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "There were several attempts."

The CIA and other U.S. agencies monitored the efforts, the source said, stressing that no Americans were involved directly in the activity.  
 
CBS News reported Sunday night that in one such attempt, non-Americans hired by the CIA launched rocket-propelled grenades at a bin Laden convoy but hit the wrong vehicle.

[midnight Target]

11. Clinton invented the position of National antiterrorism coordinator.

from http://www.nap.edu/issues/15.4/br_zilinskas.htm

On May 22, 1998, the administration issued two relevant PDDs. PDD 62 establishes the Office of the National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counter-Terrorism within the NSC and charges it with overseeing government activities such as counterterrorism, protection of critical infrastructure, and preparedness and consequence management for weapons of mass destruction. PDD 63 acts on the findings of the Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection by ordering a series of actions whose objective is to significantly increase the security of government systems by 2000. The directives have come with a lot of money for agencies to spend. According to the General Accounting Office, spending on unclassified terrorism-related programs and activities rose from $5.6 billion in 1996 to $7. 6 billion in 1999 and is expected to rise to $8.6 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2000. In addition, $1.4 billion is slated for critical infrastructure protection.

[midnight Target]

12. The Clinton administrations last act against terror was to commision a strategy paper by Richard Clark

from - http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0805-04.htm

According to today's Time magazine, Mr Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy Berger and Mr Clarke outlined the threat in briefings they provided for Condoleeza Rice, George Bush's national security adviser, in January 2001, a few weeks before she and her team took up their posts.

At the key briefing, Mr Clarke presented proposals to "roll back" al-Qaida which closely resemble the measures taken after September 11. Its financial network would be broken up and its assets frozen. Vulnerable countries like Uzbekistan, Yemen and the Philippines would be given aid to help them stamp out terrorist cells.

Crucially, the US would go after Bin Laden in his Afghan lair. Plans would be drawn up for combined air and special forces operations, while support would be channeled to the Northern Alliance in its fight against the Taliban and its al-Qaida allies.

Mr Clarke, who stayed on in his job as White House counter-terrorism tsar, repeated his briefing for vice president Dick Cheney in February. However, the proposals got lost in the clumsy transition process, turf wars between departments and the separate agendas of senior members of the Bush administration.

It was, the Time article argues, "a systematic collapse in the ability of Washington's national security apparatus to handle the terrorist threat".

[Montezuma]

This is quite a 'qualified' news story.  Couldn't they get anyone on the record for the first half?

according to sources
Washington Source
former senior intelligence/white house source
Clinton is reported
According to a witness

The second part is more interesting, which indicates good intentions but bad mistakes; similar to the Bush administration's failures in the months before 9/11.

It isn't fair to judge either President based on current standards for the war on terror.  If Bush or Clinton had proposed going to Afghanistan to break AQ before 9/11, the opposition party would have been apoplectic.

Originally posted by Rude
Clinton missed three chances to seize Bin Laden


Editorial

The Sunday Times [U.K.], January 6, 2002



PRESIDENT Bill Clinton turned down at least three offers involving foreign governments to help to seize Osama Bin Laden after he was identified as a terrorist who was threatening America, according to sources in Washington and the Middle East.
Clinton himself, according to one Washington source, has described the refusal to accept the first of the offers as "the biggest mistake" of his presidency.

The main reasons were legal: there was no evidence that could be brought against Bin Laden in an American court. But former senior intelligence sources accuse the administration of a lack of commitment to the fight against terrorism.

When Sudanese officials claimed late last year that Washington had spurned Bin Laden's secret extradition from Khartoum in 1996, former White House officials said they had no recollection of the offer. Senior sources in the former administration now confirm that it was true.

An Insight investigation has revealed that far from being an isolated incident this was the first in a series of missed opportunities right up to Clinton's last year in office. One of these involved a Gulf state; another would have relied on the assistance of Saudi Arabia.

