And John Kerry could have made Christopher Reeves walk again. Democrats. What can't they do?

And his college would have been three sport National Champions it he had been the quarterback, the pitcher and the forward on the basketball team.
Everyone knows he had already got his whacker in trouble under the desk and the entire Justice department and several other government agencies were spending all their time keeping him out of prison. Seems I remember something about him and his a**hole buddy Algore trading top secret information to the Chinese for campaign cash that had them in a little hot water also. I guess he would have attacked China to get the secrets back. What an a bunch of **holes the entire slick willie administration were.

Thanks Ace! You made me laugh with your sarcasm at something that really isn't funny.

But he *DID* attack bin laden before 9/11 - he lobbed a Tomahawk into the empty desert somewhere in Afganistan.

And there was always the outside chance that Osama might have had a headache and was resting on a couch in that aspirin factory.

I always thought those expressions of "liberal outrage" over a few embassy bombings and the Cole were very impressive [snort]

Ace, I'll go you one better. Clinton fired cruise missiles at OBL once, yes, but as for the various CIA missions he tried to authorize he could never quite bring himself to come out and say "yeah, kill the guy", with the result that the CIA had to plan to capture him alive.

Let's see, I've got a link here somewhere--here we go.

Key paragraphs:

It was common in Clinton's cabinet and among his National Security Council aides to see the CIA as too cautious, paralyzed by fears of legal and political risks. At Langley, this criticism rankled. The CIA's senior managers believed officials at the White House wanted to have it both ways: They liked to blame the agency for its supposed lack of aggression, yet they sent over classified legal memos full of wiggle words.

Clinton's covert policy against bin Laden pursued two goals at the same time. He ordered submarines equipped with cruise missiles to patrol secretly in waters off Pakistan in the hope that CIA spotters would one day identify bin Laden's location confidently enough to warrant a deadly missile strike.

But Clinton also authorized the CIA to carry out operations that legally required the agency's officers to plan in almost every instance to capture bin Laden alive and bring him to the United States to face trial.

This meant the CIA officers had to arrange in advance for detention facilities, extraction flights and other contingencies -- even if they expected that bin Laden would probably die in the arrest attempt. These requirements made operational planning much more cumbersome, the CIA officers contended.

I'm sorry I had to be the one to tell you this.

He could have taken Sudan up on their offers [multiple] to hand OBL over too...

Clinton didn't do nothing. He just didn't do enough. Nor was the right calling for him to do more; the right was almost as bad as the left was. (OK, this is an exaggeration; the left was worse. But still, the right has little to brag about. "Wag the dog!" "I question the timing!" Blah.)

I call it a tie. They should forgive Bush's few months of too little action and insufficient psychic powers, we should forgive their eight years of inaction, and we call it even. Then we can stop the pointless finger-pointing, second-guessing, and revisionist history, and actually work together to make sure such things don't happen again. But that would require today's democrats to love our country more than they love their party, so I'm not holding my breath.

I think that "aspirin factory" was in Sudan, not Afghanistan. And I highly doubt it was chosen as a target for no reason. When right-wingers complained about it ("think of the Sudanese children!") they were putting partisan politics ahead of our national security. Yes, some of yesterday's right did sometimes act like most of today's left.

All of Clinton's blather makes me want to pop a couple extra Vicodin and swill Nyquil straight from the bottle. I figure if I do that often enough, whatever he's saying just might begin to make sense.

By the way, in an attempt to get more traffic to my site, I'm changing my name to Da Sheehan

Come on Kev, don't be so naive.

That factory was chosen because it WAS innocuous, likely to be uninhabited at the time, and not like trying to single out one house from thousands.

IOW, it was a target that we could hit that wasn't going to cause hundreds of unwanted casualties - yet would "send a message" that Mr Bill was "serious".

Seriously - for a Benjamin ($100), we could have gotten some worker there to hand over the blueprints, and shoot the whole place inside with whatever hi-tech spy camera we wanted, and come out with sample scraping from every surface inside - including the plant manager's armpits!

And the legend continues to grow. President Clinton, flanked by legendary toughmen Warren Christopher and Sandy Berger, cut such an intimidating swath that grown men - veterans of even the toughest terrorist campaign - were reduced to simpering fools.

