Posted on 09/25/2006 8:44:26 AM PDT by DBCJR
“I worked hard to try and kill him,” former president Bill Clinton told Fox News Sunday. “I tried. I tried and failed.”
”Him” is Osama bin Laden. And in his interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, the former president based nearly his entire defense on one source: Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror, the book by former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke. “All I’m asking is if anybody wants to say I didn’t do enough, you read Richard Clarke’s book,” Clinton said at one point in the interview. “All you have to do is read Richard Clarke’s book to look at what we did in a comprehensive systematic way to try to protect the country against terror,” he said at another. “All you have to do is read Richard Clarke’s findings and you know it’s not true,” he said at yet another point. In all, Clinton mentioned Clarke’s name 11 times during the Fox interview.
But Clarke’s book does not, in fact, support Clinton’s claim. Judging by Clarke’s sympathetic account — as well as by the sympathetic accounts of other former Clinton aides like Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon — it’s not quite accurate to say that Clinton tried to kill bin Laden.
(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...
See a Recent Letter Signed by Democratic Senatorial Leadership Threatening Disney about ABC's broadcasting license:
The Senate Democratic leadership threatened Disney's broadcast license (ABC) regarding The Path to 9/11 mini-series aired on September 10 and 11 depicting the events that lead up to 9/11 because the series, based upon the 9/11 Commission Report, clearly implicated the Clinton Administration. http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/senate-democratic-leadership-threatens.html
This is despite an abundance of evidence that what was depicted in the miniseries The Path to 9/11 was true - and worse:
Twice in 2000, including one time after the USS Cole bombing, Clinton had bin Laden in his sights and failed to pull the trigger, according to a senior Pentagon official familiar with covert counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan at the time. He said the CIA had equipped pro-U.S. factions on the ground in Afghanistan with high-tech surveillance gear from the Defense Department to track bin Laden. They were armed with sniper rifles and shoulder-fired rocket launchers, the official explained, and had the OK to assassinate bin Laden on orders from U.S. intelligence back in Washington. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=34942
NBC Documentary
Over the next three nights, NBC News will present this incredible spy footage and reveal some of the difficult questions it has raised for the 9/11 commission. In 1993, the first World Trade Center bombing killed six people. In 1998, the bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa killed 224. Both were the work of al-Qaida and bin Laden, who in 1998 declared holy war on America, making him arguably the most wanted man in the world. In 1998, President Clinton announced, “We will use all the means at our disposal to bring those responsible to justice, no matter what or how long it takes.”
NBC News has obtained, exclusively, extraordinary secret video, shot by the U.S. government. It illustrates an enormous opportunity the Clinton administration had to kill or capture bin Laden. Critics call it a missed opportunity. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4540958/
VANITY FAIR OBTAINED LETTERS and memorandums that document approaches made by Sudanese intelligence officials and other emissaries to members of the Clinton administration to share information about many of the 22 terrorists on the government's most-wanted list, including: Osama bin Laden. THE MUKHABARAT, A SUDANESE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, spent the early to mid-1990s amassing copious amounts of information on bin Laden and his cohorts at a time when they were relatively unknown and their activities limited, author David Rose reports. From the fall of 1996 until weeks before the September 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, the Mukhabarat made repeated efforts to share its files on terrorists with the U.S. On more than one occasion senior F.B.I. officials wanted to accept the offers, but were apparently overruled by the State Department under the Clinton Administration.
http://www.tupbiosystems.com/articles/sudan_bin_laden.html
President Clinton and his national security team ignored several opportunities to capture Osama bin Laden and his terrorist associates, including one as late as last year. I know because I [MANSOOR IJAZ ] negotiated more than one of the opportunities. From 1996 to 1998, I opened unofficial channels between Sudan and the Clinton administration. I met with officials in both countries, including Clinton, U.S. National Security Advisor Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger and Sudan's president and intelligence chief. LA Times http://www.infowars.com/saved%20pages/Prior_Knowledge/Clinton_let_bin_laden.htm
Washington Post: Clinton Paralyzed About Making Decisions About Bin Laden
Between 1998 and 2000, the CIA and President Bill Clinton's national security team were caught up in paralyzing policy disputes as they secretly debated the legal permissions for covert operations against Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.