In early 1996 America was putting strong pressure on Sudan's Islamic government to expel Bin Laden, who had been living there since 1991. Sources now reveal that Khartoum sent a former intelligence officer with Central Intelligence Agency connections to Washington with an offer to hand over Bin Laden — just as it had put another terrorist, Carlos the Jackal, into French hands in 1994.

At the time the State Department was describing Bin Laden as "the greatest single financier of terrorist projects in the world" and was accusing Sudan of harbouring terrorists. The extradition offer was turned down, however. A former senior White House source said: "There simply was not the evidence to prosecute Osama Bin Laden. He could not be indicted, so it would serve no purpose for him to have been brought into US custody."

A former figure in American counterterrorist intelligence claims, however, that there was "clear and convincing" proof of Bin Laden's conspiracy against America. In May, 1996, American diplomats were informed in a Sudanese government fax that Bin Laden was about to be expelled — giving Washington another chance to seize him. The decision not to do so went to the very top of the White House, according to former administration sources.

They say that the clear focus of American policy was to discourage the state sponsorship of terrorism. So persuading Khartoum to expel Bin Laden was in itself counted as a clear victory. The administration was "delighted".

Bin Laden took off from Khartoum on May 18 in a chartered C-130 plane with 150 of his followers, including his wives. He was bound for Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. On the way the plane refuelled in the Gulf state of Qatar, which has friendly relations with Washington, but he was allowed to proceed unhindered.

Barely a month later, on June 25, a 5,000lb truck bomb ripped apart the front of Khobar Towers, a US military housing complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The explosion killed 19 American servicemen. Bin Laden was immediately suspected.

Clinton is reported to have admitted how things went wrong in Sudan at a private dinner at a Manhattan restaurant shortly after September 11 last year. According to a witness, Clinton told a dinner companion that the decision to let Bin Laden go was probably "the biggest mistake of my presidency".

Clinton could not be reached for comment yesterday, but a former senior White House official acknowledged that the Sudan episode had been a "screw-up".

A second offer to get Bin Laden came unofficially from Mansoor Ijaz, a Pakistani-American millionaire who was a donor to Clinton's election campaign in 1996. On July 6, 2000, he visited John Podesta, then the president's chief of staff, to say that intelligence officers from a Gulf state were offering to help to extract Bin Laden.

Details of the meeting are confirmed in an exchange of e-mails between the White House and Ijaz, which have been seen by The Sunday Times. According to Ijaz, the offer involved setting up an Islamic relief fund to aid Afghanistan in return for the Taliban handing over Bin Laden to the Gulf state. America could then extract Bin Laden from there.

The Sunday Times has established that after a fierce internal row about the sincerity of the offer, the White House responded by sending Richard Clarke, Clinton's most senior counterterrorism adviser, to meet the rulers of the United Arab Emirates. They denied there was any such offer. Ijaz, however, maintained that the White House had thereby destroyed the deal, which was to have been arranged only through unofficial channels. Ijaz said that weeks later on a return trip to the Gulf he was taken on a late-night ride into the desert by his contact who told him that Clarke's front-door approach had upset a delicate internal balance and blown the deal. "Your government has missed a major opportunity," he recalls being told.

Senior former government sources said that Ijaz's offer had been treated in good faith but, with the denial of the UAE government, there was nothing to suggest it had credibility.

A third more mysterious offer to help came from the intelligence services of Saudi Arabia, then led by Prince Turki al-Faisal, according to Washington sources. Details of the offer are still unclear although, by one account, Turki offered to help to place a tracking device in the luggage of Bin Laden's mother, who was seeking to make a trip to Afghanistan to see her son. The CIA did not take up the offer.

Richard Shelby, the leading Republican on the Senate intelligence committee, said he was aware of a Saudi offer to help although, under rules protecting classified information, he was unable to discuss the details of any offer. Commenting generally, he said: "I don't believe that the fight against terrorism was the number one goal of the Clinton administration. I believe there were some lost opportunities."

[rc51]

Originally posted by midnight Target
I could give you a fish, and you would eat for a day.

I choose to teach you to fish.....

(try to disprove any of it)

Grasshopper.
When you can take the pebble form my hand.
Then you may leave.