Somalia was a Bush Sr./ Colin Powell "screw-up". "Arguably" had Bush Jr. listened to Clinton's security team warnings on the possibilities of 9/11 style attack the disaster could have been avoided. Hash/ Rehash
Clinton had more terrorist acts occuring against us than any other President. He knew who was responsible and could have done him in. He failed. obl did not. I don't have a proclivity to look backwards and point fingers, but nyquil's post about our troops deaths really rankled. It's downright ignorant to compare and contrast these deaths when the environment that the Presidents were operating in was so entirely different. That comment is what made some retrospective analysis germane.
Originally posted by underoverup Somalia was a Bush Sr./ Colin Powell "screw-up". Funny, I thought Clinton was in the White House then. Were Bush and Powell the hidden forces behind the Clinton presidency? "Arguably" had Bush Jr. listened to Clinton's security team warnings on the possibilities of 9/11 style attack the disaster could have been avoided. Hash/ Rehash Right. Bush's team had 9 months. Clinton's had almost 8 years to dispose of obl. Give me a break. And yes, it's rehash. See my previous post to understand why.
Clinton was President when these first terrorist acts on US soil transpired. That made them different. The WTC event was treated as a crime not as an act of terrorism, was it not? Is that bad judgement? Whose call was that? It is virtually undeniable that if Clinton had taken OBL as was offered, the horror of 9/11 would not have transpired and all the economic, political, and legislative ramifications and distractions would not have burdened the Bush presidency for the last 2 years. Bush is the Donovan McNabb of Presidents!
Breaking News... Any president never truly has a "vacation"... These guys are on call and work practically 24/7... A smear campaign in deed...
No, they didn't catch OBL. Has Bush? giddyup, I'd like to read up on this offer that Clinton had for OBL. IIRC, this was after he OK'd an assassination for him, I find it highly suspect that he was simply offered OBL for nothing.
Clinton approved the assasination of bin Laden, spent more money on anti-terror programs than any other president in history, and put into place initiatives that squelched countless terrorist attacks. Shoot, even Republicans said he was "obsessed" with fighting terrorism. And the much-cited Sudanese offer of bin Laden *never happened.* It's a myth -- some Sudanese resident called the administration and said he knew where bin Laden was. The government looked into it, and nothing. THAT'S the much-hyped "Clinton was offered OBL" story. Bush ignored all this and even threatened a veto against any anti-terrorist legislation that didn't include missile defense. Republicans can whine and complain about Clinton all they want, but it was on their boys' watch that this **** happened. Had he even given cursory attention to the plans outlined by the Clinton Administration, Sept. 11 never would have happened. But this doesn't fit with the Republican storyline of Hero Bush, so it doesn't matter what facts are presented. By the way, I think it was that idiot in the White House who wanted bin Laden "dead or alive." Then he later said he didn't care where bin Laden was. Clinton never caught bin Laden, but jeezus, at least he *looked* for him.
I thought Clinton should have been booted out of office for breaking the law and undermining the entire basis of our judicial system...but to say that Bush's success as President is even in the same ball park as Clinton's is actually funny. To the rest of the world we are a strange combination of a national joke and an international nightmare right now, domestically we went from the biggest surplus to the biggest deficit, we have lost more jobs than at any time in history, our civil liberties are in danger, and we have easily the least intelligent leader we have had since the invention of radio, the CIA is asking Justice to investigate the White House, and people want to compare this period favourably with what preceded it!?!?!? On what basis, aside from his party affiliation?