The debates left both White House counterterrorism analysts and CIA career operators frustrated and at times confused about what kinds of operations could be carried out, according to interviews with more than a dozen officials and lawyers who were directly involved.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59781-2004Feb21.html
Aide: Clinton Unleashed bin Laden
Chuck Noe, NewsMax.com Thursday, Dec. 6, 2001
Bill Clinton ignored repeated opportunities to capture Osama bin Laden and his terrorist allies and is responsible for the spread of terrorism, one of the ex-president’s own top aides charges.
Mansoor Ijaz, who negotiated with Sudan on behalf of Clinton from 1996 to 1998, paints a portrait of a White House plagued by incompetence, focused on appearances rather than action, and heedless of profound threats to national security.
Ijaz also claims Clinton passed on an opportunity to have Osama bin Laden arrested.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/12/5/153637.shtml
Years before the public knew about Osama bin Laden, Bill Clinton did. Bin Laden first attacked Americans during Clinton's presidential transition in December 1992. He struck again at the World Trade Center in February 1993. Over the next eight years the archterrorist's attacks would escalate killing hundreds and wounding thousands -- while Clinton did his best to stymie the FBI and CIA and refused to wage a real war on terror. http://www.geocities.com/cmcofer/clinton2.html http://www.nationalreview.com/interrogatory/interrogatory091103b.asp
PBS documentary called Saddam's Ultimate Solution,
former Clinton State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said:
"Tonight, we examine the nature of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Ten years after the Gulf War and Saddam is still there and still continues to stockpile weapons of mass destruction. Now there are suggestions he is working with al Qaeda, which means the very terrorists who attacked the United States last September may now have access to chemical and biological weapons."
The documentary, broadcast on July 11, 2002, laid out in exhaustive detail alleged Iraqi connections with al Qaeda.
http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/274fwxli.asp
Clinton sites Iraq/Al-Qaeda Connection for WMDs
Back on Feb. 17, 1998, Hayes notes, Clinton – speaking at the Pentagon – warned of the "reckless acts of outlaw nations and an unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers and organized international criminals." He said these "predators of the twenty-first century," who are America's enemies, "will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and missiles to deliver them. We simply cannot allow that to happen. There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein's Iraq."
And later the same spring, Clinton's Justice Department prepared an indictment of al-Qaida's leader, Osama bin Laden, in which a prominent passage located in the fourth paragraph reads:
"Al-Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al-Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al-Qaeda would work cooperatively with the government of Iraq."
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/7/11/154020.shtml
give him some cheese - he's got the whine down pretty good.
I would recommend the reprobate read Richard Miniter's book 'Losing Bin Laden' he might learn something.
Its like "all those burning churches in Arkansas," when Slick was growing up. It didn't happen. The remark is the mark of a cornered liar, making up a strawman to knock down.
This interview is vintage Clinton. He obsesses about "the right wing" being out to get him even still, blames conservatives or some imagined right wing bias on the part of Chris Wallace for the attempt to conduct a thorough and vigorous interview with him in contrast to the fawning softball interviews he's use to from Larry King and the other dupes in the media he normally gets, he hypocritically accuses Chris Wallace of lying about the interview that half of it would be devoted to his global warming vomit, but then spends over 10 minutes filibustering and ranting to one question put forward by Chris Wallace while attacking Wallace for half the interview not being devoted to his ego trip disguised as a global warming initiative. Wallace tries at least twice to move on to what Clinton claims he wants to be asked about, but then Clinton continues to rant about being accused, rightly, of failing to get Bin Laden and STILL accuses Wallace of conducting the interview on "false pretenses" even as Wallace tries to get Clinton off his obsessive ranting.
Then also in vintage Clinton style, he blames the US military, the FBI and the CIA for his many failures to get Bin Laden as if he wasn't their commander in chief and he takes orders from them rather than the other way around, claims he didn't strike back after the bombing of the Cole because the FBI and CIA somehow prevented him by not certifying it was Bin Laden, but mind you even a 4 year old could have made that connection, and on and on Clinton's usual mental illness and delusional blathering goes.
