[chichipow]

Do I hear the scribbling of Micheal Ruppert?

[mhking]

More swipes at the Administration by AP...

[section9]

You do. There is no "scandal" here, as the headline writers try to point out. There were tech problems with getting the Predator to carry a huge explosive warhead.

Jesus, the people at AP are whores for the Rats!

Be Seeing You,

Chris

[Drango]

It's Reagan's fault.

[fiftymegaton]

So basically the Bush Administration was planning on killing him but the SOB got lucky. I might be a little confused....is this supposed to make Bush look bad?? Because in my opinion this makes him better.

[Donna Lee Nardo]

AP plants another kiss on the buttocks of clintoon (gross thought) after talking lovey dovey on the telephone with a clintoon staffer. Rehabilitation anyone? Revisionist history? At least that is what it smells like. Big deal. What an asswipe clintoon is. What a huge, empty ego, too.

[MJY1288]

ROFLMAO, I bet a "Preditor Drone" spotted lots of things before 9/11,.............. Mullah Omar, Musharraf, Kim Jong Il, Jacque Chirac, Saddam Hussein, Baghdad Bob, All 4 planes hijacked on 9/11 and maybe even Elvis.

WTF does this have to do with post 9/11.

These leftist have reached a level of desperation that I have never seen before. What's next? ...... Mohammed Attah was a guest on the Oprah Winfrey Show?

[blam]

"A former administration official said U.S. officials watched some of the Predator missions live on a television screen inside CIA headquarters, including the one in which Taliban pilots roared past."

That must have been a 'kick in the butt' to watch.

[Republican Wildcat]

This appears to have occurred in late 2000, and this article is trying to blame it on Bush. The media will go to any length possible to distort the news.

[mikegi]

Let's rewrite this in proper form:

WASHINGTON - In late 2000, the Clinton administration was told that Predator drones had recently spotted Osama bin Laden as many as three times and officials were urged to arm the unmanned planes with missiles to kill the al-Qaida leader. But the Clinton administration failed to get drones back into the Afghan skies. Clinton, instead, focussed on pardons for friends and supporters.

---

Are there no lengths to which the Democratic press will not sink in attacking Bush??? There are so many deceptive things in this DNC press release:

1) It was during Clinton's administration that the Predators supposedly spotted UBL.

2) It was during Clinton's administration that the plot for 9/11 was hatched and organized.

3) It was during Clinton's administration that the perps for 9/11 came into this country.

4) The Clinton administration failed to detect this plot and stop it.

[Lady In Blue]

I can't believe you're trying to blame President Bush for this?! Clinton was in office. bin Laden was offered to Clinton on a silver platter - 3 TIMES! You should have posted this on DU's site. I'm sure they would have appreciated it!

[Steel and Fire and Stone]

From the AP? No news here...

The Dems and their party news Bureau(s) will keep on re-writing history until they get it right...or um, "left" (as in "left-wing"). They'll never stop. You can't argue facts to people who reject the very notion of objective truth and morality. They'll keep on manufacturing news from where no news exists. That is the nature of these amoral people.

FReegards, SFS

[ALOHA RONNIE]

...Isn't it interesting how all this comes out within a few days of the CLINTONS' own White House Political Advisor DICK MORRIS' confirming on The Judicial Watch Report Talk Rado Show...

...that the CLINTONS refused 2 Offers from the President of Sudan to extradite OSAMA bin LADEN to a U.S. Trial in 1996 that would have prevented the Attacks on US on September 11, 2001..?

[Sabertooth]

When President Bush took office in January 2001, the White House was told that Predator drones had recently spotted Osama bin Laden as many as three times and officials were urged to arm the unmanned planes with missiles to kill the al-Qaida leader.

Mia, do you remember the thread and post on this, from about a year ago?

[Fighting Irish]

.....now what did I do with that pesky little time machine?

[Ann Archy]

At a White House meeting of Bush's national security principals on Sept. 4, 2001, senior officials discussed several ideas, including use of the drones, as they finalized a plan to accelerate efforts to go after al-Qaida amid signs of a growing threat of a domestic attack. Among those present were Rice, CIA Director George Tenet, soon-to-be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Clarke, then Bush's anti-terrorism chief inside the White House. Though CIA had operated the unmanned Predators in Afghanistan in 2000, Tenet expressed strong reservation about his agency running the armed drones for an attack mission, suggesting it was the purview of the military, according to officials who witnessed or were briefed about the meeting. "Generally it was understood (inside CIA) that aircraft firing weapons is the province of the military. This was a discussion about what the appropriate agency was to carry out the mission, but it was not a matter of the technology," said one official familiar with Tenet's comments at the meeting. Defense officials suggested they be given an objective — killAt a White House meeting of Bush's national security principals on Sept. 4, 2001, senior officials discussed several ideas, including use of the drones, as they finalized a plan to accelerate efforts to go after al-Qaida amid signs of a growing threat of a domestic attack. Among those present were Rice, CIA Director George Tenet, soon-to-be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Clarke, then Bush's anti-terrorism chief inside the White House. Though CIA had operated the unmanned Predators in Afghanistan in 2000, Tenet expressed strong reservation about his agency running the armed drones for an attack mission, suggesting it was the purview of the military, according to officials who witnessed or were briefed about the meeting. "Generally it was understood (inside CIA) that aircraft firing weapons is the province of the military. This was a discussion about what the appropriate agency was to carry out the mission, but it was not a matter of the technology," said one official familiar with Tenet's comments at the meeting.

