Bill Maher snapped last night

[ShadowBoxing]

didn't clinton setup a task force specifically focused on bin laden and al qaeda? i think i remember reading about that somewhere...

I don't know, maybe. I just thought he was referring to that whole "I left him a series of anti-terrorism initiatives"thing he said on FOX News.

 

[sinewave]

gotcha.

 

[Wilhelm-Scream]

PRESIDENT Bill Clinton turned down at least three offers involving foreign governments to help to seize Osama Bin Laden after he was identified as a terrorist who was threatening America, according to sources in Washington and the Middle East.

Clinton himself, according to one Washington source, has described the refusal to accept the first of the offers as "the biggest mistake" of his presidency.

The main reasons were legal: there was no evidence that could be brought against Bin Laden in an American court. But former senior intelligence sources accuse the administration of a lack of commitment to the fight against terrorism.

When Sudanese officials claimed late last year that Washington had spurned Bin Laden's secret extradition from Khartoum in 1996, former White House officials said they had no recollection of the offer. Senior sources in the former administration now confirm that it was true.

An Insight investigation has revealed that far from being an isolated incident this was the first in a series of missed opportunities right up to Clinton's last year in office. One of these involved a Gulf state; another would have relied on the assistance of Saudi Arabia.

In early 1996 America was putting strong pressure on Sudan's Islamic government to expel Bin Laden, who had been living there since 1991. Sources now reveal that Khartoum sent a former intelligence officer with Central Intelligence Agency connections to Washington with an offer to hand over Bin Laden — just as it had put another terrorist, Carlos the Jackal, into French hands in 1994.

At the time the State Department was describing Bin Laden as "the greatest single financier of terrorist projects in the world" and was accusing Sudan of harbouring terrorists. The extradition offer was turned down, however. A former senior White House source said: "There simply was not the evidence to prosecute Osama Bin Laden. He could not be indicted, so it would serve no purpose for him to have been brought into US custody."

A former figure in American counterterrorist intelligence claims, however, that there was "clear and convincing" proof of Bin Laden's conspiracy against America. In May, 1996, American diplomats were informed in a Sudanese government fax that Bin Laden was about to be expelled — giving Washington another chance to seize him. The decision not to do so went to the very top of the White House, according to former administration sources.

They say that the clear focus of American policy was to discourage the state sponsorship of terrorism. So persuading Khartoum to expel Bin Laden was in itself counted as a clear victory. The administration was "delighted".

Bin Laden took off from Khartoum on May 18 in a chartered C-130 plane with 150 of his followers, including his wives. He was bound for Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. On the way the plane refuelled in the Gulf state of Qatar, which has friendly relations with Washington, but he was allowed to proceed unhindered.

Barely a month later, on June 25, a 5,000lb truck bomb ripped apart the front of Khobar Towers, a US military housing complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The explosion killed 19 American servicemen. Bin Laden was immediately suspected.

Clinton is reported to have admitted how things went wrong in Sudan at a private dinner at a Manhattan restaurant shortly after September 11 last year. According to a witness, Clinton told a dinner companion that the decision to let Bin Laden go was probably "the biggest mistake of my presidency".

Clinton could not be reached for comment yesterday, but a former senior White House official acknowledged that the Sudan episode had been a "screw-up".

A second offer to get Bin Laden came unofficially from Mansoor Ijaz, a Pakistani-American millionaire who was a donor to Clinton's election campaign in 1996. On July 6, 2000, he visited John Podesta, then the president's chief of staff, to say that intelligence officers from a Gulf state were offering to help to extract Bin Laden.

Details of the meeting are confirmed in an exchange of e-mails between the White House and Ijaz, which have been seen by The Sunday Times. According to Ijaz, the offer involved setting up an Islamic relief fund to aid Afghanistan in return for the Taliban handing over Bin Laden to the Gulf state. America could then extract Bin Laden from there.

