Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Sandman on September 12, 2003, 11:43:32 AM
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http://www.markfiore.com/animation/twoyear.html
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just when you think someone couldn't go any lower.....
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Boy that really pegged the 'ol needle of the "Stupid" meter. :rolleyes:
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lol, bad political satire.
I found it less irritating than the "tears" and bad poems that were supposed to be heart felt, but damn.
In.
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Real classy, Sandtard.
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There is whole subculture of nutjobs out there about this. Check out some of these links:
http://www.911pi.com/investigations_overview.htm
http://www.communitycurrency.org/MainIndexMX.html
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/091203A.shtml
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Originally posted by Gadfly
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/091203A.shtml
This link is from: http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/6742902.htm
I'm thinking that this guy watched way too much X-Files.
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I remember.....
I remember how the mastermind, Osama Bin Laden was offered to Bill Clinton by Sudan, on a silver platter.
I remember this as being 5-7 years before 9/11.
I remember how the Clinton administration turned them down, saying they did not think he was of great impotance.
I remember how Mr. Clinton spent 8 years cutting back on intelligence spending.
I remember how the Clinton Administration thought you could solve any international confrontations with half a dozen cruise missles over a weekend.
I remember everything Billary did to this country for 8 years.
I remember to thank god every night that we have a strong president who stands up to tyrants who threaten our safety, no matter what the political backlash may be.
And I'll remember again in November of '04.
Will you?
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I remember how the mastermind, Osama Bin Laden was offered to Bill Clinton by Sudan, on a silver platter.
Never happened. A 3rd party intermediary, a Pakistani American (who now works for FOX NEWS) supposedly made this offer. The Sudanese Govt. never cooperated and basically knew nothing about it.
Just another made up sack o lies by the right wing controlled media.
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Originally posted by muckmaw
And I'll remember again in November of '04.
Will you?
Yes... and I won't be voting for Bush. :D
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Who will you vote for? I haven't seen anyone else that appears any better, much worse in fact. But I am open, if the Dems can come up with a real leader.
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Originally posted by Gadfly
Who will you vote for? I haven't seen anyone else that appears any better, much worse in fact. But I am open, if the Dems can come up with a real leader.
Too soon to tell.
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Sandy's the guy sitting on the lawn in Chappaqua with the "RUN HILLARY RUN!" sign.
Too bad the Clinton's don't live there, huh?
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Originally posted by muckmaw
Sandy's the guy sitting on the lawn in Chappaqua with the "RUN HILLARY RUN!" sign.
Too bad the Clinton's don't live there, huh?
I don't live in New York either. :p
It's funny... three years later and you guys are still running against Clinton.
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Originally posted by midnight Target
Never happened. A 3rd party intermediary, a Pakistani American (who now works for FOX NEWS) supposedly made this offer. The Sudanese Govt. never cooperated and basically knew nothing about it.
Just another made up sack o lies by the right wing controlled media.
Hmmm...
Well Clinton is so adept at spewing lies that you could be right, but this transcipt is his own words...
"Mr. bin Laden used to live in Sudan. He was expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1991, then he went to Sudan.
"At the time, 1996, he had committed no crime against America so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America.
So I pleaded with the Saudis to take him, 'cause they could have. But they thought it was a hot potato and they didn't and that's how he wound up in Afghanistan." (End of excerpt)
A terror mastermind, and Clinton is looking for a legal justification to arrest him? He knew he was a threat, yet he let him go. So you can't hold the man. Why did they not make him disappear.
Oh that's right, good old Bill sent a coupla cruise missles at a terror training camp in Afghanistan.
"That oughta wipe 'em all out and solve the problem. Now where's Monica?"
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muckmaw,
even if the story is true ( which i doubt ) reason Clinton couldn't do anything is because we didn't have "Parrot act"... i mean "Patriot Act" and Mr. "Pray with me" Askcroft in place...... we had this little thing call LAW to worry about. It wasn't the same back then.
Hey... i have it on good authority that muckmaw is planning attacks against america. Let's SHOOT HIM NOW !!!!
Funny you should scream about proptecting freedom when you have no clue what it means.
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Originally posted by fd ski
muckmaw,
even if the story is true ( which i doubt ) reason Clinton couldn't do anything is because we didn't have "Parrot act"... i mean "Patriot Act" and Mr. "Pray with me" Askcroft in place...... we had this little thing call LAW to worry about. It wasn't the same back then.
Hey... i have it on good authority that muckmaw is planning attacks against america. Let's SHOOT HIM NOW !!!!
