Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Al Gore vs George Bush: the moderate's perspective -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (3692)	10/26/2000 9:20:05 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Respond to of 10042

Yeah right, Clinton-Gore ignored terrorist threats. Well crap... I would have to grudgingly say I agree with you on this one... Even I'm not conspiratorial minded enough to believe he KNOWINGLY ignored direct warnings of a specific attack. HOWEVER... (and you knew that was coming.. :0).. Under the Clinton/Gore administration at least 1/2 million new or lapsed security clearances are waiting to be adjudicated, renewed, or granted. And one investigator who was interviewing me for an associate I once served with admitted to me that the number is more like 1 million. Furthermore, at least 20% of those clearances are TS, or TS SBI, which is the ONLY type of clearance that specifically permitted to handle SIGINT (signal intelligence) and electronic intercepts. If those people are waiting for their security clearances to be updated (which can take months), they are, by regulation, not permitted to work with, or be exposed to classified information. And that means that there are 20% fewer personnel available to copy, translate, interpret, analyze, or relay that highly classified information in an timely manner. It also means that, effectively speaking, there are 20% more people doing "make work" while they wait for the DSS to complete their case on a budget that has been cut by 40% by the Clinton/Gore adminstration. Ponder that when you take your trip to the voting booth..

To: American Spirit who wrote (3692)	10/26/2000 9:29:31 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Respond to of 10042

XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX THU OCT 26, 2000 11:12:24 ET XXXXX FLYNT TOLD TO 'PUT UP OR SHUT UP' ON BUSH 'ABORTION'; WOMAN DENIES PORN KING’S ALLEGATION Exclusive Friends and family of a woman at the center of Larry Flynt’s investigation into Republican presidential hopeful George W. Bush blasted the porn king for spreading abortion allegations and challenged Flynt to ‘put up or shut up,’ the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal. "Mr. Flynt better start naming names!" demanded a close friend of the Texas woman at the center of the storm. "What is he afraid of? We all know this is a setup by desperate Gore supporters. Mr. Flynt will not go into specifics, because he can’t! The story he is spreading around is pathetic. Put up or shut up, Mr. Flynt!" The controversy surrounding Flynt’s allegation intensified late last week after the all-news network CNN aired the charge. "We've found out in the early 1970s Bush was involved in an abortion in Texas," the HUSTLER publisher reported on CNN. Flynt did not offer specifics. "How could I have aborted George Bush’s child? We never once had intercourse!" the woman explained to friends. "This is outrageous." The woman’s husband, a government employee in law enforcement, has raised the possibility of legal action against anyone who links his wife to a 'Bush abortion'. Investigators working for Flynt launched their investigation after the woman’s college roommate came forward and offered to sell information that dated back thirty years. "She once overheard her roommate on the phone arranging for a doctor, but she never heard the voice on the other side of the phone," said a source. Flynt and the roommate could not reach financial terms, one insider told the DRUDGE REPORT. Flynt repeated his story on ABC radio in San Francisco on Wednesday night. Appearing on Bernie Ward's KGO-AM 810 talk show, Flynt said the abortion took place in Houston in 1970 during the elder Bush's campaign for a seat in Washington. At that time, the younger Bush was working in the campaign. Flynt claimed he had affidavits from four witnesses. Once again, Flynt did not offer names. Developing... drudgereport.com

To: American Spirit who wrote (3692)	10/26/2000 9:54:10 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10042

But here is another opinion about the USS COLE. An intimately knowledgable one based upon being America's most decorated soldier, combat vet of 3 wars, and critical analyst on US military policy: KNOW-IT-ALLS NEVER LEARN BY DAVID H. HACKWORTH There's a striking and alarming parallel between the USS Cole catastrophe -- which took 17 sailors' lives and zeroed out a billion-dollar warship -- and one that occurred seven years ago to our force in Somalia, where 18 American soldiers died. No one at the top seems to have learned much from Somalia, which happened at the beginning of President Clinton's term. Now, days before the election, he and his gang of national security know-it-alls have made the same mistakes again in Yemen. In both instances, at the highest level -- the White House, State Department, Pentagon, Intelligence Community and Central Command -- the civilian and uniformed bureaucrats screwed up big time. Simply stated, the right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing, basic security measures were ignored, and people died. No one played from the same sheet of music, and the final tune -- "Taps" -- was not a happy sound to the loved ones of the fallen or to many concerned citizens. In Somalia, while State was into getting out of that war-ravaged land, the Pentagon jumped in with all guns blazing. Sheriff Wyatt Clinton had impulsively changed the mission from feeding to fighting by ordering the Rangers to nail a two-bit gang leader. When Army Gen. Thomas Montgomery asked for tanks to protect his forces in Mogadishu, his request was denied -- since we supposedly were on our way out. Gen. Montgomery went-along-to-get-along; then Ranger task-force leader Gen. William Garrison set so clear a pattern for his opponent while conducting seven identical raids that he might as well have had the Rangers flashing "here we come" in neon. So once the rebel trap slammed shut, there was no U.S. armor waiting in the wings. Like our Rangers in Somalia, our sailors on the Cole were fed into the fire like a gas-soaked log -- even though Intelligence had warned of an attack on a U.S. warship and State had closed its embassies in the region because of a danger alert just days before the Cole arrived. Central Command not only ignored these reports -- never upgrading its threat level (re: the Port of Aden) from green to red as it shot up the thermostat -- it failed to conduct basic security checks of harbor workers in Aden. Had the Cole's skipper known the risk, surely he'd have taken security precautions to identify and destroy any terrorist craft before it closed within a thousand yards of his ship! Now Navy brass and their spinners are making more story revisions concerning the Cole than the Oval Office defenders made during the Siege of Monica. First they said the attack occurred at 12:20 p.m.; a week later this was revised to 11:18 a.m. Next they said the Cole was mooring when attacked. Now word is the ship was tied up at the refueling dock for more than two hours. Right after the incident, the party line was that the suicide craft was part of the harbor-boat operation and that the terrorists had used the mooring as a ruse to mask their attack. Why the sudden switch in stories? Was the Cole's security detail asleep at the switch? Navy boss Adm. Vern Clark initially said the ship went to Aden to be refueled. Now the Navy's admitting the Cole had 240,000 gallons of fuel aboard when it arrived at Aden, enough to make it to low-risk Oman -- one of the world's biggest gas stations -- with at least a quarter tank to spare. Why would the Navy take such a high risk in such a dangerous port only to top off and pick up some fresh vegetables, an exercise that included notifying every vendor -- and all their terrorist cousins and brothers -- of the ship's arrival? Navy insiders say with bitterness that the Cole sailed into Aden to win the hearts and minds of the Yemeni brass because the State Department sees it as a strategic asset. But the folks at State were hunkered down, bunker-safe at the very time our sailors were being blown to kingdom come. If the sailors killed in Yemen had leaders who weren't into repeating the same bloody mistakes over again, they'd still be alive. The new administration must give learning from the past maximum priority. *** © 2000 David H. Hackworth Distributed by King Features Syndicate Inc. hackworth.com is the address of David Hackworth's home page.