I hope this serves to FINALLY wake up the American public to what a sick and depraved soul this amoral low life is and that they cease from their silly delusions about him somehow having been a good president or a good anything else. This interview reveals Clinton for what he truly is. A supreme narcissist unable to accept blame or to see himself as anything other than flawless (even when he admits he failed to get Bin Laden it's with the lie that it wasn't for a lack of trying), a hypocrite, a paranoid delusionist, someone mired in an endless persecution complex as a means of escaping any serious self-assessments of his abundant failings of character and judgement, someone not in control of his temper and emotions sufficiently to thoughtfully consider views that do not square with his own, a shameless self-promoter completely intolerant of criticism devoid of any ability to hear contrary views of himself and his policies, a man accutely stunted in terms of maturity as evidenced from his inability to hear alternative views of his presidency without angrily attributing some sinister motive or conspiracy as spawning them and most of all a master liar who accuses others of lying even as he spews forth the most bald-faced of prevarications (i.e. claiming Chris Wallace accused him of "giving aid and comfort to Bin Laden," calling ABC's movie "right wing" or that it wasn't based on the 9-11 Commission report, that Richard Clarke was "demoted" prior to 9-11, and on and on.)
In short, this much emotion being displayed in answer to one question shows Clinton knows he's guilty of having failed the nation on Bin Laden and Al Qaeda and that Chris Wallace had him dead to rights, as do the rest of us who recognize that far from being such an excellent and hyper-competent president, his was one of the worst, most feckless and amoral presidencies known to the history of the Republic and a nearly completely failed presidency.
is this real time, i.e. 9/25-27/06 or archived?
"...and that little ole impeached for lying thing!"
>>"But the bottom line is that Bill Clinton, the commander-in-chief, could not find the will to order the military into action against al Qaeda, and Bill Clinton, the head of the executive branch, could not find the will to order the CIA and FBI to act. No matter what the former president says on Fox, or anywhere else, that is his legacy in the war on terror."<<
Thank you Byron York!!! Clinton stepped into it big-time yesterday, and he forgot that us Right-winged-conspirators now have the internet to conspire against him with.
And since Clinton is convinced this is all some "right wing conspiracy" he should read liberal Gerald Posner's book "Why America Slept" which details at least 3-4 more instances of Clinton allowing Bin Laden to get away, including the painful tail of Clinton allowing Bin Laden and 150 top Al Qaeda officials get away when the Sudan offered us to them all wrapped up nicely in a C-130 aircraft. But no, Clinton told the Air Force to allow the plane to proceed unhindered to Afghanistan.
Posner was a twice Clinton voter who said on CSPAN he'd never vote for Clinton again even if he could have after what he learned about Clinton's dereliction of duty in dealing with Al Qaeda in the 90s. Posner is a former New York Times journalist. This is not right wing conspirator.
"But the bottom line is that Bill Clinton, the commander-in-chief, could not find the will to order the military into action against al Qaeda, and Bill Clinton, the head of the executive branch, could not find the will to order the CIA and FBI to act. No matter what the former president says on Fox, or anywhere else, that is his legacy in the war on terror."
I think Clinton should change his name to PONTIUS PILOT. He washed his hands wanted someone else to do his dirty work.
He was this close to giving everyone the health care they deserve, the education to all children, curing AIDS, improving sliced bread, etc...but those mean old Republicans, the VRWC, kept him from delivering.
RICHARD CLARKE: Um, the first point, I think the overall point is, there was no plan on Al Qaeda that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration.
That should be a woman's hand in that cartoon.
He says that the "neocons" were against him going after Bin Laden "all the time".
How did Kosovo fit into that strategy?
This was posted on another thread yesterday. Monsoor Ijaz is a Democrat.
December 5, 2001
Clinton Let Bin Laden Slip Away and Metastasize
Sudan offered up the terrorist and data on his network. The then-president and his advisors didn't respond.
By MANSOOR IJAZ
President Clinton and his national security team ignored several opportunities to capture Osama bin Laden and his terrorist associates, including one as late as last year.
I know because I negotiated more than one of the opportunities.
