Posted on 12/02/2003 2:40:01 PM PST by dead
Stony is one of those non-thinking kids who dont realize that without the war over there it would be right HERE in a mall or shopping center a pizza hut or a cracker barrel how much less would stony like it if a jihadist walked into a store somewhere in america and decided that the 45 sticks of dyn-o-mite strapped under his topcoat needed to go off in the arcade full of kids playing pinball or in a school full of children ?
Stony and his drunk freind need to wake up and start backing America and its President! But most of all back Americas actions against Terrorism
Ive talked to people who say this could never happen in the states what about 911 no one thought that was plausable either no one would have dreamed it ! but it happened were "To many people dyin" then stony or was that a drummed up conspiracy "built in texas by George and his conspirators" ?
On one fact i do agree "There are kids getting killed every single day" Abortion has killed more than any War any Disease ,Plague or Pestilance and yet it still is allowed to be observed as a "right" And yet we have judges ,congressmen ,senators and the like who are bashing Bush for protecting America and her right to exist as a free nation not because Bush is right or wrong but because they "HATE" bush period ! No matter what he does good, bad or indifferent it's wrong because it's bush doing it EVEN when he did'nt do anything it's his fault.
SS. I get a completely different reaction from the people I know. But not one of them would have the nickname "Stony"
I think there is a "truth factor" here your not taking into consideration. You can find very few out there who admit to being a Clinton or Gore voter. Those in the article would hardly find "truth" as any kind of virtue to live by.
1. "Dems want to cut military spending"
Please elaborate, 69. Gore's proposed increase in military spending on the 2000 campaign trail was higher than Bush's.
"Stony is not a Republican but a nitwit union card holding twerp who likely has trouble trying his shoes."
His vote still counts. You had it last time. You've lost it this time.
Rick Perlstein
2. Re: Attention, Wal-Mart Voters: Lost Jobs and Military Funerals Haunt Bush in the Heartland From Perlstein | 12/03/2003 2:48 AM EST new
re: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1032617/posts
Manufacturing at Highest Level in Two Decades
NY Times 12/2/03
69, I was pissed to see this article come out the same day as mine, but mainly because it was so stupid. The whole point of the thinking of the factory owners in my piece is that it is insipid to measure economic progress in 60-day snippets, which is the only way the New York Times chooses to do it. Rick
BWAHAHAHAHA! Rick think the front page NY Times story that refutes him is STUPID! Meanwhile the rest of the media continues to get on the bandwagon as they correctly read the signs of economic recivery in full tilt. Chris Matthews on Hardball even gleefully announced Bush hit the jackpot this week with economic indictators after hammering Bush for months. I suspect the unemployment rate will continue to drop. When the gloom and doomers Mr. Perlstein interviewed get the news their opinions will be completely different a year from now. And when confronted with the choice of higher taxes, just when the economy is getting better for them, guess who they will choose?
Clinton's Role In The War Against Terrorism
Many people today are critical of how the Bush administration is handling the war against terrorism. Very few, however, are offering alternatives for how it could be handled. Amidst complaints of civil and human rights violations, government propaganda, and shady politics, there appear to be very few alternatives to what we can do to preserve our safety. We trust the President of the U.S. to be in charge and take care of our nation. There is one president in recent history that we can look to for an example of how to fight against terrorists, Bill Clinton. Although many have blamed the former president for not taking a hard stance against terrorism, Clinton did quite a bit against terrorism. This article will discuss the efforts taken to fight terror under the Clinton administration, as well as discussing the supporters and detractors of these efforts.
No president can directly fight terrorism. Whether you discuss Bush, Clinton, or any others, they are not the ones in the mine fields of Afghanistan, nor are they the ones raiding the hideouts of terrorist cells. They do, however lead people, and their efforts as leaders are just as important. They guide the nation as a whole to protect themselves and prevent harm. Clinton had been given quite a bit of credit in this area when he was in office. His detractors did not criticize his anti-terrorism efforts, but instead discussed the attacks on Bosnia, the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and other things that were fairly minor. It is accurate to say that Clinton had a very broad range of support across the political spectrum. In reference to the Clinton administration's national security efforts, Robert Oakley, a counter-terrorism expert in Reagan's State Department said to The Washington Post:
"Overall, I give them very high marks."
He then went on to say:
"The only major criticism I have is the obsession with Osama, which made him stronger."
Also in the Washington Post are many compliments from both sides when Clinton ordered the bombing of Afghanistan and Sudan. Newt Gingrich, a longtime critic of the Clinton administration had said:
"I think the president did exactly the right thing."
Gingrich further praised Clinton by saying:
"By doing this we're sending the signal there are no sanctuaries for terrorists."
Gingrich also complemented Clinton's aides for being "sensitive to making sure we were not blindsided in this." However, not everyone was happy with Clinton's fight against terrorism. Sen. John Ashcroft, for example, was not pleased and made the statement that "there is a cloud over this presidency" in response to Clinton taking on al Qaeda.
