Democratic Primary Discussion Thread

[Diff-chan]

Diff, you're a ridiculous republican.

Why dont you tell me why it is unreasonable to criticize Clinton's failure to go after bin Laden?

Especially when al-Qaeda flew planes into the World Trade Center 8 months after he left office?

Please, tell me why this is unreasonable.

Especially if we are talking about Clinton's legacy.

[Wolffen]

From CNN:

AMANPOUR: I want to ask you about Osama bin Laden. You say in your book that you made several efforts to kill him. In retrospect do you believe, though, that you should have mustered some kind of special mission, some kind of special forces mission, even though many of your senior military advisers opposed that at the time. Do you think you should have done it?

CLINTON: Well what I wish now is that I had had a more vigorous military debate. One of the discussions that I had with the 9/11 commission involved the reorganization of the military in the 1980s under the Goldwater-Nichols Act, which has done a lot of good. It's helped to rationalize military spending, it's helped us to downside the military and spend more on areas where we needed. It's done a lot of good.

But essentially it's made the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff a much more powerful and centralized authority there. So when people began to second-guess the fact that I didn't send the special forces into Afghanistan even though concededly nobody knew where bin Laden was, nobody knew where [Ayman] al-Zawahiri was, nobody knew, but we had a general idea of where they were operating.

After 9/11, when people began to second-guess that, I wish that I had had a military debate because basically the Pentagon and [the Joint Chiefs chairman] were strongly opposed to it, they thought that the chances of those guys getting killed were high. And that's what they signed on to do, to risk their lives, but they didn't want to get killed with no reasonable prospect of accomplishing the mission.

So their view was: We don't know where these people are, we have no reasonable intelligence, we know we can't trust people on the ground because they told us bin Laden was gonna be at this training camp we hit.

We contracted with all these Afghan tribals and its borne no result for us. So we think it's very high risk for a very, very low chance of return, and we recommend against it.

But I'm the commander-in-chief, or I was then, and they would have gone if I had ordered them to. I wish I had debated it a little more thoroughly because if you look at it, the record will reflect that I took every other alternative that I had based on the available intelligence.

We did, it is true, consider bombing three other sites, three other times, but in each case the CIA before the mission could be completed said we just don't have that much confidence in our intelligence.

So you know, when something like 9/11 happens you think, "Well gosh, I wish I had done everything."

Now the other issue which I have been asked about is slightly different, which is after the USS Cole [was bombed in Yemen] in October [2000], do I wish I had ordered the special forces, and the answer to that is, I would have done it in a heartbeat to special forces and more with or without international support, once I got the CIA and the FBI to agree and make an official finding that bin Laden was responsible.

I just assumed he was from the day it happened, and everyone else did. But it was not until after I left office that the FBI and the CIA made a finding. If they had given me a finding beforehand I would have gone after him without regard to the politics, the timing, the election, the court cases, anything going on in America. I would have done it, but I didn't get the confirmation, and America didn't get it until after I left office.

Take all that with a grain of salt if you like.


Clinton could have taken a stronger stance on terrorist than he did. As Commander-in-Chief, he could have pushed the military to take whatever action he thought was necessary. As could have Bush when he took office. Clinton wanted to have solid intelligence from his folks before running off to war or sending special ops in. After 9/11, Bush took the other route and went to war without solid intelligence.
We need someone in the middle. We also need true solid intelligence. I'd say our recent intelligence has been rather runny and lumpy.


The only way 9/11 would not have happened would have been for all of the top of Al-queda to have been killed in 1999, before planning for the attack began. Even if Osama had been killed in 2000, the attacks would have occured under the direction of his lieutenants.


9/11 is not one man's fault. It's not just Clinton's. It's not just Bush. The whole intelligence community fucked up because every decision maker was a stuck-up dick head too worried about petty inter-agency rivalries.

[Diff-chan]

Wolffen, Im at the stage now where I want a President who is willing to go after terrorists. We dont need airtight intelligence to tell us bin Laden is a threat to the United States and needs to be stopped. Of course, hindsight is 20/20 but like I said Clinton knew he was a threat and he didnt go after him. That much is obvious.

If Clinton went after bin Laden with vigor after the first WTC bombing, or after Cole, or after Kenya, then history would be very different.

But, really, thats all in the past. It needs to be discussed, though, when we discuss Clinton's legacy. With regards to terrorism, he just fucked up. He fucked up bad. And let's not even get into the whole Mogadishu disaster, which bin Laden repeatedly said showed that Americans are weak and will jump ship at first sight of blood (although, I do hope our campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as our defeat of al-Sadr showed them this is not the case).

[Tommy Tallarico]

Bin Laden was made as powerful as he is by the Reagan administration, with help from W's father in the early 80's. To blame Clinton like he should have fixed their mistakes is outright stupidity.

[Diff-chan]

Bin Laden was made as powerful as he is by the Reagan administration, with help from W's father in the early 80's. To blame Clinton like he should have fixed their mistakes is outright stupidity.

