Baraka known for calling Condi Rice a skeeza may lose his job.

No, he's known for spreading the 4,000 Jews stayed home on 9/11 lie.

Calling Condi Rice a skeeza doesn't make up for it. Well, okay, to me it does, but I understand that not everyone else hates Rice as much as I do.

 

She slept on the job, and 9/11 happened on her watch. If she had even pretended to carry on what Sandy Berger urged her to do, 9/11 might have been prevented. She blew it. She should have resigned, or been fired, or been impeached for dereliction of duty. I don't know how she sleeps at night, but I hope she has nightmares that would make Stephen King pee his Underoos.

 

I've asked before, and I'll ask again. On what bizarro version of Earth does it even begin to make the tiniest, invisible scintilla of sense for the state of New Jersey to have a poet laureate anyway?
Does anything that happens in Trenton (it is the capital, right?) ever need to be accompanied by iambic pentameter?

 

I can't believe the gall of this post. Where the hell was Clinton and his NSC when OBL was offered up on a silver platter by Sudan? If they had even pretended to care about National Security, no OBL and most likely, no 9/11.

 

Actually New Jersey produced a famous poet, Joyce Kilmer, but he was killed in World War One.
His best known work is "Trees." I believe there's a rest area on the turnpike named after him (some honor, huh?) He was also a character in Warner Brothers' "The Fighting Sixty-Ninth" a movie about the Irish-American regiment led by Wild Bill Donovan, who later ran the OSS. I think Pat O'Brian played Donovan. Might have been Jeffrey Lynn as Kilmer. And of course James Cagney as the miscreant Private Plunkett.

Don't think there'll be any movies about this controversy though - or poems.

 

Whatever you say, GOParrot.

STEINBERG: The administration was not offered bin Laden after the embassy bombings occurred. The discussion concerned a period of time in late 1995 and early 1996, well before bin Laden had been specifically implicated in attacks against the United States. At that time there were no charges pending against bin Laden, and no legal authority for the United States to retain him in custody. The United States did seek to persuade the Sudanese to send bin Laden to Saudi Arabia, and we also pressured Sudan to expel bin Laden from Sudan, to cut him off from his base of operations there. But if the United States had sought to hold bin Laden in 1996, we would have been forced to release him, and that would have been a setback in our efforts to weaken him and his associates. After the bombings in 1998, the US attorney did obtain an indictment against bin Laden, and had we been able to get access to him at that time, there would have been no obstacle to holding him and bringing him to trial.

It was our dear, dear friends the Saudis, and not Bill Clinton, you should be angry at.

 

Eight months to stop Al Qaeda versus eight years. Same difference.

 

> Eight months to stop Al Qaeda versus eight years.

But don't you think that, in eight months, Bush could have at least proprosed something? Started the ball rolling on some new ideas? Didn't he want to become president in order to fix the things that Clinton did wrong? The only thing his administration did was to remove the cruise missile capable patrol kept near Afganistan by Clinton to strike Bin Laden when he poked his head out of a cave because he wanted to better relations with the Taliban.

 

I agree. There is plenty of blame to go around. Both presidents should have done more. But the fact is the Bush administration had months, while the Clinton administration had years.

And yet Loney wants to blame 9/11 on Rice.

 

> And yet Loney wants to blame 9/11 on Rice.

Well, I wouldn't do that. Actually I didn't really care for her until the Gulf War. Now I think she is a national hero.

 

Fixed.

Yeah, the "fixed" thing is old and tired, but compared to the Gazza of this lie, "fixed" is a veritable Freddy Adu.

 

A lie? Really?

It's not from Rush Limbaugh. It was a Vanity Fair article. A fairly well-researched Vanity Fair article that doesn't exist online, apparently. Here is the advance from Drudge.

And it includes this nugget from former ambassador to the Sudan Tim Carney:

I'll say.

And I like how Loney's supposed "refutation" includes this line:

Forced to release him? Please. By who, exactly? The same people trying to force us to release the low level slime at Gitmo? And they're gonna force us to release Bin Laden? That is a good one.

Here is some more info on the whole Sudan fuck-up:

http://www.observer.co.uk/waronterrorism/story/0,1373,560675,00.html

Read the whole thing. It's fairly daming.

Loney is right about blaming Saudi Arabia for not accepting Bin Laden and beheading him when he was offered to them. But the Clinton Administration turned him down first, along with reams of intel about Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. And they continued to turn down that intel time and time again. And Loney's mad at Condi Rice?

 

Maybe by the same people who flew Bin Laden's family out of the country after 9/11.

