Is George Bush to Blame For 9/11?

[zeeblofowl_1969]

The partisan looking glass is indeed a mixed bag. A lot of people believe he has conducted himself professionally and without prejudice throughout the life of this investigation. What is rather pathetic is Clinton hanging on the words of a dimwit house leader because she is desperate. He was one idiot with one opinion, not directly involved in the committee. Trey was a very good prosecutor in SC and he won't be tripped up by deli-boy or Clinton.

Humor ar ar

 

[sean miguel]

And the myth that President Clinton turned down the opportunity to "get" Bin Laden is patently false.

Which one? There were several instances where Clinton turned down the opportunity and one in his own words on audio recording.

The one I was referring to was from a CIA officer on the ground himself with a visual confirmation of Bin Laden but was told to stand down.

It's the reason predator drones are now armed with Hellfires.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/14/hank-crumpton-cia-clinton-bin-laden_n_1514895.html

 

[sean miguel]

Which one? There were several instances where Clinton turned down the opportunity and one in his own words on audio recording.

The one I was referring to was from a CIA officer on the ground himself with a visual confirmation of Bin Laden but was told to stand down.

It's the reason predator drones are now armed with Hellfires.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/14/hank-crumpton-cia-clinton-bin-laden_n_1514895.html

Correction: CIA assets were on the ground but the officer in this article wasn't.

Clinton turned down several opportunities to go after Bin Laden but I still dont' think that would have prevented 9/11. Bin Laden was the founder, a major financier and the spiritual leader of Al-Qaeda but the mastermind of 9/11 was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. And if it wasn't him it would've been Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the list goes on.

I don't think you can lay the blame squarely on any one president regardless of who was at the helm. Bush had intelligence briefings that Al-Qaeda planned to attack the U.S. and imminently. But even that is awfully vague (Al-Qaeda had been at war with the U.S. since the early 90's). How do you defend against that? Well, I have my own ideas.

 

[Straight Shooter]

Which one? There were several instances where Clinton turned down the opportunity and one in his own words on audio recording.

The one I was referring to was from a CIA officer on the ground himself with a visual confirmation of Bin Laden but was told to stand down.

It's the reason predator drones are now armed with Hellfires.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/14/hank-crumpton-cia-clinton-bin-laden_n_1514895.html

I know what you're referring to. If I'm not mistaken the CIA had Bin Laden in Afghanistan at some farm but they stood down because there was some prince there with Bin Laden and it would've been a diplomatic disaster had they blown the farm to pieces and killed the prince. I'm too lazy to look it up but I'm pretty sure that's what happened

 

[xfire]

http://www.factcheck.org/2008/01/clinton-passed-on-killing-bin-laden/

Q: Did Bill Clinton pass up a chance to kill Osama bin Laden?

A: Probably not, and it would not have mattered anyway as there was no evidence at the time that bin Laden had committed any crimes against American citizens.

FULL QUESTION

Was Bill Clinton offered bin Laden on "a silver platter"? Did he refuse? Was there cause at the time?

FULL ANSWER

Let’s start with what everyone agrees on: In April 1996, Osama bin Laden was an official guest of the radical Islamic government of Sudan – a government that had been implicated in the attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993. By 1996, with the international community treating Sudan as a pariah, the Sudanese government attempted to patch its relations with the United States. At a secret meeting in a Rosslyn, Va., hotel, the Sudanese minister of state for defense, Maj. Gen. Elfatih Erwa, met with CIA operatives, where, among other things, they discussed Osama bin Laden.

It is here that things get murky. Erwa claims that he offered to hand bin Laden over to the United States. Key American players – President Bill Clinton, then-National Security Adviser Sandy Berger and Director of Counterterrorism Richard Clarke among them – have testified there were no "credible offers" to hand over bin Laden. The 9/11 Commission found "no credible evidence" that Erwa had ever made such an offer. On the other hand, Lawrence Wright, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Looming Tower," flatly states that Sudan did make such an offer. Wright bases his judgment on an interview with Erwa and notes that those who most prominently deny Erwa’s claims were not in fact present for the meeting.

Wright and the 9/11 Commission do agree that the Clinton administration encouraged Sudan to deport bin Laden back to Saudi Arabia and spent 10 weeks trying to convince the Saudi government to accept him. One Clinton security official told The Washington Post that they had "a fantasy" that the Saudi government would quietly execute bin Laden. When the Saudis refused bin Laden’s return, Clinton officials convinced the Sudanese simply to expel him, hoping that the move would at least disrupt bin Laden’s activities.

Much of the controversy stems from claims that President Clinton made in a February 2002 speech and then retracted in his 2004 testimony to the 9/11 Commission. In the 2002 speech Clinton seems to admit that the Sudanese government offered to turn over bin Laden:

Clinton: So we tried to be quite aggressive with them [al Qaeda]. We got – well, Mr. bin Laden used to live in Sudan. He was expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1991, then he went to Sudan. And we’d been hearing that the Sudanese wanted America to start dealing with them again. They released him. At the time, 1996, he had committed no crime against America, so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America. So I pleaded with the Saudis to take him, ’cause they could have. But they thought it was a hot potato and they didn’t and that’s how he wound up in Afghanistan.

Clinton later claimed to have misspoken and stated that there had never been an offer to turn over bin Laden. It is clear, however, that Berger, at least, did consider the possibility of bringing bin Laden to the U.S., but, as he told The Washington Post in 2001, "The FBI did not believe we had enough evidence to indict bin Laden at that time, and therefore opposed bringing him to the United States." According to NewsMax.com, Berger later emphasized in an interview with WABC Radio that, while administration officials had discussed whether or not they had ample evidence to indict bin Laden, that decision "was not pursuant to an offer by the Sudanese."

