Clinton had a chance to kill Osama Bin Laden when President

[Guest LeVeL]

The other day former secretary of defense testified about about having the opportunity to kill Osama Bin Laden atleast 3 times during 1998 and 1999 but instead decided against these attacks due to lack of intelligence and concerns about killing innocent people.

Now can you imagine if we could of killed this fuckker at the moment we spotted him on satellite, probably those towers and all those people could of been alive now. The Earth would of been a safer place, and terrorism wouldn't be as harmful as it is today. Our troops would of never gone to Iraq all this shit would of never happened all due to these actions.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/03/23/911.commission/index.html

[Guest endymion]

Richard A Clarke will be testifying tomorrow. He served under Clinton and Bush as counterterrorism coordinator. He has a book that came out yesterday called "Against All Enemies" that I just bought today at Borders while Nick and I were dealing with some biz.

Clarke is critical of every president who he ever worked under from what I understand, I won't be able to start reading it until tomorrow. Although he's critical of every president, he is extremely upset at Bush. Clarke feels that Bush handled 9/11 so abysmally that he quit his job and ended his career to tell us all about what happened. Least I can do is read it. I'm sure I'll be telling you guys all about it.

And if you recall, republicans were so obsessed with blow jobs at the time that Clinton was attempting to kill bin Laden that they referred to the missile attack as "the Monica Missiles". Nice to know we had our priorities straight while Al Qaeda was training pilots.

[ryan2772]

Nice to know we had our priorities straight while Al Qaeda was training pilots.

you mean, while WE were training pilots. > :'(

[Guest JMT]

And if you recall, republicans were so obsessed with blow jobs at the time that Clinton was attempting to kill bin Laden that they referred to the missile attack as "the Monica Missiles". Nice to know we had our priorities straight while Al Qaeda was training pilots.

so not true, i watched the 9/11 commision all day today, and killing Bin Laden, was NEVER an option for the Clinton Administration. His Sec. of Defense testified to that.

[Guest endymion]

so not true, i watched the 9/11 commision all day today, and killing Bin Laden, was NEVER an option for the Clinton Administration. His Sec. of Defense testified to that.

Disagree all you want but don't try to rewrite history. Here's a synposis of what was going on at the time:

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/08/21/tictoc.king/index.html

Here's the news report from the missile attack that Clinton launched that was specifically designed to kill Osama bin Laden:

http://www.cnn.com/US/9808/20/us.strikes.02/

"Bin Laden has been given shelter by Afghanistan's Islamic rulers, the Taliban, and may have been in the area targeted by U.S. missiles. Taliban officials said bin Laden survived the attack, but U.S. officials said they did not know if he survived."

We found out later that we missed him by two hours.

Here's a story describing the 800 page report from Sandy Berger, former national security advisor, regarding the two straight years that we had nuclear submarines lurking in the ocean waiting to kill bin Laden if we could figure out where he was:

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/7/24/215057.shtml

"The president ordered two submarines loaded with cruise missiles on perpetual deployment off the coast of Pakistan for that very purpose," former national security adviser Sandy Berger told a special congressional inquiry into the suicide hijackings that killed about 3,000 people.

Clinton was handicapped in pressing the issue by Republicans who were not capable of concentrating on anything that didn't involve the president's penis. Republicans invented the term "Monica Missiles" to ridicule Clinton's strike against Al Qaeda and opposed any further action. The impeachment proceedings took center stage after that despite Clinton Administration warnings that there was "specific information" that Al Qaeda was planning to strike against the US.

I'm not defending Clinton. The book that I'm about to read from Richard Clarke apparently has lots of scathing things to say about how Clinton handled the situation too. I'm just correcting the facts before people start rewriting history during an election cycle. Check your facts.

[Guest JMT]

So apparently Clintons Secretary of Defense perjured himself.

The missile attacks you mention were a needle in haystack. Everyone knew Bin Laden was probably not at any risk in any of them.

