>"But at least I tried. That's the difference in me and some, including
all of the right-wingers who are attacking me >now," Clinton said when asked
whether he had failed to fully anticipate bin Laden's danger. "They had eight
months >to try, they did not try. I tried. So I tried and failed."
Did the critcs countered this? If
not, we will have to assume the statement of Clinton to be correct. I think it
was the Bush administration who failed to fully anticipate the danger of Ben
Laden in spite of clear warning from the past administrtaion. They took a
'we know better' attitude. I remeber one senior CIA guy under Bush
administration resigned at that time seeing the utter lack of seriousness of the
Bush administration at that time.
Rajen Barua
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, September 23, 2006 10:48
AM
Subject: Re: [Assam] From NY Times/
Bullying
" *** But I understand the angst . I would be squirming too if I had to
come to W's defense ." ---
I have no intention and no need to defend Bush. Go back to my first email
on the subject- I was talking about USA, not Bush. To you, USA and Bush may be
synonymous. Not to me. Bushes and Clintons come and go but USA remains.
Changing the subject, did you read the report on Clinton's Fox News
interview? He is now trying to show that he was no chicken and tried to
be a hawk but the chicken hawk minions :-) around him did not let him
soar. He said "he tried and failed." Since you are so wound up in the
chicken or hawk description, should we run a chicken or hawk test on the next
round of candidates for presidency?
Dilip
Here is an excerpt from the interview:
Clinton faults Bush for inaction on bin Laden
By Joanne Morrison Fri Sep 22, 11:42 PM
ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former President Bill Clinton, angrily defending his
efforts to capture Osama bin Laden, accused the Bush
administration of doing far less to stop the al Qaeda leader before the
September 11 attacks.
In a heated interview to be aired on Sunday on "Fox News Sunday," the former
Democratic president defended the steps he took after al Qaeda's attack on
the USS Cole in 2000 and faulted
"right-wingers" for their criticism of his efforts to capture Osama bin
Laden. "But at least I tried. That's the difference in me and some, including
all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now," Clinton said when asked
whether he had failed to fully anticipate bin Laden's danger. "They had eight
months to try, they did not try. I tried. So I tried and failed."
"I authorized the CIA to get groups together to try to
kill him," Clinton said. He added he had drawn up plans to go into Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban
and launch an attack against bin Laden after the attack on the Cole in the
Yemeni port of Aden. "Now if you want to criticize me for one thing, you can criticize me for
this: after the Cole, I had battle plans drawn to go into Afghanistan,
overthrow the Taliban and launch a full-scale attack search for bin Laden. But
we needed basing rights in Uzbekistan -- which we got after 9/11," Clinton
said.
The former president complained at the time the CIA and FBI refused to certify bin Laden was
responsible for the USS Cole attack. "While I was there, they refused to certify. So that meant I would have
had to send a few hundred special forces in helicopters, refuel at night," he
said.
Earlier this month, Clinton dismissed as "indisputably wrong" a U.S.
television show that suggested he was too distracted by the Monica Lewinsky
scandal to confront the Islamic militant threat that culminated in the
September 11 attacks.
==============================================================================
Chan Mahanta <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
O'Deka:
Well, you are seeing too much spinning these days. I wonder why.
>-- George Bush wouldn't have said any other way. Whatever else you
can say >about the guy, he does not hide his feelings about Al Qaida and
his vow to >punish the perpretators of 9/11.
*** We have noticed his simple-minded zeal. We also remember such
memorable quotes like "Bring them on". Or that Top-Gun appearance on the
flight deck of the aircraft carrier replete with the Mission Accomplished
banner. All point to that macho-man, tough-guy-soldier wanna-be demeanor
along with the rest of the chicken-hawk minions that surround
him.
The point is that, after being ambushed by Wolfie on Iraq, he blurted
out the highly un-diplomatic threats to disregard his "strongest ally's"
sovereignty, if he has to, to get OBL.
Why is that relevant?
*** Because of the complaint "----The newspaper --- spun the news
to make USA look like a bully."
Does the AT or for that matter anybody, need to SPIN anything here
?
>--- When and where in the Blitzer interview did Bush say he
would bomb >Pakistan and that too, to the stone age? Spinning
again? That is no better than >the journalist in the Assam
Tribune.
*** I think your angst has spun you around so that you are seeing
things that weren't here, ANYWHERE, in my account.
Where did I ever mention the "---bomb Pakistan to the stone age"
quote?
