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Administration Ignored Bin Laden Intel
gettin-bored noted a nice article running in very high priority on the Washington Post, right up there on page 17 of the print edition, where it's revealed that the CIA Director warned Rice about Bin Laden two months before 9/11. And strangely, the meeting was never mentioned during all the 9/11 commission reports making you really question what exactly they were actually hearing that was more important than the CIA director telling the National Security Advisor that Bin Laden was going to attack Americans.
The fundamental problem is that the current White house administration is not remotely curious or interested in looking beyond their narrowly defined agendas. So, any deviation from what they expect is by definition, unexpected or inconvenient. This is a recurring theme again and again with hurricane Katrina, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bin Laden, the economy, energy prices, the whole torture thing and recently with senator Foley, where higher ups *knew* what was going on but they either failed to act or simply did not care as long as they can maintain power. Power for powers sake seems to be the theme here as this administration is always behind the ball. They are constantly reacting to events rather than through analysis and action being proactive and it is costing the country financially and in lives lost as well as our international reputation.
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Uh, WTF does this have to do with "News for Nerds"?
Don't get me wrong, I'm a Green Party-voting liberal, but I don't see how this is even remotely in line with the supposed purpose of this site. I mean, do we really need another ten thousand Bush-bashing posts?
--saint
"I believe the title was 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.'"
Even if they took the report seriously I doubt they would have been able to prevent the attack. There was a lot of information and misinformation out there, and it would have taken a lot of luck for everything to line up properly in order to prevent it. I don't fault the administration for failing to prevent the attack, but obviously their actions following the attack speak for themselves. Do you honestly believe if Al Gore had won his administration would have done any better? Maybe (hopefully) they wouldn't have done so much dumb shit in the wake of the attack, but I am pretty sure they would fail to prevent it, too.
Woo hoo, neat, more fodder. But, um, this is Slashdot? Not some overzealous political blog. Maybe if it was a computer-based coverup or something, then that would be cool. Or if we found out Condolezza was actually a Russian Android, originally programmed for "freaky tribal sex" that Bush acquired long ago, that would be interesting too, IF the specs were there. But none of these is the case, so this isn't Slashdot news. Of course, more recently, nothing is.
I know with the Debian/Firefox thing from yesterday there's a lot of pointless political blah-blah-blah's going on but seriously, let's get over it. Most people have made up their mind on the issue one way or another, and this is slashdot.
In other words, instead of putting a massive number of troops on the ground to flush out and kill or (even better, capture) Osama Bin Laden, let's divert all those troops to overthrowing the regime of a bad guy who also happens to be Arab, whose government had maybe one or two meetings with Bin Laden but was widely considered (as a secular Ba'athist regime) to be effectively "infidel" by Bin Laden and his associates, and whose presence, while certainly very bad for his own people and a very minor threat to the US (slightly more serious than the threat of Syria, let's say, but far less serious a threat than al Qaeda, Iran, Korea, and China, just to name the four threats the current administration has allowed to grow over the past 6 years), was more importantly a serious threat to Iran and Syria, and thereby give Bin Laden's associates a rallying cry, something they can use as evidence of a "crusade" against Islam by the US and Israel ('cause let's face it, Bin Laden and his bunch probably blamed Israel for the earthquake in Pakistan), and then use all that as an excuse to revert to practices for which we long criticized, hey, that very same bad guy whose regime we overthrew!
This just in: Bin Laden is going to attack Americans. Big Deal. He already _had_ attacked Americans.
For months, Tenet had been pressing Rice to set a clear counterterrorism policy, including specific presidential orders called "findings" that would give the CIA stronger authority to conduct covert action against bin Laden.
Interesting, Bill Clinton said last Sunday night or whenever it was that He "left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy." I guess that turned out to be a lie if Rice was being pressured to set one herself.
There was no conclusive, smoking-gun intelligence, but there was such a huge volume of data that an intelligence officer's instinct strongly suggested that something was coming.
Sound to me something like, "we don't _really_ have any proof, but I have a hunch."
This is non-news. Why are the only political stories on Slashdot left-wing propaganda?