It has been said that captured terrorists often required medical attention at the mere mention of the Clinton name.

From The 9/11 Commission Report, page 189:

"...President Clinton expressed his frustration with the lack of military options to take out Bin Ladin and the al Qaeda leadership, remarking to General Hugh Shelton, 'You know, it would scare the shit out of al-Qaeda if suddenly a bunch of black ninjas rappelled out of helicopters into the middle of their camp.' Although Shelton told the Commission he did not remember the statement, President Clinton recalled this remark as 'one of the many things I said.'"

Honestly, not even Iowahawk could make this stuff up. Looks like we can add one more item the list "of the many things I said".

BTW, the 9/11 Commission has been slammed here over Able Danger, and rightly so. But the Report is filled with interesting tid-bits, and is well worth reading. Certainly, nobody could read the Report and come away think that Bill Clinton was on the ball.

Kevin, I can't let that stand. Your remembering's a little too convenient.

No doubt there were concerns about wagging the dog and those were expressed. But I defy you to find any mainstream right-winger that didn't back the action anyway.

This is simple stuff, Kevin. We want our country to be right. We want to blow up bad guys and damn the fallout. We want there to be WMD's hidden in the desert. The left doesn't want any of this--they want our country to be wrong. They want Bush to be wrong and they want to be quite vocal in expressing their condemnation, too. (But don't question their patriotism.)

And we're in danger of losing a war because of it.

Clinton forgot about his telling a bunch of businessmen in Long Island that he let Osama get away in 1996.

Of course we all know what activity had Billy Jeff occupied in 1996.

A little off topic: August, are you all the same person? I've been getting confused. It seems like August is the same person over and over.

I mean, even the Daves/Davids distinguish between themselves.

I'm kinda with Kevin on this. Yes, a gentle law enforcement approach was the wrong way to handle terrorists, but I don't remember me getting all upset about it in the nineties. We all got blindsided by 9/11 and I'm willing to give both sides a pass on it.

Or I would be, if Bubba would shut his fat gob.

Does this guy believe his own bullshit? What a psych profile.

I was not personnally thrilled by Kosovo in part because it looked like a true lost cause (and I still think that) and partly because I thought P. Clinton had gone in there to distract the news cycle. But I did support the bombings-thought it was something we should have done many times before - until I learned WHAT was bombed. Then I was just disgusted.

Decision 08 -

Note to Terrorists and Evil-Doers Who Wish America Harm:

Clinton Redux: This Time, They're Serious

Hell, Bill Clinton could spend the time being the Anti-Teresa

But the real question is:

Would Clinton have met with Cindy Sheehan?

Ech.
When will that jerk ever get out of the news.

lauraw, not as long as there is a camera to smile at.

It's not a very big ridge. More of a hill actually. With some cedar trees.

And cows. We got cows.

spongeworthy:

Kevin, I can't let that stand. Your remembering's a little too convenient.

I guess what I'm remembering is more from the punditry, and from right-wing civilians who didn't have any access to intelligence data. And, of course, the radical left, Noam Chomsky, Christopher Hitchens (pre-conversion to war-mongerism), and friends.

I think my criticism of the right still stands, but I should soften it a lot and note that it doesn't hold a candle to the despicable behavior of the democrats today.

Yes, back then, Clinton had the full support of the country, especially the neocons and Republicans, who were focused like laserbeams on the bin Laden threat.

Not.

When missiles were fired at bin Laden, he was accused of wagging the dog. Imagine if he had ordered an invasion of Afghanistan after that, when you Republicans were obsessed with truly important matters, like the distinguishing mark on Clinton's wee-wee, and what he liked to do with it in his spare time.

Well, at least you managed to have my tax dollars fund the Starr Report - some $25 million and counting - which has the distinction of breaking new ground in the publication of state-sponsored pornography. That's something to be proud of.

AUG 6 Bin Laden Determined to Strike US

Explain that one away without that historical data bullshit, they don't do history in PDBs and they certainly don't give them to an ignorant screwhead like bush

Remind me again what Bush's response to the Cole bombing was.

Remind me again what Bush's response to the Cole bombing was.

