And for my first rant...

Because this is such a hot topic right now on the political stage, I've decided to mirror this article from my website regarding George W. Bush's dubious record in the war on terror.

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Clinton vs. Bin Laden vs. Bush vs. Bin Laden:
Which President ignored the terrorist threat?
By Erin D. Lindsey

Edited April 1, 2004.

As with everything, the Neoconservatives and Bush apologists fall back on their old standby when it comes to placing the blame for 9/11. They say that the terrorist attack was all Clinton’s fault.

“Clinton had a chance to get Osama, and he let him go!” they proclaim. What they are referring to is a claim made by a Pakistani businessman and Fox News Analyst named Mansoor Ijaz that the Sudanese government was offering to hand in Bin Laden in 1996-97, with Ijaz himself as the middleman in the deal. This was before the attacks on the African embassies in 1998, and before the USS Cole bombing in 2000. Until then, Osama Bin Laden was just another disgruntled ex-ally of the Reagan administration who was apparently pissed that his Saudi kinsmen had assisted the Americans during the first Gulf War. But at the time that Bush apologists and Mansoor Ijaz claim he was being offered, (1996-1997) Osama Bin Laden had not yet attacked any Americans or bombed anything that America leaders considered important. Yet Bush supporters will point to a number of times that Osama was apparently offered up as a sacrificial lamb by the Sudanese, who wanted to “normalize” relations with the USA after suffering US sanctions. (Incidentally, the sanctions were enacted upon Sudan because of their habit of supporting terrorism and for gross human rights violations.)

And apparently the intelligence agents of the time had reason to believe that Mansoor Ijaz was a dubious character, himself. According to Al Franken’s book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair And Balanced Look At The Right, former Clinton-era national security advisor Samuel “Sandy” Berger believed that Ijaz was an “unreliable freelancer” who was “persuing his own financial interests.” And he former director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council Daniel Benjamin had this to say of Mansoor Ijaz:

“Either he allowed himself to be manipulated, or he is in bed with a bunch of genocidal terrorists.” What this probably means is that it was believed that Sudanese government was hoping the Americans would look the other way as far as their support of terrorism, genocide, and the slave trade was concerned, as long as they handed over Osama Bin Laden. (Note: Mansoor Ijaz now works for Fox News, and wrote an article entitled "Clinton Let Bin Laden Slip Away and Metastasize." Sour grapes, Mr. Ijaz?)

Of course, when the US embassies were bombed in Kenya and Tanzania, Clinton did take action. An edict was signed authorizing the CIA to seek the death of Osama Bin Laden, and steps were taken to hunt the villain down. Admittedly, one of these attacks led to the accidental bombing of an asprin factory (weapons of mass headache destruction?) and the other bombing of an Al Qaeda terrorist training missed Osama Bin Laden entirely.

“The best post-facto intelligence we had was that bin Laden had left the training camp within an hour of the attack,” says Richard Clarke, the country’s first counter-terrorism Czar. “What went wrong? “I have reason to believe that a retired head of the I.S.I. was able to pass information along to Al Qaeda that an attack was coming.”

But by then the Republicans in America were totally consumed by something else. Completely, utterly, morbidly, voyeristically consumed. Obsessed, even. It seemed that Bill Clinton had received sexual favors from a White House Intern named Monica Lewinsky, and at that point it seemed that Clinton’s detractors wouldn’t have cared if Darth Vader were spotted orbiting the planet Earth with the Death Star. “Bill Clinton HAD SEX WITH THAT WOMAN,” they shrieked, and they tuned into Kenneth Starr’s full report in rapt fascination for any lurid details they might have missed. Whenever Clinton tried to bring up the dangers of terrorism to the drooling, hypnotized right-wing America, he was accused of “wagging the dog,” as if he’d pulled this Osama Bin Laden guy and the embassy bombings out of his posterior in order to distract the world from the fact that he’d engaged in extramartial shinnanegins.

By the time Clinton left office, US intelligence agents had collected quite a bit of information about Osama Bin Laden. By then, Clinton knew that he’d made a terrible mistake. He even said so. His agents said so. So they entrusted the information that they’d gathered to Geroge W. Bush when Bush took office. And what did Bush do with that information?

Nothing.

When the national counterterrorism organization known as the Hart-Rudman Commission suspected that Osama Bin Laden was up to something just five days before the attack on 9/11, Bush’s national security advsor Condoleezza Rice said she’d pass their concerns on to George W. Bush. Did she? If she did, did he listen?

Aparently not. In fact, this might be one of the reasons she has been so reluctant to tesify under oath and in public to the 9/11 Commission.

When FBI agents reported suspicious activities regarding specific Arab students at flight schools in July of 2001, what was done with their report?

It was shelved and ignored.

When Israeli, Jordanian, Morroccan, and German intelligence agents warned the CIA as late as August 2001 that there was high possibility of a terrorist attack on American or British soil, or in their words, "terrorists plan to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture," and when he receivd a memo from the CIA that month entitled, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," what action did George W. Bush take?

Absolutely none! He was on vacation on his ranch in Crawford, Texas in August 2001. Bush received several warnings of this sort in August, and yet he didn’t seem to find any of this disturbing enough to leave Crawford, abort his vacation, and return to active duty as our President.

