Clinton: I warned Bush about bin Laden threat [I really, really, really did!]

WorldNetDaily.com ^ | Friday, October 17, 2003

[JohnHuang2]

Former President Bill Clinton is taking the proverbial "I told you so" stance with regards to terror chief Osama bin Laden.

Speaking at a luncheon sponsored by the History Channel yesterday, Clinton said he warned incoming President George W. Bush before he left office in 2001 that the founder of al-Qaida was the biggest security threat the United States faced.

"In his campaign, Bush had said he thought the biggest security issue was Iraq and a national missile defense," Clinton said, according to Reuters. "I told him that in my opinion, the biggest security problem was Osama bin Laden."

Clinton told the audience his inability to convince Bush of the danger posed by al-Qaida represented "one of the two or three of the biggest disappointments that I had."

While he may have warned his successor, various reports suggest Clinton dropped the ball, himself.

A former FBI agent claims former Attorney General Janet Reno scrubbed a clandestine plan to capture the terror mastermind in 1998. Jack Cloonan told ABC News a secret team of federal investigators he was a part of even practiced the daring operation in the Texas desert. The scheme was to have a plane from Uzbekistan swoop into the area of Kandahar, Afghanistan, where bin Laden was operating at the time and execute an arrest warrant.

"A U.S. plane was to fly in," Cloonan said. "And he [bin Laden] would have been greeted by an FBI agent, who would have said, 'Sheik bin Laden, there is a warrant for your arrest,'" he said.

But when the details of the operation went up the chain of command for approval, according to Cloonan, Reno killed it.

"They came to the decision that this plan was probably too dangerous, that the loss of life on the ground would have been significant," Cloonan told the news network. There was concern that people around the bin Laden compound would be killed."

WorldNetDaily reported the Clinton administration "de-emphasized" fighting Arab international terrorism to focus on domestic terrorism – namely, white "right-wing" militia groups. Veteran FBI agents told WND this led to the FBI ignoring Arab nationals flocking to U.S. flight schools, namely the 19 hijackers who claimed nearly 3,000 lives on Sept. 11, 2001.

Even though Islamic terrorist groups like al-Qaida had been responsible for a pattern of attacks from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing to the 1996 bombing of U.S. military barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, to the bombing of U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, FBI Director Louis Freeh told a Senate subcommittee in 1999 "a growing number (while still small) of 'lone offender' and extremist splinter elements of right-wing groups have been identified as possessing or attempting to develop/use chemical, biological or radiological materials."

Under Reno's direction, Freeh and his deputy Robert B. "Bear" Bryant made "right-wing" terrorism the centerpiece of their strategy to combat Y2K security threats. The strategy, called "Project Megiddo," zeroed in on white supremacists, militias and Christian "extremists." The project was outlined in a 32-page report the FBI had posted on its website until last fall.

FBI veterans say the shift was so dramatic at the agency that some 40 boxes of evidence that agents gathered in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing case were never analyzed – until it was too late. The evidence held valuable clues to al-Qaida's network and operations, they say.

Other federal law-enforcement branches during the Clinton era also focused on the domestic threat from militia groups over the foreign threat from Islamic groups. The head of security at the Commerce Department, for one, sanitized a Y2K counterterrorism report distributed to the Census Bureau by removing Islamic threats. Only threats from white "right-wing" groups were included in the report, Commerce security officials told WorldNetDaily.

In his comments yesterday, Clinton said that after bin Laden, the next security priority would have been the absence of a Middle East peace agreement, followed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

"I would have started with India and Pakistan, then North Korea, and then Iraq after that," Reuters quotes him as saying. "I thought Iraq was a lower order problem than al-Qaida."

In his book "The High Cost of Peace" terrorism expert Yossef Bodansky makes the case that Clinton's foreign policies, specifically his zeal to strike a Mideast Peace accord, set the stage for the devastating terrorist attacks that have happened around the world in this century, including Sept. 11.

"Not only is the real Middle East in the early 21st century still the most volatile and dangerous region in the world, but, in addition, the enduring legacy of the Clinton administration's 'humanitarian aggression' (as European officials call it) has been to make the Arab world even more virulently radicalized and uncompromisingly hostile to the U.S.-led West," writes Bodansky.

So blinded was Clinton to achieving a Palestinian state as part of his enduring legacy that he completely overlooked the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in 2000, says Bodansky.

His "imposition of the peace process" whereby he boosted the election of Ehud Barak and then pushed the new Israeli prime minister to make "once-in-a-lifetime concessions" to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, according to Bodansky, helped embolden Muslim ire toward the United States.

