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Bill Clinton: "I could have killed" Osama bin Laden.[W:351]

Re: Bill Clinton: "I could have killed" Osama bin Laden.

Nothing really new here.

I blame Clinton for many of his offices choices regarding terrorism investigations, such as the notion referred to commonly as the "Gorelick Wall".

But I don't blame him on this. To do so is simply to do so in hindsight. And nothing inherently suggests that sans Bin Laden something akin to 9/11, or even 9/11 itself, couldn't have still came to pass. Regardless of my thoughts on any President I respect greatly the immense decisions they are faced with where lives are literally hanging in the balance, and I'm not one to play Monday Morning quarterback on something like this.
 
Re: Bill Clinton: "I could have killed" Osama bin Laden.

Another one who either didn't read the article or reads 10,000 WPM, which is it since you responded to the post in less than two minutes , not even enough time to go to the link and read all three pages.

No, I just read your summary of it. I thought that was the purpose of giving a summary so one didn't have to read the article. Otherwise, you just wasted your time with all that jibber jabber when you should of just posted the link and said nothing more.
 
Re: Bill Clinton: "I could have killed" Osama bin Laden.

No, I just read your summary of it. I thought that was the purpose of giving a summary so one didn't have to read the article. Otherwise, you just wasted your time with all that jibber jabber when you should of just posted the link and said nothing more.

Interesting that not one word on post #48 are my words, all just a copy and paste, nothing more than a paragraph excerpt from the article.

You do know what these mean don't you ? >" "<
 
Re: Bill Clinton: "I could have killed" Osama bin Laden.

Key snippet:


Read the full story HERE.

Classic moral dilemma: kill innocent people now or watch even more innocent people be killed later. No right or wrong answer, I'm afraid, and I hope I'm never put in a position to have to make that call myself (though being an artist it's probably safe to say I won't be).
 
Re: Bill Clinton: "I could have killed" Osama bin Laden.

How many people that defend Clintons decision to not risk hurting civilians also defend Obama's decision to use drones to take out possible terror targets?

If Clinton had drones available he would have ordered the strike. Civilian casualties are minimalized with drone attacks compared to conventional air attacks.
 
Re: Bill Clinton: "I could have killed" Osama bin Laden.

If Clinton had drones available he would have ordered the strike. Civilian casualties are minimalized with drone attacks compared to conventional air attacks.

Last I checked, drones are armed with the same missiles and bombs that conventional aircraft are armed with. Or are you saying that Drones have friendlier and nicer missiles?
 
Re: Bill Clinton: "I could have killed" Osama bin Laden.

Last I checked, drones are armed with the same missiles and bombs that conventional aircraft are armed with. Or are you saying that Drones have friendlier and nicer missiles?

No, they have fewer and more accurately placed missiles which results in fewer civilians in harms way. You obviously don't know how drones work.
 
Re: Bill Clinton: "I could have killed" Osama bin Laden.

Interesting that not one word on post #48 are my words, all just a copy and paste, nothing more than a paragraph excerpt from the article.

You do know what these mean don't you ? >" "<

See, I didn't need to read the article then, because you provided the "key snippet". You know, I bet you're the sort of person that walks up to people going to church and says:

spoiler-alert%206.jpg
 
Re: Bill Clinton: "I could have killed" Osama bin Laden.

My old man was an officer in the RAF and based on a signals base in Cyprus and they would debrief the CIA on the location of Bin Laden on a regular basis and he was there till 1999. Anyone that thinks the US didn't know where he was is a fool, they underestimated the threat that much is certain.
 
Re: Bill Clinton: "I could have killed" Osama bin Laden.

No, they have fewer and more accurately placed missiles which results in fewer civilians in harms way. You obviously don't know how drones work.

Didn't help the more than 2,400 killed as a result of Obama’s drone campaign...
 
Re: Bill Clinton: "I could have killed" Osama bin Laden.

My old man was an officer in the RAF and based on a signals base in Cyprus and they would debrief the CIA on the location of Bin Laden on a regular basis and he was there till 1999. Anyone that thinks the US didn't know where he was is a fool, they underestimated the threat that much is certain.

Back in 1999, the Clinton administration had already established Janet Reno's the "wall" so the FBI, CIA, NSA, INS, ONI,military intelligence and law enforcement were forbidden to share information with each other and Al Qaeda was to be treated as a law enforcement issue not a national security issue.
 
Re: Bill Clinton: "I could have killed" Osama bin Laden.

Back in 1999, the Clinton administration had already established Janet Reno's the "wall" so the FBI, CIA, NSA, INS, ONI,military intelligence and law enforcement were forbidden to share information with each other and Al Qaeda was to be treated as a law enforcement issue not a national security issue.