I realize this is a subtle distinction, but it's of a piece with the whole "Clinton had YEARS to stop AQ" line of "reasoning." I'm almost to the point of despair at making the right understand the obvious, but fortunately I'm an incurable optimist.

What's the difference between saying Clinton had years to prevent 9/11, while Bush only had months...and saying Eisenhower had years to prevent Lee Harvey Oswald from killing Kennedy, while JFK only had months?

Don't give me that 1993 crap - they caught the guys responsible for that.

Yes, in retrospect, Clinton should have grabbed OBL, buried him alive, and damned the consequences. In retrospect, Jesse Owens should have brought a gun to the Olympics and took out a few Nazis.

I'm sure if Clinton knew that his successor would let OBL do literally whatever he pleased, he probably would have been more forceful. But how could Clinton possibly have known that the next president would call off US military tracking of Bin Laden?

Obviously, we've forgotten exactly what the Sudan was all about in the 1990's. Here was their reaction to the 1998 bombing - their leader said publicly he thought OBL was being targeted unfairly.

Now, what would really, really impress me is evidence of GOP protesting Clinton's decision not to extradite OBL before 9/11. That would be significant. From here, though, it's a desperate attempt to blame Clinton for the Bush administration's singular failure.

Needless to say, Sandy Berger has a different take on whether the FBI or Clinton said we couldn't hold Bin Laden in 1996:

http://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/mideast/ladnsudx.htm

And that Vanity Fair article has been, well, disputed:

http://allafrica.com/stories/200112070235.html

There's Mansoor Ijaz - you don't hear him quoted so much in right wing circles anymore, for some reason. Oh, wait, I remember, a few months ago he told a similar tale about negotiating with the Taliban in order to hand over Osama Bin Laden to the Bush Administration before the Afghanistan invasion. Strange how that story is crap (and it almost certainly is), but that this story is gospel truth.

Damn right. I'm sure you have reams and reams of evidence showing what Rice did to prevent 9/11 - you know, her actual job? - but I haven't seen anything to show that she did a blasted thing from Inauguration Day to - well, today.

 

Only your desperation in making such a ridiculous comparison. How many people did Lee Harvey Oswald murder during the Eisenhower administration?

Do you mean David Koresh?

Why didn't they kill him after the Africa bombings, then? Or the Cole attack? Surely, if they were tracking him, they knew where he was, right?

But it's good to see you admit that Clinton messed up by not taking OBL. That's a long way from it being a Rush Limbaugh lie. You're making progress.

Now, if you can figure out why he didn't take the intel, then you'll really be making strides. Or maybe Clinton thought that if he couldn't take Osama himself, then he couldn't take the valuable intel, either.

No link. But I wouldn't be surprised if he publicly stated that OBL was being targeted unfairly. He wouldn't be the first leader to suck-up to the public while doing something different in private.

So, the Bush administration is solely to blame for 9/11? You are a sad little boy. Pathetic.

But whatever makes you feel better about the Clinton administration not ending this in the mid-90s, I guess.

Ah, good ole Sandy:

Good call, Sandy. I suppose I should give a shout-out to Janet Reno, too.

So, Saudi Arabia wouldn't take him, and then the Clintons didn't even try to find anyone else who would. And then they basically said "fuck it" and let him fly to Afghanistan. Good call, again.

And, by the way, that article also highlight once again the numerous Sudanese offers to track Osama and share intel on him.

You're really not helping your case here.

That piece doesn't "dispute" the Vanity Fair piece. It just says things might have been more "complex". And the only people disputing the story are two Clinton officials, one of whom (Susan Rice) has a vested interest in this not being looked upon as the massive intel failure that it is. She was the senior director of Africa for the NSC. Ooops. Everyone else in the article pretty much confirms what went on.

But there's plenty of backup on the Sudan story. If the Taliban story had that kind of factual backing (like the actual ambassador at the time confirming the story), then I'm sure you'd still be screaming bloody murder about it. The Sudan story holds up without Ijaz. The other one doesn't.

Again, you could save yourself plenty of time by typing "I was wrong".

Rice didn't do enough, but this was an intel failure that went far beyond Rice. And for you to pretend that 9/11 is the "singular" failure of the Bush administration is some sort of sickness on your part.

 

Because either the intel was crap, or the Clinton administration had good reason to believe it was crap. OBL was building roads and buildings and crap for the Sudanese at the time. They defended OBL against Clinton's accusations.

If it's true, as Susan Rice says, that David Rose's primary source for this was the Sudanese government, then that calls into question his entire article. To say that government - one of the worst in the world at the time, probably still today - was to be trusted implicitly is just flat-out stupid.