It seems like all the members of the left want to blame buch for 9/11 and all the members of the right insist that Clinton could have stopped it. It seems to me that there is no way that some high ranking government official (republican or democrat) could have prevented 9/11 by reading some broad document titled "Bin Laden determined to attack Americans". I'm sure they see a million documents about terrorist organizations that dont like the US. I mean what were they supposed to do? Use their spider sense when they saw the document to say "aha! that must mean they are going to fly planes into the twin towers on september 11th!"
Trying to pin this on Bush or Clinton is just silly. The only people who deserve to be blamed for 9/11 are the members of Al-Qaida.
If she were a male American of Japanese ancestry, she would have been fired on the spot.
Look carefully at the background of Rice. She is smart and has earned a Ph.D. in international relations, but she has no experience. How many people become the national security advisor without experience?
Of course, Rice is not the only problem. On the day after the infamous Clinton interview on Fox News, Charlie Rose (of PBS) interviewed Richard Clarke. He noted, "When David Kay told the current administration that, based on his survey on the ground, there were and are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, no one in the administration even batted an eye. According to Kay, Bush asked, 'What do you need from me?' Kay answered, 'I need patience to allow me to finish my work.' Bush answered, 'I have all the patience in the world.' Then, the conversation fell silent. Kay thought that someone would ask questions about his work, but no one asked any questions. Kay felt that he had never met any people who were more uninterested in the events in Iraq. According to Kay, no one in the administration lost more than 10 minutes of sleep over the war in Iraq."
Does anyone feel as though your life is being controlled by government officials who do not give a damn about you?
First, al-Qaeda was going to attack American interests, possibly in the United States itself. Black emphasized that this amounted to a strategic warning, meaning the problem was so serious that it required an overall plan and strategy. Second, this was a major foreign policy problem that needed to be addressed immediately. They needed to take action that moment -- covert, military, whatever -- to thwart bin Laden.
I have three responses to this postFUD.
1) non-specific information is almost worth than valueless. Let's say you are running a giant worldwide computer network, and I tell you that everything points to the strong conclusion that there "...is going to be a failure in your network. I can't tell you what, where, when, or how big it's going to be - but I'm nearly certain it IS going to happen." Then, months later, when there is a failure in your network, your boss calls you on the carpet to fire you, demanding why in hell you didn't prevent it "since you were warned months ahead of time". Think that's reasonable?
2) Part of this is playing into one of the oldest stock-cons in the book. Call 16 people, tell half that Stock X is going to go up, half that it's going to go down. The next week, call the half of them for whom you were right, and do the same thing (half up/half down). Repeat. After three weeks, you have 4 people that you can call and say "hey, I was 100% right 3 weeks in a row, invest with me!". Predicting something is one thing, but without knowing how many OTHER people were giving the same dire warnings about everything else, one has no reasonable idea of the 'static' surrounding the communication.
3) finally, let's assume that this was the only credible warning, and let's presuppose it was specific and certain. How would the bleeding-heart left have reacted if we'd sent an assassination team to kill Osama? Would a 'dire warning from the CIA director' been considered adequate? We invaded Iraq for a number of reasons, including (but not limited to) the consensus by a number of the world's intelligence services that Iraq had WMDs. We're still arguing about that, I believe.
One has to wonder if this Monday-morning quarterbacking will ever end.
-Styopa
Then you're either paranoid or a child.
"Plots" from whom?
Since you "don't know 'what we're worried about'", you don't know if it the "enemy" is a group of fundamentalist Muslims
Grow UP and realize that the people who founded this country PUBLICLY signed the Declaration of Independence knowing that it would be used to execute them if they lost.
You cannot live Free if you sell your Freedoms for "protection" from the "bad men" hurting you.
I was going to use my mod points to mod you up but I decided to add a comment instead.
Although I have my own feelings about Bush's administration, I have to say that your description about their "policies" is nothing new. Recently I read "Overthrow - America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq" which lists 14 countries where the USA was instrumental in ousting the legitimately elected government over the last 120 years. What I got from reading this book was not so much that the "OMG the USA is EVIL!!!!" but that sucessive goverments over that span of time all made pretty well the same arguments for doing something, but had no regards for the consequences. The book ended with Iraq, and you could just feel the approaching train wreck eerily predicted by every other previous forced regime change.
