Bush's Obscene Tirades Rattle White House Aides - Page 12

amber · #**166** 08-27-2005, 10:42 PM

Wow, thanks Diss, very interesting.

dissention · #**167** 08-27-2005, 10:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by irishgrl

interesting.

In what way? Interesting because of it's secrecy? Interesting because they didn't consult with professionals in regard to the ****ty "evidence" they had? Interesting because the chemical EMPTA that they were so up in arms over supposedly being produced at that plant is actually manufactured in Milwaukee by Aldrich Chemicals?

dissention · #**168** 08-27-2005, 10:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by skcin

Still better than Shrub.

I've **** better specimens than Shrub, but Clinton wasn't better by much.

dissention · #**169** 08-27-2005, 10:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by irishgrl

what reason did he give? National Security? Protected Intelligence?
At any rate, I accept that you suspect dire motives from Clinton. You'll just have to accept that I do not.

Therein lies the problem. You have blind hatred for Bush, yet never have anything bad or negative to say about Clinton simply because he isn't Bush.

amber · #**170** 08-27-2005, 10:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dissention

In what way? Interesting because of it's secrecy? Interesting because they didn't consult with professionals in regard to the ****ty "evidence" they had? Interesting because the chemical EMPTA that they were so up in arms over supposedly being produced at that plant is actually manufactured in Milwaukee by Aldrich Chemicals?

That's just scratching the surface of things that are "interesting" about it.

oh, and don't make me break out my analogy again.

dissention · #**171** 08-27-2005, 10:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by amber

That's just scratching the surface of things that are "interesting" about it.

oh, and don't make me break out my analogy again.

I seriously spittled when I read that particular post that contained your analogy.

And have you read about how Clinton intentionally ignored genocide in Rwanda? I think that particular thing is what I find so disturbing about his presidency.

amber · #**172** 08-27-2005, 10:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dissention

I seriously spittled when I read that particular post that contained your analogy.

And have you read about how Clinton intentionally ignored genocide in Rwanda? I think that particular thing is what I find so disturbing about his presidency.

No, I knew he did, but I don't know the details.

irishgrl · #**173** 08-27-2005, 10:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dissention

Therein lies the problem. You have blind hatred for Bush, yet never have anything bad or negative to say about Clinton simply because he isn't Bush.

My feelings for Bush are not connected to my feelings about Clinton. I hate Bush on his own merits. I happen to admire Clinton immensely. He made mistakes but at least he has the grace to apologize when he realizes he's wrong.
as for my comment ("interesting") I was referring to the part I quoted. That the Pentagon reviewed all the intelligence Clinton had with reference to bombing Sudan, and declared Clinton's actions appropriate, and that another official declared "if we had to do it all over again, we would".

btw: the following are excerpts from a blog that asks muslims what they think of the US policies (in Sudan and elsewhere)

Quote:

The United States was completely justified in carrying out missile strikes on the alleged terrorist bases in Afghanistan and Sudan. I believe that the US did not make this move lightly but was forced to show its hand. Had an Islamic country been threatened by a radical Christian group, I am sure that all of us would be condemning that group and any nation that supported it. How sad it is then that the people, not the government but the innocent people, of the United States are threatened and we say and do nothing.
I do not presume to think that I can convince the radicals of the moronic nature of their argument. However if someone, anyone, threatened my country and it's people, I would think that I would be well within my rights to hurt them, their followers and any nation that supported their cause.
That is what the US has done and I cannot, in all good conscience, condemn them for it.

# Syed Mohib ul Islam Bukhari
# The USA was justified in retaliating as her passivity in the past encouraged terrorists to continue killing innocent people. What these people do in the name of Islam is shameful. No religion, including Islam, permits violence. I hope these reprisals will make them think twice before they embark on one of their crazy acts.

Umair Pirzada.
# Terrorism should be stamped out at all costs, especially fanatical Muslims. The US was correct to bomb the bases in Afghanistan. With the spy satellite, there was obviously more than sufficient proof. The factory in Sudan is a different story. People and animals that needed that medication that was also being produced there will suffer. But then again, do the terrorists think about the innocent people they killed with their bomb blasts.
The Sudanese government is to blame. They allowed that factory to produce other products. They are just as fanatic as the Afghans. Fight fire with fire. Bomb them again if necessary.