Uh, think you sort of skimmed it too much. Since there's a significant dispute on whether the FBI said they had nothing to hold OBL on, or whether the Clinton Administration said they had nothing to hold OBL on over the FBI's protests, I think your attempts to harmonize the two accounts are...what's the word I'm looking for...dingoshit.

No, I wouldn't. Because the Taliban was not trustworthy. If Bush had taken that deal, he would have had to count his fingers afterwards.

And remember, the Taliban, like the Sudanese government, denied that OBL had anything to do with what the administration accused him of. Sensing a pattern here yet?

If you believe the Sudanese government implicitly.

I could also type "I'm not the sexiest son-of-a-bitch in the history of the Politics Forum," too. Wouldn't make that true, either.

You seem to have forgotten to link on all the instances of Rice doing a god-damned thing against OBL, AQ, or in fact anything at all.

Come on. She inherited all of the work that the Clinton administration had done, all of the intelligence, and none of the acrimony. And she did absolutely nothing. Not the so-called Clinton "nothing," but literally nothing. All this after being warned that she would spend more time on Al-Qaeda than anything else.

Worst NSA Ever.

 

The work the Clinton administration did in the intelligence community? What a crock. All they did was cripple our intelligence community by making massive cutbacks in the number of case officers we had in the field. Less case officers=less HUMINT assets=less intel=intel failure. It takes more than 8 months to rebuild an intelligence infrastructure through training of new clandestine service officers and recruitment of assets. You have shown you know absolutely nothing about intelligence.

Do you have any basis for saying the intel. on OBL that the Sudan attempted to provide us was "crap" other than Clinton rejecting solely out of his animosity for the country? Just because OBL was building roads and buildings and "crap" doesn't mean that the Sudanese Government was a large proponent of his. You have shown yourself to know nothing about international relations. Just because there is one public face that is used to limit possible internal problems doesn't mean that it is the same one used behind closed doors where acual IR and negotiations take place.

Your and Superdave's arguments attempting to clear Clinton of as much blame as possible have been shown to be completely lacking. Why do you feel the need to defend his complete failure as a result of his complete arrogance so vehemently?

 

Who pulled the Predator?

Go back and read the link where Sudan vehemently defended Osama.

That also doesn't mean you should trust the Sudanese, or the Taliban, or Yasser Arafat.

Your fantasies about secret negotiations don't trump common sense.

Consider how empty that paragraph would be without the word "complete."

If Clinton was a complete failure, it should be simplicity itself to show what improvements Bush made.

And no, "he had only eight months, waaaaaaaah, Mommy, tell Daddy to stop hitting me" isn't a valid response. FDR passed the entire freaking New Deal in 100 days.

It's no surprise that Republicans blame Clinton for everything - the idea of personal responsibility is completely alien to the right wing. There's no other way to explain why Rice still has a job, except for the culture of blame that the Bush administration has fostered. Any other administration in history would have at least fired Rice. I can only assume that the Bush Administration approves of National Security Advisors who utterly fail to advise on national security.

 

What a bunch of garbage. Even the Clintonites gave the Sudan a "clean bill of health" with regard to terrorism, years after Sudan originally came to them offering to help.

This "clean bill of health" came, despite years of the Clinton administration attempting to say that Sudan was a terrorist state.

And the Sudan wasn't just offering old intel. They were offering to actively moniter Osama's activity in-country.

Tim Carney was part of the Sudanese government? Who knew? And is J. Stephen Morrison (mentioned in the allAfrica piece) part of that government, too?

While many sources may have been Sudanese officials (which would make sense), the story was corroborated by American officials.

I'm not even going to begin to try to figure out what you're saying here. The article doesn't dispute the main thrust of the story. Susan Rice does. The article only makes the point that things were more complex than Rose makes them out to be. The fact is they didn't take him, and it was a huge, glaring missed opportunity. But why not take the intel?

Except the ambassador to the country at the time corroborates it. Apples, meet oranges.

And Ambassador Carney. But I can see why you'd gloss over that nugget.

But you typing "I was wrong" would be true, and much easier. Or you can just admit you were taken in by Democratic spin (or atrios or dailyhowler or whereever you got that "refutation" that you originally quoted).

Rice can't do anything with substandard intel. And that's what she was getting. Tenet supposedly declared war on AQ in 1998, yet only had a handful of analysts on the case. And where was the budget for counter-terrorism if the Clinton Administration was serious about it? Everyone should be well-aware of the breakdown in the FBI with regard to 9/11. Rice could only act on vague threats. Regardless, in July 2001, an NSA deputy issued a warning to the FBI concerning domestic terror attacks, even though there were no specific threats at that time. That the FBI didn't put that together with the intel regarding Moussaoui is their fault.