Bush & Co's screw ups may be bad, but the USA's continual making of the same mistakes is in my opinion far worse. And I think this goes all the way back to the 19th Century and the Monroe doctrine and the idea of manifest destiny.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Whenever I turn on the news, I always hear questions. I hear pointless speculation from anchors with no more credibility than anyone who is "able" to speak with enunciation and wear makeup, and worse, they are speaking about things that no one on earth can possibly know. Whether it's a school shooting, or a political scandal, or a celebrity arrest, the talking heads guess and guess about what the truth could be.
What happens? People make a decision based on their own biases, and then when the truth is actually known, it is written off or embraced on assumptions based on speculation based on nothing much at all.
Now, did the Bush Administration lie? Of course they did - just like all the administrations before it. Now, what did they lie about, and how important were the lies to the security and well-being of the American people? That is something we need to come to terms with as a country, but let's not speculate about it. We simply don't know. Conservatives should lay down their bias towards innocence, and liberals should lay down their bias towards guilt.
The only thing that concerns me is that the Bush Administration seems unwilling to submit to a full and thorough investigation, and no one, especially elected officials, are above criticism or criminal investigation. If the White House is unwilling to open all of their records, including all classiffied documents, to a special commission, many will simply assume guilt because they will not submit themselves to the same rules everyone else must follow.
Similarly, if America continues to display it's arrogance by flatly ignoring international law, I'm afraid we may reap what we sow when we are no longer the dominant superpower. We had moral credibility after WWII. We lost some in Vietnam, and in Grenada, then in the Iran Contra Affair, and more when we supported Hussein while he was gassing Kurds. So when the chips are down, and we are truly afraid, do we torture? Do we kill 20 civilians to kill one suspected terrorist? Do we withhold legal rights that were once so central to our belief that every man - suspected terrorist or not - is created equal, and has the right to be innocent until proven guilty?
I don't know. I can only speculate.
This is a dumb post.
e dge/Clinton_let_bin_laden.htm
/
First of all, Bin ladin (Al qaeda) had already attacked the USA several times by then. That he was going to continue attacks was obvious. That many attacks had already occurred during the Clinton administration is obvious.
I advise you to consult Wikipedia on this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Quaeda#Activities
Attacks listed by year: (might be missing some)
1992
1993*, 1993
1995, 1995
1996 (Khobar)
1998,1998
1999
2000
*dubious, may or may not be al-qaeda
These facts aren't really so relevant as is the fact that Clinton had many chances to get Bin Ladin and he failed to capitalize on them. http://www.infowars.com/saved%20pages/Prior_Knowl
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4540958/
Both Presidents are at fault. Both presidents failed when they had good chances of snagging him, clinton on numerous occasions, and bush with Tora Bora. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8853000/site/newsweek
What happened is this - those federal agencies have always been fighting with each other for influence, budgets, etc, including trying to get a favored ear in whatever current Presidental cabinet there was.
So, when they found good evidence of an upcoming attack, they said to themselves "let's sell this sucker so we can gain a little more prestige than the other agency".
The agencies have the reputation for doing this and a history of it, so whenever a cabinet memebr would read the reports, they also are applying their own filters to it saying "well, looks like FBI wants another budget allotment this year" instead of saying "well, looks like Bin Laden wants to blow stuff up this year."
This problem was not created by Clinton, Bush etc, but by the hidebound bureaucracies in place for so long. Clinton or Bush made the wrong decisions, but because of the culture in place they were unable to take off the blinders and act seriously. Maybe the middle managers and actual caseworkers realized that something very bad was going to happen very soon, but a many-tiered structure of a CIA or FBI prevents such stuff from being a priority.
That is something the 9-11 commission was very clear on that needed improvement and had little to do with Bush and Co. DOn't get me wrong, Bush was the worst possible guy for the job and the situation, and has consistently made the wrong decision that has driven up terrorist recruitment and turned nations against us, but at the same time, the Intel had far less weight b/c it came from the same knuckleheads who've been fighting each other for decades for more influence and cash.
And the fact that he created an EXTRA agency to collate the others is the single exact wrong thing to do. Why not reform the existing, broken agencies? Why the hell would you make ANOTHER one to screw things up - and remember why Katrina was so bad and FEMA failed? The dept of Homeland Security wasn't ready for primetime...
Who needs a conspiracy when good old fashioned incompetence is the Occam's Razor answer?