Thats probably the most ridiculous thing you've ever said. A President's job isn't to point fingers and wash their hands of problems that threaten America because of a previous President's mistakes. Their job is to defend America against her enemies, no matter who they are or where they originate.

[Tommy Tallarico]

Thats probably the most ridiculous thing you've ever said. A President's job isn't to point fingers and wash their hands of problems that threaten America because of a previous President's mistakes. Their job is to defend America against her enemies, no matter who they are or where they originate.

Wow, you're awesome at reading what you want to read. Amazing. However, I never inferred that Clinton should have pointed fingers and done nothing. Don't be so blinded that you only see what suits you.

You're holding someone responsible who's only earned a small part of the blame. Republicans made him, and republicans were in office when all that CIA training paid off for him, so saying "Clinton should have done something" is an acceptable remark, but only if said like this "Clinton should have done something, as should have the administrations responsible for the man rising to power and the one in power when he attacked, who was forewarned of the attack." You're a smart guy Diff, but you're not showing it here.

[Diff-chan]

Oh, I definitely agree with that. Everyone who ignored him was part of the problem.

It's kind of like how the Cold War took every President from ~1947 until 1989 (or whatever) to win, not just Reagan. If just one slacked in their duties then something drastic could've happened.

However, that doesnt change the fact that Clinton was the man in charge after the first WTC bombing, after the Kenya attacks, after Cole, and he didnt do anything. Those were real, live, in-the-flesh terrorist attacks and he pretty much just ignored them.

I remember after he fired those stupid missiles at caves, and killed like 30 al-Qaeda guys, bin Laden came on TV and said, "I will kill 100 Americans for every 1 of my men you killed", or something like that. And Clinton's response? Pretty much nothing, Im afraid.

These are very distressing things, if you ask me.

Now if we want to get into discussions about Bush's legacy or Reagan's legacy then we can bring up those other issues, and we have.

[StriderKyo]

Thats probably the most ridiculous thing you've ever said. A President's job isn't to point fingers and wash their hands of problems that threaten America because of a previous President's mistakes. Their job is to defend America against her enemies, no matter who they are or where they originate.

That must be why Bush did nothing while his counterterrorism chief was screaming in his ear to go after Al Qaeda.

[sleeve]

However, that doesnt change the fact that Clinton was the man in charge after the first WTC bombing, after the Kenya attacks, after Cole, and he didnt do anything. Those were real, live, in-the-flesh terrorist attacks and he pretty much just ignored them.

What basis do you have for this claim?

Did "ignore" become synonymous with "did not start an unprovoked war with a Middle Eastern country unconnected to the war on terror" without my knowledge?

[Wolffen]

Wolffen, Im at the stage now where I want a President who is willing to go after terrorists. We dont need airtight intelligence to tell us bin Laden is a threat to the United States and needs to be stopped. Of course, hindsight is 20/20 but like I said Clinton knew he was a threat and he didnt go after him. That much is obvious.

I won't absolve Clinton of his shortcomings in preventing terrorist attacks. But playing cowboy of the world will not win the "war on terror." You can't win the "war on terror", just like you can't win the "war on drugs", through military might. There is a fundemental failing on the part of many decision makers worldwide with addressing the root causes of terrorist and drug use. You can't kill all of the terrorist. They're like HYDRA, kill one, and 2 will take his place. That's not to say we shouldn't be killing terrorists. Just that simply killing them will not make them all go away.

Setting up a democracy in the Middle East that will act as a shining example to the Muslim world might work in 50 years. Unfortunately, we have 50 years of potential attacks to deal with while we wait for magic in Iraq. And right now, world opinion is not with us. A quick change in leadership (look! I'm trying to bring the thread back on topic!) would go a long way to mending some international fences. At least until Kerry pisses someone off. Terrorism is an international problem in terms of reach, but primarily a US and Israeli problem in terms of effect (yeah, yeah, I know about Madrid, and about the IRA in Ireland...key word is primarily). We'll get more accomplished with the world on our side than with the world against us.

As to the "we don't need airtight intelligence to tell us...": true. But we do need good solid HUMAN intelligence to help us find the bastards that want to kill everyone, and to find Osama. After the Cold War, and especially during the 90s, the CIA and FBI began to focus more on electronic intelligence than human intelligence. And that's where it all fell apart. How many people do we have on the inside in Al-Queda? How many double agents did we have in the KGB? We need to stop spending billions of dollars on one plane and start spending that money on human intelligence and our ground troops.

Long and short of it (and again, trying to get the thread on topic), I feel our current president and his administration have not done a good job with the War on Terror, do not have the full cooperation of the international community, and will not make the changes necessary in our intelligence agencies to improve our chances of finding terrorists worldwide. If the Republicans would put someone else up for election, I'd gladly consider him over Kerry depending on their background. But as it stands, I'd like to see a change.