Poll: Bush or Clinton, best methond for fighting terrorism?

I'd rather have a President who didnt find a way to avoid fighting in a war themselves

 

I want to go to war with the guy flying a flight suit.

Am I missing something, can you run for president after eight years if it is after someone after your first two terms because it seems like clinton is running for president.


I don't know who's smarter, the republicans or the democrats for making clinton a topic again

 

Clinton made terrorism a priority.

Bush uses it as a pretext - most notably for something that blew up in his face and exacerbated the problem, according to the recently declassified NIE.

I don't need a poll to tell me that.

 

Clinton has proven to be more aware of terror in general. He did something about it before 9/11.

Clinton won't keep or even worse promote people who get it wrong time after time. He won't tolerate complete incompetence and failure regarding the war.

I doubt Clinton would sell our freedoms as cheaply as Bush has.

Clinton wouldn't appoint someone like Condi Rice who believed the best thing to do about the USS Cole attack was NOTHING.

All in all I think Clinton could handle it much better.

 

This article is a joke. Let's just take this one paragraph sentence by sentence...

In his Fox interview, Mr. Clinton said "no one knew that al Qaeda existed" in October 1993, during the tragic events in Somalia.

This is true. Clarke talks about running around hounding the CIA to try and figure out "who these guys were" meaning the ones who originally bombed the WTC.

But his national security adviser, Tony Lake, told me that he first learned of bin Laden "sometime in 1993," when he was thought of as a terror financier.

Notice the sleight-of-hand here. People knew who bin Laden was and had since the Afghan resistance to the Soviet invasion. It was only after Somalia that they were able to link him to this new group Al-Q and describe his role as more than a terrorist financier... in fact as a leader of a terrorist group. Knowing of bin Laden at that time was not the same as knowing of Al-Q and it is certainly not the same as knowing what AL-Q would become.

U.S. Army Capt. James Francis Yacone, a black hawk squadron commander in Somalia, later testified that radio intercepts of enemy mortar crews firing at Americans were in Arabic, not Somali, suggesting the work of bin Laden's agents (who spoke Arabic), not warlord Farah Aideed's men (who did not). CIA and DIA reports also placed al Qaeda operatives in Somalia at the time.

OK, I'll combine two sentences since they say the same thing. It is certainly true that Al-Q operatives were in Somalia, but again, them being there and us knowing about Al-Q at the time are two entirely different things. Furthermore, we were only able to prove that they were there after the investigation done in response to the African embassy bombings.

These may look like fine distinctions to one who eschews nuance, but they are distinctions that matter. That you and the author have such little regard for such distinctions shows either sloppy thinking or a sadly deliberate attempt to make a political point.

(and the rest of the article is not any better)

 

At least Clinton tried to do something.

 

Nice job of 'parsing.'

 

I agree this article is terrible. What did Reagan do in response to the bombing of Marines in Beirut? What did Bush do in the 8 months prior to 9/11 in retaliation for all of the acts brought out in the article? I don't think there's much question Clinton could have handled post 9/11 much better. I highly doubt we'd be in Iraq with Clinton and that's the biggest drain on our resources right now.

 

Iraq had nothing to do with the War on Terror. Too bad it does now

 

Basso, I'm sure blakekoen2 thanks you for verifying what he posted and illustrating how invading Iraq played right into the hands of jihadists everywhere.

 

I didn't see a response to basso's "hypothetical," Hayes. As for myself, of course I'd rather have someone with intelligence, Bill Clinton, responding to 9/11. How good a job would he have done? One has only to look at the collossal ****-up Bush has made of... everything, to make a decision. Clinton had 8 years of relative peace and security, better relations with our allies, better relations with Muslim states around the world, an aggressive policy fighting terrorism before 9/11, and a host of other reasons I don't feel like putting into a thread so basso can make a joke about a blow job, and post nothing of substance himself.


Keep D&D Civil.

 

And do you note how hard OBL is trying to rally support to his cause by making a strained linkage to Iraq? (sound familiar? LOL)

Did you notice how he studiously avoids mentioning Mr. Hussein (his sworn enemy)?

Did you note that earlier this month, even President Bush finally admitted that Iraq had nothing to do with Sept 11 --- 5 years later?

Most importantly, did you note how the US played right into his hands by making Iraq a jihadist playground, and that all of OBL's wildest dreams have become reality? (albeit with a nasty shiite/iranian twist which he would not approve of).

 

I vote for W. I like how he alternates between asleep at the wheel and bat sh*t crazy.

 

oh man i choke because of laughter when i read that.

 

Even big time Republicans are defending Clinton:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060928/ap_on_re_us/giuliani_clinton

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani defended
Bill Clinton on Wednesday over the former president's counterterrorism efforts, saying recent criticism on preventing the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is wrong.

Political bickering over which president — Clinton or George W. Bush — missed more opportunities to prevent the attacks has been escalating since Clinton gave a combative interview on "Fox News Sunday" in which he defended his efforts to kill
Osama bin Laden.

"The idea of trying to cast blame on
President Clinton is just wrong for many, many reasons, not the least of which is I don't think he deserves it," Giuliani said in response to a question after an appearance with fellow Republican Charlie Crist, who is running for governor. "I don't think
President Bush deserves it. The people who deserve blame for Sept. 11, I think we should remind ourselves, are the terrorists — the Islamic fanatics — who came here and killed us and want to come here again and do it."

Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice challenged Clinton's claim that he did more than many of his conservative critics to pursue bin Laden, and she accused the Democrat of leaving no comprehensive plan to fight al-Qaida.

Giuliani said he believed Clinton, like his successor, did everything he could with the information he was provided.

"Every American president I've known would have given his life to prevent an attack like that. That includes President Clinton, President Bush," the former mayor said. "They did the best they could with the information they had at the time."

Giuliani also said a recently declassified report that said the
Iraq war had become a "cause celebre" for Islamic extremists demonstrated the need to continue the fight there.

"The jihadists very much want a victory in Iraq. They feel that if they could defeat us in Iraq they will have a great victory for terrorism," Giuliani said. "What that should do is organize us to say if they want a big victory in Iraq then we have to deprive them of that victory."

Giuliani said he was "very interested in considering" a run for president but would not make a decision until after the November election.

 

I try to keep an even keel but sometimes I just can't help with getting anoyed.

This ongoing ridiculous scapegoating of the Clinton presidency for something that happened during the Bush presidency is getting tedious and highly distracting from the current issues of what we should be doing now.

What's next are we going to blame the Clinton Admin for not strengthening the levees? I mean there was some huge flooding on the upper Mississippi in 1997 so maybe Clinton should've had a post Katrina mindset then.

Clinton could've done more and probably should've done more but so should GW Bush in spring of 2001, for that matter maybe Reagan shouldn't have helped arm the people who would form Al Qaeda... Anyone can go back and draw a long chain of events where some Admin. should've acted differently that would've prevented 9/11. Heck Wilson should've stopped the artificial partitioning of Arab lands at the Treaty of Versailles. The point is that for better or worse there good reasons why at the time that either Admin. could've and in hindsight maybe should've acted differently but didn't. Its easy to say that now that we know 9/11 has happened.

Honestly how many of you had a post 9/11 mindset in the '90's or May of 2001?

In the immortal words of Yogi Berra "Its hard to make predictions, especially about the future."

All of this stuff of trying to llay the blame at Clinton is just a way of trying to take the attention off of whats happening now and rather than trying to face up with the current situation is just looking to scapegoat ahead of the 2006 elections.