I'm sorry but to me, a blowjob will never, ever compare to the value of thousands of American lives, or 100s of thousands of foreign lives. If "slick" implies good at pulling the wool over people's eyes, I think Bush has succeeded Clinton in every way imaginable.
This is a website about technology, not politics (except when directly relevant to technology, of course).
Second, can we quit with the childish "hindsight is 20-20" crap. Yes, Bush missed signs. Yes, Clinton missed signs. So did damned near everyone else. Picking out the needle in the haystack AFTER the fact is meaningless, however. Their is even a technical term for this psychological error many people make - hindsight bias. It is human nature to think "I woulda seen it coming if I were in your shoes" - when in fact, when tested, you would fail as often as anyone else.
First, watch the testimony where Candi-ass Rice says "I believe the title was Bin Laden determined to attack within the US." Watch her demeanor. It's the demeanor of a petulant child. It's as if she's saying, "duh, of course we knew this was coming, how dare you ask me such a thing." It's like a student late to class in junior high and when asked for a reason just answers "Cause I was sucking dick for money. Schmuck."
The 9/11 Commission possibilites are pretty much these
1)They were covering up
2)They were denied information
3)They lost heart when they realized they would be ignored.
As the consumers of the data it's difficult to know what happened during that investigation and the only reason it matters is that there might be MORE evidence to bring against Bush in an impeachment or war crimes trial.
Fact is, when Bush stole into office he took over from Clinton who, in the last days of his administration, did LOTS of work trying to establish peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis. He ran out of time and Bush, instead of picking up the thread, instituted a "hands off the middle east" policy (insert ironic laughter here).
And the final fact of the matter is that once we were embroiled in war in Iraq the people of this country STILL relected Bush by a narrow margin. That election SHOULD have been so clearly against Bush that no amount of vote stealing should have put him in office, and the corrupt results should have triggered a revolution against the corrupt decision. Instead we end up with elections so close that they are easy to steal with small amounts of fraud.
Why was the election so close? This is what we must ask. WTF is wrong with half the electorate that they think it's ok to kill for oil? Or get distracted by gay marriage? Why are the priorities of the American public so fucked up?
There will be more 9/11s, no doubt. Mainly because the U.S. has made no effort to understand our enemy very much disappointing the ghost of Sun Tzu.
For years we did everything we could to understand communism so we could undermine it and defeat it. It wasn't just the US that destroyed communism, but it was also an unworkable system (apologies to adherents of Saint Reagan).
We were not attacked because of "who we are". That is bat-shit stupid. We were attacked because of things like unquestionable support for Israel in EVERYTHING they do including the bad stuff, cozying up with dictators when it's convenient for our interests, and so on.
When you say things like "they hate us because of who we are" then obviously the only solution is to start bombing people, and it's even MORE non sensical when the place we are bombing has nothing to do with terrorism, such as pre war Iraq. This has already been proven by a bipartisan commission. If you plan on following up on this post I trust you'll keep that proven and non controversial fact in mind. Of course it's also non controversial that we just spent over 300 billion so far to now CREATE a terrorist petri dish out of Iraq.
Nope,...we understand nothing about the enemy and we understand even less about radical and fundamental Islam. This is why there will be more 9/11s to come. If you want to understand how little we really know, just look at the futility of bringing "democracy" to Iraq. You just can't invade and impose democracy. Assuming that we managed to kill three thousand Iraqis (an absurdly low figure by any estimate), and assuming that each of these three thousand have 3 other family members then you now have 9,000 who are thinking "Hmmm maybe bin Laden is right". 9,000 more recruits for jihad.
Fundamental Islam = Fundamental Christianity in terms of disgusting behavior. If you want to play the immature game of name calling then I suggest that you start referring to this administration as ChristianFascist.
While you're at it, start using "Stay and Die" when you say "Cut and Run".
I expect the neocon mod down in 3..2..1...
running in very high priority on the Washington Post, right up there on page 17 of the print edition
I think their decision is defensible. While the article is newsworthy, it is very unsurprising in the light of all of the related news stories that have already been given front-page treatment.
We already know that Rice and Bush reviewed a Presidential Daily Brief entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack inside US" in early August, but were reluctant to mention this at the 9/11 Commission hearings. We already know that Richard Clarke says that the administration was unengaged despite repeated warnings on the threat. We already know that when a CIA operative tried to impress upon senior administration officials the severity of the threat, Bush responded with, "There, you've covered your ass," and dismissed him. At this point, reporting that Tenet was trying to warn the Bush Administration about the threat in July is interesting, but is hardly a revelation.