When the National Security Agency (NSA) intercepted phone calls from Abu Zabaida, (Bin Laden’s chief of operations) shortly before 9/11, were their findings heeded?

Nope.

If Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak warned the Bush Administration (as he has claimed he did) that “Something would happen” TWELVE DAYS before the attacks on 9/11, what was done?

Nothing.

And what about the morning of 9/11? Stricter security measures were supposed to be in place because of a lot of these warnings, but on the morning of September 11 these security measures were actually relaxed. (This is sometimes referred to as the “NORAD standown.”) Why?

And when Bush was told that commercial planes had been hijacked, and that there had been some kind of crash in New York, what did he do? Did he give the order to scramble jets? When he was told that America was under attack, did he rush to take command?

No. He went to a photo-op at Booker Elementary School. There, he read aloud from a book about goats for about 20 minutes, before he was finally “whisked away” by the Secret Service. The order to scramble jets was given thirty four minutes after the planes were reported hijacked, but ten minutes is the maxium amount of time by law that can be taken to scramble jets when a hijacking occurs. But what if those jets (when they were finally scrambled) had gained an opportunity to shoot the hijacked planes down? Bush would have had to have given the order, because the order to shoot down civillian aircaft can only come from the White House. Why did he sit for so long in that classroom in Booker Elementary School, not in command, not doing his duty as Commander-In-Chief when America was under attack?

It appears that Bush supporters can’t make the “Clinton ignored the terrorist threat!” agrument without incriminating their own beloved leader as well. Because if Bill Clinton passed up a chance to take Osama Bin Laden into custody, George W. Bush passed up several chances to prevent the deaths of the three thousand victims of the Twin Towers tragedy in the months, weeks, and days leading up to September 11th, 2001. And he lied about it. And he’s continuing to try to hide the fact that he lied about it, by repeatedly stonewalling the 9/11 commission at almost every turn. If Bill Clinton messed up royally, at least he had the guts to admit it and try to rectify his mistakes. I have yet to hear word one from the Bush administration regarding any responsibility or accountability for the terrorist act that happened on George W. Bush’s watch.

It also appears that George W. Bush ignored Osama Bin Laden a great deal of the time after 9/11, as well. Soon after the attacks he declared that Osama Bin Laden was "Wanted Dead Or Alive," similar to Clinton, and a war was waged on one of the most degraded, poverty-stricken nations in the world: Afghanistan. Yes, the Taliban are evil. Yes, they were brutually oppressive, particularly to women. Yes, they were funding Al Qaeda training camps, and had offered sanctuary to top members of Al Qaeda many times, particularly Bin Laden himself. But almost all of these things can also be said of Saudi Arabia: a country that the US government considers a valuable ally and continues to do business with to this day.

And the moment the Bush administration turned its notoriously short attention span elsewhere, the Taliban came creeping back. Today they wield a considerable amount of power in a large chunk of southern Afghanistan that is not under the control of the current Afghan President (and former Unocal employee) Hamid Karzai.

After the war in Afghanistan, some people began to speculate whether or not Osama Bin Laden had been killed in the bombings that took place on Al Qaeda hideouts where he was rumored to have been holed up.

"He's probably dead," said such authorities as Dale Watson, the FBI's counter-terrorism chief, and Pakistan's President, General Pervez Musharraf in 2002. The same year, An Egyptian journalist and former friend of Bin Laden's named Essam Darez also voiced his suspicions that the terrorist leader was no more. Then, of course, the "albums" a started coming out: recordings of Bin Laden's newest threats and fatwas (one of them calling Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein an 'infidel') that seemed to point to the villain's continued existence.

But by then, George W. Bush just didn't care. He said so himself.

"We haven't heard from him in a long time," Bush told reporters on March 13th, 2002. "I truly am not that concerned about him." And, "I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."

Bush apparently did have other priorities: the invasion of Iraq, a country that has since been proven to have no clear links to Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, or the attacks on 9/11. In fact, Osama was known to publicly denounce Saddam Hussein due to the latter's secular style of governing. Yes, Saddam is a mentally unbalanced, bloodthirsty tyrant, but one thing he's apparently not in the eyes of Islamic extremists is a religious fanatic. Not fanatical enough for Osama Bin Laden, anyway. Or, as the much-lauded comedian and Daily Show Anchor John Stewart once said, "What kind of dick do you have to be for Osama Bin Laden to not want to work with you?" Aside from calling Hussein an "infidel," he has also called him a "hypocrite" for once having been an lly of the USA in the 1980s, and a "socialist." (Good lord, Osama almost sounds like Ann Coulter!)

And while Bush spent a year barking up the wrong tree in Iraq, Al Qaeda took a breather. They regrouped and reorganized. And on March 11, 2003 they showed the world that they were still a threat when an Al Qaeda cell bombed a train in Madrid, killing 200 people.