He wasn't president at the time, but after assuming the office, two of the bombing's planners were killed by a missle launched from a Predator drone.

Here's an interesting article about the bombing of the factory in Sudan:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/527uwabl.asp?pg=1
They make a lot out of the possible Iraq connection. And while that's a subject of much debate, the ties of this factory's owners to al-Qaeda are not. Clinton chose this target for a real reason. This may not have been the right way to address the problem, but it was a problem.

Oh, and here's Christopher Hitchens, pretty much claiming that the whole thing was wrong and the factory was just making aspirin:
http://www.salon.com/news/1998/09/23news.html

Honestly, I think the main obstacle to Clinton doing more about bin Laden was the public's apathy. (His administration's incompetence didn't help much, either.) I doubt he would have been able to convince the public that more attacks on Afghanistan were in our best interest. So, the Taliban loudly proclaimed that they would never hand over bin Laden, and we pretty much led it slide. Although Clinton never meant it to pan out that way, and we the public never really thought about it, al-Qaeda spent eight years being taught exactly the wrong lessons about us.

Here's a nice depressing quote from Defense Secretary William Cohen at the time: "We recognize these strikes will not eliminate the problem. But our message is clear. There will be no sanctuary for terrorists and no limit to our resolve to defend American citizens and our interests -- our ideals of democracy and law -- against these cowardly attacks."

I always thought that bin Laden was a bigger threat than the Bush administration did,"

I can remember during the Gore compaign when during a debate Bill Bradley said that Gore was telling lies about Bradley everywhere he went and he quoted a few, and that we didn't need someone like that for president. Gore said, Well Bill, I think you're just mad because all those lies you've been telling about me haven't worked. The people can see through you and your lies." Poor Bill Bradley was sputtering with rage and was incredulous that the audience didn't start yelling and throwing rocks.
I feel like Bradely did.

I don't know why I'm surprised. Bill Clinton has demonstrated that he is the Devil himself, and I mean that quite literally. And this demonstrates again that nothing is too low down for him, absoloutely nothing. I pray that people see through him and I rest secure in the knowlege that the Bible says: "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I SHALL REPPAY!"

No matter what happens on this earth, his time is coming.

Clinton didn't get Osama when he could because we were apathetic,
Bush didn't get Osama before or after 9/11 because it was bu$$ne$$ and oh yeah, an election.

Bush didn't get Osama before or after 9/11 because it was bu$$ne$$ and oh yeah, an election.

Yes...

Sometimes it's just too easy, ya know?

Hopefully, this will help Willie remember things more clearly:

STFU Bill

tristero wrote:
Yes, back then, Clinton had the full support of the country, especially the neocons and Republicans, who were focused like laserbeams on the bin Laden threat.

Not.

When missiles were fired at bin Laden, he was accused of wagging the dog. Imagine if he had ordered an invasion of Afghanistan after that, when you Republicans were obsessed with truly important matters, like the distinguishing mark on Clinton's wee-wee, and what he liked to do with it in his spare time.

If I recall correctly, the MSM still had a huge monopoly on information dissemination at that time. They were the first ones making the Wag The Dog reference. This fits in with the Clinton spin machine's standard operational procedure of using diversion and blaming it on Republicans ("the Repugnicans say it's all about seeeeeex!"). If you have substantial evidence to the contrary, I'll recant this.

Madmatt wrote
AUG 6 Bin Laden Determined to Strike US

Explain that one away without that historical data bullshit, they don't do history in PDBs and they certainly don't give them to an ignorant screwhead like bush

I'll go you one better. Bush completely ignored a report that ABC broadcast back in 1999 where government intelligence sources told them plainly that bin Laden was planning an attack on New York and/or Washington, D.C.

Oh wait a minute, Bush was governor of Texas in 1999. Hmmm. How could he be president of the U.S. and the Texas governor at the same time? Oh yeah! KARL ROVE!

circlethewagons wrote:
Remind me again what Bush's response to the Cole bombing was.

His response was to govern Texas, because he was the governor of Texas when that happened. BUT NOT KARL ROVE!! ROVE DID IT!!

I love ignorant moonbat infestations. They give my fingers a workout.

