Uncognitive said:
Wait, what? "War" is now defined as any time any citizen is threatened?

Does that mean the Congress can suspend the habeas corpus rights of homophobes because American citizens are threatened with violence due to their (actual or perceived) sexual orientation?

Some white dude blew up a federal building on Oklahoma City. Does that mean we're at war with white men?

Wookie2 said:
And bin Laden issued fatwa's with specific demands in 1998, which were ignored by the previous administration. It's an ongoing problem that spans multiple administrations, period. It is a failing of America, and no one President, Secretary, or Congressman.

One such meeting took place in the White House situation room during the first week of January 2001. The session was part of a program designed by Bill Clinton's National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger.

Berger attended only one of the briefings %u2014 the session that dealt with the threat posed to the U.S. by international terrorism, and especially by al-Qaeda. "I'm coming to this briefing," he says he told Rice, "to underscore how important I think this subject is." Later, alone in his office with Rice, Berger says he told her, "I believe that the Bush Administration will spend more time on terrorism generally, and on al-Qaeda specifically, than any other subject."

The terrorism briefing was delivered by Richard Clarke, a career bureaucrat who had served in the first Bush Administration and risen during the Clinton years to become the White House's point man on terrorism. As chair of the interagency Counter-Terrorism Security Group (CSG), Clarke was known as a bit of an obsessive %u2014 just the sort of person you want in a job of that kind. Since the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen on Oct. 12, 2000--an attack that left 17 Americans dead %u2014 he had been working on an aggressive plan to take the fight to al-Qaeda. The result was a strategy paper that he had presented to Berger and the other national security "principals" on Dec. 20. But Berger and the principals decided to shelve the plan and let the next Administration take it up. With less than a month left in office, they did not think it appropriate to launch a major initiative against Osama bin Laden. "We would be handing [the Bush Administration] a war when they took office on Jan. 20," says a former senior Clinton aide. "That wasn't going to happen." Now it was up to Rice's team to consider what Clarke had put together.

Berger had left the room by the time Clarke, using a Powerpoint presentation, outlined his thinking to Rice. The heading on Slide 14 of the Powerpoint presentation reads, "Response to al Qaeda: Roll back." Clarke's proposals called for the "breakup" of al-Qaeda cells and the arrest of their personnel. The financial support for its terrorist activities would be systematically attacked, its assets frozen, its funding from fake charities stopped. Nations where al-Qaeda was causing trouble %u2014 Uzbekistan, the Philippines, Yemen %u2014 would be given aid to fight the terrorists. Most important, Clarke wanted to see a dramatic increase in covert action in Afghanistan to "eliminate the sanctuary" where al-Qaeda had its terrorist training camps and bin Laden was being protected by the radical Islamic Taliban regime. The Taliban had come to power in 1996, bringing a sort of order to a nation that had been riven by bloody feuds between ethnic warlords since the Soviets had pulled out. Clarke supported a substantial increase in American support for the Northern Alliance, the last remaining resistance to the Taliban. That way, terrorists graduating from the training camps would have been forced to stay in Afghanistan, fighting (and dying) for the Taliban on the front lines. At the same time, the U.S. military would start planning for air strikes on the camps and for the introduction of special-operations forces into Afghanistan. The plan was estimated to cost "several hundreds of millions of dollars." In the words of a senior Bush Administration official, the proposals amounted to "everything we've done since 9/11."

And that's the point. The proposals Clarke developed in the winter of 2000-01 were not given another hearing by top decision makers until late April, and then spent another four months making their laborious way through the bureaucracy before they were readied for approval by President Bush. It is quite true that nobody predicted Sept. 11--that nobody guessed in advance how and when the attacks would come. But other things are true too. By last summer, many of those in the know %u2014 the spooks, the buttoned-down bureaucrats, the law-enforcement professionals in a dozen countries %u2014 were almost frantic with worry that a major terrorist attack against American interests was imminent.

Formus said:
....I'm sorry, I had to clean out my ears. You're saying Clinton is as much responsible for 9/11 as Bush?

Formus said:Clinton never had concrete evidence of not only bin Laden's determination to attack the United States but the means as well. No shit we knew bin Laden wanted to destroy us. No fucking shit. But that memo explicitly stated that bin Laden would use airplanes. Bush ignored it, and lo and behold, bin Laden used airplanes to attack us. That is a monumental failure that practically makes all others irrelevant. You cannot possibly say that Clinton knew bin Laden would use airplanes as weapons, because he didn't. Bush did.

Wookie2 said:
No, I'm not saying Clinton knew the method of attack; I'm saying he had every reason to believe attacks were coming. I'm also saying that he helped provoke them; bin Laden's fatwa specifically mentioned American sanctions against Iraq (which were imposed as an alternative to war; remember?). Have you even read the fatwa?

TheRedBaron said:

Historical president, by whichever president (har) is not grounds on which to argue that such action is legitimate. I see it rather as an emotional argument rather than a rational one. Just because most of us have an overall favorable view of Lincoln, an appeal to his name is assumed to be an effective way to make a point. It is not. I have a very favorable view of FDR, but I don't think anybody today would defend his internment of Americans of Japanese ancestry.

As to your other points, I ask you this: What are we fighting for? We fight because we believe the way we live is right. If we sacrifice what separates us from the islamo-fascists, we've stopped being the good guys, the heroes, the moral. To borrow a line from Battlestar Galactica (although I am ashamed to do so): "It's not enough to survive; we have to be worthy of surviving"

Gylrek said:
wow this is the first war we've been in that we haven't released captured enimies right after they've been caught so they can have the oppurtunity to rejoin the fighting.
but on the other hand LIBERAL thrive on the numbers killed in IRAQ. The more enemy combatants = more amercan deaths = very happy Liberals.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. _ That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, _ That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.

- Ronald Reagan

Gylrek said:
wow this is the first war we've been in that we haven't released captured enimies right after they've been caught so they can have the oppurtunity to rejoin the fighting.
but on the other hand LIBERAL thrive on the numbers killed in IRAQ. The more enemy combatants = more amercan deaths = very happy Liberals.

Gylrek said:
wow this is the first war we've been in that we haven't released captured enimies right after they've been caught so they can have the oppurtunity to rejoin the fighting.
but on the other hand LIBERAL thrive on the numbers killed in IRAQ. The more enemy combatants = more amercan deaths = very happy Liberals.

FearTheReaper said:
You're very wrong.

FearTheReaper said:
Wait, so because Clinton didn't agree to the demands of terrorists, he somehow provoked further terrorist actions?

Holy fuck.

Wookie2 said:
Have you even read the fatwa?