If GWB was pres in JFK's time then Cuba would be the other half of Jamaica

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
They killed 19 memebers of AQ with the Afganistan bombing.

Let's try this again. Could you explain to me how a series of actions that accomplish nothing of substance before being shoved to the back burner qualifies as a meaningful response?

[chequita guevara]

It was an attempt to kill bin Laden. It had the possibility of succeeding. It got pushed to the back burner because your party decided to cripple the Presidency of Clinton.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Let's try this again. Could you explain to me how a series of actions that accomplish nothing of substance before being shoved to the back burner qualifies as a meaningful response?

The more interesting question is, how would the invasion of Iraq constitute as a response to the AQ threat?

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
The more interesting question is, how would the invasion of Iraq constitute as a response to the AQ threat?

Try baiting someone else. I ain't biting: An Unnecessary War?

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
It was an attempt to kill bin Laden. It had the possibility of succeeding.

And yet it failed. He screwed up at least 4 chances to capture or kill OBL. You've yet to explain how this constitutes even a half hearted response to a group that had launched attacks on US soil and killed our citizens.

[Ned]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


Nothing here about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Center_bombing

Note that OBL was publicly identified as a co-conspirator in the 1993 bombing in 1995. In early 1996, Clinton declares war on OBL. In May, he declines an offer to turn him over by the Sudan. He later denies the offer ever was made, flatly contradicting himself. Slick Willie really is slick, is he not?


"Feb 1995 Osama bin Laden named in an indictment as an unindicted co-conspirator, in the first bombing of the World Trade Center. Jane's Intelligence Review.

and

"The pace of bin Laden's attacks on America picked up rapidly in the years that followed, and his aim improved considerably. In 1993, Ramzi Yousef bombed the World Trade Center, working with members of another terrorist group ensconced in New York, Islamic Jihad, a radical extremist organization with branches in Palestinian territories and Egypt. Evidence suggests that bin Laden was behind the 1993 attack. Yousef had trained with the mujahideen in Afghanistan, and his uncle Khalid Shaikh Mohammed helped support the attack by wiring money to the bomber (at minimum). Khalid would later rise to the No. 3 position in al Qaeda.

bin Laden recruited another top deputy from Islamic Jihad, Ayman Al-Zawahiri. Zawahiri was a surgeon who had been fighting for extremist causes since the age of 15. As leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Zawahiri had been involved with numerous attacks on the Egyptian government prior to his alliance with bin Laden, including the assassination of Anwar Sadat. Zawahiri is considered al Qaeda's operational coordinator, the CEO to bin Laden's Chairman of the Board.

With Zawahiri in tow, bin Laden's al Qaeda absorbed much of Islamic Jihad's staff and resources. The precedent also helped establish Qaeda's role as a conglomerate of terror organizations. Other organizations soon followed Zawahiri's lead and joined the fold, either formally or informally, including Abu Sayyaf, Jemaah Islamiah, Hezbollah, Hamas and dozens of others.

The support bin Laden offered these often diverse groups primarily fell into three areas, financing, training and arms. bin Laden's deep pockets provided a base to begin with, which was supplemented by wealthy Saudi patrons and various charity rip-offs that misdirected funds raised under charitable guise to mujahideen in Chechnya, at times directly funding terrorist attacks.

Said attacks continued, including the bombing of U.S. embassies in Africa, the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, attempts to assassinate the pope and then-President Clinton, and an early attempt to stage a Sept. 11-style attack out of the Philippines, where bin Laden's brother-in-law Mohammed Jamal Khalifa had been funding operations on behalf of al Qaeda.
More than a Technicality, Less than a Papacy
The heat began to stick to bin Laden, and in spring 1996, President Bill Clinton signed an executive order authorizing the CIA to destroy bin Laden's network through any available means, and later that year, a secret grand jury began investigating his activities.

In May, the Sudan expelled bin Laden, under heavy pressure from the Saudis. But bin Laden wrested a powerful victory from this seeming defeat, in a development little noted by Western observers, who may have seen it as a technicality.

