Few other things of note regarding terrorist attacks...Roger Simon's comments from two++ years ago are even more interesting today.....
>>>>It was not just the 9/11 attacks and the foiled shoe-bomber attempt in 2001, and other escapades since. Before that, we had the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in 2000, the blowing up of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998, the 1996 Khobar Towers attacks, "Black Hawk Down" in Somalia, and so on. Before that, Hezbollah--a group which works with Al-Qaeda training its insurgents and which took part in the Khobar Towers attack--hijacked TWA Flight 847, torturing to death Navy diver Robert Stethem, and murdered 300 U.S. military and civilian personnel in Lebanon.<<<<<
debbieschlussel.com
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From Roger Simon: 03/30/2004: The Big Distraction
rogerlsimon.com
Polls over half a year before an election are absurd, but this new one from CNN is interesting:
The poll results -- gathered between Friday and Sunday -- suggest that the Bush campaign's attempts to paint Kerry as a tax-raising liberal who flip-flops on the issues has affected the race more than recent charges that the Bush administration didn't put enough focus on the threat of terrorism before 9/11.
Well, well, it's the old American public again. Could it be that most of us see the hearings in Washington for what they are--partisan hackery and posturing? Now I recognize that some bloggers see them as a proud exercise in democracy, and to an extent they are, but I would put the emphasis on the exercise because, interesting as the truth might be, no one seems to want to deal with it.
What's the truth you ask? Well, I'm no "terrorism expert." I'm just some guy with a computer, but I'll tell you my guesses... and they're obvious ones:
Before 9/11 both Bush and Clinton knew there was a threat from Al Qaeda. On some days it seemed bad and on other days the far away product of a primitive culture. They both wished it would go away, but maybe deep down knew that it wouldn't. All very human. Once in a while, when it got in our faces, one of them (Clinton in this case since he was in office for eight years) took a relatively futile swing at the terrorists and then went on to other things.
Next Bush comes into office after an extraordinarily difficult election. He has barely gotten his people into position when--wham!--9/11. Any human being in his shoes probably went through a welter of emotions, but I can promise you one of those was: why didn't those bastards warn me about this?... Meaning the intelligence community, of course. He may have wanted to fire them immediately--I would have. But wait. What does he do then? Obviously, the American Public will demand an immediate response to this catastrophe. How can I do that and dismantle the CIA at the same time? Besides, could this event actually have been prevented? (Even that great "terrorism expert" Richard Clarke... excuse me "counter-terrorism expert"... must make our distinctions... says no.) So Bush doesn't dismantle his intelligence agencies. I wouldn't have and you wouldn't have either.
And now we are where we are. All in all Bush has behaved remarkably well on the terrorism issue post 9/11. The public obviously agrees with that, if the poll is in any way reliable. So the only hearings really necessary are the ones we can't have--a true, full and non-partisan investigation of our intelligence capabilities. But could this possibly occur in public? Clearly not. So what we have now is The Big Distraction.... How big? According to Michael Ledeen a terrorist named "Ahmed" has been spilling his considerable beans to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera:
>>>These revelations have apparently been confirmed by Italian authorities, who have efficiently dismantled a series of terrorist cells all over the country, even as they warn that terrorist attacks on Italian soil are likely. They remember that Spanish intelligence officials were murdered in Iraq several months before the Madrid bombings, and that Italian carabinieri were killed in a suicide bombing in Nasiriyah a few months ago.
But there are broader, and far more important conclusions to be drawn from the recent information coming from Spain and Italy. For if "Ahmed" is telling the truth, then the targeting of European cities has nothing at all to do with the liberation of Iraq, or European support for American foreign policy, or even with the nature of the government in one European country or another. In 1997, when "Ahmed" began his work, Italy had a left-wing government, and Operation Iraqi Freedom was six years away. <<<<<
As I have been arguing for many years now, September 11 did not mark a watershed in the terror war against the West. That war is properly dated to September, 1979, when the Aytaollah Khomeini seized power in Iran, branded the United States "the great Satan," and declared war against us. Iran continued to wage that war through the Beirut bombings and hostage seizures of the mid-80s — conducted by the Iranian surrogate, Hezbollah — and collected allies along the way, including al Qaeda.
Today Iran is either on the verge of, or has actually accomplished the acquisition of nuclear weapons, and is speeding ahead on bigger and better delivery systems. Yet Western policy toward Iran is either feckless or eager appeasement. Each revelation of the Iranian hand in terrorism is either ignored or shrugged off, and each new discovery of Iran's nuclear-weapons program is greeted with disappointment as action is postponed to the next meeting of the toothless International Atomic Energy Agency.
Is Ledeen a "terrorism expert?" As I've been implying...nobody is, but we all are. But Michael is obviously keeping his eye on the ball while too many in our government seem to be keeping their eyes on the television camera. Enough already.
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americanpressinstitute.org
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freerepublic.com
Unfortunately, this is a most interesting historical link of terrorist attacks against the USA...and Americans ...
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