posted September 27, 2006 02:27 AM              

I love this comment, personally:

quote:

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"We should replay that interview as often as possible," chortled Republican strategist Nelson Warfield on Tuesday.

"In this election there's been a lot of worry among Republicans about whether our base is motivated and is going to turn out to vote," Warfield said. "Nothing motivates the Republican base more than some puffy pontification from Bill Clinton. When he has a little fit on TV, it reminds us of the future that awaits if the Democrats should ever win another national election."

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LOL ROFL Little fit.... once again reminded me of GU

posted September 27, 2006 04:33 PM            

So, this is the same old Liar in Chief doing what he always does when confronted with his corruption or incompetence....he either blows his stack as he did on Fox News or he lies through his teeth.

"I did not have sex with that woman, MS Lewdwinski".

This is the truth, not a rewriting history as Bill and Hill and leftist democrats are attempting to do.

Much of the information comes from the bipartisan "Report of the Joint Inquiry into the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001," which was jointly published by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in December 2002.

None of this even deals with the fact that Commander Corruption refused an offer by Sudan to arrest bin Laden...who was in Sudan with his top al-Qaeda leaders...and turn the whole bunch over to the United States. Sudan made that offer 3 times in an attempt to improve relations with the United States and Clinton stiffed them every time.

What is striking is that after refusing Sudan's offer, Clinton directed the CIA to set up a desk to track bin Laden. His excuse that he couldn't take bin Laden off Sudan's hands falls flat upon that revelation..since he set up that group within weeks of refusing to take bin Laden from Sudan.

Note the dates on these briefings and findings...all well within the years of the Clinton administration and all well before 9/11. Clinton did nothing.

Both Clintons are liars.

Warning Signs
Hillary Clinton attempts to rewrite history.
by Thomas Joscelyn
09/27/2006 1:45:00 PM

"The Intelligence Community has strong indications that Bin Laden intends to conduct or sponsor attacks inside the United States."
-Classified document signed by President Clinton in December 1998

YESTERDAY, in the wake of President Clinton's interview on Fox News, Senator Hillary Clinton defended her husband's counterterrorism track record. Reacting to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's assertion that the Bush administration "was at least as aggressive" in the eight months preceding September 11, 2001 as the Clinton administration was in the years prior, the former first lady remarked:

"I'm certain that if my husband and his national security team had been shown a classified report entitled 'Bin Laden Determined To Attack Inside the United States' he would have taken it more seriously than history suggests it was taken by our current president and his national security team."

Apparently referring to the August 6, 2001 presidential daily briefing, which was entitled "bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US," Senator Clinton suggested that her husband did not receive the same type of warnings that President Bush did.

In fact, President Clinton signed a similar classified document--which contained an explicit warning from the U.S. Intelligence Community that bin Laden intended to strike inside the United States, more than two years prior to leaving office. And the U.S. intelligence community collected numerous pieces of intelligence concerning bin Laden's determination to strike inside the United States during President Clinton's tenure. In addition to the failed plot against the World Trade Center in 1993 and the failed al Qaeda plot against LAX airport in 1999, there were clear indications that bin Laden's terror empire intended to strike targets in the continental United States.

The warning signs collected during the Clinton administration are outlined in the bipartisan "Report of the Joint Inquiry into the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001," which was jointly published by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in December 2002.

The Joint Inquiry outlines a number of U.S. government failures in the years leading up to September 11, 2001. Among the report's findings, the committees concluded that prior to September 11, 2001: The "U.S. Intelligence Community was involved in fighting a 'war' against Bin Laden largely without the benefit of what some would call its most potent weapon in that effort: an alert and committed American public."

The report goes on to list three examples of "information that was shared with senior U.S. Government officials, but was not made available to the American public because of its national security classification." This information was "explicit about the gravity and immediacy of the threat posed by Bin Laden" and included "a classified document" signed by President Clinton in December 1998, which read in part:

"The Intelligence Community has strong indications that Bin Laden intends to conduct or sponsor attacks inside the United States."

This conclusion was based on numerous threads of evidence. Beginning in 1998 the U.S. intelligence community received regular reporting concerning not only al Qaeda's determination to carry out attacks in the United States but that the terror group also planned to hijack civilian aircraft. Some of the reporting even specifically referenced the World Trade Center.

On page 124, for example, the Joint Inquiry lists six instances--all prior to 2001--in which the intelligence indicated al Qaeda was planning attacks on U.S. soil:

In June 1998, the Intelligence Community obtained information from several sources that Osama Bin Laden was considering attacks in the United States, including against Washington, D. C. and New York;

In August 1998, the Intelligence Community obtained information that a group of unidentified Arabs planned to crash an explosive-laden plane from a foreign country into the World Trade Center;

In September 1998, the Intelligence Community obtained information that Osama Bin Laden's next operation could possibly involve flying an aircraft loaded with explosives into a U.S. airport;

In October 1998, the Intelligence Community obtained information that al-Qaeda was trying to establish an operative cell within the United States, and that there might be an effort underway to recruit U.S. citizen- Islamists and U.S.-based expatriates from the Middle East and North Africa;

In September 1999, the Intelligence Community obtained information that Osama Bin Laden and others were planning a terrorist act in the United States, possibly against specific landmarks in California and New York City; and

In late 1999, the Intelligence Community obtained information regarding the Bin Laden network's possible plans to attack targets in Washington, D. C. and New York City during the New Year's Millennium celebrations.

The report goes on to note that the "group of unidentified Arabs" mentioned in the information obtained in August 1998 were later "linked to al-Qaeda." The Federal Aviation Administration, however, "found the plot to be highly unlikely
given the state of the foreign country's aviation program" and "that a flight originating outside the United States would be detected before it reached its target." The FBI's New York office, therefore, "took no action on the information."