That story is conjectre that was written about in a book by right wing hack Richard Minitir; it has been hotly disputed by the very same Saudis who he alleged offered the chance to assassinate him. In fact, Clinton signed the executive order authorizing his assassination and the CIA was allegedly working on ways to get him (Predator drones, training pakistani agents, the northern alliance) throughout the late 1990's, or so mainstream news sources have reported. Clinton's foreign policy team told Condi Rice and the rest that terrorism and Al Q was the number one priority when they were transitioning out of office, to which they were reportedly dismissive. Another story/rumor I vaguely recall hearing about was that a lower level person in State or Defense was once approached through an intermediary who was supposedly transmitting an offer from Libyan pres. Col. Momar Gadafy (yes, that Gadafy) to have Bin Laden killed. Apparently, there was a failed assassination attempt by Al Q to kill Gadafy in 96 (rumored to be sanctioned by British intelligence) and he was willing to return the favor. I don't think the offer was pursued because we were weary about dealing with Gadafy (considering we tried to kill him once).
I believe Clinton also set a record for time spent out of the country -- including a week spent in Africa on a "Foreign Policy Trip" that happened to coincide with his daughter's spring break. One could easily say those were vacations -- at the taxpayer's expense. He also spent a lot of time at Camp David. Just because Bush chooses to use Crawford, TX, instead of Camp David, doesn't mean that all time spent there is on vacation. Presidents may get some choice where they work, but they work 24/7, more than any other job, anywhere.
UH, since we like to call the President the Leader of the Free World, it's generally important for him to, you know, go there. A state trip by a head of state abroad is a vacation at taxpayer expense? That's one way of loooking at it, one really stupid way.
You missed the thread about civility. I like to call the President the leader of the U.S. He isn't elected by, or paid by, the free world. Clinton broke many records for time spent by a U.S. President overseas. If you're going to criticize Bush breaking records for a President spending time on vacation, based on time spent in Crawford, then you should also look at Clinton's time spent out of the U.S. on "Foreign Relations" trips, where he 'toured' places and 'met with' people. While there's nothing necessarily wrong with showing the flag overseas, there's very little reason for the President of the United States to "go there" for any length of time. The true diplomatic details are handled by others. Presidential travel, especially overseas, is extremely expensive, both in terms of his valuable time, and of course money. I'm hardly the first person to suggest that many of Clinton's foreign trade missions were thinly veiled "vactations at taxpayer expense." The one I mentioned in particular, he timed to coincide with his daughter's spring break, and they spent most of the time touring nature preserves in South Africa. While I'm sure the few hours he met with the foreign heads of state were helpful for U.S. trade policy, the President of the United States has about as much need to spend a whole week in Africa on a trade mission as the Mayor of Houston. While Bush is probably tipping the scales a bit in terms of time spent in Crawford, he's obviously working there, just as Clinton tipped the scales a bit in terms of unnecessary travel, and also worked hard. You really can't criticize one much more than the other, without contradicting yourself.
Excerpt from Joe Conason's "Big Lies." _______________ Any honest examination of the roots of the September 11 attack would necessarily begin several years before Clinton was elected President -- when the Central Intelligence Agency provided up to a billion dollars in aid to the Afghan mujahideen. Those resources, controlled by the Islamist generals who ran Pakistan's Interservice Intelligence agency, were used to build the militant jihadist movements that later formed the Taliban and al-Qaida. According to Yossef Bodansky, former director of the Congressonal Task Force on Terrorism and author of "Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America," U.S. taxpayers unwittingly financed the training of Islamist terrorists under Pakistani auspices. None of that ancient history was of much concern to conservatives who had supported Reagan's Afghan adventure. For them, the history of Islamist terror began with the first attempt to bring down the World Trade Center. That was when Clinton supposedly ought to have declared war on Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida, as Sullivan and others insisted, because "the investigation found links to Osama bin Laden." In fact, however, no clue to the Saudi millionaire's alleged involvement with the WTC bombing emerged until at least three years later. In 1993 U.S. authorities were scarcely aware of bin Laden's existence. Conservative journalists, such as the New Republic's Fred Barnes, were then suggesting that the likeliest perpetrator of the World Trade Center bombing was Iran. Hard evidence linking bin Laden to that