The Sunday Times has established that after a fierce internal row about the sincerity of the offer, the White House responded by sending Richard Clarke, Clinton's most senior counterterrorism adviser, to meet the rulers of the United Arab Emirates. They denied there was any such offer. Ijaz, however, maintained that the White House had thereby destroyed the deal, which was to have been arranged only through unofficial channels. Ijaz said that weeks later on a return trip to the Gulf he was taken on a late-night ride into the desert by his contact who told him that Clarke's front-door approach had upset a delicate internal balance and blown the deal. "Your government has missed a major opportunity," he recalls being told.

Senior former government sources said that Ijaz's offer had been treated in good faith but, with the denial of the UAE government, there was nothing to suggest it had credibility.

A third more mysterious offer to help came from the intelligence services of Saudi Arabia, then led by Prince Turki al-Faisal, according to Washington sources. Details of the offer are still unclear although, by one account, Turki offered to help to place a tracking device in the luggage of Bin Laden's mother, who was seeking to make a trip to Afghanistan to see her son. The CIA did not take up the offer.

Richard Shelby, the leading Republican on the Senate intelligence committee, said he was aware of a Saudi offer to help although, under rules protecting classified information, he was unable to discuss the details of any offer. Commenting generally, he said: "I don't believe that the fight against terrorism was the number one goal of the Clinton administration. I believe there were some lost opportunities."

...

 

[sinewave]

...

oh boy... you're just fueling the clinton-haters with this crap.

most of that sounds pretty questionable. got a link for this article?

 

[NateGray]

Yes.


You hear an attack is coming from 23 different sources, giving you the rough time window and target.
Lives will be lost but it's a legitimate sacrifice because it will allow you, who know better than the public, to usher in the beginings of a new golden age of power undreamt of.......so, you simply allow the attack to occur, by ordering your defense to stand down, 'cause this is what you've been waiting for for 10 years.


Or, you haul 100's of gigantic vehicles and silos into a hostile country, THROUGH all the surrounding hostile countries, where U.N. inspectors are dutifully inspecting (finding no WMD's), AND you have to kill the scores of men involved afterwards to ensure that they don't tell anyone.

Have you ever moved? If a bunch of Americans started moving s*** in (that's big enough to see from a satellite) to such a hostile country, that they'd been at war with before????

PLEASE.

The OTHER alternative is, you simply sit back and continue reading the Goat Book to the little children at school.

Says the guy drinking the koolaid..... just keep drinking its not poison yep not at all.
Seriously get a clue.
While the US government and many others have done atrocious acts in the past it would take believing in ZENU to think the US had anything to do with 911.
Let me take a stab here and you are a scientology person?

 

[Carcharodon]

...

 

[Wilhelm-Scream]

Says the guy drinking the koolaid..... just keep drinking its not poison yep not at all.

Whose Kool-Aid do you think I'm drinking?

Seriously get a clue.

I've got a boatload of clues.

While the US government and many others have done atrocious acts in the past it would take believing in ZENU to think the US had anything to do with 911.

That makes no sense.
You're saying there IS a precedent for the U.S. Government doing evil/Machiavellian things.
That means it's possible they would do it again.
There is no known precedent for the existence of wacky space beings invented by L. Ron Hubbard actually existing.
It's way easier to believe that a group of people who actually said we MUST return to Iraq, but that it would require some kind of attack to "justify" it, would allow an attack, which would expedite their goals, than it is to believe in a space creature no one's ever seen or heard, that was initially written about by a science fiction writer notorious for his questionable claims.

Let me take a stab here and you are a scientology person?

equally ******ed ^.

Trying to establish some connection between a belief in the possibility of political conspiracy (you know, something like Watergate, or the assassination of Lincoln, or the outrageous and documented covert undertakings of the C.I.A. in the 60's, or the theories about the burning of the Reichstag, etc.) and a belief in a wacky self-help cult is.......meh, you're a waste.

 

[Superhobo]

Whose Kool-Aid do you think I'm drinking?

I've got a boatload of clues.


That makes no sense.
You're saying there IS a precedent for the U.S. Government doing evil/Machiavellian things.
That means it's possible they would do it again.
There is no known precedent for the existence of wacky space beings invented by L. Ron Hubbard actually existing.
It's way easier to believe that a group of people who actually said we MUST return to Iraq, but that it would require some kind of attack to "justify" it, would allow an attack, which would expedite their goals, than it is to believe in a space creature no one's ever seen or heard, that was initially written about by a science fiction writer notorious for his questionable claims.

equally ******ed ^.