Funny you should scream about proptecting freedom when you have no clue what it means.
Oh stop it. Would you please.
If we wanted him, we could have taken him. Too bad we did not have someone in office who was a man of action instead of words.
If you believe we never tried to take out foreign official before because he was simply a threat to us, you are deluded.
How many covert acts does this country perform without your knowlege, Ski. I mean, YOU KNOW what freedom means, right. You must be informed, huh?
Ever heard of Castro? What crime did he commmit, yet how many times did the intelligence services try to take him out.
Put down the Kool-Aid, brush up on your history and get back to me.
Thanks.
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so on the one hand you are buying into "we're the good guys in iraq and everywhere we go" story and love bush like noone else, on the other hand you are argumenting that based on history of our f___k ups ( and there is pleanty ) it's ok for our government to eliminate people whenever they feel nessesary ?
No question that we're tried to take people out ( and did ) but that hardly justifies it, and secondly, if GOVERNMENT offers him, IN PUBLIC, how exacly do you expect to be able to whack him and keep up the pretense of "freedom and democracy" stuff ?
Man of action ? If this is supposed to be a complement i wouldn't be suprized if it was used to rationalize bombing of civilians in israel and flying planes into buildings.
Sit down for a second, relax, engage your head not your fist, and decide for yourself what's "right" rather then basing your decisions on "Rambo" movies.
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Another pointless exchange with a condescending Liberal.
The point is, the offer from Sudan only became public because the former president spoke about it.
It was a secret long before this.
If Sudan was willing to give him up, we could have taken him and either aranged a convenient plane crash, or had him assasinated on the way to the airport.
The fact that our attempts on Castro were botched is not the point. The point is, we were active in political assasination long before tha partiot act. I'd be willing to wager we carried out a successful assasination or 2 since then as well.
So why did we stop with Osama Bin Laden?
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Originally posted by midnight Target
Never happened. A 3rd party intermediary, a Pakistani American (who now works for FOX NEWS) supposedly made this offer. The Sudanese Govt. never cooperated and basically knew nothing about it.
Just another made up sack o lies by the right wing controlled media.
Prove it
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Originally posted by midnight Target
Never happened. A 3rd party intermediary, a Pakistani American (who now works for FOX NEWS) supposedly made this offer. The Sudanese Govt. never cooperated and basically knew nothing about it.
Just another made up sack o lies by the right wing controlled media.
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."
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Here is an article about the "offer" (http://www.infowars.com/saved%20pages/Prior_Knowledge/Clinton_let_bin_laden.htm)
Notice who wrote it. "MANSOOR IJAZ" and the same guy who takes credit for
From 1996 to 1998, I opened unofficial channels between Sudan and the Clinton administration. I met with officials in both countries, including Clinton, U.S. National Security Advisor Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger and Sudan's president and intelligence chief. President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, who wanted terrorism sanctions against Sudan lifted, offered the arrest and extradition of Bin Laden and detailed intelligence data about the global networks constructed by Egypt's Islamic Jihad, Iran's Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas.
Now look here (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,46241,00.html)
Mansoor Ijaz is a FOX News Channel foreign affairs and terrorism analyst. He joined FOX in December 2001 and contributes to FNC’s prime time and weekend news analysis programs on matters related to terrorism, foreign policy and national security.
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So you know Clinton had no opportunities to collect OBL?
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Originally posted by Rude
So you know Clinton had no opportunities to collect OBL?
So you know he did?
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I'm not the one making the bold statement calling others liars...is Dick Morris a liar as well?...he was only Clintons closest advisor thru his first term.
BTW, your response to an honest question was so predictable.
WHY CLINTON SLEPT
Dick Morris
New York Post, January 2, 2002
LAST month, President Bush shut down three U.S.-based "charities" accused of funneling money to Hamas, a terrorist organization that last year alone was responsible for at least 20 bombings, two shootings and a mortar attack that killed 77 people. These "charities" - The Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, the Global Relief Foundation and the Benevolence International Foundation - raised $20 million last year alone.
But the information on which Bush largely relied to act against these charities was taped nine years ago, in 1993. FBI electronic eavesdropping had produced compelling evidence that officials of Hamas and the Holy Land Foundation had met to discuss raising funds for Hamas training schools and establishing annuities for suicide bombers' families - pensions for terrorists.
Why didn't Clinton act to shut these people down?
In 1995 and 1996, he was advised to do just that. At a White House strategy meeting on April 27, 1995 - two weeks after the Oklahoma City bombing - the president was urged to create a "President's List" of extremist/terrorist groups, their members and donors "to warn the public against well-intentioned donations which might foster terrorism." On April 1, 1996, he was again advised to "prohibit fund-raising by terrorists and identify terrorist organizations," specifically mentioning the Hamas.
