Boy am I going to miss Monday Night Football this year.

Two weeks after 9/11 the conservative activists at the conservative-activist New Republic printed two sentences stating that Presidend Clinton refused to take Osama bin Laden from Sudan in 1996. Sudan offered to extradite bin Laden to us, and Clinton rejected the offer. Perhaps Sandy Berger, Clinton's man at the NSA, was attempting to rewrite that episode when he was busted for pilfering papers from the national archives.

Richard Clarke, insisted that Clintonoids were so obsessed with al Qaeda that they were trying to shake terrorists out of trees. Because of Clintonian acuity & resolve, wrote Clarke, they shook mad bomber Ahmed Ressam out of a Puget Sound ferry. As the Seattle Times eventually and obscurely noted, Clarke a lying liar. Ressam was taken down by dumb luck and profiling.

Meanwhile, the UK is filled with people in pubs that will buy rounds of drinks for the actor who played the assassin of GWB ....

Hmmm. Think I'll be watching the BBC America lineup to see when they show that movie here.

ABC, Disney, Touchstone, Miramax, Hyperion Books, ESPN, Buena Vista TV, Pixar, Disney theme parks, Discover magazine, Hollywood Records, Hollywood Pictures, Mammoth Records, Lyric Street Records, the Muppets. That's what you're up against.

Just wondering, why did BC turn down Sudan's offer? I'm not axing to be an A-hole; I really want to know.

BTW -regardless, blaming BC for what he didn't do in 1996 is obviosly denial about what GB didn't do in 2001.

But I really am curious as to the rational behind the 1996 Sudan thing...

That "Lost" DVD y'all are excited about puts money in these people's pockets. Ditto "Monk", "Scrubs", and "The Amazing Race".

I guess the docudrama skips over the bit about Bush's transition team having zero interest in any anti-terrorist intelligence that had nothing to do with Iraq.
Clinton and Bush both failed to press al-qaida very hard because of the deep ties between Al-Qaida and our arabic allies. At least under Clinton, prior to President Ahab's megalomanaical fixation on Iraq, the threat that did exist was taken seriously.
A chess analogy: there is nothing wrong with leaving the enemy queen on the board for the sake of position play, provided you remember it's there. It's that last bit that got fouled ub, by dubbya.

Well, maybe this documentary will finally press the Clinton Administration to do something about Bin Laden after all these years.

Mr. Clinton, running his war on terror as a criminal-justice project, not as a war, said that that he didn't have controlling legal authority to accept bin Laden's extradition. There were no outstanding warrants.

" ... (T)he bit about Bush's transition team having zero interest in any anti-terrorist intelligence that had nothing to do with Iraq."

You've been spun by Richard Clarke. That was his post-hoc line, delivered in his bid for media stardom.

His statement about shaking Ressam out of the trees was a lying lie. Period. His spew about the transition period is more problematic, since none of us has final proof about who said what to whom. All we have is Richard Clarke's assertion that Bush's vulcans had no interest in al Qaeda, and that Condi Rice had never heard of it. Sounds like more Clintonian BS.

Wow, the excusers are out in force. It wasn't even 21 minutes before a "IT'S ALL CLINTON'S FAULT" post.

Look nutjob. Bottom line is, it happened on your chimp's watch. He's either an incompetent asshole or let it happen so he could play with the bullhorn on top of the wreckage.

Can't you "IT'S ALL CLINTON'S FAULT" guys learn a new tune? You've been playing that one for six years now.

But look, two posts down from this one: Hannah Levin sure loves herself some of that ABC crap opera, "Lost."

@ALTKTC - Give them some slack. They've got a point, you know, considering what a bang-up job GWB has been doing to catch Bin Laden in the past 5 years. Clearly, Bush's approach is working a heckuva lot better than Clinton's.

FNARF, you forgot Grey's Anatomy.

and it's all Bush and Cheney's fault. We know that.

I remember sometime in the mid-90s having my ear bent by some deluded old hippie about how evil Richard Nixon was and how the FBI had a file on him a mile thick and he was being watched and blah blah blah, and it was all Nixon's fault, blah blah blah, and I remember thinking to myself, "you know, dude, Nixon was a prong but your problems are entirely self-inflicted, and you need to let fucking go of the Nixon thing, he's dead".

