Sorry, been away a few days at a client site... So lemme catch up a bit...

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and you can't be so gullible to think that clinton created bin laden or put him in the position to gain the strength he eventually did. you know, with you being an intel analyst and all i'd think you'd know better than that.



Not at all. What I meant was that during Clinton's term in office I was also in a position to be "in the know". I know what we were telling him on a daily basis, I know we had solid intel previous to certain terrorist attacks, yet nothing was done. When we provided solid intel on links to Osama along with current information on his where-abouts, we were bushed off. Only a few weeks later, when it was more politically sound to do so, did we lob a few cruise missles at the location -- of course by then Osama had moved on.

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i was just pointing out that there's enough blame to go around for the people prior to clinton (who armed and empowered bin laden, then left him to his own devices) and the people who ignored or mishandled the information about the 9/11 attackers that were gallivanting around our country prior to getting behind the wheel of 747s.



I agree, there is plenty of blame to go around -- unfortunately I can only comment on what I saw firsthand during the Clinton years -- which is what I did. I saw a first class intelligence failure, and felt the daily frustrations while we made more and more links, and connected the dots, and explained everything in briefings that even a 2 year old could understand. But at the time the administration was too busy riding the .com boom to worry everyday Americans about a growing threat.

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Very true. A request for an all out attack/search and destroy put on Osama at that time would have made it nowhere. National and international support for such an endeavour at that time was non existant. Congress and the House would have shot such a proposal down in minutes.



We did not need an all out search and destroy mission, though. We had SOLID intel as to his very location -- during this time Osama stayed in one spot a bit longer at a time because the whole world wasn't looking for him. We had the perfect opportunity, and a valid reason. (Just ask anyone who served during this time how they felt after the various terror attacks on their friends and fellow service members -- to them it was obvious something needed to be done.)

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However at that time, Bin Laden had no qualms with the US



Wow. Bin Laden started his "holy war" against us way back in August of 1990 -- when we first set troops on the ground in Saudi Arabia. Some experts believe it goes further back than that, but we know (from his own private writings) that this is when he considers the US his "final target" before he can make the world an Islamic one.

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you mean this isn't all clinton's fault, as our resident 'intel analyst' and neo-con crew would like us to believe?



Spiiiiiin. I never said it was all Clinton's fault -- again all I said was it was the biggest intel failure of all times. He could have cut the head off the snake very early on, which would have quelled the issue before it exploded into the worldwide Jihad that we have today.

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the abysmal way that intel was gathered and handled by the Clinton Administration



The intel gathering was going on just fine during that period -- unfortunately the War on Terror was as popular then as it is now.

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give yourself more credit than that. my opinion is islamic extremism has been exacerbated by the bush admin foreign policy and the very badly managed wot.



I do agree with you here, BP. I do believe that the terrorist "problem" has been made worse in the past few years -- unfortunately I also saw no other choice. History proves we cannot ignore the problem, because it doesn't "just go away".

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that said, there is hope for lasting peace in the me and a reduction in the threat of terror attacks on US interests. i just think it's a lot further off than some of us are willing to accept, and we'll have to forgo the scorched earth approach that so many people love in order for us to get there.



I also hope for lasting peace. Unfortunately I feel that Americans (and the world in general today) is far too short-sighted. You cannot expect a country radically change overnight. I do not believe this will be solved in the next year or two, we're talking 5-10 years as a more accurate assessment. Back in the day we theorised that if Osama was left unchecked, that his hatred would grow, as would his power (given the nearly unlimited funds he had available at the time). We concluded that the end result of this would be either a major attack on American soil, or an attack overseas so devistating that the American public would lose all faith in the gov't to protect them, and we would end up falling back to an isolationist country, which would be a bad thing for the entire world.

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We need to get out of the ME entirely in terms of military and politics.
...[snip]...
our politics and our military don't need to be there.



In otherwards you'd rather have entire countries fall into the hands of terrorist leaders, willing and able to exert their influence across the entire region? Do you even understand what this would do to the global economy, or do you just not care?

E1

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