On page 210, the Joint Inquiry reports this warning sign:

In January 1996, the Intelligence Community obtained information concerning a planned suicide attack by persons associated with Shaykh al-Rahman [note: aka the "Blind Shaykh"] and a key al-Qaeda operative to fly to the United States from Afghanistan and attack the White House.

On page 211, of the Joint Inquiry report, we learn the following:

In April 2000, the Intelligence Community obtained information regarding an alleged Bin Laden plot to hijack a Boeing 747. The source, a "walk-in" to the FBI's Newark office, claimed that he had learned hijacking techniques and received arms training in a Pakistani camp. He also claimed that he was to meet five or six persons in the United States. Some of these persons would be pilots who had been instructed to take over a plane, fly to Afghanistan, or, if they could not make it there, blow the plane up. Although the source passed a polygraph, the Bureau was unable to verify any aspect of his story or identify his contacts in the United States.

ALL OF THIS, and more, led the authors of the Joint Inquiry to conclude that from 1998 through the summer of 2001, the U.S. Intelligence Community was hindered in its counterterrorism efforts by a number of "systemic weaknesses," including:

Despite intelligence reporting from 1998 through the summer of 2001 indicating that Osama Bin Laden's terrorist network intended to strike inside the United States, the United States Government did not undertake a comprehensive effort to implement defensive measures in the United States.

The report notes that the intelligence disseminated from 1998 on "encompassed, for example, indications of plots for attacks within the United States," including "attacks on civil aviation; assassinations of U.S. public officials; use of high explosives; attacks on Washington, D.C., New York City, and cities on the West Coast; crashing aircraft into buildings as weapons; and using weapons of mass destruction." [emphasis added]

As with the August 6, 2001 PDB, "the intelligence that was acquired and shared by the Intelligence Community was not specific as to time and place." Nonetheless, it "should have been sufficient to prompt action to insure a heightened sense of alert and implementation of additional defensive measures."

That's the real point in all of this. Prior to September 11, 2001, no one in the U.S. Government--Republican or Democrat--did enough to stop the terrorist threat from metastasizing on U.S. soil.

Senator Clinton's attempted whitewash of her husband's record does not change that.

posted September 27, 2006 04:59 PM            

Clinton jabbed his finger in Wallace's face, poking his knee, and invading the commentator's space.

But beyond noting the ex-president's non-presidential style, it is important to answer his distortions and misrepresentations. His self-justifications constitute a mangling of the truth which only someone who once quibbled about what the "definition of ‘is' is" could perform.

Clinton told Wallace, "There is not a living soul in the world who thought that Osama bin Laden had anything to do with Black Hawk Down." Nobody said there was. The point of citing Somalia in the run up to 9/11 is that bin Laden told Fortune Magazine in a 1999 interview that the precipitous American pullout after Black Hawk Down convinced him that Americans would not stand up to armed resistance.

Clinton said conservatives "were all trying to get me to withdraw from Somalia in 1993 the next day" after the attack which killed American soldiers. But the real question was whether Clinton would honor the military's request to be allowed to stay and avenge the attack, a request he denied.

The debate was not between immediate withdrawal and a six-month delay. (Then-first lady, now-Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) favored the first option, by the way). The fight was over whether to attack or pull out eventually without any major offensive operations.

The president told Wallace, "I authorized the CIA to get groups together to try to kill bin Laden." But actually, the 9-11 Commission was clear that the plan to kidnap Osama was derailed by Sandy Berger and George Tenet because Clinton had not yet made a finding authorizing his assassination. They were fearful that Osama would die in the kidnapping and the U.S. would be blamed for using assassination as an instrument of policy.

Clinton claims "the CIA and the FBI refused to certify that bin Laden was responsible [for the Cole bombing] while I was there." But he could replace or direct his employees as he felt. His helplessness was, as usual, self-imposed.

Why didn't the CIA and FBI realize the extent of bin Laden's involvement in terrorism? Because Clinton never took the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center sufficiently seriously. He never visited the site and his only public comment was to caution against "over-reaction."

In his pre-9/11 memoirs, George Stephanopoulos confirms that he and others on the staff saw it as a "failed bombing" and noted that it was far from topic A at the White House. Rather than the full-court press that the first terror attack on American soil deserved, Clinton let the investigation be handled by the FBI on location in New York without making it the national emergency it actually was.

In my frequent phone and personal conversations with both Clintons in 1993, there was never a mention, not one, of the World Trade Center attack. It was never a subject of presidential focus.

Failure to grasp the import of the 1993 attack led to a delay in fingering bin Laden and understanding his danger. This, in turn, led to our failure to seize him when Sudan evicted him and also to our failure to carry through with the plot to kidnap him. And, it was responsible for the failure to "certify" him as the culprit until very late in the Clinton administration.

The former president says, "I worked hard to try to kill him." If so, why did he notify Pakistan of our cruise-missile strike in time for them to warn Osama and allow him to escape? Why did he refuse to allow us to fire cruise missiles to kill bin Laden when we had the best chance, by far, in 1999?

The answer to the first question — incompetence; to the second — he was paralyzed by fear of civilian casualties and by accusations that he was wagging the dog. The 9/11 Commission report also attributes the 1999 failure to the fear that we would be labeled trigger-happy having just bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade by mistake.

President Clinton assumes that criticism of his failure to kill bin Laden is a "nice little conservative hit job on me." But he has it backwards. It is not because people are right-wingers that they criticize him over the failure to prevent 9/11. It was his failure to catch bin Laden that drove them to the right wing.

The ex-president is fully justified in laying eight months of the blame for the failure to kill or catch bin Laden at the doorstep of George W. Bush. But he should candidly acknowledge that eight years of blame fall on him.