Now that choas has engulfed Iraq in the aftermath of a war that has never really ended, there are signs of Al Qaeda activity where there were none before. Much has been made of a Jordanian millitant named Abu Musab Zarqawi, who is said to be linked to Al Qaeda and is rumored to have killed at least 700 Iraqis. Yet there are signs that the Bush administration had several chances to capture or kill this terrorist, but decided to let him go on his merry way instead, in order to focus all of their energies on attacking Iraq. Gee, it sure sounds like Bush let Abu Musab Zarqawi slip away and metastasize---hey wait, isn't that what Mansoor Ijaz and the GOP said about Clinton and his supposed "chance" at Bin Laden?

And just this week, the Bush administration actually scuttled a plan to increase by 50 percent the number of criminal financial investigators working to disrupt the finances of Al Qaeda, Hamas and other terrorist organizations in order to save $12 million. I can understand trying to save money, but how can the Bush admninistration cut funding in the war on terror, and then claim that they're tough on terror? This goes way beyond the realm of political doublespeak, and from all of the evidence it seems that it would be just plain dishonest of Bush and Cheney to run for re-election on an anti-terror platform. But this is exactly the kind of manuver that many have come to expect of the Bush admninistration.

Yet even now, Bush is attempting to defend his record in the war on terror against former Treasury Secretaries and Former White House experts on counter-terrorism, and the 9/11 commission that he has repeatedly thwarted and stonewalled since the investigations into that horrific and tragic day began. But looking back on Bush's abysmal record in the war on terror, one wonders why he would even bother to try to get himself elected with it, much less defend it. Or, as they might say in George W. Bush's hometown of Crawford, TX: "That dog won't hunt."

SOURCES AND MORE INFORMATION:

NEW! The Bush administration has scuttled a plan to increase by 50 percent the number of criminal financial investigators working to disrupt the finances of Al Qaeda, Hamas and other terrorist organizations.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/31/business/31irs.html (New York Times: Registration Required.)

Bush Administration ignores multiple warnings:

http://www.wanttoknow.info/9-11cover-up

http://democrats.com/elandslide/petition.cfm?campaign=911

Warning from Hart-Rudman commission:

http://www.cjr.org/archives.asp?url=/01/6/evans.asp

Warning from FBI:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A30176-2002May16¬Found=true

Warning from NSA:

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/DailyNews/wnt_missedsignals_1_020218.htm l

Warnings from CIA, Morrocco, Russia, Jordan, Israel, and Germany:

http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/generic.cgi?template=articleprint.tmplh&ArticleId=58269

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/izvestia_story_pic.html

http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/09/16/wcia16.xml

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A357442002May17¬Found=true

http://www.thememoryhole.org/faz-article.htm

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/main/foreignwarnings.html

http://edition.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/18/intelligence.hearings/

http://www.mediamonitors.net/mosaddeq36.html

Warning from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak:

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/LEB112A.html

And on Clinton’s record with Bin Laden:

http://foi.missouri.edu/terrorintelligence/search4osama.html

http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/23/ret.clinton.bin.laden/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1558918.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/752808.stm

http://www.infowars.com/saved%20pages/Prior_Knowledge/Clinton_let_bin_laden.htm

“Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair And Balanced Look At The Right.” by Al Franken. Published by Pengiun Group USA Inc, 2003.

Clinton accused of "wagging the dog" in the hunt for Bin Laden.

http://www.ishipress.com/wag-dog.htm

http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,2422,00.html

http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/5/22/173502

http://archive.salon.com/news/1998/08/21newsc.html

Bush claims that Clinton wasted too much time trying to track down Bin Laden in 2001 (pre-9/11.)

http://www.misleader.org/daily_mislead/read.asp?fn=df03262004.html

Taliban are back in Afghanistan:

http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040228.wtalib28/BNStory/Front/

http://truthout.org/docs_03/041003D.shtml

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1501,973075,00.html

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0508/p01s02-wosc.html


http://www.infoplease.com/spot/taliban-time.html

"Osama Bin Laden Is Probably Dead."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/2135473.stm

http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/south/01/18/gen.musharraf.binladen/

http://www.namibian.com.na/2002/January/world/023AE065CA.html

Osama Bin Laden disses Saddam Hussein---the "Infidel," "Socialist," and "Hypocrite" comments:

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0211-11.htm


Bush pledges to get bin Laden, dead or alive.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/sept11/2001/12/14/bush-binladen.htm

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/WTC_MAIN010917.html

Bush says he doesn't care about Bin Laden, "I'm not concerned with him."

http://www.cursor.org/stories/binladenforgotten.htm

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2002/03/14/MN233349.DTL

No clear Saddam/Al Qaeda links:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,887207,00.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3398677.stm

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030712-104217-1565r.htm

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/8089829.htm

And Bush himself admits there is no clear link between Saddam and 9/11.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3118262.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2727471.stm

http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/no-saddam-qaeda.htm

The Bush administration lets Al Qaeda terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi slip through their fingers.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4431601/

Bush Administration stonewalls the 9/11 Commission:

http://www.911citizenswatch.org/print.php?sid=88

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A41468-2004Mar8¬Found=true

http://cooperativeresearch.org/sourcetree.jsp?EVENT_SOURCE_TREE_ID=45

http://205.177.120.143/artman/publish/article_3380.shtml