The Clinton Presidency and the WTC

“Dude, you need to descend. The thin air is messing up your brain.”

“NO WAY! I can see everything from up here!”

“I hate that man”

“bacpac, the closest anyone comes to making that claim is in this excerpt from a post by jmitch:

i feel he is not to blame for WTC; he authorized, secretly, the assassination of bin ladin, he authorized the training of pakistanis to track him down, pres. gen. musharraf dissallowed cooperation or airspace. [italics added]

And here's what I posted from an AP report:

The Pakistani commando team reportedly was up and running and ready to strike by October 1999 but was shut down by Gen. Pervez Musharraf after he deposed Sharif in a coup that month.

So I guess you could argue that jmitch's version is slightly inaccurate, but not in any way that has any bearing on the larger point jmitch was making.”

“Clinton Ruining TT Threads...Leaving TT.”

“my facts are right, as reported by newsweek and the nyt (sorry for omitting the previous pakistani prime minister was overthrown, regardless, clinton couldn't get approval for any operation) none of us know all of the facts or circumstances, so why pass blame? let's be objective and fair. bacpac, your dislike for clinton may be understandable, but to insinuate that clinton is to blame for the attacks is unreasonable. ps- does anyone know any good trails in the catskills?
jmitch
2:39:25 PM
10/9/01”

“agreed.”

“sorry, i meant i agreed with dunadan.
nice chatting w/ y'all--adios.”

“wait, i know a LOT of good trails in the catskills!!!”

“finally...tell me what you know. any good guides/ books on the area?”

“2 for you:
Catskill Trails: A Ranger's Guide to the High Peaks: Book 1, The Northern Catskills

Catskill Trails: A Ranger's Guide to the High Peaks: Book 2, The Central Catskills”

“You should hike Harlem. That's where Clinton hikes.”

“How 'bout that nutty George W. Bush? Just what did he know and when did he know it?

Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.”

“He knew more than he first said he knew and knew it before he admitted knowing it.”

“Are we surprised by this?”

“No.”

“sort of hypocritical for bush to hint that clinton holds some blame for 9/11 when bush was given warnings about possible hijackings. even if the warnings were vague, could they not have done something, like notify the FAA? if clinton is at fault, so is bush. regardless, the real fault belongs to the terrorists who did this. it also shows the ineptitude of american intelligence.”

“When they were asked for additional money for counter-terrorism, it was denied because they said it was needed for their precious space nukes program. This admin has shown crap foreign policy so far which is fine by me because it means Bushie is diggin his own political grave.”

“my sentiments exactly jmitch. It appears to me that laying the blame on the former administration is sort of like the pot calling the kettle black”

“The Gore Commission created in 1996 after TWA Flight 800, recommended full-scale deployment of bomb detection equipment, automated profiling of all airline passengers, bag matching on all flights, criminal background checks on airport employees, training of additional bomb-sniffing dogs and handler teams, increased test attempts to dodge security by FAA personnel, tighter access to secured areas of the airport, and certification of the security screeners.

This would have cost money and caused delays so Congress failed to require these measures, the airlines declined to provide them and we failed to demand them.

Plenty of blame to go around.”

“and I think it's funny that the republicans were the first ones to blame Clinton and now that we know Bush was warned about it the republicans are the first ones saying don't blame anybody... It does really bother me that if airport security were told to be on the lookout for suspicious middle eastern men that James Woods report might have been enough to stop the tragedy before it happened”

“And of course none of the measures recommended by the Gore Commission would have stopped a group of box-cutter weilding men.”

“Why should the tax payer pay for airline security.If is requires so much ,let the ticket buying public pay the price.By the time business rights of the travel(indivuals also)the price of security falls on the none flying tax payers. IIB”

“it's pretty much understood that security didn't have much blame for this, the hijackers did nothing illegal until they hijacked the planes. If airports/airlines/security knew of this threat then when 2 of the actual hijackers were reported by James Woods for casing out the plane then maybe they would have been investigated... maybe is a crappy word, but I'm thinking about how to actually keep this from happening again”

“I thought the James Wood story was 4 men of Middle Eastern origin, not necessarily the actual hijackers... but yeah, you'd think a more alert intelligence community could have acted on that.

I think the shoe bomber and the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania showed that something like that can’t happen again. What about the other unimaginable threats?”

“Pre-election year partisan politics at its worst..THe whole situation is damned if you do damned if you don't...How many terrorist plots have been prevented that have never been reported and that no-one cares about...It's only if something #&%!$ty happens that people start spouting..proactive this and that...Bottom line..the past is behind us...we need to focus on the here and now...No more wait and respond crap..time for seek and destroy.........”

“Sounds like the liberals have already convicted George W. Bush. I say a hijack warning does not constitute sex.

Oh never mind. The liberals seem to have lost their sense of humor along with their sense of dignity. If the Bush Administration fell asleep at the switch they will pay. If they didn't they will pay, because the liberal verdict is already in.”

“I blame goat's blood.”

“I am still wondering about the other two planes.

We now know there were to be a total of six planes hijacked on that fateful day. We know of the 4 that crashed. Were the other two hijackings foiled because of the immediate grounding of all airplanes by the FAA? In that case the intended perpetrators would have simply walked off the plane as ordinary passengers and disappeared.”

