Did anyone read yesterdays U.S.A.Today newspaper? The F.B.I. has put out a warning that suicide bombs are headed to the U.S.A.
My first thought was what kind of "Evil" has the Clinton administration let into this country. I know a bunch of people have been on George Bush's back since they found out he had a pre-warning of terrorists attacks, but these evil terrorists first landed on our shores during the Clinton Administration. By the time Ole George took office, these terrorists were already trained by our American flying schools and had their plans ready to go.
These evil terrorists obtained visas and was let into this country under Bill Clinton's lax immigration policy. Please don't bash Ole George, because Clinton has blood on his hands also.......

I wish you Clinton-obsessed maniacs would either take some pills or find me a cheap apartment in Toronto.

The "warning du jour" (as even the stodgy NY Times calls it today) is clearly a cynical "we-knew-that" announcement designed to take the heat off the Phoenix Memo scandal.

If the federal government had let Clinton take out both Bin Laden and Hussian like he wanted to do and tried to get support, 911 would have never happened!!!

[quote]Originally posted by thumper:
If the federal government had let Clinton take out both Bin Laden and Hussian like he wanted to do and tried to get support, 911 would have never happened!!!

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How do you know that the federal government didn't allow Clinton to act? I'm just wondering what kind of evidence you have to support this.

Peter Jennings on ABC news had a story on it a few months ago. (Feb.?) Said it was to be a under-cover operation. Congress also took a wait and see attitude after the embassy and USS Cole bombings. If you need more evidence ask Jennings. I'm just passing on info that I heard.

I don't agree with you queens....I still say Clinton has blood on his hands....

Interesting...Bush gets criticized for "marketing" his 9/11 photos and then the FBI ignores under Bush's watch a memo apprising them of the high number of Middle Eastern men in US flight schools. Now, amid all that brouhaha there is a new and always vague security threat. Or perhaps it is just another creation from the Cheney/Ashcroft team to deflect the just criticism. Blaming Clinton -- what a pathetic joke.

As a disagreeable Queen, Cal--I can tell you I personally washed all the blood off Clinton's hands, leaving you free to move on to fresh blood on new hands.

So Clinton, with a hesitating Congress, little funding, lack of public support, little cooperation between the agencies ... was supposed to have taken out bin Laden & Co. before 2001? How can anyone say that when Bush II -- with tremendous support from the people, a nearly unanimous Congress, $$$ out the wazoo, an office of "Homeland Security" -- still hasn't stopped the man, is still fighting al Qaeda in Afghanistan, is still issuing warnings about possible attacks?? ...

Damn, if I'm a queen, somebody better get me a big-ass crown that makes Liz's look like a princess.

Cal....I am right in the middle politically and came from the Republican side. You got it wrong on this one. It is inexcusable that, with all of the memos and intelligence information that was provided that this happened. I think the decision not to issue warnings before hand was purely $$$$ driven. Funny thing is, the negative $$$$ happened anyway. Unless you count that fact that they are now going to add 57,000 government employees to insure my safety as a positive $$$$ impact.

Let's not forget that Bush's Attorney General, John Ashcroft, proposed a budget in the summer of 2001 which called for a substantial cut in counterterrorism programs for the FBI. Additionally, "Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield vetoed a request to divert $800 million from missile defense into counterterrorism." (Newsweek, 5/27/02) Terrorism was not a focus of the Bush administration, as it was the Clinton administration when they left office. Is there any wonder that Bush doesn't want a commission to look into what may have been done to prevent 9/11? Tell me one good reason why there shouldn't be an independent review of what happened and why.

hey thumper, thanks for the info. I wasn't challenging your statement. Despite my conservative and Republican affiliations, I actually supported Bill Clinton and often find myself defending him amongst my right-wing circles. I just wanted to make sure that my next defense of the man has some substantiation, that's all.

I'm wondering what Rumsfeld's rationale was for not wanting to divert $800 million from missile defense (puh-leeze, missile defense? that's so Cold War) to counter-terrorism. Rumsfeld runs neck & neck with Colin Powell in the credibility department, so I'm quite inclined to give him the benefit of a doubt. Just a guess here, but perhaps Rumsfeld was dismayed (and disgusted) by the $10 billion spent by the federal government toward counterterrorism since the 1993 WTC bombing. What do we have to show for that $10 billion? Not much of anything. The $10 billion went toward do-nothing pork barrel projects for Congress's home districts, and the American taxpayer got RIPPED OFF!!! We might as well have spent the appropriations on garlic and crucifixes for all the good the $10 billion did us!

I hate these polititical diatribes. What is important is what to do about the current situation. Couda, shoulda, woulda just doesn't cut it. People prefer to concentrate on who blame because its more convenient than coming up with solutions.

It doesn't matter whether Bush, Clinton or Lincoln were in office, if terrorists want to come into this country they will find a way. Hell there are even American born terrorists. Israel probably has the strictest screening of potential terrorists in the world and they still have problems.

There are no simple solutions. Over time as more is learned about radical groups, threats can be reduced but probably will never be entirely eradicated. All we can do is minimize their chances and become more vigilant.


Well, I have probably said enough.

Perhaps the original poster was being sarcastic, or ironic. Whoever's in office, Clinton or Bush, the major problems appear to be with the INS, the FBI, the CIA, their ineptitude, and the lack of coordination between all these agencies. Had the INS been doing its job--and not kowtowing to big businesses that sought cheap immigrant labor or universities that needed to fill slots, when not just being purely incompetent--we would not have the 6-10 million plus undocumented aliens now living in our borders. Why are all these people STILL here? Have we truly tightened our borders, or are people from Iraq and elsewhere going to keep slipping in from Canada, Puerto Rico, and Mexico? Why are we detaining Haitians in Miami and not people from countries KNOWN to harbor terrorists? Why do we have such idiotic policies?

I live in New Jersey, and I can assure all of you that there are people here our government probably has no IDEA are here. Some of these folks were involved in the first WTC bombing, and some were involved in the 9.11 tragedy, it seems. We really need to be serious about immigration in the U.S. and clamp down. There millions of American citizens and permanent residents now who want jobs but don't have them, so the "broken gate" policy has to end. Plus, our INS needs to coordinate with the FBI and CIA and do it swiftly. No more visas to dead terrorists, as happened earlier this year!

The immigration policy of the United State of America started off as "Give me your tired, and poor."
The years have yielded an increasingly harder interpretation of that principle with each successive generation.

Quotas have become the norm.

But the immigration policy of Clinton is not at fault here. There are few substantial immigration policy differences separating Clinton and Bush Part 1 and Reagan and Carter and Ford and Nixon.

In fact, you really have to go back to Roosevelt and Truman before you find a spike in protectionism at the border.

And so I believe that things should be now as they were then. We must protect our borders at all cost. We are at war with an enemy that seeks to evade detection.

I do not blame Bush for what was allowed to intrude US soil. And I do not blame Clinton for being the one to open the door.

That door has been left relatively open for a long, long time. It's just that this time, that liberty came back to bite us in the ass.

My hope is that the US gov't devotes greater budgeting to a centralized federal database at airports that can allow agents to screen etrants as they walk off the plane.

And my greater hope is that things might some day, even if it not be in my lifetime, life can go back to the way it was. I hope for peace.

"I hope for peace." Sage words, fellow sportslover, sage words!