Legion said:
Oh, just the classic "blame Clinton first" stuff then. Gutting of the intelligence agencies, does that mean increasing FBI intelligence branch five times over? If Clinton really gutted the CIA for instance, why doesn't the CIA funding actually decrease during the clinton years? And this is starting from the cold-war budget, you know the big bad red menace years? Besides, the CIA needed to be seriously looked over, because, you know, stuff like illegaly selling weapons to known terrorist-supporting countries for funding nun-raping deathsquads in south america was rapidly going out of fashion, don't you agree? Also, I can't quite see how the increased spending on counter-terrorism _every year_ of the Clinton administration apparently can't be seen as part of intelligence...
Right...and yet it can present dozens of webpages citing information as to Clinton's degenerating of intelligence agencies
http://english.pravda.ru/usa/2001/11/08/20400.html
http://www.nrbookservice.com/BookPage.asp?prod_cd=c6007
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2000/11/wsj110600.html
Let's see... Pravda... skipping...
LOL! Bill Gertz! ROTFL! But hey, Rush Limbaugh says he's A-ok right there on the page! Jeez...
And then some CIA guys whining when they didn't get what they wanted right away... Now the thing about the Intelligence Spending Bill in 2000 is that it wasn't liek it was uncontroversial. Now you can believe that Clinton vetoed it because he hated the intelligence community, or part of some coverup conspiracy, but it isn't quite cut-and-dried like that.
It's even in the linked-to article:
But even some key backers conceded before the veto that the wording of the provision was too broad and would open the way for the prosecution of officials who were legitimately trying to inform the public.
Crafting a new law that will also satisfy critics won't be easy. The CIA and other U.S. agencies had intentionally sought a broader mandate to go after those who disclose national secrets. But the very broadness of the provision is what sparked such an outcry.
Afghanistan in '98... Hmm, 9/11 was a retaliation for the attacks in august '98, and you shouldn't attack terrorists because of fear of retaliation, I think I got it... Why, you terrorist-loving-america-hater!!
No, didn't imply we shouldn't have attacked. So you can pretty much cut out the majority of your psychobabel here justifying his attack. What i did suggest was the major reason for Clinton's Wag the Dog scenerio was to cover for his politic scandals. his lacking devotion to the war on terrorism and insipid cruize missle crusade in Afghanistan only served to allow for later events to occur.
Psycho-babble? LOL! Jeez... You just said that Clinton didn't think of a retaliation?? Don't weasel and explain what you insinuated by that!
Btw, Newt calls you sick. How does that make you feel?
Another, Senator Dan Coats of Indiana, called the timing of the attack
"certainly suspect." If the terrorist role of the sites attacked was
known about for some time, as U.S. officials say, "the question
arises, why didn't we do something before? Why now?" he asked.
"We fear we may have a president that is desperately seeking to hold
on to his job," Coats declared.
But Gingrich, the top Republican in the House, dismissed such
speculation as "sick."
And Stevens joined in that assessment. Citing his high regard for
Defense Secretary William Cohen and top military leaders involved in
planning the operation, Stevens said "they would be the first to jump
up if our military people were put in danger for political reasons.
"I just discount that entirely," he said.
Ignored warnings about Al Qaeda and Bin Ladin? Apart from trying to bean him with a Tomahawk, then? If anybody ignored warnings about Al Qaeda and Bin Laden it was the Bush Administration, and in particular, Rumsfeld. Clinton advisors Sandy Berger and Richard Clarke handed over plans to invade and root out Al Qaeda in Afghanistan drafted after the USS Cole bombing in october 2000. This would mean that the go-getting can-do republicans would be raring to go being anti-terror like the Clinton administration never was? Yeah, right. Ashcroft was more interested in fighting clamping down hard on the real scourge of modern society; porn. Rumsfeld was polishing away at his multi-hundred-billion dollar missile defence pet right up until 2 days before 9/11. 9/9 2001 Rumsfeld stopped a $600M diversion of funds from his beloved missiles to _anti-terrorism_. Good thing we have those republicans setting the priorities straight for all of us!
Here are some interesting links:
http://www.infowars.com/saved pages/Prior_Knowledge/Clinton_let_bin_laden.htm
Ah, yes, Manzoor Ijaz and the infamous Sudan scandal.
The thing about this story is that Manzoor Ijaz himself is the only source, and that's an important fact. He CLAIMED he could deliver Bin Laden in 1996 and has claimed it ever since, beating his own drum as much as he can. However Ijaz was a businessman in the oiltrade with considerable oil investments in Sudan and one of the condition that he would BROKER the deal with the Sudanese government was that trade restrictions would be lifted. Sudan was at the time considered a sponsor of terrorism. The key word here is
broker a deal. The rightwing media has made this seem like Bin Laden was wrapped in a box with red ribbons ready to send to the U.S. as a gift.
To belive in this story like the rightwing media does, you have to make some assumptions and leaps of faith. That he
actually could do it for instance. This isn't putting just a little faith in someone's word, someone who is basically just an american civilian! Not some shady character who tries to further his own agenda like tending to his own invested assets.
But the right-wing media sees no such subtle shades of grey, he said he could deliver bin Laden, and Clinton didn't want him/fumbled/whatever. End of story. Yeah right.
Btw, Ijaz was one of the sources claiming Saddam an Al Qaeda was connected. No credible evidence of that has been found as of yet. Credible source? You be the judge.
- BTW i noticed you didn't even bother addressing pratically half of the fuck ups i mentioned (the state of clinton being a felon is certainly an important issue). I also noticed you attack the republicans on this issue as though it were a direct attack against me (assuming i share the same views they may have had at one given time concerning a "war on terrorism").
No I didn't because it's sooo 1999. Your argument was that it had hurt someone or something, what a load of crap that is. I'm not saying it was a great thing what he did, but if anybody else had done it nobody had f**n cared either way, in regular trial hearings stuff like that doesn't get procecuted, and you know what, except clinton-hating right-wingers(where I probably can put you, no?), nobody did. What REALLY hurt the american presidency was the incredibly silly conservative witchhunt led by the Ken Starr, which led NOWHERE. That's where the real mockery of american politics lie. What the rest of the world saw was republican and assorted right-wingers falling over themselves to desperately trying to make anything stick to Clinton, no matter what kind of sleazy methods they could find. Would you agree if I said that Ken Starr ended up a despised obsessed character and a laughing stock? You probably wouldn't, but I don't really care.
The thing with you blaming Clinton is that, if you're going to knee-jerkingly blame Clinton, it had to be any other way if he weren't there... With your two-party system there is de facto one way or the other. Would it have been different if Clinton wasn't in office, or not?