What I find much more curious is that the article was printed without a byline, and that there was an apologetic Editor's Note explaining why they felt they were justified in printing the story.
Do spam filters work for printed documents?
Sure they do! It's called a secretary with an extra large paper shredder. Remember, kids, the Buck Stops Here applies only if the document reaches the final destination. That's why so many government officials can truly say they don't recall seeing the "smoking gun" document since it never came across their desk.
That's why so many government officials can truly say they don't recall seeing the "smoking gun" document since it never came across their desk.
It's just a lie. Don't rationalize the lies.
That's why they can just blame it a few levels lower. I didn't know they were torturing...
Well, yes I did try to get the torture bill passed, but I didn't think we'd actually USE it.
http://use.perl.org
Post anything remotely conservative, and be modded into troll oblivion.
Poor conservatives. If only you had the House.. Or the Senate.. Or the Judiciary... Or the Presidency...
Poor little conservatives, always beaten down by the brutal media.
*sniffle*
http://use.perl.org
I was glad for the good information you provided on Condi Rice's background refuting the grandparent post, but the above comment is disgusting mudslinging. If you really think that accusing the administration of appointing an underqualified black female National Security Advisor in a cynical bid to improve their image in those demographics is in itself racist or sexist, then you've failed to understand what racism or sexism really are. More likely you've picked up the habit from those that routinely use those words as epithets to discourage honest discourse.
Support NRA, America's oldest civil rights group.
It wouldn't have mattered if they saw it or not. It didn't say anything about what happened on 9/11.
At best, it says bin laden from 2 or more years ago wanted to strike the US inside it's borders, Some of his operatives are US citizens and have traveled in or though the US, there are 70 investigation going on by the FBI suggesting more information would become availible and they were monitoring it, It gives a few misleading potential targets, referes to a foiled attempted attack on LAX by the candian government, and suggest if a plane was hijacked, it would be to hold hostages for the release of two operatives and not to use as a missle and destroy several buildings.
Smoking gun? Only if you read into it what you know today. But if you objectivly look at it from what was known then, how would you read it? How would you have know that event on 9/11 was going to happen and how could you have stoped it. Remeber, don't answer with anything known after 9/11 to be honest. But if you ask the Question "did you get a report claiming 9/11 was going to happen 2 months before 9/11?" you could probably reply with hoestly and say "no". I'm not saying that more wasn't known but if what we know that was known is true, it didn't offer much of anything on the predictability of 9/11.
Now as this is related to the July 10th 2001 meeting between Tenet and Rice concerning a June 30th 2001 report that was a consolidation of "bits and pieces" of inteligence sent to the NSA for verification and analisis, that the article, though Tenet's own admisions, claims he and the document didn't say much of anything specific other then it is likley Al Qeada and Bin Ladin are up to something and he had a gut feeling it was going to be big and soon. Then Augast 6th 2001 the refernced document "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US," was submited to the presidential daily briefing.
What this shows to me is, that people were doing something about our security, they were analizing the facts and informing the people needing to make the decisions, but we didn't know how to act as Tenet would have liked on the information because it didn't tell us what was going to happen.
And the article did state a plan take out bin laden and Al Qeada leaders was in the works but stalled on technicle details and would take some time to work out. Curriously, I'm wondering why they couldn't use one of Clintons left over plans that should have already had the details worked out. I doubt just taking bin ladin and Al Qeada leaders out would have stoped or disrupted 9/11 though. The plan was too long in the making and too close to execution. I think this might be a political astro-turffing article designed to gain favor for republicans and motivate them to the polls this election cycle. It shows how dificult it was to determin what Al Qeada were upto and it shows that the government was actualy doing something, just not enough because the information wasn't there. I'm sure democrates will try to use the slant on this to make republicans look bad but repulican voters tend to look at all the information and see the entire picture so it is sure to infuriate them enough to show up.
This isn't directed directly at the parent poster but feel free to respond because,
It wasn't bad inteligence. Clinton lied and janitors died!
Seriously, why is it bad inteligence when clinton acts on bad inteligence, it is reasonable. But Bush gets bad inteligence he's a lier and "he lied and people died" all hell is breaking loose?
