Clinton: "I would have attacked bin Laden"

[Tiger in Spain 0]

Clinton: I Would Have Attacked bin Laden

Ex-president Bill Clinton now says he would have taken out Osama bin Laden before the 9/11 attacks – if only the FBI and CIA had been able to prove the al-Qaida mastermind was behind the attack on the U.S.S. Cole.

"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," Clinton tells New York magazine this week. "Then we could have launched an attack on Afghanistan early."

"I don’t know if it would have prevented 9/11," he added. "But it certainly would have complicated it.”

Despite his failure to launch such an attack, Clinton said he saw the danger posed by bin Laden much more clearly than did President Bush.

"I always thought that bin Laden was a bigger threat than the Bush administration did," he told New York magazine.

Link

[Tigermike 3,066]

Would someone please provide the reasons that the great world leader from Arkansas failed to take bin Laden prisoner when offered up on for the taking? Now we have another deep look into the Clinton mind and personality - Revisionist Historian.

[Piglet 0]

Would someone please provide the reasons that the great world leader from Arkansas failed to take bin Laden prisoner when offered up on for the taking?  Now we have another deep look into the Clinton mind and personality - Revisionist Historian.

174511[/snapback]

More like Monday Morning Quarterback. OF COURSE now that the WTC is no more he thinks he should have taken out Bin Laden before. I'll bet by 1940 Neville Chamberlain was wishing he'd handled Munich differently, too. No surprises here.

Of course, being a national-level politician, anything he failed to do must have been someone else's fault. What ever happened to Harry Truman's "The Buck Stops Here" sign? Probably in the Smithsonian museum being dusted off for exhibit now and then, 'cause there ain't nobody been using it in the White House for the past 30 years.

[TexasTiger 13,053]

Would someone please provide the reasons that the great world leader from Arkansas failed to take bin Laden prisoner when offered up on for the taking?  Now we have another deep look into the Clinton mind and personality - Revisionist Historian.

174511[/snapback]

More like Monday Morning Quarterback. OF COURSE now that the WTC is no more he thinks he should have taken out Bin Laden before. I'll bet by 1940 Neville Chamberlain was wishing he'd handled Munich differently, too. No surprises here.

Of course, being a national-level politician, anything he failed to do must have been someone else's fault. What ever happened to Harry Truman's "The Buck Stops Here" sign? Probably in the Smithsonian museum being dusted off for exhibit now and then, 'cause there ain't nobody been using it in the White House for the past 30 years.

174544[/snapback]

You can question any President's effectiveness at implementing a policy, but Clinton did bomb a structure in the Sudan where our intelligence said Bin Laden was. Turned out it was a pharmaceutical factory and he got endless grief from Republicans despite the bad intelligence. He saw Bin Laden as a threat before many other politicians saw him as a priority. It was not like he failed to act in the face of calls to do so by the opposition or members of his own party. I know you like to present yourself as nonpartisan, but the Neville Chamberlain comparison hardly stands up to any logical scrutiny and the facts.

Clarke told me that in the mid-nineties “the C.I.A. was authorized to mount operations to go into Afghanistan and apprehend bin Laden.” President Clinton, Clarke said, “was really gung-ho” about the scenario. “He had no hesitations,” he said. “But the C.I.A. had hesitations. They didn’t want their own people killed. And they didn’t want their shortcomings exposed. They really didn’t have the paramilitary capability to do it; they could not stage a snatch operation.” Instead of trying to mount the operation themselves, Clarke said, “the C.I.A. basically paid a bunch of local Afghans, who went in and did nothing.”

In 1998, Al Qaeda struck the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing more than two hundred people. In retaliation, Clinton signed a secret Presidential finding authorizing the C.I.A. to kill bin Laden. It was the first directive of this kind that Clarke had seen during his thirty years in government. Soon afterward, he told me, C.I.A. officials went to the White House and said they had “specific, predictive, actionable” intelligence that bin Laden would soon be attending a particular meeting, in a particular place. “It was a rare occurrence,” Clarke said. Clinton authorized a lethal attack. The target date, however—August 20, 1998—nearly coincided with Clinton’s deposition about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Clarke said that he and other top national-security officials at the White House went to see Clinton to warn him that he would likely be accused of “wagging the dog” in order to distract the public from his political embarrassment. Clinton was enraged. “Don’t you ******* tell me about my political problems, or my personal problems,” Clinton said, according to Clarke. “You tell me about national security. Is it the right thing to do?” Clarke thought it was. “Then ******* do it,” Clinton told him.

The attacks, which cost seventy-nine million dollars and involved some sixty satellite-guided Tomahawk cruise missiles, obliterated two targets—a terrorist training camp outside Khost, in Afghanistan, and a pharmaceutical plant thought to be manufacturing chemical weapons in Khartoum, Sudan—and were notorious failures. “The best post-facto intelligence we had was that bin Laden had left the training camp within an hour of the attack,” Clarke said. What went wrong? “I have reason to believe that a retired head of the I.S.I. was able to pass information along to Al Qaeda that an attack was coming,” he said.

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/030804fa_fact

Clinton authorized bold unprecedented action based on the best information available. It failed.

[AURaptor 1,128]

Clinton authorized bold unprecedented action based on the best information available. It failed.

Two things wrong about this.

1) Clinton trying to wag the dog while the Monica fiasco was occuring then and now trying to tell us he 'almost' has OBL is incredible. Completely. There are 365 days in the year, and the Clinton W.H. expected us to buy that tripe about it being mere coincidence that cruise missles are launched on the exact same date as his deposition? He can ***** swear all he wants, but that's not going to cover up the fact that he was, wagging the dog. Everyone knows it.

2) You want to vilify Bush for doing exactly the same thing as Clinton, - authorized bold unprecedented action based on the best information available.

Saddam was toppled, and the world witnessed one of the great military victories in human history.

[aucorner 0]

Clinton: I Would Have Attacked bin Laden

cough***bulls***cough

[AUesquire 1]

Wasn't it Clinton's choice for VP that scoffed at Ollie North for thinking his life was in danger from some kook named Osama Bin Laden?

[AURaptor 1,128]

Wasn't it Clinton's choice for VP that scoffed at Ollie North for thinking his life was in danger from some kook named Osama Bin Laden?

174653[/snapback]

It wasn't OBL. It was, I believe, Abu Nidal. Different terrorist, but still one that, oddly enough, got sanctuary from Saddam Hussien.

The wheel never stops turning....does it?

[CCTAU 3,351]

Wasn't it Clinton's choice for VP that scoffed at Ollie North for thinking his life was in danger from some kook named Osama Bin Laden?

174653[/snapback]

It wasn't OBL. It was, I believe, Abu Nidal. Different terrorist, but still one that, oddly enough, got sanctuary from Saddam Hussien.

The wheel never stops turning....does it?

174654[/snapback]

Yes. The wheel keeps turning. But as every Demoncrat knows, its just not turning efficiently enough. They will tell you that you need a new wheel that turns more efficiently, but they will never suggest a design for that new wheel. They just keep pointing out that the wheel you have sucks. And don't even try to suggest a design from a republican supporting designer. Cause then it's just all the good ole boys trying to stick together. Always bitching, no real solutions.

"You know, that new fusion reactor you have don't work. You should fix it."