From the parts that you quoted, it says very clearly that "the United States did not have evidence about Bin Ladin's personal involvement in the attacks until Nashiri and Khallad were captured in 2002 and 2003."

I'm not a history major, but I think that means that Bill Clinton did not have evidence of Bin Ladin's involvement in the attacks while he was still President, which is what he claims in his quote.

Ooops, circlethewagons needs to brush up on the timeline. Guess she's hard-pressed to find any correct factual information on her lefty sites.

Remember, everything is Bush's fault, even the stuff that happened before he was president.

You know what I do, circlethewagons, when a lefty troll reveals her ignorance by making such a stupid and easily avoidable mistake?

I smile.
This is why you are in the minority.

I know you guys already gave the troll a corrective slap, but I'm mean and tired today and that was a perfect opportunity to work it off.

"But he *DID* attack bin laden before 9/11 - he lobbed a Tomahawk into the empty desert somewhere in Afganistan."

Except that he launched missiles at an actual Al Queda training camp.

And how did we know where the camp was?

We built it.

Late in his presidency after the evidence came in, Clinton ordered a war plan developed against Al Queda, which was completed after the election. Rather than launch a war for Bush, he handed the war plan to the Bush administration.

Which promptly followed its "eww icky Clinton don't do what he says" policy.

"If you have substantial evidence to the contrary, I'll recant this."

Read the history of the period, e.g., 'The Hunting of the President'. The republicans were enormously obstructionist, trying to cut Clinton off at the knees (e.g., trying to take his power to certify things away because he couldn't be trusted with it).

And the MSM was disgraceful in the poor reporting.

Craig:

And how did we know where the camp was?

We built it.What point are you trying to make by saying this? Are you actually literally serious? If so, could you provide some evidence?

In fact, there was probably little to "build". It probably wasn't called a "camp" for nothing. The pictures I've seen of terrorist camps looked like pretty basic facilities to me; some simple buildings, some trenches and firing ranges, and so on.

Perhaps this is just a bizarre way to reference our involvement repelling the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. We sided with some relatively unsavory types, it's true. But again, I'm not sure what your point is. Should we have done nothing while the USSR invaded the middle east and seized the world's oil supply? Should we have sent in our own military to repel them? Would you have supported a US counter-invasion of Afghanistan in the 80's, which might have resulted in nuclear war with the USSR? Since you seem to be making a veiled criticism of our policies then, perhaps you could actually explicitly state what you think we should have done.

Seriously, what point are you trying to make by saying that we built that terrorist camp? You can't possibly mean that we literally sent in a construction team to dig their trenches for them, can you? So what do you mean?

Rather than launch a war for Bush, he handed the war plan to the Bush administration.

Craig wrote:
Read the history of the period, e.g., 'The Hunting of the President'. The republicans were enormously obstructionist, trying to cut Clinton off at the knees (e.g., trying to take his power to certify things away because he couldn't be trusted with it).

I was a not-so-young adult during the period, so I remember it without having to buy a book.

And you'll excuse me if I don't swallow everything fed to me about Billy Jeff by someone "objective" enough to write books like "The Raw Deal : How the Bush Republicans Plan to Destroy Social Security and the Legacy of the New Deal" and "Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth"

History? More like hagiography.

And the MSM was disgraceful in the poor reporting.

How so? You agreed with their assessment that Republicans were screaming about Wag the Dog. So now you don't agree?

LOL! I was probably typing the word "hagiography" while "August" up there was linking to St. Clinton! Scary.

(anonymous) wrote:
Seriously, what point are you trying to make by saying that we built that terrorist camp? You can't possibly mean that we literally sent in a construction team to dig their trenches for them, can you? So what do you mean?

That's probably what he does mean, since there is no difference in such a mind between helping the Afghans expel Soviet forces from their country and constructing terrorist bases. In his mind, tents and holes in the dirt are structures that last upwards of fifteen to twenty years and are legitimate cruise missile targets.

He also doesn't understand that if you can punch the coordinates for such a camp into a cruise missile guidance system, chances are the Soviets could have destroyed it much earlier with their helicopter gunships.

