Posted on 06/25/2002 5:24:11 PM PDT by OKCSubmariner
But it is an amazing coincidence. And I have not ruled out the possibility yet that Padilla may have helped in OKC. I just do not know yet.
Incompetent. Dismissive. Two adjectives that have been widely used to described our former president. Right.
sarcasm/on, btw
I flew a lot as a helicopter passenger out to production platforms and drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico in the late 1970's, when Petroleum Helicopters, Inc., was employing numbers of former VNAF helicopter pilots on milk runs offshore. I didn't catch any rides with any of these guys until the 1990's, but in the 70's my colleagues reported that the Viets were still flying the way they had in 'Nam -- take off and climb, climb, climb to 3000+, fly out to the destination above 3000', then descend quickly and steeply to the landing pad. Even some ex-USAF/Army pilots commented on it. The more usual operating altitude for pilots who aren't habitually avoiding automatic weapons fire is 300-1100' depending on seasonal and weather factors.
You're a very long way from safe harbor in floating this accusation. Nobody dislikes DIRTXPOTUS more than I do (except maybe his ex-wife and people who knew him well), but even though Clinton was, in fact, desperate for a political fixer-upper after his shellacking by Newt and the Pubbies, and despite the fact that it is quite true that he seized on the Oklahoma City bombing for obscene demagoguing of Newt and Rush, literally blaming them for the explosion (something the Leftie Press would have had George H. W. Bush's head for saying, or Nixon's, or Dubya's), nevertheless it should be said that the "evidence" offered here of Iraqi "involvement" is very, very thin stuff.
The APB for the Arabs you describe was carried out, the guys and their pickup truck were found, I remember reading or hearing at the time, and the two men were exonerated of any responsibility for the explosion. Do you contradict that?
About all you've got to go on is some eyewitness descriptions and a police sketch of "John Doe 2", and a piece of camo cloth from the explosion crater. That guy could as easily have been Hispanic (after all, Spaniards are Mediterranean types just as much as North Africans -- their darker-skinned ancestors crossed the Gibraltar Strait 10,000 years ago from North Africa) as Middle Eastern. Terry Nichols's travels to Cebu and packages of money are interesting, but unless the coin rolls are stamped "Bank of Abu Dhabi", you've got a lot of 'splainin' to do, to tie him to Al-Q'aeda. Turning Nichols and Ramzi Yousef inside out on sodium pentothal would seem to be a good place to start, but until more evidence is forthcoming, what you mostly have is some arm-waving Filipino policemen and overtaxed, underinterested FBI men.
I doubt it. These guys are really allowed to make decisions like that on their own. Not only do the air-traffic controllers control their speed and altitude,but so do their accountants. These things burn a BUNCH of fuel with they kick in their afterburners. I went outside the terminal to smoke a cigarette several times,and the noise when they took off was actually painful. Painful enough it reminds me of federal and local noise-control laws around airports. These were obviously being violated.
And there was a ton of speculation back then. It doesn't reflect a briefed threat, does it? Just personal precaution.
I doubt there would ever be anything such as a formal briefing on a issue this sensitive. If word were to get out that terrorists were shooting down US passenger jets with Stinger-style missles,the whole US airline industry would collapse. A much better plan would be to whisper into the pilots ears something along the line of ,"we really ain't sure what happened,but it might be a good idea to gain altitude and distance as quickly as possible.".
SHOULD have read,"These guys are NOT really allowed....."
I just stumbled on this. Tell me what you think.
Actually, it has been reported on several occassions that the FBI confiscated video tapes from security cameras that were aimed at the front of the Murrough building. I have seen one person (former FBI) interviewed that saw PART of these tapes and confirmed that a middle-eastern man sat in the truck for, at least, a minute AFTER McVeigh got out and walked across the street. He said it difficult to tell exactly how long "john doe #2" stayed in the truck because the cameras recorded on time lapse and he was unsure of the exact lapse in seconds. He went on to say that witnesses' statements that theysaw John Doe exit the truck on the passenger side and then walk back to the passenger door before finally leaving the scene were confirmed by the tape he saw. Have you, perchance, seen any of the local news tapes from the day of and days following the bombing? They are quite telling.
Dick Morris has stated that Clinton didn't seem interested in terrorist activities and didn't even go to inspect the first WTC bombing. What's up with that?!?
How many more people have to die before we have a real investigation for the truth?? The last investigations seem to be just to make it look like it wasn't Clinton's problem.
Please. Allow me to speculate...