# Mohammad Amir Aslam
Florida
# I would condemn the US for its actions but I cannot; in this instance, Mr. Osama Bin Laden asked for it. Cowards
like Mr. Osama Bin Laden should take their fight to Saudi Arabia and not to hotels, restaurants and embassy's around the world. The Afghan government should kick him out of Afghanistan before he comes to bite them as well.
He has the blood of 300 poor and innocent Kenyans and Tanzanians on his hands.
Muslims around the world should develop consistency in their opinions and stop blaming Jews for their
dilapidation. The pathetic state of the Muslims around the world is their own doing and no one else's, shifting blame to others particularly the Jewish community is ignorant and racist.

# Atif Hassan
# As a US citizen, I am glad that our nation launched these missiles against those who are sworn to attack and destroy our people and their properties around the world. I hear so much about moderate Islamic people who do not support the taking of innocent lives. If such people exist, or if, as I am told, they constitute the majority of the Muslim people, then I suggest that those sensible Muslims themselves take up arms against their terrorist brothers. Doing so will lend credibility to the claim of Muslims that they are a peace loving people who do not support attacks on innocent people, and put a stop to the general belief that Islam and terrorist are one and the same thing. Before pointing at US for attacks against such Muslims, perhaps the Muslims of Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc. should eliminate such undesirable people from among their own midst.

# Sohaib Faruqi
Mississipi
US
# Yes. The US did the right thing by attacking these countries that support terrorists. Just because of some extremists our religion is considered bad in the world. Think how many innocent people have died in the bombing of the World trade center. And how many have died in the recent bombing in Kenya. And who gets caught? As usual, the Muslims. I`m a Moslem too but our religion does not order us to blow away innocent people.Islam is a religion of peace and Quran does not tell us to kill innocent people.

Sheikh Faisal N.

# Cynthia T. Zai
Louisiana
# I believe that the US is completely justified in carrying out missile strikes against Taliban militia. Taliban are becoming a disgrace to Muslims all over the world and with the advent of Taliban, Muslims in the western hemisphere are being stamped as people of a terrorist religion.

Qari Ghulam Buksh Chaudhry
Lala Musa.
# I see no harm in striking the Muslim countries, those who have already sold their wills to the US and European powers. Muslims are cowards, and cowards say nothing but cry over spilt milk. If we can not defend our Muslim brothers in Afghanistan and Sudan, then we will not be able to defend even Pakistan and Saudi Arabia once they become the next targets.

# Abed Qureshi
# Yes, the US was justified in the recent attacks on terrorists. Evidence of the guilt of Osama bin Laden was shown to the leaders of the Taliban and they were asked to turn him over to stand trial. They chose to shelter him, becoming de facto accomplices in his declaration of war against the US.
President Clinton was forced to show Bin Laden that there is no safe shelter for him anywhere on earth. If there is evidence that the chemical factory in Sudan was being used to manufacture weapons for Bin Laden, it should have been closed immediately. It was. It is better to wrangle over the validity of the evidence after the forced closure rather than after chemical weapons have been used in a terrorist attack.

# Waqas Cheema
USA
# Yes they are justified in attacking the so-called terrorist camps in Sudan and Afghanistan. They missed one terrorist, Mr. Nawaz Sharif, who allowed them to do so. He should be ashamed.

As you can see, not every Muslim is angry with the actions of the US. In fact I think its significant that ANY Muslims are speaking out in support.
and then there's this: (note the publication date, its fairly recent)

Bill Clinton Was Right
From the July 5 / July 12, 2004 issue: There was a Saddam-Osama connection and we're learning more every day.
by Stephen F. Hayes
07/05/2004, Volume 009, Issue 41
On February 17, 1998, President Clinton, speaking at the Pentagon, warned of the "reckless acts of outlaw nations and an unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers and organized international criminals." These "predators of the twenty-first century," he said, these enemies of America, "will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and missiles to deliver them. We simply cannot allow that to happen. There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein's Iraq."

