Would it have been great for the U.S. intelligence agencies, or those of our international allies, to have upended the 9/11 terror plot in the two years it's assumed it was being hatched, in cells in Germany, in caves somewhere in Afghanistan and in the money transfer houses of Saudi Arabia? Of course. If the plots could have been interrupted, or Osama bin Laden captured, or al-Qaida attacked and rooted out of Afghanistan in the eight years prior to 9/11, there is a chance -- though by no means a certainty -- that nearly 3,000 lives in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington could have been spared. Of course, that didn't happen.
And yet ... in the 9-12 months before 9/11, there were many more opportunities, and moer intensity devoted, to stopping al-Qaida than there had been at any time before. And no matter how badly the Bush-bots may want to hang all of the world's ills around Bill Clinton's neck, they cannot escape the fact that it was their president who was in office when the terror attacks happened. And now that they have chosen to fight on the "who's to blame" playing field, it's fair to examine what the Bush administration did, or failed to do, in the nine months leading up to the attacks.
Keith Olbermann did, last night, and he knocked it out of the park.
Point one: the U.S.S. Cole was attacked in October 2000, but the finding that it was attacked by al-Qaida, until early 2001, when the Bush administration was in office. What did they do to respond to the attacks? Nothing.
Point two: The administration not only had a comprehensive al-Qaida strategy handed to them by Richard Clarke and Sandy Berger when they came into office, contrary to Condoleezza Rice's questionable testimony to the 9/11 commission, it DID include a Pakistan strategy.
Point three: Olbermann played three key pieces of video last night. One was of a February 21, 2001 press conference in which a reporter asked then press secretary Ari Fleischer about a report that the Taliban was offering to turn Osama bin Laden over to the United States in exchange for lifting the sanctions on Afghanistan. Added to the debunked folklore that the Clinton administration had turned down a Sudanese offer to hand over Bin Laden, that tape raises the question of whether the righties have the right story, but the wrong administration... the second piece of tape was of Sandy Berger speaking at a welcome event for his replacement, Condi Rice. At that event, Berger described the struggle against growing Islamic extremism as the seminal struggle faced by the United States, and contrary to the usual rightie spin about the Democrats not being on a war footing, Berger described the struggle as nothing less than war.
Make that four pieces of tape. Clip three was of Michigan Senator Carl Levin testifiying, also in early 2001, that the U.S. would need to face asymmetric threats from terrorists like those who attacked the cole. Clearly the Democrats were thinking about al-Qaida before the attacks. (In fact, Senator Diane Feinstein requested a meeting on September 10, 2001 with the head of the president's task force on terrorism related issues, Dick Cheney -- who hadn't assembled his task force yet -- and she was told that it would take six months to get such a meeting). And what was the president thinking about? In his first address to the nation as president, (and the fourth clip on the key Olbermann clips list,) Mr. Bush said that the U.S. needed to get busy deploying a missile defense shield.
Crooks and Liars has the Olbermann video, which is a must see for anyone who cares about the truth, rather than the ridiculous Bush-bot spin spewed by the authoritarian set. They also have an advanced transcript. (I'll post the MSNBC version when it's available on the Countdown website).
Meanwhile, guess who's defending Bill Clinton? Hint, it's someone I generally can't stand, whose from New York, and who, despite Chris Matthews adoration, will never be president. But good looking out, nonetheless.
And the right wing wackos threaten Keith Olbermann ... the New York Post yuks it up... Nice work, winger faithful (aren't you the same nuts who say the left is insane in its hatred of Dubya?) Stay classy.
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dim done
done = request.form("done")
if done = "" then
done = "No"
%>
Tell a friend
<%
Else
if request.form("done") = "Yes" then
'sets variables
dim email, sendmail
email = request.form("email")
Set sendmail = Server.CreateObject("CDONTS.NewMail")
'put the webmaster address here
sendmail.From = "webmaster@aspbasics.com"
'The mail is sent to the address entered in the previous page.
sendmail.To = email
'Enter the subject of your mail here
sendmail.Subject = "Check out this website"
'send a specific page or send a site url
dim url
'url = Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
url = "http://www.aspbasics.net"
'This is the content of the message.
sendmail.Body = "Site recommendation from a friend!" & _
vbCrlf & vbCrlf & "A friend has sent you this email and thought you would should check out this site." & _
vbCrlf & url & vbCrlf
'this sets mail priority.... 0=low 1=normal 2=high
sendmail.Importance = 1
sendmail.Send 'Send the email!
response.redirect Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
'Response.write ("Sent to ") & email
End if
End if
%>
"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