attack still remains scanty. The indictment of Clinton by Sean Hannity, Sullivan and other conservatives relies heavily on a fable about attempts by the government of Sudan to "hand over bin Laden to the United States" in 1996. That story, attested by an American businessman who represents Sudanese interests, is designed to expunge the Khartoum regime's many atrocities against its own people as well as its close relationship with Islamist terror organizations. Authoritative reporting in the Washington Post and in "The Age of Sacred Terror" by Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon shows that the Sudanese offered only to "arrest Osama bin Laden and place him in Saudi custody." Post reporter Barton Gellman detailed the efforts by the Clinton White House and the State Department to induce the Saudis to accept custody of bin Laden, a request that the authorities in Riyadh adamantly refused. There was no offer to hand bin Laden over to the United States before the Sudanese deported him back to Kabul. The Sudanese have always had their own agenda, by the way, which Clinton's antagonists never mention. They promised to cooperate against terrorism only if the United States ended economic sanctions imposed to punish their genocidal campaign of bombing and enslavement against black Christians. Frequently during those years, Sudanese officials would promise copious intelligence about the Islamist terror network. But after many meetings, neither the FBI nor the CIA believed that Khartoum was providing anything valuable on bin Laden or al-Qaida. In their eagerness to indict Clinton and their inexperience in dealing with matters of foreign intelligence, propagandists like Hannity have served as useful idiots in a disinformation gambit by the Sudanese intelligence service. The Clinton critics like to dismiss his administration's efforts to stop bin Laden as a couple of missiles fired at an empty tent. Yet there was no lack of zeal in Clinton's hunt for the Saudi terrorist. In 1998 Clinton signed a secret National Security Decision Directive that authorized an intensive, ongoing campaign to destroy al-Qaida and seize or assassinate bin Laden. Several attempts were made on bin Laden's life, aside from the famous cruise missile launches that summer, which conservatives falsely denounced as an attempt to deflect attention from the Lewinsky scandal. In 1999, the CIA organized a Pakistani commando unit to enter Afghanistan on a mission to capture or kill bin Laden. That operation was aborted when General Pervez Musharraf seized the Pakistani government from Nawaz Sharif, the more cooperative civilian Prime Minister. A year later, bin Laden was reportedly almost killed in a rocket-grenade attack on his convoy. Unfortunately, the missiles hit the wrong truck. Simultaneously, the White House tried to persuade or coerce the Taliban regime into expelling bin Laden from Afghanistan. Clinton signed an executive order freezing $254 million in Taliban assets in the United States, while the State Department kept the Taliban internationally isolated. But there was nothing the United States could have done, short of full-scale military action, to separate al-Qaida from the Taliban. And there was also no guarantee that such action would lead to the apprehension of bin Laden, as the Bush administration discovered when American forces helped to overthrow the Taliban after September 11. On Clinton's watch, the CIA and the National Security Council instituted a special al-Qaida unit that thwarted several deadly conspiracies, including a scheme to blow up Los Angeles International Airport on Millennium Eve, and plots to bomb the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels in New York City as well as the United Nations building. Timely American intelligence also prevented a deadly assault on the Israeli embassy in Washington. Meanwhile, the State Department and the CIA neutralized dozens of terrorist cells overseas through quiet prosecutions, extraditions, and executions undertaken by allies from Albania to the Philippines. A month before Clinton left office -- and nine months before the planes hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon -- the nation's most experienced diplomats in counterterrorism praised those efforts. "Overall, I give them very high marks," said Robert Oakley, former Ambassador for Counterterrorism in the Reagan State Department. "The only major criticism I have is the obsession with Osama, which has made him stronger." Paul Bremer, who had served in the same post under Reagan and later was chosen by congressional leaders to chair the National Commission on Terrorism, disagreed slightly with his colleague. Bremer told the Washington Post he believed that the Clinton administration had "correctly focused on bin Laden." (He has since been chosen to lead the Bush administration team in Iraq.) Following the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, the new president sent stringent antiterrorism legislation to Congress as part of his first crime bill. The passage of that legislation many months later was the last time he would enjoy real cooperation against terrorism from congressional conservatives. When he sought to expand those protections in 1995 after