*** But I understand the angst . I would be squirming too if I had to
come to W's defense .
O'm :-)
At 8:58 PM -0700 9/22/06, Dilip/Dil Deka wrote:
The concoction in your email using
different stories in nothing sort of spinning. Let's look at
it.
"...
Wolfie asked W, point blank, if he would
go wherever he had to, to get OBL. W answered affirmatively. So Wolfie
asked if he would go into Pakistan for that. W, again, emphatically
replied in the affirmative."
-- George Bush wouldn't have said any
other way. Whatever else you can say about the guy, he does not hide his
feelings about Al Qaida and his vow to punish the perpretators of
9/11.
"...So, it might not have been the 'damned
English language' after all, that caused AT to change the 'had' to has.
And if they changed it intentionally, spun that is"
--- When and where in the Blitzer
interview did Bush say he would bomb Pakistan and that too, to the
stone age? Spinning again? That is no better than the journalist in
the Assam Tribune.
".....What an ally, "strongest ally" at
that, it must have made Mush feel, in this 'war on terror'!"
-- It is no secret that Pakistan (really
Musharraf) is an unwilling ally. Till 9/11 happened USA was tolerating the
Pak shenanigans and treating them like an adult, for convenience. 9/11
changed all that and I am sure Washington used harsh words at Islamabad,
telling them that breeding terrorism on Pak soil to attack the western
world will not be tolerated.
I think what really has appened is this-
USA probably is telling Pakistan that no positive results have come out of
the billions USA has poured into Pakistan and money is going to dry up
now. Basically cunning Musharraf cannot buy any more time and money if Bin
Laden is not caught. Musharraf can't send his army to capture Bin Laden
when there is a strong sentiment in Pakistan and elsewhere supporting Bin
Laden. Hence all this public washing of dirty linen. Don't you think
so?
Dilip
Chan Mahanta
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Now you know all Texans are not alike.
**** Ooops ! I don't know how I could have been holding such
an unfair and incorrect impression about Texans all these years ! My bad
:-) :-)!!!
BTW, did you see the Wolf Blitzer interview ?
If you did not, Wolfie asked W, point blank, if he would go
wherever he had to, to get OBL. W answered affirmatively. So Wolfie
asked if he would go into Pakistan for that. W, again, emphatically
replied in the affirmative. ( I am paraphrasing the exchange as best as
I can remember. The exact words may have been different).
So, it might not have been the 'damned English language'
after all, that caused AT to change the 'had' to has. And if they
changed it intentionally, spun that is ( no doubt to annoy loyal Texans
:-)) they just happened to hit a bulls-eye here, even though I am not
about to give the AT that much credit :-).
I understand, when confronted by the press with W's
statement next morning, Mush was not amused. What an ally, "strongest
ally" at that, it must have made Mush feel, in this 'war on
terror'!
Now YOU tell us if there has been any bullying, and if so by
who :-)?
At 10:15 AM -0700 9/22/06, Dilip/Dil Deka wrote:
I not only found it interesting, I am
proud that a fellow Texan is talking such
sense.
Now you know all Texans are not alike.
Dilip
Chan Mahanta
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Dilip might find this
interesting.
cm
Op-Ed Contributor
The
Trials of the Century
By LAWRENCE WRIGHT
Published:
September 22, 2006
Austin, Tex.
THE fifth
anniversary of 9/11 has come and gone,
but there was a
conspicuous figure missing from
the retrospectives and
commentaries: Osama bin
Laden.
Al Qaeda's founder has
clearly been marginalized
even in his own movement, as other
jihadist
spokesmen, Ayman al-Zawahri and an American,
Adam
Gadahn, issued threats and demanded that
Americans
convert to Islam. Meantime, Pakistan
has negotiated a truce with
tribal chiefs
promising to keep troops out of the
Waziristan
districts, where the leadership of Al Qaeda may
be
hiding, and the C.I.A. has closed Alec
Station, the unit devoted
to finding Mr. bin
Laden. He is the forgotten
man.
Fortunately, there are still some members of
the
American intelligence community who are
interested in the
terrorist's whereabouts. Not
long ago one of them approached me -
not because
of my reporting on Al Qaeda but because of
my
experience as a Hollywood screenwriter, a talent
pool the
C.I.A. occasionally draws on for
futurist thinking. The official
asked me to
envision what we would do with Mr. bin Laden if
we
caught him. I said that I didn't feel
comfortable, as a reporter,
writing a script for
the C.I.A.