Really? I never knew that very interesting. I will have to read up on it as that seems like an absurd ruling.
 
Re: Bill Clinton: "I could have killed" Osama bin Laden.

Really? I never knew that very interesting. I will have to read up on it as that seems like an absurd ruling.

It's all can be found in the 9-11 Commission Report.
 
Re: Bill Clinton: "I could have killed" Osama bin Laden.

I do. The Sudanese offered him to us on a platter, and there was at least one other opportunity offered as well, both of which were turned down.

The 9/11 commission investigated those claims and concluded, "The Commission has found no credible evidence that this was so."
 
Re: Bill Clinton: "I could have killed" Osama bin Laden.

It's all can be found in the 9-11 Commission Report.

I always thought it was unfair that people blamed Bush for 9/11. This was an attack that was as a decade in the making.
 
Re: Bill Clinton: "I could have killed" Osama bin Laden.

If Clinton had drones available he would have ordered the strike. Civilian casualties are minimalized with drone attacks compared to conventional air attacks.
So...civilian casualties are OK then?

I'm glad Clinton was so concerned. Killing off 80 kids to arrest David Koresch...that was a brilliant maneuver...
 
Re: Bill Clinton: "I could have killed" Osama bin Laden.

The 9/11 commission investigated those claims and concluded, "The Commission has found no credible evidence that this was so."

BTW: You are aware there are two 9-11 Commission Reports, the unclassified and classified.

But I digress.

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...."<

Clinton Passed on Killing bin Laden?

Note: Fact Check credibility has been questioned as we know today.
 
Re: Bill Clinton: "I could have killed" Osama bin Laden.

I do. The Sudanese offered him to us on a platter, and there was at least one other opportunity offered as well, both of which were turned down.



Nah. I'm not arrogant enough :lol: Nor am I willing to work in the NCR if I can avoid it at all. I'm on the military side of the community.

... killing the leaders of rival organizations is generally a bad strategy unless you are willing to commit to a full scale war.
 
Re: Bill Clinton: "I could have killed" Osama bin Laden.

We can see the depth of Clinton's deception by how phrased his words here. He refers to Kandahar as "a little town called Kandahar".
The population of Kandahar is nearly 500,000, not even close to being a small town. Clinton uses the reference of the 300 innocents to insinuate that by bombing OBL he'd be destroying this little town called Kandahar and it's 300 citizens. Did Clinton not know that Kandahar is the 2nd largest city in all of Afghanistan?

Secondly, the CIA Intel said OBL was at the governor's residence in Kandahar. The governor isn't going to be living in a little tent next to 300 people, he's going to have his own large home on private land. Which means Clinton again is lying when he says 300 were at risk of being killed, since we have the bombing capability to only take out that governors home and not effect much of the surrounding neighborhood.
 
Re: Bill Clinton: "I could have killed" Osama bin Laden.

Just let us know if you think Clinton should've killed 300 people then. Just say it. No need to beat around the bush.

I was wondering when someone was going to bring bush into the conversation.... :doh
 
Re: Bill Clinton: "I could have killed" Osama bin Laden.

... killing the leaders of rival organizations is generally a bad strategy unless you are willing to commit to a full scale war.

:shrug: depending. It can also be a way to avoid full scale war.

Regardless, at this point, AQ had already decided to go to war with us. Killing UBL would have simply reduced their ability to do so.
 
Re: Bill Clinton: "I could have killed" Osama bin Laden.

The 9/11 commission investigated those claims and concluded, "The Commission has found no credible evidence that this was so."

:lol: did they now :)
 
Re: Bill Clinton: "I could have killed" Osama bin Laden.

The information from the OP isn't new. In fact, it's been common knowledge for years most noticeably as reported in the 9/11 Commission Report, Chap. 4.
 
Re: Bill Clinton: "I could have killed" Osama bin Laden.

How many people that defend Clintons decision to not risk hurting civilians also defend Obama's decision to use drones to take out possible terror targets?

I can understand Clinton's decision not to go forward with a missile strike to kill OBL our over concern for collateral damage and the possibility of world-wide political backlash. I also agreed with Pres. Obama initial decision to use targeted/surgical drone strikes to go after AQ targets. I'm re-evaluating my opinion about the policy now for various reasons.
 
Re: Bill Clinton: "I could have killed" Osama bin Laden.

Here is a photo of Kandahar:

photo1.jpg

Does anyone honestly think he would have to destroy the whole city if he knew where OBL was?
 
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