“That's not good.”

“Gordon, that's what I heard too, on that fateful day. That 6 planes got hijacked...later on, the media were just talking about the 4 that crashed.

Another tidbit from Canada here...maybe Americans/the world didn't hear about this one; An Air Canada jetliner about to take off for San Francisco (could be another city) from Toronto was grounded on 9/11. All the passengers were let off, and the plane was on the ground all week.

When the plane was about to take off to another U.S city, a passenger putting stuff into the overhead storage, found 3 box-cutters.”

“Even the 'CROTCHRASH' was 'CLINTONSFAULT'.”

“I hadn't heard that one, Stan. yikes.


I hadn't heard that other one either, Uncliff, LOL.

Just wonderin'... Is 'uncliff' kinda like the 'uncola'?”

“Exactly-except totally different.
Password blackout..the easy way.”

“Ah, the same thong only different.”

“uh... THING, that is!”

“Funny that they should have performed this particular exercise. Note the date.”

“bizarre.”

“U.S. repeatedly asked Taliban to expel bin Laden
Declassified cable details years of negotiations
From Henry Schuster

(CNN) -- The U.S. government asked the Taliban regime in Afghanistan to expel or hand over Osama bin Laden more than two dozen times between September 1996 and summer 2001, according to a recently declassified State Department cable.

Three of those attempts were made after the Bush administration came into office in late January 2001.

Despite the various efforts, "these talks have been fruitless," the cable said.

The cable was written in July 2001 and was obtained recently by the National Security Archive at George Washington University through the Freedom of Information Act. The National Security Archive posted the document to its Web site Friday.

Sajit Gandhi, research associate at the NSA, said there are indications that the Taliban were approached more than 30 times during the time period.

The Taliban religious militia ruled much of Afghanistan from the mid-1990s until a coalition of U.S. and allied forces drove them from power in November 2001.

The Taliban had given haven to al Qaeda before the attacks of September 11 2001. Remnants of the group remain active, and bin Laden is still at large.

The State Department held its first meeting with a Taliban official September 18, 1996, when the political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, asked that bin Laden be made "unwelcome" in Afghanistan.

According to the document, the U.S. official was told by the Afghani deputy foreign affairs adviser that "the Taliban do not support terrorism and would not provide refuge to bin Laden."

Gandhi said he was particularly struck by a U.S. request in early 1997 that it be allowed to visit "militant training camps in eastern Afghanistan," and that a Taliban official initially agreed. But the Afghan government kept delaying the visit and finally rescinded the offer in April.

The cable recounts, in chronological order, a series of attempts to get bin Laden out of Afghanistan that continued before and after the U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, which the United States linked to al Qaeda. The U.S. government warned the Taliban, for example, in September 1998, that they would be held accountable for any future terrorist actions by bin Laden.

The Taliban offered a series of responses, most of which were made public at the time. First, the Afghan government told the United States that to oust bin Laden "would violate Taliban rules of hospitality," then later said they would put bin Laden on trial. However, the Taliban rejected the evidence linking bin Laden to the embassy bombings.

At one point, a Taliban spokesman also told a U.S. official that his government could not expel bin Laden because it "would result in the downfall of the Taliban."

The Bush administration continued the warnings, with contacts February 8, March 19 and July 2, 2001. In the last communication, the Taliban deputy foreign minister told the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan that bin Laden had not been convicted and that officials of his government "still consider him innocent."”

“Main difference between the Clinton and Bush presidencies?

Clinton was screwing Monica (regardless of what he says!)

Bush is screwing me.”

“"The economy STUPID!", Sorry I said that , But Bush just cancelled my flight to Mars, because some Plutonians were seen smoking crack on the back side of the moon. Awayfromhomeland securities' intelligence is superb, it's as though they have eyes inback of where their head should be.”

“(CBS/AP) Former President Bill Clinton's memoir "My Life" is not due out until next week, but The Associated Press got a copy of it today and reported some of what's in it without directly quoting from the book.

One of the more important sections of the book— dealing with al Qaeda, is the focus of the Associated Press report.

In one of the more compelling passages of Clinton's book, he recounts a meeting with then President-elect George W. Bush, reports CBS News Anchor Dan Rather.

The former president claims he warned Mr. Bush that the biggest threat to the nation's security was Osama Bin-Laden and al Qaeda.

According to Mr. Clinton, Mr. Bush said little in response, and then switched subjects.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/18/eveningnews/main624825.shtml”

“Of course he did. This book is nothing more than an attempt to rewrite history and clean up the democrat image.”

“I suppose the fact that very similar stories have been told by various people does nothing to illuminate who the revisionists might be.”

“Uh huh, everyone else is lyin' and Dubya is tellin' the truth.”

“The Bush administrations lack of interest in AL-Qeda prior to 9/11 is reported by a great variety of people. Richard Clark's book "Against all enemies" is very clear and detailed on this point.”

“Yes but clarke is a democrat and disgruntled, therefore a compulsive liar.”

“is he a dem?”

“Depends on who you ask. He says he isn't, but didn't I already tell you he's a liar?

(this is a previously recorded conversation from stratdewd)”