So on one side, we have Clinton administration officials who say that there were no credible offers on the table, and on the other, we have claims by a Sudanese government that was (and still is) listed as an official state sponsor of terrorism. It’s possible, of course, that both sides are telling the truth: It could be that Erwa did make an offer, but the offer was completely disingenuous. What is clear is that the 9/11 Commission report totally discounts the Sudanese claims. Unless further evidence arises, that has to be the final word.

Ultimately, however, it doesn’t matter. What is not in dispute at all is the fact that, in early 1996, American officials regarded Osama bin Laden as a financier of terrorism and not as a mastermind largely because, at the time, there was no real evidence that bin Laden had harmed American citizens. So even if the Sudanese government really did offer to hand bin Laden over, the U.S. would have had no grounds for detaining him. In fact, the Justice Department did not secure an indictment against bin Laden until 1998 – at which point Clinton did order a cruise missile attack on an al Qaeda camp in an attempt to kill bin Laden.

We have to be careful about engaging in what historians call "Whig history," which is the practice of assuming that historical figures value exactly the same things that we do today. It’s a fancy term for those "why didn’t someone just shoot Hitler in 1930?" questions that one hears in dorm-room bull sessions. The answer, of course, is that no one knew quite how bad Hitler was in 1930. The same is true of bin Laden in 1996.

Correction: We originally answered this question with a flat ‘yes’ early this week, based on the account in "The Looming Tower," but an alert reader pointed out to us the more tangled history laid out in the 9/11 Commission report. We said flatly that Sudan had made such an offer. We have deleted our original answer and are posting this corrected version in its place.

– Joe Miller

This is the same as the Benghazi circus, Republicans throwing disingenuous accusations merely to score political points, and it's the reason the far right can't be trusted. No one on the left tries to prosecute the Bush Administration for the intelligence failures that allowed 9/11 to happen, I suppose it's too much to expect the same decorum from the lunatics on the far right.

 

[sean miguel]

Yeah I read that article too.

This isn't about decorum. But partisan on.

 

[Jack Davenport]

Factcheck is not always reliable. . I wish it were, it would relieve a ton of paperwork on my desk.

 

[Chopper3000]

Surely the piss poor security checks at Logan Airport are to blame for 9/11.

 

[Ace Boobtoucher]

Nope. Though their security was faulty, they didn't crash four jumbo jets themselves. Although the shitty Clinton doctrine played a part, too. I mean, if someone's gotta take blame for the fumbled security. There's plenty of blame to go around there. But mostly it's the fault of the religion of peace.

 

[ChuckFaze]

IF Trump wins the presidency, I wonder if he's going to remember his words when this, that and the other goes wrong ... this, that and the other sucks ... this, that and the other shit hits the fan. Then it'll be a case of no matter whose fault it is ... it will have happened on HIS reign. It would be some Pterodactyl-sized crow to eat. :1orglaugh

 

[xfire]

 

[Jack Davenport]

http://www.breitbart.com/big-govern...-jeb-bush-admitted-leaky-immigration-led-911/

 

[Straight Shooter]

There's plenty of blame to go around there. But mostly it's the fault of the religion of peace.

I agree. Just like Benghazi right?

 

[Ace Boobtoucher]

I agree. Just like Benghazi right?

I'd say most of the blame belongs to the moon jews, yes. But Hilldebeast paved the way for them.

 

[xfire]

I'd say most of the blame belongs to the moon jews, yes. But Hilldebeast paved the way for them.

If Hillary paved the way for Benghazi then Colin Powell paved the way for the 9/11 attacks? At some point Republicans are going to have to acknowledge that the Benghazi conspiracy theory has no merit and has been nothing but illegal political theater, good luck sweeping it under the rug when it happens.

 

[Jack Davenport]

Rush Limbaugh totally destroyed those false equivalences today. More silliness from the silliest group I know. Liberals.

 

[xfire]

Rush Limbaugh totally destroyed those false equivalences today. More silliness from the silliest group I know. Liberals.

I didn't listen to Rush Limbaugh today but I'm sure he laid the definitive smack down on silly libruls, just as George W.'s brother did in the video I posted above because the exact same logic applied to a politician affiliated with a different political party is still somehow different.

 

[georges]

Three attacks happened under bill the fucking liar and bill the blowjobber: 1st WTC Bombing in 1993, 2nd Bombing in the Ambassy of Nairobi in Kenya in 1997 and 3rd attack against the USS Cole in 1999, so Bill has a lot to be blamed because nothing was done concretely to catch Ben Laden when he was in the office. I am not forgetting the sacrifice of the US military forces in Mogadisciu which happened because of him in 1992.

 

[xfire]

Three attacks happened under bill the fucking liar and bill the blowjobber: 1st WTC Bombing in 1993, 2nd Bombing in the Ambassy of Nairobi in Kenya in 1997 and 3rd attack against the USS Cole in 1999, so Bill has a lot to be blamed because nothing was done concretely to catch Ben Laden when he was in the office. I am not forgetting the sacrifice of the US military forces in Mogadisciu which happened because of him in 1992.

How many embassies were attacked and how many Americans died during the George W. Bush administration, Whore Heys, and where were all these far right morons calling for nine investigations of each of them?

 

[sean miguel]

How many embassies were attacked and how many Americans died during the George W. Bush administration, Whore Heys, and where were all these far right morons calling for nine investigations of each of them?

You seriously don't see the difference?