Semi-OT--Biking To Nowhere

Robert Chung wrote:
Bill C wrote:

There were reasons why neither President did much of anything about Al
Qaida before 9/11 [...] but it needs to be clear that it was both
administrations

In every other thing it did during its first few months, the guiding
principle of this administration was: if Clinton did it, it must be bad,
so we'll do it the other way. If the previous administration had done
nothing about terrorism, this administration would have made it their top
priority.
I don't think they were even vaguely organized enough to begin to deal
with this. The people who say that it was low on their list of
priorities are absolutely right. All the intel from the during the
Clinton administration said that at most Al-Qaida could kill a couple
of hundred, and probably outside the US as they had already done. They
were being pretty closely monitored, and Clinton had decided against
several possible military and covert solutions.
Please tell me what alarming new info came in between 20 Jan and 9 Sep
that should have caused an all out scramble to attempt to quickly
cobble together an operation to kill or capture Bin-Laden by the Bush
team? The Clinton administrations decided, and I can ubderstand why,
that there was way too much risk, and cost, both internally and
internationally to going after him using all resources. They
consistantly blocked this option, that's clear from the evidence before
the committee, and had followed this since at least 96, and continued
it even after the embassy bombings. The planned operation to capture
him sounds a lot like the failed Iranian hostage mission, and probably
had less chance of success and more risk for global disaster.
I'm willing to bet that, even now, if the US military or Intel types
kill Bin-Laden, there will be a huge outcry among the "progressives"
about extra-judicial executions, and that he was killed, rather than
brought to trial to protect the Saudi government from being exposed. It
would've been a hundred times worse before 9/11 if they had killed him.
Arresting him once he was out of Sudan was going to be damn near
impossible.
You tell me how either administration could've done anything really
effective against him without generating a huge legal headache both
here in the US, UN, and World Courts? Then how about the backlash
against the US for unilaterally going into another sovereign nation,
before 9/11, and killing or kidnapping a guest, especially an Islamic
hero?
What came out of the Church commission and the US intel agencies
actions prior to that around the globe was the neutering of our
capability to deal with any situation, no matter how bad. Carter gutted
US Humnit, becuase he personally found spying repugnant, but that just
added to what Congress and Ford had done in swinging the pedulum on
Intel way too far the other way so that they were3 basically blind
except for NSA, and that doesn't give you people on the ground to
handle operations, and get a feeling for the context of the intercepted
information, let alone actually act on it to kill someone like
Bin-Laden. We didn't have the ability, or any way for the president to
legally authorize his killing. The Taliban sure as hell weren't going
to extradite him, kidnapping him using the US military would've been an
open act of war, especially when it failed and they had a couple of US
helicopters, bodies, and prisoners to parade on tv. Sanctions almost
never work.
How about you telling us just what reasonable action, either
administration could've taken, without causing a huge legal and
political firestorm?
Bill C

Bill C wrote:
Please tell me what alarming new info came in between 20 Jan and 9 Sep
that should have caused an all out scramble to attempt to quickly
cobble together an operation to kill or capture Bin-Laden by the Bush
team?

How about, "Bin Ladin determined to strike in US?"

"The system was blinking red:"
http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch8.pdf

Robert Chung wrote:

Bill C wrote:


There were reasons why neither President did much of anything about Al
Qaida before 9/11 [...] but it needs to be clear that it was both
administrations


In every other thing it did during its first few months, the guiding
principle of this administration was: if Clinton did it, it must be bad,
so we'll do it the other way. If the previous administration had done
nothing about terrorism, this administration would have made it their top
priority.



Actually, I remember reading one area that they saw things the same
way; that the US would not accept a judgement by the World Court--at the
same time as the administration acceded to holding other countries to
accept the court.
It was supposedly something to do with surrendering sovereignty to a
foreign power.

Steve

--
Mark & Steven Bornfeld DDS
http://www.dentaltwins.com
Brooklyn, NY
718-258-5001

Bill C wrote:
I'm willing to bet that, even now, if the US military or Intel types
kill Bin-Laden, there will be a huge outcry among the "progressives"
about extra-judicial executions, and that he was killed, rather than
brought to trial to protect the Saudi government from being exposed. It
would've been a hundred times worse before 9/11 if they had killed him.
Arresting him once he was out of Sudan was going to be damn near
impossible.
You tell me how either administration could've done anything really
effective against him without generating a huge legal headache both
here in the US, UN, and World Courts? Then how about the backlash
against the US for unilaterally going into another sovereign nation,
before 9/11, and killing or kidnapping a guest, especially an Islamic
hero?

