>>You make a joke again right? IMO the clinton bunch did more to permit terrorists to enter the USA than any other political group in history. You must have read the many posts and news articles from many different sources about clinton turning down the offer from The Sudan to turn over bin laden. Was that clinton that ran from muslims in Somalia and encouraged them to try bigger and more horrific crimes? Was clinton around for the Cole incident? etc.etc.<<
Lorne -
Conservatives love to spew that crap about Clinton being soft on terrorism, because then they can blame him for 9/11, even though it happened on Bush's watch. But I notice that they didn't blame Bush Sr. for the first attack on the World Trade Center, even though that happened only 38 days after Clinton took office.
If you want to talk about an anti-terrorism record that is stunning in its lack of action, you really have to look at the first Bush Administration.
As for the crap about the offer from Sudan, there was never any offer from Sudan to turn over Bin Laden. The story is just bogus. Remember, Clinton had signed an order authorizing the assassination of Bin Laden. Why would he turn down a real offer to gain custody of the man? Answer, he wouldn't.
One shady jerk who was trying to curry favor with the U.S. government SAID there was an offer, but when the State Department checked with the actual government in Sudan, they found that there wasn't any such offer.
Yes, I do have a problem with SOME of Bush's anti-terrorism activities, which differ in significant ways from the rational plan proposed by Richard Clarke. Clarke proposed covert operations by, among others, Special Forces troops, not full-scale invasions.
Huge armies are, for obvious reasons, ineffective against terrorists. That's especially true when those armies are sent to countries with limited, if any, real ties to the terrorists.
The Bush Administration acts like the only two options are either large military operations or complete inaction. They tried the complete inaction thing for the first 8 months they were in office. We saw how that worked out.
Now they've tried the big wars, and the result has been a net increase in terrorist activity, and an increase in the ranks of disaffected, radicalized muslims willing to blow themselves up for a wrong-headed cause.
I will say that I think going into Afghanistan made sense, because there you had an entire government openly and materially supporting Al Qaeda. We also had the support of almost the entire world in that action.
Contrast that with the devestating blow on levels of international support that has been wrought by the Iraq fiasco.
And just ask yourself, is there more terrorist activity now than there was before we attacked Iraq, or less? Has there been more since Bush took office, or less?
- Allen |