Trying to establish some connection between a belief in the possibility of political conspiracy (you know, something like Watergate, or the assassination of Lincoln, or the outrageous and documented covert undertakings of the C.I.A. in the 60's, or the theories about the burning of the Reichstag, etc.) and a belief in a wacky self-help cult is.......meh, you're a waste.

DAMN. You always amaze me with these posts, dude.

Right on. Right on.

 

[Wilhelm-Scream]

Here is a good link debunking Loose Change
http://www.loosechangeguide.com/LooseChangeGuide.html

Addresses the whole PNAC report too...they take that "New Pearl Harbor" quote way out of context.

BTW, before you go bashing this....READ THE W-H-O-L-E THING first, kay

Well in speaking in shorthand about PNAC's goals, I haven't made my take on it clear enough.

The problem is not that the "New Pearl Harbor" comment is taken out of context, it's that I'm looking at the larger context...PNAC itself.
It's not a case, as whoever wrote that "debunking" thinks it is, of the criminals stupidly declaring their nefarious plan publicly.
It's a case of connecting the statements to arrive at a picture of their attitude.

Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor.

The "transformation" would benefit/be accelerated by a Pearl Harbor event.
They WANT the "transformation" to occur.
They also want to return to Iraq and eventually "stabilize" the Middle East and settle the pesky oil issues.

Several times I've likened it to seeing an empty cookie jar and a boy there with crumbs on his face.
That's not PROOF that that particular boy ate those particular cookies but you can say it sure looks like he did.

They didn't overtly say "If only someone would blow up thousands of Americans, we could finally return to Iraq, conquer the Middle East and build a super arsenal! Darn.", but they did "say" it, if you look at what they're saying.
When you see that attitude, IN CONJUNCTION with all of the other fishy stuff, and the same core players involved throughout, I think it's foolish to just dismiss even the possibility, as "crackpot malarky".


It's like, if a billionaire's son writes to his wife in a letter:
"Short of Dad slipping into the pool and drowning, I'm afraid it's going to be a long wait until we can collect the inheritance."

...and then, the son fires all of home nursing staff 'cause HE'S going to take over supervising and caring for his Dad.


....and then a few months later, Dad slips into the pool and drowns....

I'm not going to just ignore those connections.

 

[Wilhelm-Scream]

DAMN. You always amaze me with these posts, dude.

Right on. Right on.

Well, really that one was just like shooting fish in a barrel because of the guy's bizarrely misguided Scientology thing ( ), but thanks.

 

[hippie_hunter]

I feel the main problem with the "Bush planned it!" part of there argument is that they're actually saying GWB is smart enough to plan a massive conspiracy and pull it off without anyone finding out about it...the man makes up his own words and can barely speak for gods sake...

That's what I love about those nut jobs, they'll say how much of a dumbass Bush is, yet he's also some diabolical genius capable of doing this.

 

[Wilhelm-Scream]

I feel the main problem with the "Bush planned it!" part of there argument is that they're actually saying GWB is smart enough to plan a massive conspiracy and pull it off without anyone finding out about it...the man makes up his own words and can barely speak for gods sake...

Wow, you don't know what you are talking about at all.
GWB is, almost universally considered to be a brainless puppet, the "face"/"figurehead", whose strings were pulled by

Dick Cheney
Donald Rumsfeld
Paul Wolfowitz

Karl Freaking Rove is known as "The BRAIN of Bush".
I have never, ever seen anyone suggest that Bush is a mastermind.

The "nutjobs" routinely, jokingly call Dick Cheney the President of the United States, stuff like that.

 

[ShadowBoxing]

The "transformation" would benefit/be accelerated by a Pearl Harbor event.
They WANT the "transformation" to occur.

You didn't even read the whole in context did you?...just the first sentence

You know that whole sentence meaning changes when you read it in context.