So what did Clinton do to earn praise in his anti-terrorism tactics? There were many fronts on which Clinton fought terrorism. The first was in policy. Clinton tripled the FBI's anti-terrorism budget. He gave funding to other agencies and organizations to be used against al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. He also sought tough anti-terrorism legislation, although the bill presented to him was not as strong as he originally wanted. Clinton had ordered the stockpiling of vaccines for smallpox and anthrax, which became very important after 9/11. Another law signed in by Clinton was an airport security bill. There were many other policy changes that Clinton brought about to fight terrorism, even though Congress fought against Clinton's anti-terrorism efforts whenever they could.
Of course, Clinton's efforts were not all about policy. He had taken a tough stance on fighting terrorists as well. An order to kill Usama bin Laden had been given by Clinton to the CIA in 1996 in response to the attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In addition, after the U.S.S. Cole bombing, Clinton begun a plan to attack and destroy terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, to which he tasked counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke.
Clinton's anti-terrorism work had paid off. There were many spectacular attacks avoided because of his efforts, which Clinton himself talks about. One such thwarted plot was an attempt to kill the pope by Abu Sayyaf, a Filipino terrorist group with suspected ties to al Qaeda. The U.S. also foiled Project Bojinka, a plan to hijack and blow up 12 U.S. civilian airliners in a single day. In reference to his accomplishments, Clinton said:
"When I was president, we stopped planned attacks on the Holland Tunnel, the Lincoln Tunnel, the Los Angeles Airport, planes flying out of Los Angeles to the Philippines, millennium weekend bombs planned for cities in the Northeast and the Northwest, for Jordan, and for a Christian site in the Holy Land."
There were other things Clinton did that were more similar to what Bush has done, such as sending cruise missles into al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, as well as other attacks on Afghanistan, Sudan, and other nations that had terrorist controlled areas. Even the financial fight against terrorism was also well underway. Clinton had ordered $254 million of Taliban money to be frozen. He had bin Laden money frozen as well.
This was not enough though. The Clinton administration needed to plan for the future, which brought about the beginning of a bi-partisan committie that eventually came up with the Hart-Rudman report. According to the executive summary, some of the major goals were:
"ensuring the security of the American homeland"
"redesigning key institutions of the Executive Branch"
and other things related to national security. In particular, they called for:
"National Homeland Security Agency (NHSA) with responsibility for planning, coordinating, and integrating various U.S. government activities involved in homeland security. NHSA would be built upon the Federal Emergency Management Agency, with the three organizations currently on the front line of border security -- the Coast Guard, the Customs Service, and the Border Patrol -- transferred to it."
The Hart-Rudman report was the basis for what came into effect after 9/11, which called for the Department of Homeland Security as well as other reorganizations of the federal government. The Clinton administration had put all this together with the help of politicians from both major political parties, and presented this to Bush administration officials in January, 2001. These plans eventually went through the bureaucracy and made it to the desk of George W. Bush in the middle of 2001. This plan was presented to Condoleeza Rice by Richard Clarke, who is now in charge of the Bush administration's cyberterrorism office. Clarke's reccomendations, based on the Hart-Rudman report, were initially shelved by Vice President Dick Cheney, who was extremely busy working on many different things. President Bush had asked Cheney to get back with him by the beginning of October, 2001.
Unfortunately, the FBI, CIA, and other agencies that had information about the potential of an al Qaeda attack, could not do anything about the events that happened on September 11th, 2001. After the attacks of 9/11, the Hart-Rudman report became a top priority again, and many of the things it called for were brought into law with the full support of both the Republicans and the Democrats. It is not entirely likely that these things would have happened before the terrorist attack, because of the difficulty of getting both of the major parties to support it.
After the terrorist attacks, Bill Clinton has continued to speak publicly and support the U.S. in its fight against terrorism and in its efforts to find safety. While it is horrible that 9/11 happened, it could have been even worse if not for the efforts of President Clinton. He not only fought terrorism while he was in office, but he also blazed the path for President Bush has followed today.
END
Click link in order to access hyperlinks contained in the body of the article. I am sure many of the points therein can be refuted.
Imagine Clinton "blazing a path" to anything besides the Oval Office sink.
Clinton administration counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke attended a meeting with Secretary of Defense William Cohen, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Attorney General Janet Reno, and others. Several others were in the room, including Leon Fuerth, Gore's national security advisor; Jim Steinberg, the deputy National Security Advisor; and Michael Sheehan, the State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism. An American warship had been attacked without warning in a "friendly" harbor — and, at the time, no one knew if the ship's pumps could keep it afloat for the night. Now they had to decide what to do about it. Mr. Clarke had no doubts about whom to punish. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had compiled thick binders of bin Laden and Taliban targets in Afghanistan, complete with satellite photographs and GPS bomb coordinates — the Pentagon's "target decks." The detailed plan was "to level" every bin Laden training camp and compound in Afghanistan as well as key Taliban buildings in Kabul and Kandahar. "Let's blow them up," Clarke said. . . . Around the table, Clarke heard only objections — not a mandate for action.