Bill, I'm not sure you're clued into reality here. The Bush
administration does not give a **** about progressives, the UN,
or the World Court. In the US, liberals are on the outside of
the halls of power, looking in. The list of stuff that has
happened in spite of howls of protest from "progressives" is
really long.

With very few exceptions the Bush administration does whatever
the **** it wants. You seem to have a very inflated sense of
the left's influence in current American politics.

Bob Schwartz

Bob Schwartz wrote:
Bill C wrote:
I'm willing to bet that, even now, if the US military or Intel types
kill Bin-Laden, there will be a huge outcry among the "progressives"
about extra-judicial executions, and that he was killed, rather than
brought to trial to protect the Saudi government from being exposed. It
would've been a hundred times worse before 9/11 if they had killed him.
Arresting him once he was out of Sudan was going to be damn near
impossible.
You tell me how either administration could've done anything really
effective against him without generating a huge legal headache both
here in the US, UN, and World Courts? Then how about the backlash
against the US for unilaterally going into another sovereign nation,
before 9/11, and killing or kidnapping a guest, especially an Islamic
hero?

Bill, I'm not sure you're clued into reality here. The Bush
administration does not give a **** about progressives, the UN,
or the World Court. In the US, liberals are on the outside of
the halls of power, looking in. The list of stuff that has
happened in spite of howls of protest from "progressives" is
really long.

With very few exceptions the Bush administration does whatever
the **** it wants. You seem to have a very inflated sense of
the left's influence in current American politics.

Bob Schwartz


All of which happened after 9/11. 9/11 was the excuse that turned the
neocons and their agenda loose on the world. Everything they've done,
they have claimed to do in the name of defending America from terror.
Before 9/11 their hands were still tied, but as I pointed out there was
no major new intelligence. We knew that Bin-Laden wanted badly to hit
inside the US, but nobody thought he could pull off anything even
approaching the level of 9/11. From page 258 0n for the next couple it
deatials the threat assessment rising through the end of july with
everyone reporting the "spectacular attack" was going to happen
somewhere in the middle east, noone gave any credibility to it
happening here. Not the CIA, FBI, any of the military etc. And by the
end of July it was WAY too late to do anything except try and find the
people already pre-positioned and prepared.

MoveOn.org, Soros, Hollywood etc are spending how much money, the last
two elctions were how close? Bush's approval rating is where? I'm not
sure the left's power is growing but the rights is fading with the
majority of the country who are pretty moderate. If the Democrats
manage to lose this next election they should just disband as a party,
because they are hopeless.
We're way into the next election cycle and most of the GOP are shaking
in their boots, from what I'm seeing, and that's not coming from
sources that lean way left. There's a huge sense of Bush may have
wrecked the GOP for decades to come, and that's coming from GOP leaders
off the record.
Bill C

Robert Chung wrote:
Bill C wrote:
Please tell me what alarming new info came in between 20 Jan and 9 Sep
that should have caused an all out scramble to attempt to quickly
cobble together an operation to kill or capture Bin-Laden by the Bush
team?

How about, "Bin Ladin determined to strike in US?"

"The system was blinking red:"
http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch8.pdf

There was an increase in activity, but it was way too late, with way
too little in the way of Human Intelligence resources to do a damned
thing about it. If we had solid evidence of a specific cell operating,
or even solid info on the target we might've had a shot at stopping it.
Nothing in the intelligence world happens quickly, especially when we
hadn't restructured after the cold war. There was a complete failure to
assess where, and what type of threats we were going to face. As far as
I can tell we were still locked in on China, and the activities of Cuba
in Central and South America. We had ****, and still have **** for a
reliable network in the Middle East, we've always counted on the
Israelis to handle that for us. Didn't work out too well, did it?
You've got to recruit good people, but the CIA recruiters keep getting
run off college campuses here, train them, acclimate them to the
culture and life of the region they're going to work in,make them
fluent and literate not only in the academic language but local slang
and dialects, get them enough experience to have some idea when they
are being mislead, and then have enough of them inserted and trusted in
all the strategic places you need them.
Any guesses how long that takes?
This isn't a stupid Hollywood thriller movie, intelligence work is
years of dull boring plugging away at getting to the right spot to pick
up one or two important and accurate chunks of info. Do you have any
idea of the amount of garbage they sort through, and have to try to
piece together to even beging to decide on what's crdible and where to
beging digging at it? Then since the early 70s they more often than not
found they didn't have the resources on the ground to really follow it
up and relied on the Brits, French, and other allies who did, and do
have extensive networks on the ground.
If on Jan 21 someone had guaranteed that before June Bin-Laden was
going to be at a certain spot, at a certain time, they might have been
able to get an operation together to slip in a sniper team, make the
kill and get them out, but the hard intell needed to make a strike
happen, and the network to support it just didn't exist, and still
doesn't.
Are you aware of the fact that over 75% of the intel budget was
dedicated to NSA, who was supposed to have 0 Humint Resources? Carter
took us out of that business in a wholesale fashion. NSA does have some
clandestine operations groups, and the ability to call up anything they
need from the military, but without people on the ground you just
aren't sure exactly what those satelite photos are, or those
conversations mean for sure. Bit us in the ass big time, didn't it?
The truth is that there was really no way in hell politically for
Clinton to do much more than he did, and Bush had no time, if he'd
wanted to, and neither had the resources.
I'm on the outside looking in taking guesses about what we were
capable of, and I'd bet that I'm seriously overestimating just how
prepared and capable we were, and still are.
Bill C