Later that spring, the Clinton Justice Department prepared an indictment of Osama bin Laden. The relevant passage, prominently placed in the fourth paragraph, reads:

Al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the government of Iraq.

Patrick Fitzgerald, a U.S. attorney involved in the preparation of the indictment, testified before the 9/11 Commission. He said the intelligence behind that assertion came from Jamal al Fadl, a former high-ranking al Qaeda terrorist who before the 9/11 attacks gave the U.S intelligence community its first intimate look at al Qaeda. According to Fitzgerald, al Fadl told his interrogators that bin Laden associate Mamdouh Mahmud Salim (Abu Hajer al Iraqi) "tried to reach a sort of agreement where they wouldn't work against each other--sort of the enemy of my enemy is my friend--and that there were indications that within Sudan when al Qaeda was there,

which al Qaeda left in the summer of '96, or the spring of '96, there were efforts to work on jointly acquiring weapons."

Several months later, after al Qaeda bombed two American embassies in East Africa, numerous Clinton officials cited an Iraq-al Qaeda connection as the basis for retaliatory U.S. strikes against the al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan.

On August 24, 1998, the Clinton administration made available a "senior intelligence official" who cited "strong ties between the plant and Iraq." The following day, Thomas Pickering, undersecretary of state for political affairs and one of a handful of Clinton officials involved in the decision to strike al Shifa, briefed foreign reporters at the National Press Club. He was asked directly whether he knew "of any connection between the so-called pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum and the Iraqi government in regard to production of precursors of VX" nerve gas.

Yeah, I would like to consult my notes just to be sure that what I have to say is stated clearly and correctly. We see evidence that we think is quite clear on contacts between Sudan and Iraq. In fact, al Shifa officials, early in the company's history, we believe were in touch with Iraqi individuals associated with Iraq's VX program.

Five days after that, U.N. ambassador Bill Richardson appeared on CNN and pointed to "direct evidence of ties between Osama bin Laden" and Sudan's Military Industrial Corporation. "You combine that with Sudan support for terrorism, their connections with Iraq on VX, and you combine that, also, with the chemical precursor issue, and Sudan's leadership support for Osama bin Laden, and you've got a pretty clear-cut case."

Sandy Berger, then Clinton's national security adviser and now a top adviser to the Kerry campaign, made the connection in an October 16, 1998, op-ed in the Washington Times. "To not have acted against this facility would have been the height of irresponsibility," he argued. The Clinton administration had "information linking bin Laden to the Sudanese regime and to the al Shifa plant."

Berger explained that al Shifa was a dual-use facility. "We had physical evidence indicating that al Shifa was the site of chemical weapons activity," Berger wrote. "Other products were made at al Shifa. But we have seen such dual-use plants before--in Iraq. And, indeed, we have information that Iraq has assisted chemical weapons activity in Sudan."

Richard Clarke, a former counterterrorism official under both Clinton and Bush, confirmed this in an interview with the Washington Post on January 23, 1999. Clarke said the U.S. government was "sure" Iraq was behind the VX precursor produced at the factory. The story continued, "Clarke said U.S. intelligence does not know how much of the substance was produced at al Shifa or what happened to it. But he said that intelligence exists linking bin Laden to al Shifa's current and past operators, the Iraqi nerve gas experts, and the National Islamic Front in Sudan."

More recently, former Clinton defense secretary William Cohen affirmed the Baghdad-Khartoum connection in testimony before the September 11 Commission on March 23, 2004. Cohen told the panel that an executive from al Shifa had "traveled to Baghdad to meet with the father of the VX program."

Many of these same officials now disclaim any knowledge of an Iraq-al Qaeda relationship. Daniel Benjamin, a top counterterrorism official on Clinton's National Security Council, makes the strongest case that intelligence cited by Clinton officials did not amount to a direct Iraq-al Qaeda connection. Benjamin has pointed out that it is unclear that the Iraqis knew the chemical weapons technology they provided to the Sudanese Military Industrial Corporation would end up in the hands of al Qaeda or that al Qaeda knew that the assistance it was receiving came from Iraq.