This is how Clarke remembers the meeting, which has never before been described in the press. . . . Attorney General Janet Reno insisted that they had no clear idea who had actually carried out the attack. The "Justice [Department] also noted, as always, that any use of force had to be consistent with international law, i.e. not retaliation but self protection from future attack," Clarke told the author. Reno could not be reached for comment.
Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet joined Reno in insisting on an investigation before launching a retaliatory strike. Tenet "did not want a months-long investigation," CIA spokesman Bill Harlow said. "He simply believed that before the United States attacked, it ought to know for sure who was behind the Cole bombing." While Tenet noted that the CIA had not reached a conclusion about what terror group was behind the surprise attack on the USS Cole, "he said personally he thought that it would turn out to be al Qaeda," Clarke recalls.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was also against a counterstrike — but for diplomatic reasons. "We're desperately trying to halt the fighting that has broken out between Israel and the Palestinians," Albright said. Clarke recalls her saying, "Bombing Muslims wouldn't be helpful at this time." Some two weeks earlier, Ariel Sharon had visited the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, which touched off a wave of violence known as the "second Intifada" and threatened to completely destroy the Clinton Administration's hopes for Middle East peace settlement.
Mr. Clarke remembers other objections from the State Department. "State noted that we had been bombing Iraq and Serbia and were getting the reputation internationally as a mad bomber nation that could only address its problems that way." "It would be irresponsible," a spokeswoman for Albright told the author, for the Secretary of State, as America's chief diplomat, not to consider the diplomatic impact of a missile strike that might try but would quite likely fail to kill bin Laden.
Albright urged continued diplomatic efforts to persuade the Taliban to turn over bin Laden. Those efforts had been going on for more than two years and had gone nowhere. It was unlikely that the Taliban would ever voluntarily turn over its strongest internal ally. . . .
Secretary of Defense Cohen also did not favor a retaliatory strike, according to Mr. Clarke. The attack "was not sufficient provocation," Clarke remembers Cohen saying, or words to that effect. Cohen thought that any military strike needed a "clear and compelling justification," Clarke recalls. (Cohen, despite repeated phone calls over more than one week, failed to respond to interview requests.) Cohen also noted that General Anthony Zinni, then head of CENTCOM, was concerned that a major bombing campaign would cause domestic unrest in Pakistan (where bin Laden enjoyed strong support among extremists) and hurt the U.S. military's relationship with that nation.
Mr. Cohen's views were perfectly in accord with those of the top uniformed officers and Clinton's political appointees at the Pentagon, Sheehan told the author. "It was the entire Pentagon," he added. The chief lesson that the Defense Department seemed to draw from the assault on the USS Cole was the need for better security for its ships, what was invariably called "force protection." Listening to Cohen and later talking to top military officers, Sheehan, a former member of Special Forces before joining the State Department, told the author that he was "stunned" and "taken aback" by their views. "This phenomenon I cannot explain," he said. Why didn't they want to go hit back at those who had just murdered American servicemen without warning or provocation?
The issue was hotly debated. Some of the principals were concerned that bin Laden might somehow survive the cruise-missile attack and appear in another triumphant press conference. Clarke countered by saying that they could say that they were only targeting terrorist infrastructure. If they got bin Laden, they could take that as a bonus. Others worried about target information. At the time, Clarke said that he had very reliable and specific information about bin Laden's location. And so on. Each objection was countered and answered with a yet another objection.
In the end, for a variety of reasons, the principals were against Mr. Clarke's retaliation plan by a margin of seven to one against. Mr. Clarke was the sole one in favor. Bin Laden would get away — again.
Heh, heh. Amusing article.
This whole thing reads like a 19th century explorer venturing into "darkest Africa." I'm picturing Perlstein in full safari get-up with a native guide (overalls, beer-gut, and a NASCAR cap), delving into the deep dark regions of north-central Illinois. And much like his 19th century predecessors, he's laughably wrong attempting to understand the strange and frightening things he finds so far from "civilization."
Quote of the day!
I know this is from NewsMax and Dick Morris, but merits at least the amount of attention paid to the musings of "Stony":
Morris: Clinton Was Oblivious to Khobar Towers Terror Alert
Excerpt:
Former chief White House political adviser Dick Morris revealed Tuesday that his former boss Bill Clinton cared so little about global terrorism that his own assistant secretary of state had trouble getting him to pay attention to a bomb threat against the Khobar Towers Air Force barracks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
"In 1996, I got a phone call from Dick Holbrooke," Morris told WABC Radio's Sean Hannity.
~snip~
Heavens! There was a presidential campaign in 1996. He couldn't take a chance to rock the boat.
I'm glad you come here to defend and discuss your work, and I am not going to flame you. I just can't shake the impression that you picked quotes that supported the premise you started with...what might be called in the south 'picking gnat shit out of pepper.'
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