The one thing that I cannot understand is how even now we are willing to let Blowjob Bill off for his response- or total lack thereof- to the FIRST WTC bombing. Why weren't the links to Iran followed? Why wasn't America's counterterrorism program ramped up after a nearly-successful attempt to drop one of the WTC towers across Manhattan? With the WTC bombing and the involvement of foreign-born and trained terrorists in mind, why WAS the Gorelick Wall instituted- a rule that would INSURE that future terrorists would not be discovered until they had already committed their acts?

And where was Craig then?

One other thing to remember: Not only did Bill's "throw a few Tomahawks" response seriously deplete the reserve stock of cruise missiles (and money was never budgeted for their replacement- does anyone remember the opening days of the Afghan War when this was brought up?) --but by striking at Bin Laden by name and FAILING TO KILL HIM or even seriously disrupt his poerations and then just letting him lie, it turned Osama into a hero and a saint to the muslim extremists: Here is the man that the Americans tried to kill and they could not! Bin Laden himself has been quoted as saying that the Monica Missiles proved to him that America would never provide a serious threat of retaliation, because Americans were afraid of taking losses (a statement that Democrats are attempting to prove correct right now).

Sorry for the double post.

Weird how we liberals are called out for our hate of everything Bush does, blame Bush for everything, etc. behaivor... yet what we have here is an entire thread based on bashing a guy who hasn't been Prez for almost 5 years.

The whole "everything Clinton touches is crap" attitude was so pervasive in 2001, Condi figured that when Sandy Berger's told her, "I believe that the Bush administration will spend more time on terrorism in general, and on al Qaeda specifically, than any other subject.'' it must be crap because it came from Clinton. Oh well. Sorry, New York. Or are we?

My 2 cents (add it to the 2 I just gave you): If there was anything to this "Able Danger" thing AND it wouldn't implicate the Bushies in the process (that's a big if) the GOP would be all over it already. But that's typical wingNUT for you: flying the Elephant over the Stars and Stripes....

I remember back then when Clinton was trying to hit bin Laden and WMD factories in Afghanistan, and the Republicans accused him of trying to distract them from Monica, and criticized him for attacking a factory without definitive evidence that WMD were really being made there (seems a bit ironic now, doesn't it?).

According to Richard Clarke, he tried very hard to persuade the Bush administration to keep going after bin Laden, but they were more interested in planning to invade Iraq. They thought that Clarke's and Clinton's warnings that bin Laden presented a serious threat reflected some kind of paranoid obsession with bin Laden.

tgibbs:

SHushhh!
You're ruining it for us!!

what we have here is an entire thread based on bashing a guy who hasn't been Prez for almost 5 years

We're talking about Clinton because Clinton is injecting himself into the news, in a most unhelpful manner.

According to Richard Clarke

So, to sum up:

Clinton claims he would have listened to his advisors if he remained in office. And we know that Bush did *not* listen to Richard Clarke, when he came into the White House.

So, Clinton must be lying.

Further, Clinton didn't do enough to stop Bin Laden before 1/2001, and Bush did even less - therefore it's all Bill Clinton's fault.

Oh, and Bush's inexplicable avoiding of capturing Bin Laden in the field after Bin Laden had killed 3000 Americans - because Clinton didn't kill Bin Laden years earlier, this failure is somehow Clinton's fault too.

And it was right for the GOP to oppose Kosovo, undermine Clinton while our soldiers were in the field, and push some affair with a big-haired intern above all other priorities because there was no part of Clinton's job performance that they could fault - but the Democrats love their party more than their country.

Interesting.

As reported in many places, the Clinton administration had a plan of attack in Afghanistan, originally reported by Time here. We don't know the contents of this "plan," but we do know that at the most generous Bush's team dragged their feet on the al Qaeda threat until after 9/11.

It's always easy to place blame on politicians, especially when they happen to represent the other party. But let's be honest: there were errors made on all sides.

I remember two quotes of Bill Clinton (not including the sex thing...)
1) regarding the opportunity to mount an armed assault to capture OBL: if one innocent life had been lost I would not have been able to live with it".
2) Regarding Bill Clinton's reliability the King of Spain stated: " The President of the United States is a liar".
That pretty much did it for me as far as Clinton being a responsible leader and Commander In Chief......