Now I'm getting that same vibe off of the relentless Clinton-haters. They will never let go, because it's the only thing they have to hold onto, the only thing that makes sense of their world.

The fact is, when the CIA told Bush in August 6, 2001 that Bin Laden was planning to strike the US, he said "All right, you've covered your ass now". And instead of working the intelligence community, he has proceeded in the five years since to dismantle it, so that the ideologically pure agents who are left are only interested in, or fit to, read the worthless reports of their paid torturers back in Pakistan, Uzbekhistan and Syria.

Clinton's intelligence community was imperfect; Bush's is non-existent, and we are more exposed now than at any time during Clinton's administration. That's the sad reality.

It's the sex. Most of the White House doesn't get enough. And for closeted gays like Bush and Cheney, it really bugs them.

Well, that plus Bush not willing to actually realize his beliefs are almost always WRONG.

Just wondering, why did BC turn down Sudan's offer? I'm not axing to be an A-hole; I really want to know.

He didn't. It's another right-wing myth designed to cover Bush's ass.

Clinton tried to broker a deal for Sudan to turn OBL over to Saudi Arabia but they wouldn't take him. And it's not clear whether Sudan was ever actually in a position to turn him over to anyone in any case.

This is just designed to distract you: The fact of the matter is that Bush did *nothing* to combat terrorism prior to 9/11.

I've asked hundreds of times on-line and the Bushbots never answer the question.

Of course, when Clinton was attempting to fight terrorism, the Republicans fought him every step of the way. When he tried to kill Bin Laden, they said he was focusing "too much attention" on him. When he launched missile strikes at OBL's base camps, they accused him of "wagging the dog". When he pushed for more anti-terrorism funding and security measures, the Republicans opposed them.

Republicans didn't give two shits about terrorism prior to 9/11 and today, they only "care" about it as far as it'll advance their political agenda.

Remember what Bush co was obsessing about during the transition rather than terrorism? Those (later shown to be bullshit) stories about the White House being left a pigsty, with 'W' keys ripped off keyboards, empty pizza boxes, etc.

It was all shown to be lies, of course. Too bad they were so obsessed with Clinton-hate rathan than concern for the nation's safety.

Anyone else remember how Bush Sr. got us involved in Somalia in December of 1992, less than a month before the transition? Remember how the Republicans pillored him for the military failure that ensued? Perhaps Clinton wasn't interested in starting a land war in central Asia right before leaving office, remembering what it was like to be handed a land war in Africa at the start of his term...

One of my favorite lines of all time:

"Liberal bloggers are furious..."

Like when the Queen Anne Dispatch called for Bush's impeachment a few weeks back.

Hooray!

Ummmm, so citing the New Republic as a, you know, citation, is 'Clinton hate.'

And there's this from fnarf's asshole: "Clinton's intelligence community was imperfect; Bush's is non-existent, and we are more exposed now than at any time during Clinton's administration. That's the sad reality."

And that's supposed to prove the delusional paranoia of those who say or imply THAT IT'S ALL CLINTON'S FAULT!

Actually it's not all Clinton's fault. It's also Jamie Gorelick's fault. She was the Clintonoid Asst. Attorney General, later imipartial member of the 9/11 Commission, who built the wall of separation between FBI & CIA that moron Bush, the chimp, was stuck with prior to 9/11. The wall wasn't breached until the post 9/11 Patriot Act, you morons.

Got down to Golob: That's not the way I heard it. Here's how it went down, according to the usual reliable sources ... Klinton's Kids, merry pranksters that they were, did indeed do about $15000 larceny & vandalism to the People's House. Bush, smooching with Teddy Kennedy & setting a sweet new nonpartisan tone, chose not to prosecute or persecute or make a scene. Klinton apologists then claimed vindication & exoneration.

Something similar happened with Klintonista Sandy Berger, referenced above. Old whore Dan Schore on NPR said that his good friend Berger had been exonerated by the Wall Street Journal, and that corporate-dominated media (which had feebly reported Berger's larceny of the National Archives prior to Klinton's 9/11 testimony) hadn't reported the exoneration. In fact, boys & girls, Berger was busily pleading guilty and getting a sweetheart suspended sentence, an SSS. Fat Cat 'Crats get all the breaks.

