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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
It is my belief that Clinton refused to retaliate against al Qaeda after they bombed the USS Cole on October 12, 2000 because Al Gore was running on a "peace and prosperity" platform. If Clinton had done the right thing and sent troops into Afghanistan, obviously one half of that platform would have been questioned.
Regarding the prosperity half, former Clinton officials Alan Binder and Janet Yellen wrote of the 1997 balanced negotiations, "discretionary spending had already declined roughly 11 percent in real terms between 1992 and 1997. Further progress would be difficult because the entire cut had, to that point, come from the defense budget."
Akan S. Binder and Janet L. Yellen, The Fabulous Decade, p. 74.
In other words, as Rich Lowry noted in "Legacy," "This, not the 1993 budget deal, was Clinton’s big contribution to deficit reduction—-taken directly out of the hide of America’s military."
So cutting our military and intelligence budgets gave us a "prosperity" that ultimately left us much less secure. In truth, we had neither peace nor prosperity under Clinton.
Nobody who's sane believes anything you have to say.
I know I already stated this -- it's just that it's so refreshing to say.
Bush has certainly been incompetent and immoral, and is probably a war criminal, but let's give credit where credit is due. Being a target of terrorist attacks is a consequence of American imperialism, which in its present form goes back to the 1940s. Clinton's part in the program included several military attacks on several countries, including Yugoslavia, Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan and Iraq. In the case of Iraq, which was blockaded as well as bombed, the program supposedly resulted in 500,000 deaths, most of them children, of which Madeleine Albright, Clinton's Secretary of State, famously said, "We think it is worth it." The Clinton administration also pursued the expansion of NATO, which adversely affected the political development of post-Communist Russia and will almost certainly be a source of important trouble in the future. The American habit of attacking and threatening foreign countries and peoples ensured that, sooner or later, there would be hostile responses. Obama has explicitly stated that he plans more of the same in the future, in spite of having been elected as a sort of peace candidate, so we can expect more of the same sort of results we have observed.
The present financial and economic crisis was made inevitable by a headlong expansion of debt and credit, going back at least to the 1980s, in part to fund imperial adventures without having to tax the people, who, unlike their ruling class, are ambivalent about war and imperialism and might have been a source of political trouble. Again, we see a uniformity of policy all the way through, and more of the same is promised by Obama, who has made one of the architects of the present debacle, Larry Summers, a top financial advisor.
Bush increased domestic repression more radically than his predecessors, but most of the time all Clinton had to work with for this purpose was the Drug War. Obama, by voting for FISA last spring, showed that he plans to continue this part of the program.
In short, in these areas of fundamental policy (and others as well), while Bush was unusually incompetent and mendacious, he hewed to the line in general. It seems like further mendacity to complain about the results of these policies as if they had been his invention.
"C'mon Carmina and all you other increasingly desperate right wingnuts. As has been accurately testified to, PresBush and his regime were so dismissive of everything "Clinton," everything "progressive," everything "Democratic," that they threw into the proverbial dumpster everything the Clinton administration had been trying to do to guard against Al-Qaida and ignored several months of CIA warnings about Al-Qaida."
Let's see. Al Qaeda bombed two US embassies in August 1998 and the USS Cole in October 2000. According to Lawrence Wright in The Looming Tower, in November 1997, Mustafa Mahmoud Said Ahmed, an Egyptian member of al Qaeda, walked into the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, and told the CIA about a bombing plot involving the embassy. He was ignored. Prudence Bushnell, the US ambassador to Kenya warned Madeleine Albright and the State Department several times concerning the vulnerability of our embassy there. She was ignored. Can you tell us exactly what the Clinton administration did to guard against al Qaeda?
As far as CIA warnings, Richard Clarke wrote the following in "Against All Enemies":
"During the first week of July I convened the CSG and asked each agency to consider itself on full alert. I asked the CSG agencies to cancel summer vacations and official travel for the counterterrorism response staffs. Each agency should report anything unusual, even if a sparrow should fall from a tree. I asked the FBI to send another warning to the 18,000 police departments, State to alert the embassies, and the Defense Department to go to Threat Condition Delta. The Navy moved ships out of Bahrain.
"I asked FAA to send another security warning to the airlines and airports and requested special scrutiny at the ports of entry. We considered a broad public warning, but we had no proof or specificity. What would it say? ‘A terrorist group you have never heard of may be planning to do something somewhere?"
There was no proof or specificity concerning an imminent al Qaeda attack.
Carmina, for one. And then there's that Elephantman clown who shows up occasionally.
"Nobody who's sane believes anything you have to say.
"I know I already stated this -- it's just that it's so refreshing to say."
The facts are hard for the left to accept. Note that we are citing sources here. All you have offered thus far is snide remarks.
Bill Clinton refused to retaliate after the USS Cole because Al Gore was running?
Do you actually even KNOW anything about the USS Cole? What type of retaliation would YOU have had him do? Do you think maybe he refused to "retaliate", to your level of apocalyptic satisfaction, because ALL of the relevant military authorities including THEN incoming CENTCOM chief Tommy Franks, as he detailed in the book HE wrote, advised against it?
You might want to pick up Franks' book. It comes with pictures and everything.
Also as I seem to recall Clinton DID retaliate and right-wingers simultaenously whined about him both "wagging-the-dog" by launching an unnecessary attack and not doing enough by merely "bombing aspirin factories."
You know sort of like they want to argue now that Bush both inherited a recession from Bill Clinton and that same recession was magically caused by 9/11 nine months later.
Or how Bush was both wrong and right about Iraq.
Here's the deal: If you Repuklicans ever want anyone to take you seriously again pick one tact and stick with it. Then a few dumb people might at least buy your bullshit again. Otherwise you're likely to be out of power for a very LOOOONG time to come.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