Yeah, she probably should have taken the "airplanes as weapons" thing more seriously, but she wasn't alone in interpreting that as hijacking. Which is why the FAA issued two warning about hijackings during summer 2001.

All the work? Good stuff, Loney. The famous Berger Brief that even he admits he never gave to the Bush team? That is rich.

You were wrong. So apologize to 352klr and be done with it. You too, superdave.

 

And yet you're the one giving the Clinton administration a pass on the biggest missed opportunity in fighting terrorism in the last 15 years. That is rich.

 

The Predator is an UAV. Once again you have shown you have no clue about intelligence when you compare a freaking machine to a case officer or the development of HUMINT assets.

Fantasies? You're telling me negotiations never take place through non-traditional channels? Once again, undermining your intelligence.

Once again, showing yourself to have no basis in reality or understanding when it comes to intellgence issues. You can not compare the New Deal to the amount of time it takes to train new case officers, for them to get in country and then to develop solid, reliable assets. It's beyond being a case of apples and oranges. Keep grasping at those straws though. Maybe you'll stay above water.




Personal responsibility alien to right wing? I'm firmly in the middle but if personal responsibility is alien to any faction, it's that of the left. It was Clinton's responsibility to investigate what the Sudan was offering us in regards to intel and Bin Laden himself. It was his responsibility to go after OBL after the Embassy and USS Cole bombings with more than freaking cruise missles. Face it. The man shirked his national security responsiblities to our country, making our nation look like completely afraid, opening the door for more attacks because our responses to previous terrorist attacks were barely slaps on the wrist. Taking your personal responsibility to our national security so seriously as to quit reading your President's Daily Brief is not the sign of a POTUS that is overly concerned about his country's security.

 

No, it came in May of 2001. Read your own links. Who was President then?

And Sudan WAS a terrorist state. Do I really have to catalog the crimes they were committing?

And the Taliban offered to try Osama for 9/11. I suppose you would have trusted them, too.

Then how come we never did see the intelligence? Susan Rice asked a very, very good question - why wasn't the intelligence simply given to Carney?

Notice we don't know what the Sudan was demanding in return for this help. It's absolutely not beyond the realm that the price of dealing with an untrustworthy regime was too high - especially given that in 1996, we couldn't see the future.

Good question - in exchange for what?

Manta rayshit.

http://mahabarbara.tripod.com/themahablog/id11.html

Rice and the administration had plenty of very specific information. They blew it. Apart from the numerous indications which you glossed over, according to Jane’s Intelligence Digest, the Russians gave oodles of detailed information on Bin Laden in March. Wish I had the Jane’s article online, but here’s the gist of it:

http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jid/jidpromo011005.shtml

http://www.cooperativeresearch.net/timeline/main/timelinebefore911.html

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?xml=0&art_id=710291385

I can’t believe this has never been addressed, debunked, or refuted. Instead, it was all but ignored. Wonder why.

http://www.cooperativeresearch.net/timeline/main/timelinebefore911.html, the Clinton Administration increased the counter-terrorism budget to over 12 billion dollars for 2001.

Meanwhile, on freaking September 10, John Ashcroft rejects an increase for the FBI’s counterterrorism activities. The administration also grounded the Predator drone, and their number one priority was a freaking Star Wars missile defense system.

Where was Rice?

No, she claimed she could only act on vague threats. Rice’s veracity is absolutely in tatters by now.

Pathetic. Rice and the NSA completely ignored Richard Clarke, who put together a freaking PowerPoint presentation on the topic.

Amusingly, the G-7 conference in Italy that summer had anti-aircraft guns stationed. Now, why do you suppose they would have those up there? Hm?

It’s also true. Go back and read the Time article. Berger warned Rice, Richard Clarke gave the specific presentation. I’m certain you’ve already read and ignored this article, in your desire to always think good thoughts about the Bush Administration, but here it is one more time:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,333835,00.html

You know what’s amusing? I still haven’t read anything about what Rice actually did to prevent 9/11! I mean, it wasn’t as if she didn’t know there was a threat, right? I mean, if Clinton did nothing at all, that’s bad and evil, but Rice gets a free pass because she only had (more likely, would only admit to having) general warnings, that’s forgivable?

It wasn’t as if she wasn’t prodded at all – did Rice ever give an answer to the letter mentioned here by Congressman Shays? She’s had years now, after all:

http://www.house.gov/reform/ns/107th_testimony/shays_march27.htm

So, the theory on the right wing is that Clinton did nothing, and so it doesn’t matter that Bush did less than nothing.

Typical.

Oh, and I got your apology - wedged between my buttcheeks.