Wrong. Saudi Arabia wanted the US to send in troops to repatriate OBL to their custody and not complain when they found him innocent when he demonstrated he had memorized the Koran - which is what they do frequently in both Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

Clinton rightly refused to let the Saudis pardon him and tried to kill him.

Bush, on the other hand, did nothing.

Six years, since the Shrub came in, and they can't sing a new tune.

Six years. You'd think they'd even be bored with it themselves.

Oh well. It gives them something to do.

Not to get into a pissing match about an off topic tangent, but the GAO report explicitly claimed the "damage" was typical, and similar to that observed from the 1989 and 1993 transitions. Then again, not all of us get our news from the WSJ op/ed pages.

Typo-Dong: Should be 'old whore Dan Shore.' According to Richard Helms, & as reported by Thomas Powers in the New York Review of Books, Shore publicly outed a covert CIA agent & was responsible for the deaths of humint informants being run by that agent.

That was in the 1970s, when it was fashionable for leftists to hate the CIA & the USA, & it was the reason for the writing of the covert agent protection act that Frogmarch Rove was supposed to have violated in 2003.

That's when leftists got jerked into a 180 by Joe Wilson, whose web of lies twisted around your leftists throats last week. No wonder you people have gone insane.

Will, as usual, is more nuanced than most of you. Have heard rumors about Saudi manipulation of the extradition.

But I've also heard (via my main man Hannity) an actual factual tape of Clinton, c. 2002, telling an audience that he lacked the authority of international law to accept the extradition of OBL from Sudan.

Thanks Alexa & Will. I had to sort through a bunch of shit about who stole W keys before I got an answer.

I always know a RW talking point is BS when it is recited like an ad slogan.

Say it with me everyone, "Clinton had a chance to get Osama, but he didn't!"

repeat as necessary...

It's funny how the trolls are popping up all over - sort of like mushrooms after a storm.

Or maybe like the leaks that are springing in the GOP's Ship of Fools.

But will Diebold be their waterproof chamber, allowing them to sail on into oblivion, with the rest of us locked in Steerage?

The suspense is killing me....

In the meantime, we have this lovely GOP propaganda piece, brought to you by the same folks who gave you "The Brady Bunch" "Dark Shadows" and "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition". They've always been known for their schmaltz

As for Clinton trying to kill bin Laden, that would be a reference to Bill's famous wag-the-dog war of 1998, midway between Articles of Impeachment & the Senate Trial. Clinton's war, as moron Bush famously said, entailed firing expensive missiles into a cheap, empty tent.

That was the second act of Clinton's war on terror. The first act was firing expensive missiles into a Sudanese pharma phactory, at night, killing the clean-up crew.

It's sort of like Clinton's undeclared, preemptive, elective wars in the Balkans in which c. 3000 civilians were collaterally damaged to death for a cause utterly irrelevant to our national security.

Yup, Bush I, the wanker, started a Somali humanitarian mission that was utterly irrelevant to our national security. Clinton & the excremental UN bitched it up. Read Bowden's book.

OBL declared war on America during Clinton's 8-year joy ride under the desk. Al Qaeda committed about 6 acts of war against us druing those 8 years, from the first Trade Center attack to the USS Cole. National Review was reporting in 1999 that there were al Qaeda sleeper cells in the US.

But hey, that's history, which, as we all know, isn't written by the victors. It's written by the Democrats.

Don't forget that Clinton had two teenagers in Arkansas killed and Hillary had Vince Foster killed because he was her lover, even though she's a lesbian.

We can't get through a off-the-deep-end Clinton Psychosis incident without bringing those stories up!

OOO! And be sure to use the term "Jack Booted Thugs" in reference to some governmental agency!!!!

OOO OOO OOO!!!! And don't forget about Elian Gonzales!!! And the Waco Massacare!!!

I love the Clinton Chronicles!!!

@DR

What about the war in Afghanistan? That was based on Clinton era planning, intelligence and diplomacy.

All of this was well established in a Time article titled _They Had a Plan_.

"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)... Since the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen on Oct. 12, 2000—an attack that left 17 Americans dead—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..."

Bush was handed a plan to dismantle the Taleban and Al Queda in Afghanistan. Clinton was too politically damaged to pull it off. Bush and co were too busy planning war with China (!) and Iraq, and preparing for a month-long vacation to bother.