Osama bin Laden relocated to Afghanistan after his expulsion. Once ensconced there, according to Bodansky, bin Laden set up a territorial network of camps and training compounds, with the support of the ruling Taliban party. By establishing his rule over a territorial boundary, Osama bin Laden was able to claim an Imarat or emirate, which under Islamic law gave him a special dispensation to act as a teacher of Islam without a formal religious education."

from

http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/crime/terrorists/osama-bin-laden/

"Thursday, March 25, 2004 12:45 p.m. EST

Prosecutors Eyed bin Laden Before Clinton Let Him Go

In 1996, when President Clinton refused Sudan's offer to extradite Osama bin Laden to America, federal prosecutors had already publicly identified the 9/11 mastermind as an unindicted co-conspirator in a radical Islamist plot to blow up New York City landmarks.

Bin Laden's known ties to the terror cell that would later be implicated in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center stands in marked contrast to the ex-president's claim that when he turned the Sudanese offer down, bin Laden had committed no crime against the U.S.

"At the time, 1996, he had committed no crime against America," Clinton insisted in a 2002 speech to a New York business group. "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."

But reports published before March 1996, when the Sudanese tried to hand the top terrorist over, show that the ex-president did indeed have a legal basis to bring him to America and at least hold him, with an eye toward putting him on trial.

On April 21, 1995, USA Today reported:

"One of the most notorious patrons of Sudan's terrorist camps is Osama Bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi Arabian. He was named by federal prosecutors in New York as a potential co-conspirator in the terror trial of radical Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and 10 other Muslims accusing of plotting a 'war of urban terrorism' in the USA."

Mohammed Jamal Khalifah, better known as "bin Laden's banker," was also named an unindicted co-conspirator who financed Ramzi Yousef's plot to destroy the World Trade Center in 1993, according to a November 1995 report in U.S. News & World Report.

Six Americans died in the '93 attack, with over 1,000 injured.

Five months before Sudan offered to turn bin Laden over to Clinton, the 9/11 mastermind helped carry out another terrorist attack that killed five Americans.

On Nov. 27, 1995, U.S. News reported, "At 11:40 a.m. last Monday, dozens of Americans sat eating lunch in a downtown Riyadh snack bar in a building that housed a U.S.-run military training center for the Saudi National Guard. Suddenly, a van packed with explosives erupted outside. Another explosion followed seconds later. When the dust settled, six people were dead and 60 injured, most of them Americans."

The final death toll rose to seven, with two Indians among those killed.

Four Saudis later confessed to the crime, naming bin Laden as their leader.

In 2001, PBS's "Frontline" chronicled what the U.S. knew about bin Laden before the 9/11 attacks. According to PBS, prior to Sudan's March 1996 offer to turn the wealthy Saudi over, bin Laden had been implicated in the following terrorist activity:

"February/March 1995 - Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing, is captured in Pakistan and extradited to the United States. A search of his former residences leads investigators to believe he is financially linked to bin Laden. Also, he had stayed at a bin Laden-financed guest house while in Pakistan.

"June 1995 - Unsuccessful assassination attempt on the life of the President of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, in Addis Ababa. U.S. intelligence sources believe bin Laden was somehow linked.

"August 1995 - Bin Laden wrote an open letter to King Fahd of Saudi Arabia calling for a campaign of guerrilla attacks in order to drive U.S forces out of the kingdom.

"November 13, 1995 - Five Americans and two Indians are killed in the truck bombing of a US-operated Saudi National Guard training center in Riyadh. Bin Laden denies involvement but praises the attack.

"Spring 1996 - President Clinton signed a top secret order that authorized the CIA to use any and all means to destroy bin Laden's network." [End of Excerpt]

On Tuesday the Independent Commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks said there was "no reliable evidence" to contradict denials from Clinton administration officials that Sudan ever offered bin Laden to the U.S. The Commission did not explain why President Clinton's own admission that the offer was real was not considered "reliable evidence."

To listen to President Clinton explain why he turned the Sudanese offer down, Click here.

http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/3/25/124653.shtml

[Ned]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


The more interesting question is, how would the invasion of Iraq constitute as a response to the AQ threat?

UR, this has been explained soooooo many times, as it defies credibility that you don't know what Bush said on this. Bush said, not Michael Moore said.