 

[Wilhelm-Scream]

I don't think you read it.
You have to go into it almost the end to get to the part I quoted.
How could I only read the first sentence?

 

[Wilhelm-Scream]

Any serious effort at transformation must occur within the larger framework of U.S. national security strategy, military missions and defense budgets. The United States cannot simply declare a "strategic pause" while experimenting with new technologies and operational concepts. Nor can it choose to pursue a transformation strategy that would decouple American and allied interests. A transformation strategy that solely pursued capabilities for projecting force from the United States, for example, and sacrificed forward basing and presence, would be at odds with larger American policy goals and would trouble American allies.


I see them talking about how lame all other strategies for "transformation" would be, except how cool and expedient it would be if a new Pearl Harbor happened.

What am I not getting?

 

[ShadowBoxing]

I don't think you read it.
You have to go into it almost the end to get to the part I quoted.
How could I only read the first sentence?

No it's not. It's a quarter way down the page
...of a six page site I might add.

Here I found it for you:

It is in no way a plan or suggestion for a "new Pearl Harbor." Is it plausible that these "conspirators" would publicly announce a plan to kill thousands of Americans?

So Wilhelm, since you read it all...what is the PNAC report about, exactly.

 

[Wilhelm-Scream]

So Wilhelm, since you read it all...what is the PNAC report about, exactly.

It's conveniently summed up right there.

The document is mostly concerned with the transformations the authors believe are necessary to keep America's military dominent in a world where many adversaries may soon have

1) Long range missiles, and
2) Satellite-based battlefield-awareness technology



Go back and read MY post.
The "transformation" is something Timmy, Jimmy and Bobby want.
The quickest way to their desires is if X happens.
Timmy, Jimmy and Bobby take over.
X happens.
We find out that 50 people were warning Tim and Jim and Bob that X might happen.
Wow, fishy.

 

[ShadowBoxing]

It's conveniently summed up right there.

The document is mostly concerned with the transformations the authors believe are necessary to keep America's military dominent in a world where many adversaries may soon have

1) Long range missiles, and
2) Satellite-based battlefield-awareness technology



Go back and read MY post.
The "transformation" is something Timmy, Jimmy and Bobby want.
The quickest way to their desires is if X happens.
Timmy, Jimmy and Bobby take over.
X happens.
We find out that 50 people were warning Tim and Jim and Bob that X might happen.
Wow, fishy.

So 9/11 was perpetrated with long range missiles and satellite based battlefield awareness technology now?

 

[Wilhelm-Scream]

oh my god

*see your 15 Minutes thread on The Site That Must Not Be Named

Seriously, try reading post #109 again, or for the first time.

 

[ShadowBoxing]

oh my god

*see your 15 Minutes thread on The Site That Must Not Be Named

Seriously, try reading post #109 again, or for the first time.

The document is mostly concerned with the transformations the authors believe are necessary to keep America's military dominent in a world where many adversaries may soon have

1) Long range missiles, and
2) Satellite-based battlefield-awareness technology

You said

Go back and read MY post.
The "transformation" is something Timmy, Jimmy and Bobby want.
The quickest way to their desires is if X happens.

"X" being
a world where many adversaries may soon have
1) Long range missiles, and
2) Satellite-based battlefield-awareness technology

i.e. "A New Pearl Harbor"

Timmy, Jimmy and Bobby take over.
X happens.
We find out that 50 people were warning Tim and Jim and Bob that X might happen.
Wow, fishy.

Ummm, you missed it did't you. "X" never happened. Pearl Harbor was an event perpetrated by an enemy (Japan) whose technology was on par, if not greater, than our own. 9/11 was perpetrated by low-tech terrorists, people with box cutters who highjacked planes, who by the way are only mentioned once and not seen as a viable threat in the PNAC report...or at least in regards to what they are requesting funding for.

All this stuff you posted references Reagan's administration heavily, hell it's in post 109. "The United States cannot simply declare a "strategic pause" while experimenting with new technologies and operational concepts." They are talking about "Star Wars". You know, funding for very advanced, very technologically sophisticated defense systems...used to say, deflect or destroy a nuke before it reaches our soil...ward off an attack by a series of enemy fighter jets, ya know like Pearl Harbor.

