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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (392013)	4/14/2003 3:21:34 PM
From: Jerrel Peters	Respond to of 769667

SSSSSWAT!

To: TigerPaw who wrote (392013)	4/14/2003 3:25:18 PM
From: JakeStraw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Read a transcript of the bin Ladengate exchange between GMA's Elizabeth Vargas and Sean Hannity: VARGAS: Talking about the war on terrorism, among the controversial aspects of the book, you have placed responsibility squarely at President Clinton's feet for the Sept. 11 attacks and Osama bin Laden. HANNITY: Well, I'm very clear to say I don't blame the left, I don't blame President Clinton for the attacks. You can't blame him. I blame the people that hijacked those airplanes and dive-bombed them into those buildings because they have no respect for human life. But there were four opportunities when Sudan offered Osama bin Laden on a silver platter to America and we turned it down. These aren't my words. Mansoor Ijaz, a big Clinton Democratic supporter, a Muslim-American, he was the one who negotiated it. I've interviewed him many times. Similarly, his own ambassador to the Sudan has confirmed the offer that was made. All I'm saying is that, if we were offered him we've got to go back and analyze, how is it that America, if we're going to battle terror and we don't want this to ever happen again, this vast audience on "Good Morning America" doesn't want to wake up one morning and see something tragic like that ever happen again, we have to go back and we have to examine the mistakes that we made. And an offer (for) Osama bin Laden after the Trade Center bombing in 1993, you have to ask questions. Why did that happen? And how can we prevent it from happening again? VARGAS: We should say that members of the Clinton administration say that they have no knowledge of any offer and ... HANNITY: I have a tape of Bill Clinton himself that finally acknowledges that it was offered. This has recently come out. But his own ambassador is the one that is saying it.

To: TigerPaw who wrote (392013)	4/14/2003 3:28:21 PM
From: JakeStraw	Respond to of 769667

Bin Laden-gate Witness Dares Dems: Depose Me on Clinton 9-11 Cover-Up The man who negotiated a deal for Osama bin Laden's extradition to the United States six years ago is daring Senate Democrats to call him as a witness in the upcoming probe into the government's 9-11 intelligence failures, saying he can blow the lid off the Clinton administration's cover-up of the episode. Mansoor Ijaz, a major Clinton financial supporter who hammered out the 1996 bin Laden agreement with the government of Sudan only to have the White House turn the offer down, issued the challenge Thursday during an interview with nationally syndicated radio host Sean Hannity. "I'm saying this point blank," Ijaz announced in impassioned tones. "Clinton, Berger, Albright, Susan Rice - any of them that want to come and take us on. I've got the paperwork to back up what I've said and they know it. And they know they can't run and hide." Ijaz complained that since Sept. 11, he has yet to be called by either the House or Senate intelligence committees to give sworn testimony. "[Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman] Bob Graham is a friend of mine and he knows what I've got in my files. And they know where to find me if they really want to find out the truth about what was possible at that time." Ijaz charged that Senate Democrats don't want to call him, in order to protect the previous administration. "I'm absolutely convinced," he told Hannity, "that the Democrats are desperately trying to find a way to deflect the attention from the complicity of the Clinton administration in letting this terrorism problem get so far out of hand." The former Clinton negotiator described the missed opportunity to get bin Laden and fingered former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger and former Attorney General Janet Reno as having key roles in the deadly foul-up. "By May of 1996 the Sudanese had decided to get rid of bin Laden because he was becoming a problem there as well. They called the Clinton administration one last time and said, 'If you don't want him to go to Saudi Arabia, we're prepared to hand him over to you guys directly.'" "And the Clinton administration's response to that was 'We don't have enough legal evidence against him,'" Ijaz explained. Besides Berger and Reno, "Clearly the president had to have had a hand in making that decision," he added. "There's no question in my mind that he was involved in those decisions as well. There's no question about that at all." The former Clinton negotiator suggested that Congress depose other witnesses who could corroborate and expand upon his account. "The American people should know that I have even persuaded a senior Sudanese intelligence official, who was later the intelligence chief, that if it became necessary he would come to the United States and testify in closed hearings about precisely what they were prepared to do," he said. "And he would bring the data with him." Another witness suggested by Ijaz: former Clinton administration ambassador to the Sudan, Tim Carney. "Frankly, [Carney] can take the American people a couple of steps further in terms of taking them inside the deliberations that went on and telling people precisely how the politicizing of the intelligence took place at that time." Ijaz also charged that Clinton officials deliberately went out of their way to stifle FBI anti-terrorism probes. "The FBI, in 1996 and 1997, had their efforts to look at terrorism data and deal with the bin Laden issue overruled every single time by the State Department, by Susan Rice and her cronies, who were hell-bent on destroying the Sudan," he said. The Bush administration takes a different approach entirely, according to Ijaz. "I can tell you personally that I have dealt with the Bush administration's national security team." he told Hannity. "These are people who immediately react to information that is brought to their attention that is necessary and important for people to know. ... There is no comparison to the Clinton administration."

To: TigerPaw who wrote (392013)	4/14/2003 3:30:31 PM
From: JakeStraw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Inhofe: Clinton Should be Held Accountable for Failure to Get Bin Laden WASHINGTON-A senior member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence says ex-President Clinton should be held accountable for his decision during his presidency, to give terrorist leader Osama bin Laden a pass. That confession by the impeached 42nd president was revealed in a taped statement. Reacting to that tape, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., in a statement relayed by his spokesman Gary Hoitsma, says Clinton’s comments constitute "an admission that he didn’t seriously go after Osama bin Laden,” although Clinton tried to justify it in "a self-serving” manner. Inhofe, who is also the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support, tells NewsMax that Clinton "is admitting that he didn’t go after them [al-Qaeda] when he could have, and he’s making excuses as to why he couldn’t or wouldn’t.” Asked how the former chief executive should be held accountable, Hoitsma, again speaking for the senator, replied, "We would want to do that in some way. It’s a matter of picking the right forum.” Presidents and ex-presidents are rarely called before congressional committees. At the moment the Intelligence Committee is looking into some things that went on in the intelligence community leading up to 9/11, although that probe "is not a matter of holding anyone accountable for wrongdoing or anything like that,” Hoitsma notes. Some lawmakers have privately complained to NewsMax.com that the Intelligence Committee channels so much of what it does through so many political filters so as to reach a consensus that very little is accomplished when it comes to pressing for accountability. Senator Inhofe says "objectively,” during the Clinton presidency, "not very much was done to deal with some of the terrorist incidents that had happened during that time.” Each time terrorist acts were committed, they were viewed by the Clintonites as law enforcement issues "instead of acts of war against America.” The Oklahoma conservative listed the first World Trade Center bombing in 1998, the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in 1996 (death toll: 17), the embassy bombings in Africa (killing over 200), and violent action against the USS Cole (leaving 17 American sailors dead). These attacks on Clinton’s watch were "downplayed,” and there were "never serious consequences for the perpetrators.” Inhofe sees 1998 as "the lost year,” when the entire country was focused on a single issue (the Monica Lewinsky scandal) "that had nothing to do with any serious public policy.” As the senator sees it, this was "when the [then] president was lying to the country [and under oath] about his personal problems,” and "dragged the country through the trauma of an impeachment trial.”