There are planty of people that give clinton a pass just because he is thier guy.
Yup, that eeevil librul media. If you compare the media's treatment of Clinton over the Whitewater witch hunt or his getting a blowjob and lying to Congress about it, versus Bush and Enron, Katrina, the Iraq war fiasco, foreign relations in the crapper, the 2000 and 2004 election scandals, no WMDs in Iraq, Valerie Plame, no Iraq-9/11 connection, lowering taxes in the middle of *TWO* ground wars, just to name a few, you can't but help to notice Bush's scandals receive a lot less intense coverage and is much less critical. But then a a neocon isn't satisfied with the treatment of current events unless the media Gannons it.
These are the Sudanese officials that Bush protects from intervention in their government's ongoing genocide. The Sudanese officials making oil development plans with Cheney while he was running Halliburton in the 1990s. The Sudanese officials who built that "pharma factory" - pharmaceuticals are made from petro materials. The same Sudanese officials who Clinton fired missiles into. The Sudanese officials who were harboring Bin Laden that whole time.
Sudan's claims against Clinton are about as credible as Ahmed Chalabi, the Iranian spy who Bush trusted to design our Iraq invasion.
--
make install -not war
We can argue all day about who's to fault for 911 but honestly there is so much blame to go around, CIA, FBI, Clinton, Bush, etc. There is no one person or event that directly caused 911. The best thing is move forward and put in place security measures that will prevent another 911 (which is not being done btw).
Second Iraq has the potential to be so much worse than 911. The causalities already outnumber 911, but the damage done to America's world image has been catastrophic. After 911 we had the majority of the world with us, as well as the American public. We really had an opportunity to put in place a new foreign policy coupled with domestic initiatives that could have transformed American politics for the better. Yet all this energy was misplaced towards Iraq. Who's responsible for that?
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
To do what? Would the attack be against
Would the type of attack be
Would it be in
The intelligence was fuzzy and vague beyond usability.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Poor conservatives. If only you had the House.. Or the Senate.. Or the Judiciary... Or the Presidency...
If you didn't censor conservatives all the time you might pick up on what voters are actually interested in.
But then you might have the House, the Senate, &c...
So keep on censoring us. You're only driving your own ideology to irrelevancy.
If Right Wingers are censored, A) why do they have an all out media outlet(Fox News)? B) Why are they always in the media? Turn on any Sunday morning talk show, and there will be a sizeable rightwing presence.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Unfortunately, the United States Secretary of Defense does not have the luxury of saying 'no' when the Director of the CIA is telling you some kind of attack is imminent, despite your 'beliefs' to the contrary. To ignore that is total incompetence, pure and simple.
We are the fire that lights our world.. and we are the fire that consumes it.
Maybe if those poor conservatives had actually, y'know, posted a cogent argument instead of whining how liberal /. is, the comment would be a +5? Not to mention the point that if you have all 3 of the branches of government, who the fuck cares about how conservative /. may or may not be? Really, if it's too touchy-feely for you here, go to the Stormfront forums.
And one more thing: One of the main reasons conservatives get so much shit, especially here, is because they're using the same damn whiny arguments they've been using for decades. Unfortunately, times do change, and the cognitive dissonance is just ridiculous.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Bush's mistake is still going and has taken thousands of American lives with no end in sight, countless numbers of Iraqi lives, and billions of dollars. What's the current cost, 1-2 billion a day? Is it really worth it? Didn't less people die in the unfortunate 9/11 incidents than have did in Iraq so far? Is this an appropriate response? Are we actually "winning" any war on terrorism by military destabilization, rather than education and assisting these people? I'd like to think that 300-400 billion dollars in aid every year could produce one hell of a better civilization for a 3rd world nation, rather than killing people and blowing things up, but that's just me.