From 1996 to 1998, I opened unofficial channels between Sudan and the Clinton administration. I met with officials in both countries, including Clinton, U.S. National Security Advisor Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger and Sudan's president and intelligence chief. President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, who wanted terrorism sanctions against Sudan lifted, offered the arrest and extradition of Bin Laden and detailed intelligence data about the global networks constructed by Egypt's Islamic Jihad, Iran's Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas.
Among those in the networks were the two hijackers who piloted commercial airliners into the World Trade Center.
The silence of the Clinton administration in responding to these offers was deafening.
As an American Muslim and a political supporter of Clinton, I feel now, as I argued with Clinton and Berger then, that their counter-terrorism policies fueled the rise of Bin Laden from an ordinary man to a Hydra-like monster.
Realizing the growing problem with Bin Laden, Bashir sent key intelligence officials to the U.S. in February 1996.
The Sudanese offered to arrest Bin Laden and extradite him to Saudi Arabia or, barring that, to "baby-sit" him--monitoring all his activities and associates.
But Saudi officials didn't want their home-grown terrorist back where he might plot to overthrow them.
In May 1996, the Sudanese capitulated to U.S. pressure and asked Bin Laden to leave, despite their feeling that he could be monitored better in Sudan than elsewhere.
Bin Laden left for Afghanistan, taking with him Ayman Zawahiri, considered by the U.S. to be the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks; Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, who traveled frequently to Germany to obtain electronic equipment for Al Qaeda; Wadih El-Hage, Bin Laden's personal secretary and roving emissary, now serving a life sentence in the U.S. for his role in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya; and Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Saif Adel, also accused of carrying out the embassy attacks.
Some of these men are now among the FBI's 22 most-wanted terrorists.
The two men who allegedly piloted the planes into the twin towers, Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi, prayed in the same Hamburg mosque as did Salim and Mamoun Darkazanli, a Syrian trader who managed Salim's bank accounts and whose assets are frozen.
Important data on each had been compiled by the Sudanese.
But U.S. authorities repeatedly turned the data away, first in February 1996; then again that August, when at my suggestion Sudan's religious ideologue, Hassan Turabi, wrote directly to Clinton; then again in April 1997, when I persuaded Bashir to invite the FBI to come to Sudan and view the data; and finally in February 1998, when Sudan's intelligence chief, Gutbi al-Mahdi, wrote directly to the FBI.
Gutbi had shown me some of Sudan's data during a three-hour meeting in Khartoum in October 1996. When I returned to Washington, I told Berger and his specialist for East Africa, Susan Rice, about the data available. They said they'd get back to me. They never did. Neither did they respond when Bashir made the offer directly. I believe they never had any intention to engage Muslim countries--ally or not. Radical Islam, for the administration, was a convenient national security threat.
And that was not the end of it. In July 2000--three months before the deadly attack on the destroyer Cole in Yemen--I brought the White House another plausible offer to deal with Bin Laden, by then known to be involved in the embassy bombings. A senior counter-terrorism official from one of the United States' closest Arab allies--an ally whose name I am not free to divulge--approached me with the proposal after telling me he was fed up with the antics and arrogance of U.S. counter-terrorism officials.
The offer, which would have brought Bin Laden to the Arab country as the first step of an extradition process that would eventually deliver him to the U.S., required only that Clinton make a state visit there to personally request Bin Laden's extradition. But senior Clinton officials sabotaged the offer, letting it get caught up in internal politics within the ruling family--Clintonian diplomacy at its best.
Clinton's failure to grasp the opportunity to unravel increasingly organized extremists, coupled with Berger's assessments of their potential to directly threaten the U.S., represents one of the most serious foreign policy failures in American history.
*
Mansoor Ijaz, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, is chairman of a New York-based investment company.
97 posted on 09/22/2006 7:32:19 PM CDT by woofie
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Bubba claimed that the Bush Administration "dropped the ball" but Laura Ingraham closed her show today playing an audiotape from an "open mike" comment from Richard Clarke (Bubba's "go to guy" referenced in his Sunday interview) that there was no plan regarding Al Qaeda passed to the Bush administration.
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