The last thing this document would want would be for American military interest to shift from sophisticated missile defense grids, to offensive military action against a low-tech enemy who is fought in a lengthly groundwar.

See why it's important to read things in context. You essentially have been using a document whose sole request was to move AWAY from fighting enemies on the ground with low-tech weaponry and focus on these future enemies who may start fighting wars with:
1) Long range missiles, and
2) Satellite-based battlefield-awareness technology
Those aren't exactly terrorists.

 

[NateGray]

Whose Kool-Aid do you think I'm drinking?

I've got a boatload of clues.


That makes no sense.
You're saying there IS a precedent for the U.S. Government doing evil/Machiavellian things.
That means it's possible they would do it again.
There is no known precedent for the existence of wacky space beings invented by L. Ron Hubbard actually existing.
It's way easier to believe that a group of people who actually said we MUST return to Iraq, but that it would require some kind of attack to "justify" it, would allow an attack, which would expedite their goals, than it is to believe in a space creature no one's ever seen or heard, that was initially written about by a science fiction writer notorious for his questionable claims.

equally ******ed ^.

Trying to establish some connection between a belief in the possibility of political conspiracy (you know, something like Watergate, or the assassination of Lincoln, or the outrageous and documented covert undertakings of the C.I.A. in the 60's, or the theories about the burning of the Reichstag, etc.) and a belief in a wacky self-help cult is.......meh, you're a waste.

Look little wackjob nutcase
You can believe what ever you want but tryiing to spin the crap you believe as fact ignoring REAL FACTS in doing so only makes you look like a MORON.
I was being nice with the scientology comment... you know giving your wackjob ass a way out.
But I see you are the dumbass who believes idiots like Michael Moore....
Comparing watergate to 9/11 yeh you are a dumbass aright.

 

[NateGray]

That's what I love about those nut jobs, they'll say how much of a dumbass Bush is, yet he's also some diabolical genius capable of doing this.

QFMFT

 

[Wilhelm-Scream]

The document is mostly concerned with the transformations the authors believe are necessary to keep America's military dominent in a world where many adversaries may soon have

1) Long range missiles, and
2) Satellite-based battlefield-awareness technology

You said

"X" being
a world where many adversaries may soon have
1) Long range missiles, and
2) Satellite-based battlefield-awareness technology

i.e. "A New Pearl Harbor"

Ummm, you missed it did't you. "X" never happened. Pearl Harbor was an event perpetrated by an enemy (Japan) whose technology was on par, if not greater, than our own. 9/11 was perpetrated by low-tech terrorists, people with box cutters who highjacked planes, who by the way are only mentioned once and not seen as a viable threat in the PNAC report...or at least in regards to what they are requesting funding for.

All this stuff you posted references Reagan's administration heavily, hell it's in post 109. "The United States cannot simply declare a "strategic pause" while experimenting with new technologies and operational concepts." They are talking about "Star Wars". You know, funding for very advanced, very technologically sophisticated defense systems...used to say, deflect or destroy a nuke before it reaches our soil...ward off an attack by a series of enemy fighter jets, ya know like Pearl Harbor.

The last thing this document would want would be for American military interest to shift from sophisticated missile defense grids, to offensive military action against a low-tech enemy who is fought in a lengthly groundwar.

See why it's important to read things in context. You essentially have been using a document whose sole request was to move AWAY from fighting enemies on the ground with low-tech weaponry and focus on these future enemies who may start fighting wars with:
1) Long range missiles, and
2) Satellite-based battlefield-awareness technology
Those aren't exactly terrorists.

You are completely missing what I am saying.
I'll try again.

You're focusing on the wrong part.

The document is mostly concerned with the transformations the authors believe are necessary to keep America's military dominant

How do we maintain global leadership?

America's global leadership, and its role as the guarantor of the current great-power peace, relies upon the safety of the American homeland; the preservation of a favorable balance of power in Europe, the Middle East and surrounding energyproducing region, and East Asia; and the general stability of the international system of nation-states relative to terrorists, organized crime, and other "non-state actors."