Bill C wrote:

intelligence work is
years of dull boring plugging away at getting to the right spot to pick
up one or two important and accurate chunks of info. Do you have any
idea of the amount of garbage they sort through

Yes.

Bill C wrote:
Robert Chung wrote:
Bill C wrote:

Brian, what did Clinton do in all the time after he was given these
reports? http://www.judicialwatch.org/5504.shtml

http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch4.pdf
Thanks it was good to read through that again. It just confirms the
fact that the Clinton administration, did nothing even remotely
effective [about Al-Qaida], mostly for fear of offending people and
creating a
backlash.

So what has the Bush administration done that's been remotely effective
about Al-Qaida? Not for want of trying in Afghanistan, either (although the
whole Iraq thing IMO has benefited Al-Qaida, as there never were many
members in Iraq under Saddam, but you can bet there are now).

Peter

Bill C wrote:
MoveOn.org, Soros, Hollywood etc are spending how much money, the last
two elctions were how close? Bush's approval rating is where? I'm not
sure the left's power is growing but the rights is fading with the
majority of the country who are pretty moderate. If the Democrats
manage to lose this next election they should just disband as a party,
because they are hopeless.

We're way into the next election cycle and most of the GOP are shaking
in their boots, from what I'm seeing, and that's not coming from
sources that lean way left. There's a huge sense of Bush may have
wrecked the GOP for decades to come, and that's coming from GOP leaders
off the record.

You need to get out more. This is just not possible. If there
is one area of cooperation between the two parties it is in
gerrymandering electoral districts. There are almost no swing
districts and incumbents don't lose. There will not be a big
change in seats at any level because that is no longer possible.

The Senate can't be gerrymandered so that's really the only
place where meaningful pickups could be made. But the margin is
still too big.

Where I live there will be no political swing with the exception
that the GOP has an excellent chance to pick up the governor's
office. The GOP congressional seats are so safe there is no way
they could **** up enough to lose one. Wrecked for decades to
come? Whoever is telling you that is needs to stop smoking dope.
No one in the GOP is shaking in their boots here. Or any incumbent
Dem for that matter. Everyone is safe.

And the people at MoveOn are idiots. You're not in a swing state.
If you were you would have seen that. The money that organizations
like them and ACT were spending was based on the premise that the
small number of target areas were not yet saturated, when in fact
they were so oversaturated that it was getting painful. Because
of that they completely missed valid secondary targets like Sen
Alzheimer in Kentucky.

If you give an idiot a lot of money they are still an idiot.

Bob Schwartz

Peter Allen wrote:
Bill C wrote:
Robert Chung wrote:
Bill C wrote:

Brian, what did Clinton do in all the time after he was given these
reports? http://www.judicialwatch.org/5504.shtml

http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch4.pdf
Thanks it was good to read through that again. It just confirms the
fact that the Clinton administration, did nothing even remotely
effective [about Al-Qaida], mostly for fear of offending people and
creating a
backlash.

So what has the Bush administration done that's been remotely effective
about Al-Qaida? Not for want of trying in Afghanistan, either (although the
whole Iraq thing IMO has benefited Al-Qaida, as there never were many
members in Iraq under Saddam, but you can bet there are now).

Peter

Have you read the thread? Bush has made it worse by going into Iraq.
They along with the other governments have taken out a huge portion of
Al-Qaida's top leadership, the Saudis just got another. If Bush hadn't
gone off on his merry little adventure, we would've had plenty of
troops available to really hurt Al-Qaida in Afghanistan, but the
problem is that they are perfectly safe on the Pakistan side of the
border as long as they stay in those tribal regions. The reality is
that the Pakistan situation is a little better than it was with
Cambodia but not much and the list of friends and neighbors still
pouring in money and support for the extremists starting with the
Saudis makes this a holding action for the forseeable future.
Bill C