I have given the idea some
thought, however.
Osama bin Laden is arguably the most famous
man
alive, and his name will resound through history.
If we do
have the good fortune of actually
capturing him, the manner in
which we bring him
to justice will make a critical difference in
the
way in which his legacy will unfold. Here is my
scenario
for how this movie could end.
First, don't kill him. He'd
become a martyr
instantly, which is of course his goal. His
death
at the hands of Americans would be the ideal
finale from
a Qaeda perspective. Deny him that
victory at all
costs.
And, please, don't send him to Guantánamo
or
torture him in an undisclosed location. That
route leads to
his becoming a symbol of
resistance to the erosion of the
American legal
system. The world will want to know what
happens
to him, and if he is hidden away, or subjected to
a
secret trial, then his reputation will soar as
ours plummets. He
has to be accorded the
civilized treatment that he and his
movement
would never offer their enemies.
But don't bring
him to the United States to
answer for his crimes, at least not
at the
beginning. His followers would never accept the
verdict
of an American court. And, more to the
point, neither would
hundreds of thousands,
perhaps millions, of Muslims who sympathize with
him
and his cause. It's that audience that we
have to address in our
attempt to roll back Mr.
bin Laden's awful
legacy.
Moreover, if he were tried in an American
court,
one can easily envision wide-scale attacks on
American
holdings and Americans being held for
ransom in exchange for the
terrorist leader.
Placing him in the dock of the World Court
would
involve similar risks, and could lead to the sort
of
prolonged trial that sees him dying of natural
causes, as in the
case of Slobodan Milosevic.
We should, instead, offer him to
the authorities
in Kenya, where, on Aug. 7, 1998, a Qaeda
suicide
bomber murdered 213 people in the attack on
the
American Embassy. More than 150 people were
blinded by flying glass in the attack - most of
them
Africans who were in or near the embassy or
the secretarial
school across the street, which
was flattened by the blast. Let
Mr. bin Laden sit
in a courtroom in Nairobi and explain to
those
blind Africans that he was aiming only at an icon
of
American power.
Then take him to Tanzania, where on the
same
August morning Al Qaeda hit another American
Embassy,
killing 11 people, most of them Muslims.
The terrorists excused
the murder of their
co-religionists by saying that the bombing
took
place on a Friday, when good Muslims should have
been in
a mosque. That would be an excellent
venue to pose the question
of what Islam really
stands for.
Thus exposed as a mass
murderer of Africans who
had no part in his quarrel with America,
Mr. bin
Laden would be ready to stand trial for the
bombing of
the American destroyer Cole and, of
course, 9/11. By treating him
as a criminal
defendant instead of a enemy combatant, we
could
underline the differences between a civil society
and
the Taliban-like rule he seeks to impose on
Muslim countries and
eventually the entire world.
Mr. bin Laden could go on to
many other venues to
answer for his crimes - Istanbul,
Casablanca,
Madrid, London, Islamabad - but in my
opinion
there is an obvious last stop on his tour of
justice:
his homeland, Saudi Arabia, where
hundreds of his countrymen and
expatriate workers
have died at the hands of Al Qaeda. There
he
would be tried in a Shariah court, the only law
he would
ever recognize.
If he were found guilty, he would be taken to
a
park in the middle of downtown Riyadh known as
"Chop Chop
Square." There, the executioner would
greet him with his long,
heavy sword at his side.
It is a Saudi tradition that the
executioner
personally beseeches the audience, composed of
the
victims of the condemned man's crimes, to
forgive the condemned.
If they cannot, the
executioner will carry out his task. After
that,
Osama bin Laden's body would be taken to an
unmarked
tomb in a Wahhabi graveyard, as he would
have
wanted.
There are other ways this movie could end, and
as
a screenwriter I can't say that any of them are
"happy" in
the conventional Hollywood sense. But
drama demands resolution,
in real life as well as
fiction. Since the Greeks, dramatists
have known
that a good ending is one that acknowledges
the
longing of the audience for justice and the sense
that
order has been restored.
I think the American intelligence
community would
be wise to pay attention to those
ancient
artistic dictates. The role that Osama bin Laden
has
cast himself in is that of the hero to
Muslims who feel slighted
by history and
victimized by the West. It is a legend that
could
last for hundreds of years and inspire many
generations
of future terrorists. By turning his
actions in other parts of
the world against him,
we can justly put that legend to
rest.
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