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
The Tampa Tribune
December 17, 1995
COMMENTARY, Pg. 2
Remaking of the president: Lucky Bill
by CHRISTOPHER MATTHEWS
As an early stocking-stuffer for President Clinton, I would like to suggest a new nickname: "Lucky Bill."
Check the guy's streak:(snip)
Give the president credit for making some of this luck happen.
The polls. Clinton was shocked by the 1994 election returns. So shocked that he did something about them.
A. He got the kids out of the living room. In the early months of this administration, you didn't see Clinton without his claque of young, leftish staffers. Now you don't. Out of sight, out of mind.
B. He dressed for success. We used to see Clinton sweating up to McDonald's at 6:30 a.m. for his black coffee. Now the shorts are gone, replaced by long pants. The overaged yuppie jogger has been replaced by the youthful middle-aged golfer. Instead of seeing Clinton's white legs gleaming in the morning sun, we see him with Vernon Jordan riding in a golf cart. Don't think it doesn't matter.
C. He acts like a president. Instead of pushing the agenda of his political clients, including wife Hillary, Clinton now seems most intent on protecting the average American from what the other side is up to. It started with his fine response to the Oklahoma City bombing and has carried through to his dealings with the budget. Instead of Clinton the innovator, we have seen Clinton the protector. That's the Clinton people seem to want.
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
The Boston Globe
November 7, 1996
Thursday, City Edition
NATIONAL/FOREIGN; Pg. A1Clinton, GOP stake middle-ground claim
By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff(snip)
Clinton, whose chances for reelection practically were written off two years ago when he was perceived as a liberal, said yesterday that he triumphed in large part because he embodied the nation's centrist mood.
"The American people began to sort of move back to the 'vital center' after Oklahoma City," Clinton said yesterday aboard Air Force One, referring to the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma. The bombing "broke the spell in the country as people began searching for our common ground again," he said.
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
The Boston Globe
November 7, 1996
Thursday, City Edition
NATIONAL/FOREIGN; Pg. A1
Christopher leads list of Cabinet resignations; Perry also quits; major shifts seen
By Brian McGrory, Globe Staff
(snip)Yesterday, Clinton flew back to Washington on Air Force One, replayed the high points of his campaign and victory for reporters and greeted his staff in a warm, sometimes giddy celebration on the South Lawn.
"Sometimes I don't say 'thank you' enough," Clinton told the group, which ranged from office secretaries to Cabinet secretaries, the latter wearing "Welcome Home" T-shirts under their suitcoats and over dresses. "Sometimes I'm too hard on myself and by omission, sometimes I'm too hard on the people who work here. You have accomplished an enormous amount over these past four years."
After a campaign in which Clinton often seemed to strive not to create news, the day exploded with developments, all of them tinged with Clinton's obvious joy at being the first Democratic president reelected since Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Clinton, flying between Little Rock and Washington, visited reporters in the back of Air Force One, even donning a "funmeter" button given to him by one of the photographers.
Looking back over his campaign, Clinton attributed his success to a series of developments and strategy decisions in his first term. First, he said the roots of his political comeback dated to the decisions on the deficit reduction package and the crime bill that he made in 1993 and 1994. By 1996, he said, the results could be seen by the electorate, with the deficit down by more than 60 percent, and with most categories of violent crime down all over the country.
"We got interest rates down, we got the economy going and people finally started to feel it in 1996," Clinton said.
Second, he said the country began to shuck a strong antigovernment attitude and come together after the bombing of the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, in which 168 people were killed, many of them government workers.
"The American people began to sort of move back to the vital center after Oklahoma City," he said.
Although Clinton refrained from saying it yesterday, the explosion provided him his most successful opportunity to use his position to talk to the country, which he did frequently in the year and a half that followed.
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
St. Petersburg Times
November 7, 1996
NATIONAL; ELECTION '96 RESULTS; Pg. 1ASecond-term shake-up
by DAVID DAHL
(snip)The step from campaigning to governing has proven especially difficult the past four years. In 1992, Clinton came into office with just 43 percent of the popular vote and proposed a restructuring of the nation's health-care system. In 1994, Republicans won control of Congress and boldly shut down the federal government to force their budget on Clinton.
The American people rejected both sides' dramatic blueprints. Clinton says the country has come to the center of the ideological spectrum now, and he is trying to place himself right there with the people.
"The American people began to sort of move back to the vital center after Oklahoma City," Clinton said. Coming after the "bitter, bitter rhetoric" of the Republican revolution, the 1995 bombing "broke the spell in the country as people began searching for our common ground again," he said.
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