Metal Sludge Gossip Board

YourMomma wrote:10 months after Clinton passed on taking Bin Laden out, just 9 months before the 9/11 attack that killed thousands of Americans. Funny how that works.

YourMomma wrote:I would place blame on both administrations for dropping the ball. Wouldn't you?

YourMomma wrote:I would place blame on both administrations for dropping the ball. Wouldn't you?

"Worried about intercepts showing a growing likelihood of al-Qaeda attacks around the millennium, the CIA steps up ties with Ahmed Shah Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance fighting the Taliban. The CIA sends a team of agents, led by bin Laden unit chief Richard Blee, to Massoud’s headquarters in a remote part of northern Afghanistan, seeking his help to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. The CIA team and Massoud meet twice, and Blee tells him, “We have a common enemy.” Massoud complains that the US is too focused on bin Laden, and is not interested in the root problems of Taliban, Saudi, and Pakistani support for terrorism that is propping him up. He agrees to help nonetheless, and the CIA gives him more aid in return. However, the US is officially neutral in the Afghan civil war and the agents are prohibited from giving any aid that would “fundamentally alter the Afghan battlefield.” The CIA team will later be reported to admire Massoud greatly. They see him as “a Che Guevara figure, a great actor on history’s stage,” and “a poet, a military genius, a religious man, and a leader of enormous courage who defied death and accepted its inevitability.” Author Steve Coll will write: “The CIA team had gone into the Panjshir [Valley, where Massoud’s headquarters is located] as unabashed admirers of Massoud. Now their convictions deepened even as they recognized that the agency’s new partnership with the Northern Alliance would be awkward, limited, and perhaps unlikely to succeed.” Perhaps because of this, the team members agree with Massoud’s criticism of US policy and agree to lobby for a policy change in his favor in Washington. [COLL, 2004, PP. 469-472; WASHINGTON POST, 2/23/2004]"

http://www.historycommons.org/entity.js ... ah_massoud

YourMomma wrote:

tin00can wrote:


It sure didn't sound like that in your first post. However, I'm sure that was on purpose. OK.

I was pointing out that a previous President failed well before W did. In the end does it really matter who failed harder? The guy is most likely dead anyway. Or so I've heard.

chickenona wrote:Hahaha @ "your side failed first and harder than my side".

I could go on a lengthy harangue about how the Bush administration back-burnered a security report pointedly entitled "bin Laden Determined to Attack Within the US" in August of 2001, or we could all finally admit that the whole debate of who screwed up worse ten years ago is pointless.

"A secret intelligence document prepared for President Bill Clinton in December 1998 reported on a suspected plot by Osama bin Laden to hijack a U.S. airliner in an effort to force the United States to release imprisoned conspirators in the 1993 World Trade Center attacks."

washingtonpost.com

YourMomma wrote:The bottom line is both administrations failed in killing the little fuck. At least the current one has taken a good first step in not surrendering in Afghanistan. What he does from here remains to be seen. I"m not too optimistic however.

tin00can wrote:http://www.snopes.com/rumors/clinton.asp

tin00can wrote:http://www.snopes.com/rumors/clinton.asp

"Men and women at the CIA risked their lives to provide occasions to kill a man we knew had declared war and had attacked America four or five times before 1998. We had plans that had been approved by the Joint Operations Command at Fort Bragg. We had opportunities, many opportunities to kill him.

But that's the president's decision. That's absolutely the case. It's not a simple, dumb bureaucrat like me; that's not my decision. It's his. But for him to get on the television and say to the American people he did all he could is a flat lie, sir." - FORMER CIA UNIT CHIEF MICHAEL SCHEUER - 2006 Fox News Sunday Interview

EvilMadman wrote:Wait, I know what you're going to say, "But so did President Bush". Yes, but President Bush wasn't offered custody of Bin Laden from the Sudanese government.

The Clinton administration struggled to find a way to accept the offer in secret contacts that stretched from a meeting at a Rosslyn hotel on March 3, 1996, to a fax that closed the door on the effort 10 weeks later. Unable to persuade the Saudis to accept bin Laden, and lacking a case to indict him in U.S. courts at the time, the Clinton administration finally gave up on the capture.

EvilMadman wrote:

tin00can wrote:http://www.snopes.com/rumors/clinton.asp

Yeah, okay, he did a great job of catching one of the masterminds of the '93 WTC attack [Ramzi Youssef], and maybe a few other plotters/foot soldiers. But he failed miserably to mount a concerted effort to smash the Al-Qaeda network and either capture or kill Bin Laden.