And instead of working the intelligence community, he has proceeded in the five years since to dismantle it

Heard a story recently from someone who had met up with an old classmate at a highschool reunion this summer. The classmate was a career field agent in the CIA. When he joined, he was assigned to keep tabs on a specific geographic area, and spent close to 3 decades learning the local language(s) and developing reliable contacts. When the neocons came in, word came down that all agents would be reassigned to new posts every 2 years, and that's what's been going on ever since. Before the agents even have time to find their footing, they're uprooted and sent off somewhere else. Explain to me how this is supposed to make us safer, cause I don't get it.

Amazing. By citing 2 simple September 2001 sentences from The New Republic (which cited the Washington Post as its source), I've inspired pools of liberal spit & penumbras of progressive projectile farting.

I mean, TNR & WaPo are from your side, aside from TNR's distant & lamented neocon flirtations. Since c. 1913 it's been liberal, aside from the years under Henry Wallace when it was loony liberal.
===============================
Aexia's post has merit. My failure to remember that Republicans fought Bill Chimpton's terror war "every step of the way" is not to say that Republicans didn't fight Chimpton's war every step of the way. But I suspect that Aexia is confused: Republicans certainly fought against Chimpton's preemptive, elective wars in the Balkans, but how could they fight Bill's terror war when he wasn't fighting it as war, but as law enforcement?

And yes, when Chimpton bombed the empty tent and the pharma phactory, Republicans called it wag-the-dog, a phrase I also used before reading Aexia's stuff. (Is bombing an empty tent in Afghanistan a war on terror? Killing a clean-up crew in Sudan? I dunno.)

And did Richard Clarke, after 8 years of utter failure to stop bin Laden, give Bush & Condi a fool-proof plan to get bin Laden in 8 months? Doubt it, because Clarke was a lying stinking sack of liquid crap when be bragged about shaking Ahmed Ressam from the trees. Also when he said that Condi Rice, Ph.D., multilingual, Stanford provost, had never heard of al Qaeda. If you believe Clarke, and if you believe he had a fool-proof plan, you've proved you're a fool, ya fools.

But Bush & Rice & Rummy & Deadeye Dick were so preoccupied with Iraq that they failed to heed warnings that bin Laden would blow up America on Bush's watch. That's equivalent to saying that al Qaeda was able to launch its first attack against the World Trade Center, on Chimpton's watch, because Chimpton was preoccupied with incinerating children at Waco.

Actually it's not equivalent, because Chimpton was also preoccupied with Iraq. (Newsweek is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the DNC. It's a pretty good guide to where Chimpton & Clarke had their heads during Chimpton's 1998 Senate trial. During that period, perhaps to divert attention or wag the dog, Newsweek's reporting is loaded with expressions of Chimpton's concern about Saddam's WMDs & about the imminent threat posed by Saddam's WMDs. Check it out.)

Yes, Saudi Arabia may have ensnared bin Laden's extradition in 1996, & may have ensnared the Bush Crime Family. You don't have to read Robert Baer & you don't have to be a Carlisle (sp?) geek to see that we're too entangled in the Saudi web. Richard Clarke, in fact, was so tied up with the Saudi plutocrats that he expedited the flight of various bin Ladens from the US, after 9/11, when Americans weren't allowed to fly. At least that's the word on the street.

Wow, not only do we get the same old story again and again and again and again and again from Our Douche Bag, we also get some good old-fashioned right wing paranoia right out of 1970. Everything old really IS new again. What's next - a Carpenters revival? A return of "Up With People"? I'll be sure to dust off my John Wayne LP.

Admit it el Douchey - you really have a thing for slick willy's willy, dontcha? It's OK - he is a very sexy man. And intelligent. As a conservative, I can see why you are drawn to such "forbidden fruit". Your type is usually much more the flop sweat and comb-over crowd. Thank GOD for Viagra. It just might have bought our species a few more years before the onset of Neocon-driven armegeddon.

Speaking of flop sweat - was the Dear Leader's performance today particularly grim, or am I imagining things? I love when he does his "steely resolve" bit. He's MUCH Campier than Nixon ever was.

You got me, you cute little fat bitch. You're a flop, but the sweat is such a turn-on.