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=aUVph1iBgWIQ&refer=top_world_news#

Bush ``from the start, by word and deed, made clear his interest and his intense desire to protect the nation from terrorism,'' Powell said. ``As he said in early spring, 'I'm tired of swatting flies.' He wanted a thorough, comprehensive diplomatic, military, intelligence, law enforcement and financial strategy to go after al-Qaeda.''

Powell said the Bush administration had plans to eradicate al-Qaeda before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks shocked the U.S. ``We wanted the new policy to go beyond tit for tat retaliation,'' Powell said.

By contrast, he suggested the prior Clinton administration had responded weakly to terror attacks on U.S. targets overseas, ``launching cruise missiles at already warned targets.''

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/040323/3/3izjr.html

"Anything we might have done against al Qaeda in this period or against Osama bin Laden may or may not have had any influence on these people who were already in this country, already had their instructions, were already burrowed in and were getting ready to commit the crimes that we saw on 9/11," Powell said.

Separately, a commission report said the Clinton administration had four opportunities in the late 1990s to try to kill bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader, but held back -- for fear of killing innocent civilians or out of lack of confidence in the intelligence.

One CIA official told commission investigators a February 1999 sighting had presented a "lost opportunity to kill bin Laden before 9/11."

.....at any rate it doesnt really matter. the damage is done. the blame game is pointless, i just hope some good can come from this commission for the future. I tend to agree with what Rummy said today, killing Bin Laden probably would not have stopped 9/11.

And here's a new story about Clarke that makes him look like somewhat of a hypocrite:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=544&u=/ap/20040323/ap_on_go_pr_wh/terrorism_adviser_3&printer=1

[Guest endymion]

And here's a new story about Clarke that makes him look like somewhat of a hypocrite:

Interesting, but whether he's a hypocrite isn't especially relevant. I'll have more opinions after I read his book. Clarke is one of the highest-level, most-intelligent, least-partisan players in this drama. He has taken the time to digest his concepts and organize his thoughts and I'm interested in what he has to say.

Clinton's efforts weren't enough. Bush was so heavy-handed that he did more harm than good. The terrorists have constructed a network that is intentionally designed so that both strategies will be ineffective. Now that we can see that, what do we do now?

[bornslippy22]

Clinton's efforts weren't enough. Bush was so heavy-handed that he did more harm than good.

i agree with ya...i think Bush's actions have def. hurt us with the International Community, but then again...if we dont look after our own ass...u know we CANNOT rely on the International Community...i think its unfair to blame either one (Clinton/Bush) for 9/11...this is clearly a Intelligence "F" up (in my opinion)...i think we need to start pumping some funds into the CIA..for re-training and re-arming our agents with proper tactics and equipment to do the job right...we also need to fire Tennet..i know i sound like a broken record, but too much has happened with him in charge...

[ryan2772]

a couple of points:

clark has been in our goverment for 30 years, i think he's been through 4 administrations. i think what he says is probably pretty valid.

also, there is absolutely no way we would've killed bin laden before 9/11. a pre-emptive strike against some extremist in the desert? the vast majority of the public didn't know who bin laden was until 9/11. no one would've went for an assassination. of course, everything has changed since then.

[bornslippy22]

also, there is absolutely no way we would've killed bin laden before 9/11. a pre-emptive strike against some extremist in the desert? the vast majority of the public didn't know who bin laden was until 9/11. no one would've went for an assassination.

i dont think it really matters if the public knows who is who...most of the guys they have killed or captured from Al-Qeada are people that the public knows nothing about...

[Guest antonio]

also, there is absolutely no way we would've killed bin laden before 9/11. a pre-emptive strike against some extremist in the desert? the vast majority of the public didn't know who bin laden was until 9/11. no one would've went for an assassination.

i dont think it really matters if the public knows who is who...most of the guys they have killed or captured from Al-Qeada are people that the public knows nothing about...

It's not about who is or who ain't, it's about who will be!!!

[bornslippy22]

It's not about who is or who ain't, it's about who will be!!!

who cares...as long as its not u...