Wait, I know what you're going to say, "But so did President Bush". Yes, but President Bush wasn't offered custody of Bin Laden from the Sudanese government.

"Men and women at the CIA risked their lives to provide occasions to kill a man we knew had declared war and had attacked America four or five times before 1998. We had plans that had been approved by the Joint Operations Command at Fort Bragg. We had opportunities, many opportunities to kill him.

But that's the president's decision. That's absolutely the case. It's not a simple, dumb bureaucrat like me; that's not my decision. It's his. But for him to get on the television and say to the American people he did all he could is a flat lie, sir." - FORMER CIA UNIT CHIEF MICHAEL SCHEUER - 2006 Fox News Sunday Interview

And what's with all the "We just let him [Bin Laden] go" nonsense?

How the hell can you just let someone go that you never even had possession of in the first place?

And we [The U.S.] didn't "just let him go", he fucking ESCAPED through a mountain range [The Hindu Kush] that are bigger and more treacherous than the American Rocky Mountains! He probably used the exact same underground bunkers and passages that the Mujahideen used to hide from the Russian army?

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0 ... index.html

pooldude wrote:^^^ That sounds too reasonable, Earl.

Waddaya tryin' to do...let all the hot air outta everyone's balloon, or what?

Dana_Dubrow wrote:Ask any investigator the best way to solve a crime involving theft and murder. You simply follow the money. Who stood to profit, who had the motive, who stood to gain the most?

Was it terrorists to strike a blow at our "freedom" cause you know , they hate it?

Or security and defense industries because they stood to make so much money if our country went to war?

Or was it the oil industry, because the country's that wouldn't play ball, were the ones that sat on large amounts of the worlds remaining oil reserves?

Or was it the banking industry, who had/has/is held aloft by laundering drug money from the sales of cocaine in South America and the sale of opium/heroin from Afghanistan?

Fact is, is that both party's have their finger in the pie, gr(R)anted, one more than the other. UBL was/ is nothing more than the common enemy propped up for us to hate, he became the new USSR.

pooldude wrote:I have to admit, Earl...your stage presentation reminds me a lot of Al Franken.

And now, after these 2 latest Sludge posts, I'm thinkin' maybe you have a future in politics.

Dana_Dubrow wrote:again, follow the money. Do your own math. If you read about it from some dipshit on a message board, most likely, you'll dismiss it.

Search it out, and make your own opinion.




Just so I don't look like a total aloof twat: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... =firefox-a

It's a couple hours long, so grab a sandwich.

Dana_Dubrow wrote: Was it terrorists to strike a blow at our "freedom" cause you know , they hate it?

Ugmo wrote:How about doing a little research before throwing around that timeworn GOP myth?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dy ... 1-2001Oct2

The Clinton administration struggled to find a way to accept the offer in secret contacts that stretched from a meeting at a Rosslyn hotel on March 3, 1996, to a fax that closed the door on the effort 10 weeks later. Unable to persuade the Saudis to accept bin Laden, and lacking a case to indict him in U.S. courts at the time, the Clinton administration finally gave up on the capture.

"In 1996, bin Laden personally engineered a plot to assassinate Clinton while the president was in Manila for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation. However, intelligence agents intercepted a message just minutes before the motorcade was to leave, and alerted the United States Secret Service. Agents later discovered a bomb planted under a bridge."

en.wikipedia.org

"In 1996, al-Qaeda announced its jihad to expel foreign troops and interests from what they considered Islamic lands. Bin Laden issued a fatwa, which amounted to a public declaration of war against the United States of America and any of its allies, and began to refocus al-Qaeda's resources towards large-scale, propagandist strikes. Also occurring on June 25, 1996, was the bombing of the Khobar towers, located in Khobar, Saudi Arabia."

en.wikipedia.org

VinnieKulick wrote:

Dana_Dubrow wrote:again, follow the money. Do your own math. If you read about it from some dipshit on a message board, most likely, you'll dismiss it.

Search it out, and make your own opinion.




Just so I don't look like a total aloof twat: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... =firefox-a

It's a couple hours long, so grab a sandwich.

Don't have a couple of hours to waste.
What I am saying is, you say "follow the money" as if the terrorist are all because of the last two presidents, and I am saying, those 'peaceful religion' followers have been blowing people up for over 40 years. Who was profiting then? Who's profiting when they blow up shit in Spain, or Indonesia?