Check it out.

Generally, American strategy for the coming decades should seek to consolidate the great victories won in the 20th century - which have made Germany and Japan into stable democracies, for example - maintain stability in the Middle East,

Any serious effort at transformation must occur within the larger framework of U.S. national security strategy, military missions and defense budgets

Their goals are Way, Way, Way broader than just R+D for Buck Rogers space weapons. The transformation they want is an increase in defense spending,....so they can stay dominant and LEAD the world.

As far as Iraq being "the last thing they'd want", WRONG. It's exactly what they want. The last thing they want, is for it to go as it has gone.
Because, nay-sayers are fond of saying, "These f***-ups that are botching the war, THEY are supposed to be smart enough to carry off all these elaborate schemes?"
NO, they're NOT. They f***ed up. Your article even highlights their "cocky" attitude with regards to the Middle East, and it's well known that Rumsfeld's whole deal is to get more done with less. That's why Generals suggested huge numbers of men required to go into Iraq and he poo-pooed it.



Anyway, look at this part.

From an American perspective, the value of such bases would endure even should Saddam pass from the scene. Over the long term, Iran may well prove as large a threat to U.S. interests in the Gulf as Iraq has. And even should U.S.-Iranian relations improve, retaining forward-based forces in the region would still be an essential element in U.S. security strategy given the longstanding American interests in the region.

We all know that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, but 9/11 happened, even though we should've been fully prepared to prevent it. And FROM that event, the Patriot Act, an "inexplicable" war with Iraq, talk of bombing Iran...

The "Transformation" is one of their goals. I'm saying, they have it set up so that a Pearl Harbor event, is a GOOD thing, for expediting their goals.
That's what was SAID.
And then, I'm extrapolating, saying that the comment bespeaks an attitude.
I freely admitted that I've spoken about the relation between their many individual goals and "Pearl Harbor" event, in "shorthand", AND that it isn't PROOF of a desire for 9/11 to occur, but that, given THE LARGER CONTEXT OF PNAC as a group with GOALS, IN CONJUNCTION with all the other discrepancies and anomalies, SUGGESTS, to ME, that the present administration had so much to gain from the P.R. op (aganda) of 9/11, that that it wasn't baffling ineptitude that made Cheney order jets not to scramble or to ignore SCREAMING warnings from all over the world, but that it was intentional.

 

[sinewave]

Man, SB and Wilhelm are like those two guys in Michael Jackson's "Beat It" video dancing around with their wrists tied to each other's, but instead of switchblades they're armed with s. It's like a battle for the title of "Mr. Condescending Know-it-all" of 2007. Good times!

 

[Wilhelm-Scream]

Look little wackjob nutcase
You can believe what ever you want but tryiing to spin the crap you believe as fact ignoring REAL FACTS in doing so only makes you look like a MORON.
I was being nice with the scientology comment... you know giving your wackjob ass a way out.
But I see you are the dumbass who believes idiots like Michael Moore....
Comparing watergate to 9/11 yeh you are a dumbass aright.

First of all, I'm wondering why you have so much hostility about this, with the name-calling.
I'm not "little", nor am I a "wackjob" or a "nutcase".
I'm not ignoring ANY "real facts".
I was not comparing 9/11 to Watergate, I was saying that what we know about Watergate and what's theorized about 9/11 would fall under "POLITICAL CONSPIRACY", which is stuff that occurs in the real WORLD?
as opposed to Xenu being real?
And that to say that if you think a gov't. might use amoral secrecy to achieve a goal, you must....believe in the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard is completely 100% ******ed and makes no sense, as we know for a fact, that governments HAVE done that in the past. Indisputable.


Finally, I think you have me mixed up with someone else, because, you keep throwing out descriptions of me that aren't applicable in any way.

First you said I must be a Scientologist. I am most definitely very, very ANTI-Scientology.
Next, you say that I must be a Michael Moore fan, and I'm not.
He has said true things, and he has been full of s*** and been shamefully manipulative and misguided.



Really, just shut up.