"What the Clinton administration accomplished with its Middle East policy was to create in the Muslim eyes the image of a weak and subservient Israel, vulnerable to political pressure from the United States and military onslaught by its neighbors, while at the same time arousing frustration and wrath toward the United States because of its failure to 'deliver' Israel," writes Bodansky.

[JohnHuang2]

Friday, October 17, 2003

Quote of the Day by RobbyS

[GeronL]

nobody believes bubba

[RJayneJ]

He must have forgotten to mention it to Gore, since I don't recall Gore harping about it during the campaign.

[FlyVet]

Thanks for clearing that up for me, Bubba. All this time, I had thought Randy Weaver, the Waco Cult, and Right Wing Talk Radio were the biggest threats on your watch.

[Cindy]

BOOK: "Dereliction of Duty: An Eyewitness Account of How Bill Clinton Compromised America's National Security" by Buzz Patterson

BOOK: "HOW TO DESTROY A VILLAGE: WHAT THE CLINTONS TAUGHT A SEVENTEEN YEAR OLD" by Jason D. Fodeman

BOOK: "LOSING BIN LADEN: How Bill Clinton's Failures Unleashed Global Terror" by Richard Miniter

NewsMax.com: "Clinton Audio Exclusive: Pre-September 11 Bin Laden Strike Wouldn't Have Worked" (August 7, 2002)

NewsMax.com: "CLINTON: CHINA OR EUROPE WILL REPLACE U.S. AS TOP POWER" by Carl Limbacher and the NewsMax.com staff (May 2, 2003)

WEB.ARCHIVE.ORG - www.house.gov - Congressman Curt Weldon - COX REPORT: "CLINTON-GORE ILLEGAL CAMPAIGN FUNDRAISING, CHINESE ESPIONAGE, and U.S. TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER TO PRC" (Note: PRC is The Peoples Republic of China.)

ARMED SERVICES.house.gov: "Testimony of Gary Milhollin Professor, University of Wisconsin Law School and | Director, Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control Before the Committees on International Relations and National Security United States House of Representatives June 17, 1998" (TESTIMONY SNIPPET: "When we look at the history of U.S. sanctions policy, we see a willingness to sanction China for missile proliferation in both the Bush Administration, which applied sanctions in 1991, and in the Clinton Administration, which applied sanctions in 1993. But in 1995, the Clinton Administration policy changes. China supplied the C-802s to Iran in 1995; China supplied other missile components to Iran and Pakistan in 1995 and has continued to supply up to the present time. And in 1996, the Administration refused to act on explicit findings by the intelligence community that the transfers occurred. Also in 1996, the Administration started transferring control over satellites exports from the State to the Commerce Department, insulating them from the application of missile sanction laws in the future. For some reason, the Administration decided in either 1995 or 1996 that missile sanctions would no longer be part of U.S. policy in dealing with China. Why did U.S. policy change? I don't know the answer to that question, but I urge the Committees to look into it. We do know the result of the policy change. It gave China a green light to proliferate. Our government's policy on sanctions has enabled Chinese satellite launch companies to sell missiles and missile components to Iran and Pakistan without fear of punishment. Thus, it may be that we are asking the wrong question about how our satellite export policy affects missile proliferation. Whether or not our satellite exports caused U.S. missile technology to go to China, they have made it easier for Chinese missile technology to go to Pakistan.")

NewsMax.com: "NORTH KOREA NUKES CLINTON LEGACY" by Charles R. Smith (010803)

FREE CONGRESS.org - Notable News Now: "NEGLIGENCE: BILL CLINTON'S REAL LEGACY ON NATIONAL DEFENSE" -Commentary by Paul M. Weyrich (120502)

WorldNetDaily.com: "U.S. FIRMS HELPED CHINA WITH NUKES? State Accuses Hughes, Boeing of Providing Missile Technology" by Jon Dougherty (010203)

GertzFile.com

SoftWar.net

TOWNHALL.com: "CLINTON SCANDALS CONTINUE TO SURFACE" -Column by Phyllis Schlafly (COLUMN SNIPPET: "...The GAO discovered that those pilots departed because the Clinton administration ordered them to receive the anthrax vaccine, and 86 percent of those who did take the shots reported adverse side effects. Now, after scores of resignations and hundreds of careers destroyed by court-martial, we discover that our brave servicemen and women were right to resist the anthrax orders, and the government was fatally and corruptly wrong. A lawsuit filed by two Connecticut Air Force Reserve pilots asserted that the vaccine used on the military was never properly tested, and the Food and Drug Administration's recent response was to halt use of existing stocks of the vaccine...") (110502)

stepping back in time...GULF1.com: "CLINTON and SADDAM" by Robert L. Pappas, Col. USMC (Ret.) (September 19, 1998) (Reposted July 21, 2003)

stepping back in time....RPC.SENATE.GOV: "Clinton-Approved Iranian Arms Transfers Help Turn Bosnia Into Militant Islamic Base" (011697)