When you're going to bomb a building, you should make sure you have the right intel. I'm not %100 sure but I think the building was bombed when there weren't many people inside (or a minimal amount) so the casualties weren't large. It's an appropriate response to a bad intel, which until the thing was actually bombed enough people thought it was a legitimate threat. (and honestly, there's no proof it wasn't making chemicals that could produce nerve agents, and there was still a very good chance it was supply the bin Laden group with money, which makes it a decent target anyway if you're actually fighting a "war on terror")
When you invade a country, depose their leader, destabilize the entire region, torture citizens and attempt to convert an entire nation to your form of government and social expectations in a small amount of time, I think you need to be absolutely sure of what you're doing and absolutely have your facts straight. It's a much larger idea. If Bush had decided to bomb all of the sites in Iraq that may or may not have had "WMD's", and just left things alone, I believe that the entire world would have supported his decision, even if a few of them were inaccurate. (they can probably dig up enough circumstantial evidence to attempt to prove that there was something sinister going on at a few sites, but perhaps not all). Instead, Bush went the extra mile of righteousness, and invaded the entire country under a very weak pretext. I don't care how Republican or Democrat you are, this should be a Very Bad Thing. Especially now that we know there was very little to no threat from Iraq in the near future.
This should not be about any ignorant partisan politics. People are currently dying, there's no end in sight, and people want to turn things into a "blowjobs vs. bombs" debate.
What a wonderful country. I've never felt more ashamed to be American.
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So if you were Condi, what would your have done differently? And on what information would you have acted that might of saved us from 9/11? I think the monday morning armchair quarter backing has places the bar between competent and incompetence a little too unrealisticy high. I may be missing something though. It apears the biggest gripe is that she didn't apear the the CIA directer, to acting like it was the most important thing of the minute and praise the messenger for delivering the news.
I don't know whether he's quite such a pathological liar as O'Reilly but his whole rhetoric...
About all the /.-is-so-liberal whining:
I think you're wrong. I think based on the discussions on different kinds of stories that /. is actually very strongly libertarian.
Most people here prefer a government that is socially liberal and fiscally conservative. The reason it seems /. is overwhelmingly liberal in discussions such as this one is that people seem to assume that supporting the Dems atm is the same as being liberal. It is not. Clinton was both less obsessed with spying on you and didn't blow the budget so he could cut taxes for millionaires. He also didn't piss off just about all of your allies (notice how a few years ago, every time there was a story about the EU at least one Brit wrote a post that the UK should leave the EU and enter a closer relationship with the US? I haven't seen any of those lately =) and I think about a third of /. readers was non-US according to one of the old polls.
If I had to make a list with 10 people I'd like to see as POTUS there'd be more Reps than Dems on that list but somehow the demagogues, corrupt and stupid seem to have hijacked the GOP.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
At that late date they probably couldn't have done anything. However, if the Bush administration had spent any effort developing foreign policy, including anti-terrorism policy, they wouldn't just be finding out about the possiblity so late in the year. This is just another point showing that it wasn't lack of intelligence, but lack of focus, that made it easier for terrorists to attack the US.
Does that mean everyone else supports letting terrorists go free after capture, open prisons with conjugal visits, and no interest whatsoever in a suspected terrorist cell making a call to a city in Pakistan?
:)
While I join you in denouncing some of the shady goings-on, there are non-brutal and effective means of interrogation (depends on your def. of "torture"), there is a legitimacy to not telling everyone in the world where we are holding some of the top-ranking al Qaida operatives, and if done properly there is due process in surveillance (FISA) and this information could lead to the apprehension of cells waiting inside the US or abroad for another operation.
So I guess what I'm saying is that you are begging the question there.
I don't mean this as a troll or a snark, but i am honestly puzzled at how one could approve of Democratic tactics or corruption less than the Republicans? I really don't think that anyone could disagree that the Rove/Abramoff/DeLay triangle is really the most systematically unfair, corrupt, and underhanded political machine to exist in the past 25 years. Rove has been responsible for push polling (even against Republicans), phone bank DDoSing, money laundering, and swift-boating; Abramoff for more wide-spread graft (golf-outings to scotland, parties at his now-defunct resturant, cash gifts, scamming Native American tribes) than i think anyone can possibly account for; and DeLay for abusing House proceedural control so badly that he was single-handedly holding back legislation that had a MAJORITY of all representatives in the House as SPONSORS, not to mention the K-Street Project.
Honestly, i'm not trying to bait, i'd love a sincere and measured response, what could the Democrats could have done that was or could be worse?