Richard Clarke was primarily worried about cyberterrorism.

Actually, no. At the time, Clarke was worried about ordinary terrorism, like Islamic terrorists hijacking planes. Once everybody came around to agree that he was right about that, he moved on to what he sees as the next underrated threat--i.e. cyberterrorism.

"That pretty much did it for me as far as Clinton being a responsible leader and Commander In Chief......"

Oh come on! Bill lied about a blow job! And that was the worst that was found out about him, after a four-year $25 million investigation...

With the Bush admin we have scandal after scandal, from WMD's to corporate welfare, to Halliburton "losing" $9 BILLION dollars, to the wilful disclosure of classified info...and Bush is the trustworthy one?

If the same standards were only applied to both presidents, I would be happy. But this really looks like the famous "It's OK If You're A Republican" syndrome to me.

"That pretty much did it for me as far as Clinton being a responsible leader and Commander In Chief......"

Oh come on! Bill lied about a blow job! And that was the worst that was found out about him, after a four-year $25 million investigation...

With the Bush admin we have scandal after scandal, from WMD's to corporate welfare, to Halliburton "losing" $9 BILLION dollars, to the wilful disclosure of classified info...and Bush is the trustworthy one?

If the same standards were only applied to both presidents, I would be happy. But this really looks like the famous "It's OK If You're A Republican" syndrome to me.

Let's see if I understand your points here, libs.

Paraphrase: You can't blame Clinton for any of this, because that means you're obsessed with Clinton.

You might have a point there if the man had been happy to retire instead of popping up and saying stupid shit like:

I desperately wish that I had been president when the FBI and CIA finally confirmed, officially, that bin Laden was responsible for the attack on the U.S.S. Cole. Then we could have launched an attack on Afghanistan early.

I don’t know if it would have prevented 9/11. But it certainly would have complicated it.

Which is mentioned by the very blog post you're commenting on. Way to go.

We're less obsessed with Clinton than he is with his damned legacy. Or trying to make sure Hillary is elected President, whichever it is he's angling for. Or making sure the 9-11 Commission was stacked with his cronies for some reason.

Paraphrase: Not Clinton's fault, Bush's fault, Bush was President and ignored Richard Clark and whoever else.

Richard Clark said two years before testifying in front of the 9-11 Commission and several months before he resigned from the Bush administration:

Um, the first point, I think the overall point is, there was no plan on Al Qaeda that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration.

Clark gets his pink slip in 2003, gets pissed off enough to write an anti-Bush book to make a few bucks and then huddles with his old Clinton-era buddies to put finishing touches on his anti-Bush 9-11 testimony, which he then conveniently delivers to many of the same buddies sitting on the other side of the table.

Clinton had seven years to roll up Al-Qaeda. Bush had four months, even less if you consider the disarray left by the 2000 election. Penalty: Clinton.

I work at Taco Bell on the morning/lunch shift - 8 hours. You arrive at 5:00 p.m. for the dinner shift and I warn you that the toilets are filthy and need cleaning and have been so since after lunch.

Who should the manager have a talk with?

Who tried to kill bin Laden in the Afgan desert with cruise missles? President Clinton. Who didn't attack bin Laden when we knew he was in Tora Bora, letting warlords do our dirty work for us, thereby letting him escape to Pakistan? President Bush. Who tried to fight a war against terrorists in the 90's? Clinton. Who called his efforts "trying to change the subject?" Congressional republicans.

Come on, most of you aren't giving Bill Clinton any credit what's so ever. Think of all the 'good' things he orchestrated on his watch. Some of his stellar accomplishments were: 1) destroyed the seditous Davidians in Waco, 2) killing a son, mother and baby at Ruby Ridge 3) blocking possible alien terrorist activity investigation at Olkahoma City 4) blocking possible terrorist activity investigaton on TWA 800 5) kidnapping a child so he could be sent back to Cuba 6) giving sex education to interns. Why Clinton
was probably so busy doing these marvels things that he probably didn't have time to give much attention to little ol' Bin Laden.

On the day that Clinton missed killing bin Laden by about 45 minutes, he had spent the entire morning in deposition answering questions about oral sex.

Do any of you think the republican congress was helping with the war on terror on that day?

When Clinton's "Gore Commission" suggested there should be armed guards on airliners and reinforced cockpit doors, the republican congress rejected these suggestions out-of-hand. Do any of you think republicans made a mistake there?

According to docdave, Clinton was responsible for the 3 deaths at Ruby Ridge. I agree. He was the boss and the buck stops at the desk of the President. So, by the same reasoning, is Bush responsible for the thousands of deaths in Iraq? Docdave also states that Clinton "probably didn't have time for bin Laden." But, just one year after 9-11, Bush said of bin Laden, "I don't think about him that much."

Bill Batten, congradulation on you convoluted logic. i.e. Clinton wasn't doing his job so it's okay since Bush and the Republican congress weren't doing theirs either. In your work environment, try that logic on your supervisor and see how long you will keep your job. On the other hand it is the nature of liberals to blame their inadequacies on somebody else.

My point was not that Clinton wasn't doing his job. My point was that in the war on terror, the republican congress was not helping. The question is this: were republicans in congress more interesting in fighting terror or fighting Clinton?

docdave also states: "it is the nature of liberals to blame their inadequacies on somebody else." The first WTC bombing happened barely 30 days into the Clinton administration. There is no record of any democrat or member of the Clinton administration blaming the previous administration for this.

"Bombing a sovereign nation for ill-defined reasons with vague objectives undermines the American stature in the world. The international respect and trust for America has diminished every time we casually let the bombs fly."
  
-Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)

"Explain to the mothers and fathers of American servicemen that may come home in body bags why their son or daughter have to give up their life?"
   -Sean Hannity, Fox News, 4/6/99

"This is President Clinton's war, and when he falls flat on his face, that's his problem."
  
-Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN)

Hey, dickboy. Clinton DID attack bin laden. You guys said it was a wag the dog moment. Good job. All that blowjob nonsense cost us 3,000 lives on 9/11

Maybe if Clinton hadn't waited until 3 days after he admitted he actually did wag something other than the dog at Monica, which happened 25 months after he got the information on bin Laden we might not have accused him of wagging the dog. He didn't see any need to destroy any aspirin factories before he made the admission.

Sorry but the Cole bombing has never been linked to bin Laden; neither has nine eleven, for that matter. O'Neill was thrown out of Yemen and refused entry by BUSH in 2001, forcing him out of the FBI and into security at the WTC.

Powell and Blair promised us proof of bin Laden's involvement in nine eleven, but it never appeared---unless you accept that the statement by Blair, "who else could it have been?" is all the proof you need.

I happen to think that bin Laden has been dead for years, having died many months before 9/11/01, and while that doesn't remove his imprint from the Atta gang, nothing I've seen proves that he was connected to it either.

Today they are all saying that "al Qa'ida" isn't so much an organization as a "movement." They are saying that because the only people they have found who ADMIT to being members of al Qa'ida probably aren't, being instead part of a red herring network of either jihadists or dupes who can't tell us anything because they don't KNOW anything.

If "al Qa'ida" didn't exist, both sides would hurry to invent it and claim it was the epitome of terrorism, one side to divert, the other to put a face on an otherwise hidden enemy.

Sam,

You've gone and done it now. I think the Trilateral Commission is sending the black helicopters. This kind of information just can't be leaked! Remember, they can track you through the IP address on the comments you leave here!

I'm not sure where Sam gets his "facts," but bin Laden had to have been alive after 9-11 because he made specific comments regarding the buildings coming down and how they didn't expect that on tape after the fact. In addition, bin Laden publically took credit for both the Cole and 9-11. Come to think of it, Sam must be joking and I'm a little slow... never mind.

1. My question was genuine - I couldn't remember what Bush did AFTER getting into office (or whether he did anything) regarding the Cole bombing. He went after the Cole bombers? Then good.
2. You assume that I'm a lefty troll. I'm not. I'm a libertarian troll. I hate the left AND the right. So stop congratulating yourselves on giving me an ass kicking (but thank you for educating me about the fact that Bush did do something).
3. Where on earth did you get the idea that I'm female?