the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, he was frustrated by a coalition of civil libertarians and antigovernment conservatives, who argued that his "overreaction" posed a threat to constitutional rights. Among that bill's most controversial provisions were new powers to turn away suspect immigrants, swifter deportation procedures, and a new deportation court that could view secret evidence. (During his 2000 campaign, George W. Bush won support from American Muslims by denouncing that provision.) Thanks to an increasingly obstreperous Republican majority on both sides of the Capitol, law enforcement officials were denied new authority for roving wiretaps and new powers to monitor money laundering. All that would have to wait until after September 11, when the Republicans suddenly reversed position with a vengeance. Indiana Representative David McIntosh, a leading conservative ideologue in Congress, enunciated the typical partisan reaction to Clinton's counterterror proposals. McIntosh insisted on steering the debate back to a phony White House scandal. "We find it very troubling that you're asking us for additional authority to wiretap innocent Americans," he declared, "when you have failed to explain to the American people why you abuse their civil liberties by having FBI files brought into the White House." Among the most conspicuous opponents of counterterrorist action was former Senator Phil Gramm, who blocked an administration bill to close loopholes that let terrorist groups launder money through offshore banks. The Texas Republican denounced that legislation, since endorsed by the Bush White House as essential in dismantling al-Qaida, as "totalitarian." Clinton persevered, even as his adversaries on Capitol Hill prosecuted the right-wing harassment campaign against the White House. While politicians and journalists fanned the scandal frenzy, he and his appointees tried to prepare for the serious threats they anticipated. After the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, they began a nationwide initiative to improve home front security. Between 1996 and 2001, federal spending on counterterrorism increased dramatically, to more than $12 billion annually. The FBI's counterterrorism budget rose even more sharply, from $78 million in 1996 to $609 million in 2000, tripling the number of agents assigned to such activities and creating a new Counter-terrorism Center at the Bureau's Washington headquarters. Whether FBI Director Louis Freeh properly used that gusher of funding is another question. In retrospect, Clinton must be blamed for appointing Freeh, a truly inept administrator. The Republican Freeh, always favored by conservatives in Congress, never concealed his contempt for the president who had appointed him, and after he aligned himself with Clinton's adversaries in Congress and in the media, the President had no real power to remove him. But the degree of the Bureau's deterioration didn't become clear until near the end of Clinton's second term. Besides strengthening law enforcement, the Clinton administration sponsored a series of sophisticated simulations to improve the response of local, state, and federal officials to possible assaults with nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. The President himself became obsessed with the potential threat of anthrax and other biological weapons. Before he left office, the federal Centers for Disease Control issued a $343 million contract to manufacture 40 million doses of smallpox vaccine, as part of a wide-ranging research and development program of defense against biological weapons. Altogether, spending on "domestic preparedness" rose from $42.6 million in 1997 to more than $1.2 billion in 2000. The foresight represented by those appropriations gave Bush an important head start, though the White House press corps will never hear about that from his press secretary. None of this means that Clinton's record is free of blemish. Could he have done more to reform the intelligence and law enforcement bureaucracy? Did he fail to resolve the ongoing rivalries that fractured the FBI, the CIA, and the other intelligence services? Was he distracted by domestic concerns and scandals, including the Lewinsky affair that he so foolishly and selfishly brought upon himself? The answer to all those questions is yes. But instead of smearing Clinton, his antagonists might ask themselves what they and their political allies did in the early years of the war against terrorism.
You really think that the President and the Mayor of Houston have comparable roles in conducting foreign policy? Big f-ng deal if he took his daughter along with him; you're saying that he would not have gone but for his daughter's Spring Break? What about President Bush's last visit to Africa? He didn't have to go, since it was all about AIDS, he could have easily sent his secretary of Health and Human Services. Yes, you are hardly the first person to suggest this though; it was a common theme of xenophobic right wingers who would gleefully trash trips abroad and nation building and such, just like GWB used to do, who know fall all over themeselves talking about how great a job of nationbuiliding we're doing and how important it is to build democracies abroad.