I'm not claiming the Democrats aren't corrupt. Politics in America are corrupt. The nature of American politics will not change until there is serious reform regarding how candidates recieve money. But the depth, breadth, and malevolence of neo-conservative corruption has been dumbfounding to me. They've abused the campaign finance system (see Jack Abramoff and Tom Noe of Ohio, who stole millions of dollars from the Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation, and contributed much of it to Bush's relection campaign), they've abused the wheels of government (see Tom DeLay), and the news media (Swift-boat, push-polls, news media leaks). I don't know of any similar systematic mechanism employed by anybody else.
p.s. i can dig up links to the stuff i've mentioned for the genuinely curious.
There are lives at stake here!
Funny how at the time, republicans were accusing Clinton of exploiting the situation to detract attention away from Monicagate.
He didn't have the ability to strike Osama Bin Laden because it would damn him and his party in the eyes of the American people, and his party would have ensured that he be not only impeached, but removed from office.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
ObsessiveMathsFreak wrote:
I'll be the first to accuse the Bush administration of gross incompetence--but let's also not forget several stunning displays of true competence, including examples eerily similar to what would be required to pull off a Reichstag-esque plot.
I mean, we've got the lead-up to the Iraq War (Remember Colin Powell? Valerie Plame and the aluminum tubes? Condi's smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud?) for one very obvious example. And who could forget the Swift Boat Veterans, or the similar job done on McCain? Not to mention, of course, the whole Lewinsky affair....
And, before you dismiss the administration's conducting of the Iraq war as gross incompetence, ask yourself three questions: Is there anything that they've done that hasn't been the textbook example of how not to conduct this kind of a war? Is there any chance that Rumsfeld et al. have not studied the textbooks? And, finally, which is more beneficial to a cynical Orwellian regime: success in Iraq...or the spectacular failure (complete with the worst possible breeding ground for terrorists) we have there now?
Like I said in my original post: I'm not one for conspiracy theories. All I'm doing here is applying Occam's Razor, and feeling like we're experiencing the death of a thousand cuts.
The administration's actions in Iraq and elsewhere make absolutely no sense whatsoever not only if you grant them the benefit of the doubt, but even if you take their stated claims perfectly at face value: their actions are not only spectacularly counterproductive, but glaringly obviously so, and repeatedly, and often excessively.
They do, however, make perfect sense if you assume that Bush & co. is another Hitler & Nazis, and that they're doing all of this consciously, intentionally, and with malice aforethought.
Never forget that Hitler sincerely believed that all he did was not only in his country's best interests, but in God's and Christ's best interests, too. (Re-read Mein Kampf if you've forgotten.) Or that he had all sorts of seemingly-legitimate reasons and excuses for all his excesses. He really thought that Poland was a direct threat to German sovereignty, that a cabal of Jews controlled world finances and were committed to usurping German authority...and that Germany really was the best nation on Earth, the greatest hope for the human race and salvation, and that the power of the state and of the corporations was necessary to ensure the common security and welfare.
And he had lots of convincing evidence to back up all those beliefs! In the abstract, you're certainly more ``secure'' if you control not only your side of your borders, but the other side, as well--and Germany and Poland had long been rivals. There were disproportionate numbers of Jews in international finance, and a non-trivial number had Bolshevik and other ``left'' leanings antithetical to Hitler's (and many other German's) ideas of how to run an economy, which made for a natural enmity. Hitler could easily point to all sorts of great advancements in the arts, science, culture, and Christianity (think of the amazingly anti-Semitic Martin Luther, amongst others) to demonstrate just how formidable Germany had been historically. And lots of people to this day still believe that a strong central government with expansive policing powers is necessary for personal security, and that a strong corporate culture is necessary for economic security.
If you sta
All but God can prove this sentence true.
> You can lose many battles, but in the end you can still win the war.
That's hardly an argument in favor of a do-nothing strategy.
> I'm bloody amazed that we even won WW2. For fucks sake, your attitude is that of the French!
This has nothing in common with WWII, nor with the attitude of the French.
> What will it take before western civilization wakes up and realizes we have a pan-islamic threat. I guess we just have to face facts. It will take a few nukes going off in our country before something happens. Worse yet, nothing happens...no one wakes up...and the finger pointing continues...
The homocidal nutcakes don't represent a pan-Islamic threat any more than our home-grown homocidal nutcakes represent a pan-Christian threat.
And all that is irrelevant to the fact that "stay the course" is a policy of trading lives to postpone an admission of fucking up.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade