Saturday, May 12, 2007
Rebutting a meme
MadTom comments on yesterday's post:
Remind me again, at the time that OBL was in Sudan, what did we know he had done? And isn't the story that the Clinton administration got Sudan to move against OBL and break up his venture, forcing OBL to move leaving behind most of the investment OBL had made in Sudan, farms and maybe an airport or something?
That's just ridiculous. At the time OBL was in Sudan, we obviously knew enough about him that he attracted the personal interest of the President of the United States. OBL was not just some random haji on the street by that time. Indeed, Clinton himself claimed that at that time, "a lot of people were claiming I was too obsessed with Bin Ladin and Al Qaeda."
For chrissakes, madtom, OBL was in Sudan in 1996! That's three years AFTER Al Qaeda hit the World Trade Center and tried to bring it down with a truck bomb (and nearly succeeded!). By that time, OBL had been named by prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator.
We also knew damn well that OBL was building a terrorist network inside Sudan in 1996. Why? Because we sent a Ambassador Carney to meet with the Sudanese Minister of State for Defense Elfanih Erwa with a specific request for information on that network.
Furthermore, we also assessed that he was involved in an attempt to assassinate Hosni Mubarek.
Even more, the CIA knew that Osama Bin Ladin was enough of a threat even in 2006 that in April of that year they created a special unit devoted to tracking him down. The problem was that it was only created AFTER Clinton turned down the chance to have him handed over to us.
The story is not that we stripped him of his financial assets, because obviously we didn't. The Sudanese did, despite Clinton's dereliction (If you'll recall, in the spring of 1996, Clinton had some other distractions on his time of a more, ummm, personal nature.)
This idea that Osama was somehow entitled to a presumption of innocence, and that we had no reason to believe he had commited crimes or was a threat to the United States in 1996, is absurd and ridiculous.
Splash, out
Jason
Remind me again, at the time that OBL was in Sudan, what did we know he had done? And isn't the story that the Clinton administration got Sudan to move against OBL and break up his venture, forcing OBL to move leaving behind most of the investment OBL had made in Sudan, farms and maybe an airport or something?
That's just ridiculous. At the time OBL was in Sudan, we obviously knew enough about him that he attracted the personal interest of the President of the United States. OBL was not just some random haji on the street by that time. Indeed, Clinton himself claimed that at that time, "a lot of people were claiming I was too obsessed with Bin Ladin and Al Qaeda."
For chrissakes, madtom, OBL was in Sudan in 1996! That's three years AFTER Al Qaeda hit the World Trade Center and tried to bring it down with a truck bomb (and nearly succeeded!). By that time, OBL had been named by prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator.
We also knew damn well that OBL was building a terrorist network inside Sudan in 1996. Why? Because we sent a Ambassador Carney to meet with the Sudanese Minister of State for Defense Elfanih Erwa with a specific request for information on that network.
Furthermore, we also assessed that he was involved in an attempt to assassinate Hosni Mubarek.
Even more, the CIA knew that Osama Bin Ladin was enough of a threat even in 2006 that in April of that year they created a special unit devoted to tracking him down. The problem was that it was only created AFTER Clinton turned down the chance to have him handed over to us.
The story is not that we stripped him of his financial assets, because obviously we didn't. The Sudanese did, despite Clinton's dereliction (If you'll recall, in the spring of 1996, Clinton had some other distractions on his time of a more, ummm, personal nature.)
This idea that Osama was somehow entitled to a presumption of innocence, and that we had no reason to believe he had commited crimes or was a threat to the United States in 1996, is absurd and ridiculous.
Splash, out
Jason
Comments:
The meme your talking about is mostly republicans desperate to bring Clinton back to the front page.
But lets just take one thing at a time. You said:
" AFTER Clinton turned down the chance to have him handed over to us."
You accept that meme with out a thought. Sure the Sudanese were going to "just hand him over".
"The story is not that we stripped him of his financial assets,"
Never said that, I actually said :
"administration got Sudan to move against OBL"
"despite Clinton's dereliction "
Bush did a much better job at Tora Tora I'm sure.
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But lets just take one thing at a time. You said:
" AFTER Clinton turned down the chance to have him handed over to us."
You accept that meme with out a thought. Sure the Sudanese were going to "just hand him over".
"The story is not that we stripped him of his financial assets,"
Never said that, I actually said :
"administration got Sudan to move against OBL"
"despite Clinton's dereliction "
Bush did a much better job at Tora Tora I'm sure.