"HUSTLER: The Clinton Legacy" by Joe Sobran

CONGRESS ACTION: "TEAPOT DOME AND NUCLEAR MISSILES" by Mr. Kim Weissman (012002)

WorldNetDaily (Human Events) article by Tim Carney: "U.S. TAX DOLLARS BUILD NUKE PLANT IN CHINA Clinton Deemed Government Loan 'in the national interest'"

"THE YEAR OF THE RAT: How Bill Clinton Compromised American Security for Chinese Money"

"PRESIDENTIAL TREASON 101, 102 & 103" by Gretchen Glass

"DOWNSIDE LEGACY at Two Degrees of PRESIDENT CLINTON"

Office of the Independent Counsel - Ray

NewsMax.com: "OIC: Clinton Can Seek Reimbursement for Whitewater Legal Bills"

Tray.com: "CLINTON LIBRARY DONORS"

Informative Discussion on FreeRepublic.com re: "The Clinton Library Pardons"

[dsc]

Yeah, I can hear that conversation.

"Oh, yeah, one more problem that's been festering for years that I left for you to clean up..."

[Samwise]

[beavus]

Good thing Slick told him because I'm sure Bush missed the news reports on the Al-qaeda bombing of two U.S. embassies, Kobei Towers, the USS Cole, and suspected involvment in the first WTC bombing.

Or maybe Bush thought Slick's flattening of a Sudan pharmaceutical plant rang the death knell for Bin Laden.

Denial is one way of assuaging guilt I suppose.

[wayoverontheright]

Clinton: I warned Bush about bin Laden threat [I really, really, really did!]

"Hey Dubya, I stuck my hand in this hornet's nest, and, by golly, those little buggers are flyin' around mad as hell, I think you better do something about 'em fella."

[backhoe]

Like the chains on Marley's Ghost

That "clinton legacy" has been forged...
link...
by link...
by sordid link....

Warning!

-The Clinton Files--

Liars-- and Sleaze, Incorporated... ( my files on the clintons and friends )

Madison Society - Slick Willy
... THE CLINTON TIME LINE. The Etherzone provides, in one location, all the events
of the Clinton Ongoing Corruption from 1977 through 2000. Read more. ...

CLINTON'S ROGUES GALLERY:
... And that gets to my second chart, Mr. Speaker, which is the time line.....Up until
1993, Mr. Speaker, under Democrats and Republican Presidents alike, there ...

The Cost of Life (Clinton/Gore Sellout of Security for Campaign Contributions) **FR EXCLUSIVE** #2

DOWNSIDE LEGACY AT TWO DEGREES OF PRESIDENT CLINTON

---

"Has that clinton "legacy" made you feel safer yet?"
Lest Americans ever forget why the clintons, and all their enablers need to be hectored, hounded, and harried into silence, until "clintonese is only spoken in Hell," look here:

Hodgepodge O' Hillary

The Holiday *Best* of Bill Clinton & his Friends!

-Some old strange clinton "stuff"--

Bush and Clinton and 911- some facts...

Hillary! and Arafat's wife-

---

clintonscandals:

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[Mean Daddy]

Then why the f*ck didn't he do something about it?!?

[bigcat00]

'Cause he was too busy not having sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinski.

[bert]

In his California speech with Arnold, W packed off the terrorist problem on previous administrations that passed problems along.


Clinton must have taken it personally.

[FourPeas]

It's interesting that the comment was made at History Channel luncheon since Clinton is, well, history (as opposed, say, to historic).

[randita]

Bush needs to find a diplomatic way to say publicly that Clinton's assertion is bunk.

[mtbopfuyn]

Bubba certainly didn't think this through. It doesn't matter if he told Bush or not. The point is he's now admitted he knew about OBL, yet did nothing time and time again culminating in 9/11. Clinton has blood stained hands.

[JohnHuang2]

Bingo.

[JohnHuang2]

Bush needs to find a diplomatic way to say publicly that Clinton's assertion is bunk.

Voters already know. Clinton is a daily reminder of what a pathetic joke Clinton was as 'president.'

[Jeff Head]

I did not have sex with that woman and I did warn President Bush about that man!

I guess it depends on what his definition of I did is, huh?.

[Jeff Head]

Hillary knows what his definition of I do is (same as her own)...perhaps the two-his definition of I do, and his definition of I did-are one and the same.

You think?