George Tenet was and still is the WEAKEST LINK!! He's a Clinton Buddy.....he gave Bush bad info for the first night when he told Bush that Saddam and sons were all in one place.....bad info or MIS-INFO????

[Z-28]

This is a bit off-topic but,

I heard tonight on San Diego radio that Condolezza Rice is being suggested as a candidate for the governor of California; after we dump the Marxist Gray Davis in a recall election in September 2003.

Davis is bleeding California of $1,000,000,000.00 ($1 billion) a month for a total deficit so far of $38,000,000,000.00 ($38 billion)!

But we have free education for illegal aliens, and lower-priced instate tuition when they go to college in California.

However, all our approximately 100,000 military personal in San Diego county must pay much higher out-of-state education tuition for their children enrolled in San Diego schools.

Wifey and I have sent in our recall Gray Davis petitions. We think Condolezza Rice would make a great California governor.

[rintense]

So what? What they fail to realize is the Clinton had the chance to get OBL three time- even more, and failed miserably.

[bushfamfan]

This kind of propaganda continues to be an outrage. If I was in a position in the administration or somewhere in politics I would sue these people and continually bring up the clear bias they continue to show. Maybe they ought to be sued for slander? It is so obvious how the media is attempting to tear this President down and I am so enraged by this smear campaign. The media is despicable and someone has to start calling them on it because this is yet another attempt to level outrageous charges against the administration with their 'unnamed sources'.

[Valin]

Top administration officials discussed the mission to kill bin Laden as late as one week before the suicide attacks on New York and Washington, but they had not yet resolved a debate over whether the CIA or Pentagon should operate the armed Predators and whether the missiles would be sufficiently lethal, officials told The Associated Press.

On a related note:(On the Hunt: An interview with Col. David Hunt)
NRO: How are we doing in the war on terrorism?

HUNT: Al Qaeda is in 80 different countries. We need to harass these terrorist groups, everywhere — in Saudi Arabia, in Yemen, North Korea, the Sudan, Algeria, and Zimbabwe. And then there's the Russian mafia. We need to screw around with their banks, to squeeze them. A lot of these groups get money through laundering and drug trafficking. Here's an example: poppy-producers in Afghanistan. We need to destroy all those poppy fields. We could be much more aggressive in that area.

The point is to make it painful on states that sponsor terrorism. If I go after the bank, that hurts a lot of people. We want to go into the towns and kill these terrorists, in their homes. We're doing that, but we need to do it more. This is the first time we've had a president who wants to do this, aggressively.

NRO: What about the turf wars between FBI and CIA. Has that gotten any better since 9/11?

HUNT: The turf wars continue. Because of the 9/11 commissions, people are sweating scared about what happened. We sucked! We sucked, and we got hurt. 800 Americans were killed over 20 years in terrorist actions, and what did we do? We shot a couple of missiles.

We have not solved the bureaucracy and, because of the war, the Bush administration has been understandably focused on that. But these agencies are still at each other's throats. The FBI is a fabulous crime-fighter, the best in the world, but they need to get out of the terrorism business. We need something to fight terrorism domestically that's not fighting banks. Maybe like the British MI-5.

NRO: What about the Homeland Security department? How's Tom Ridge doing?

HUNT: Don't even get me started on "homeland security"! It was courageous for Bush to do, but you can't do anything without intel. They talk about "sharing" — we know they don't share. You can't get the job done without intel. They get what the FBI and the CIA want to give them. To be effective, a security agency must have what's called "tasking authority." This is probably the most important thing I'll tell you today: I've got to be able to tell you what to do. If I don't have that, I come to you and say, "Would you mind doing X and we'll have a meeting about it." Guess what? Nothing gets done. The Homeland Security department doesn't have tasking authority in the intelligence community. They can ask for stuff, but they can't direct anything except inside their bureau.

And the other problem: You still see public relations playing a role, which is so frustrating. We're not profiling. We know who's attacking us, but we pull over grandmothers so that when we go to court we can show that we're treating white women the same way. Everyone knows that's the wrong thing to do. On the Hunt: An interview with Col. David Hunt National Review ^ | 06/25/03 | Sarah Maserati

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