Inexplicably, Clinton ignored these recommendations. Why? FBI agents have stated that they were prevented from opening either criminal or national-security cases because of a fear that it would be seen as "profiling" Islamic charities. While Clinton was politically correct, the Hamas flourished.
Clinton did seize any bank accounts of the terrorist groups themselves, but his order netted no money since neither al Qaeda nor bin Laden were obliging enough to open accounts in their own names.
Liberals felt that the civil rights of suspected terrorists were more important than cutting off their funds. George Stephanopoulos, the ankle bracelet that kept Clinton on the liberal reservation, explains in his memoir "All Too Human" that he opposed the proposal to "publish the names of suspected terrorists in the newspapers" with a "civil liberties argument" and by pointing out that Attorney General Janet Reno would object.
So five years later - after millions have been given to terrorist groups through U.S. fronts - the government is finally blocking the flow of cash.
Political correctness also doomed a separate recommendation to require that drivers' licenses and visas for noncitizens expire simultaneously so that illegal aliens pulled over in traffic stops could be identified and (if appropriate) deported. Stephanopoulos cited "potential abuse and political harm to the president's Hispanic base," and said that he'd killed the idea by raising "the practical grounds of prohibitive cost."
Had Clinton adopted this recommendation, Mohammed Atta might have been deported after he was stopped for driving without a license three months before be piloted an American Airlines jet into the World Trade Center.
Nothing so illustrates the low priority of terrorism in Clinton's first term than the short shrift he gave the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the first terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Six people were killed and 1,042 injured; 750 firefighters worked for one month to contain the damage. But Clinton never visited the site. Several days after the explosion, speaking in New Jersey, he actually "discouraged Americans from overacting" to the Trade Center bombing.
Why this de-emphasis of the threat? In Sunday's New York Times, Stephanopoulis explains that the 1993 attack "wasn't a successful bombing. . . . It wasn't the kind of thing where you walked into a staff meeting and people asked, what are we doing today in the war against terrorism?"
In sharp contrast, U.S. District Court Judge Kevin Duffy, who presided over the WTC-bombing trial, noted that the attack caused "more hospital casualties than any other event in domestic American history other than the Civil War."
But Stephanopoulos was just the hired help. Clinton was the president and commander-in-chief. For all of his willingness to act courageously and decisively - against the advice of his liberal staff - on issues like deficit reduction and welfare reform, he was passive and almost inert on terrorism in his first term.
It wasn't until 1998 that Clinton finally got around to setting up a post of Counter Terrorism Coordinator in the National Security Council.
Everything was more important than fighting terrorism. Political correctness, civil liberties concerns, fear of offending the administration's supporters, Janet Reno's objections, considerations of cost, worries about racial profiling and, in the second term, surviving impeachment, all came before fighting terrorism.
The evidence of his inaction needs no disclosure...it was evident throughout his administration....the repeated terrorist events revealed his lack of resolve to honor his committment to serve this nation as it's President.
Knock Bush until you're blue in the face...he at least loves his country more than he loves himself, which I cannot say about Clinton and if your honest, neither could you.
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Bill Clinton is a T URD that was flush long ago.
And Hillary Is Just a budding Fart on the political scene.
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Originally posted by rc51
Bill Clinton is a T URD that was flush long ago.
And Hillary Is Just a budding Fart on the political scene.
:D
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Reality check people: The world is and was full of people who hate America. Bin Laden was one of a number. Before September 11th no one had a good enough reason to lock them all up or invade the countries they lived in. It never occurred to anyone jut how monstrous a conspiracy was being concocted by this fanatic. Not even George W Bush.
America is full of people who hate Bill Clinton, but to blame him for September 11th is absurd. In any case George W Bush and the massed ranks of right had EIGHT MONTHS to do something about OSL. But they did nothing and worse still ignored numerous warnings from among others the head of security at the World Trade Center who died in the attack.
So aim your bile at the right targets the real enemies which contrary to some people's opinions are not the Democrats but Islamic terrorists.
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Blue, do you like them french fried pertators? Mmmhmmm.
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Creamo have you been drinking? You're not making sense.
In any case we call them chips.............
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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?)
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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.
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not cut and pasted.. but thanks for the compliment.
All are verifyable facts paraphrased from written material.
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What written material?
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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)
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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.
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The loch ness monster exists- disprove it.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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".
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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."
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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.:D