But now the New York Times--a newspaper heretofore dismissive of the Iraq-al Qaeda connection--has revealed the contents of an Iraqi Intelligence document that discusses the Iraq-bin Laden "relationship" and plans for bin Laden to work with Iraq against the ruling family in Saudi Arabia. The document states that "cooperation between the two organizations should be allowed to develop freely through discussion and agreement." The Iraqi document, which refers to the period of the first Clinton term, has been "authenticated by the U.S. government," according to the front-page story in Friday's Times.

Taken together with other evidence of the close relationship between al Qaeda and the Sudanese government, the information in the Times article makes it less likely that Iraq and al Qaeda were unwitting allies. The Times reported that a representative of the Sudanese government approached the Iraqis at bin Laden's behest: "The Iraqis were cued to make their approach to Mr. bin Laden after a Sudanese official visited Uday Hussein, the leader's son, as well as the director of Iraqi Intelligence, and indicated that Mr. bin Laden was willing to meet in Sudan."

Virtually no one disputes the significant overlap between the government in Sudan and al Qaeda. As President Clinton said last week, in an interview on CBS: "Mr. [Hassan] al Turabi, the head of the Sudanese government, was a buddy of bin Laden's. They were business partners together."

According to al Fadl, the close associate of bin Laden who has cooperated with the U.S. government since 1996, bin Laden himself said his businesses were run in support of the government in Sudan. Al Fadl, testifying at the trial of al Qaeda terrorists who plotted the 1998 embassy bombings, recalled in broken English a 1992 conversation he had with bin Laden. "He say our agenda is bigger than business. We not going to make business here, but we need to help the government and the government help our group, and this is our purpose."

Al Fadl and other high-level al Qaeda detainees have described the group's relationship with Sudan in detail. The relationship included: al Qaeda terrorists assigned by the Sudanese government to assassinate political opponents; al Qaeda's providing communications equipment and arms--"Kaleshnikovs"--on behalf of Defaa al Shabi, a division of the Sudanese Army fighting Christians in southern Sudan; training exchanges--going both ways--between Sudanese intelligence and bin Laden's group; and Sudanese intelligence providing perimeter security for al Qaeda training facilities and safehouses.

Concerns that Iraq would work with al Qaeda against the Saudis did not end when bin Laden left Sudan in 1996. According to a CIA report summarized in a top-secret memo sent from the Pentagon to the Senate Intelligence Committee in the fall of 2003: "The Saudi Arabian National Guard went on a kingdom-wide heightened state of alert in late Dec 2000 after learning that Saddam agreed to assist al Qaeda in attacking U.S. and U.K. interests in Saudi Arabia."

So the Clinton administration, based on the evidence it had, was right to express concerns about an Iraq-al Qaeda connection. We now know more. And given the vast number of documents from the former Iraqi regime that sit untranslated, we are certain to learn more still. It's an odd time for the former president and his old advisers to be backing away from what they once so confidently told us.

Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard. Parts of this article are drawn from his new book, The Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein has Endangered America (HarperCollins).

I want to say that I concede (without having seen the video) that the hand gesture Bush is making is the "thumbs up" sign. I trust that enough people saw it and determined thats what that was. Ok. I stand corrected.

dissention · #**174** 08-27-2005, 11:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by irishgrl

My feelings for Bush are not connected to my feelings about Clinton. I hate Bush on his own merits. I happen to admire Clinton immensely. He made mistakes but at least he has the grace to apologize when he realizes he's wrong.

Clinton doesn't apologize for ****. He feigns ignorance and then apologizes. It doesn't cut the mustard.

How anyone could admire Clinton is something I probably will never comprehend, I just wish that you could help me understand it a little better, especially in the face of his numerous lies, inaction, and half-assed policies.

Quote:

Originally Posted by irishgrl

as for my comment ("interesting") I was referring to the part I quoted. That the Pentagon reviewed all the intelligence Clinton had with reference to bombing Sudan, and declared Clinton's actions appropriate, and that another official declared "if we had to do it all over again, we would".

Yeah, Clinton's own Pentagon is going to turn against him. Just like Bush's, right?