Gop 2012

[DarkLaw]

Ron Paul or his son, Rand Paul. Period (so far).

 

[bulbboy]

Blaming Bill Clinton for 9/11 is seriously asinine. George W. Bush had 9 months to prevent the attacks, but he was on vacation 40% of the time. Coincidentally, Bush set a Presidential record for vacation taken during 2001.

During that time he held literally zero cabinet meetings on the threat of terrorism. Richard Clarke tried to warn Rice and Bush about the threat of Al Queda and was patently ignored. On August 6, 2001, he was warned via daily briefing that Bin Laden was determined to attack the American homeland in the very near future.

Could the attacks on 9/11 have been prevented? It's possible, but I don't put the responsibility on Bush's shoulders. I don't think placing the blame on any one person is constructive or even really possible. However, if one is looking for someone to blame, he is by far the person who bears the most responsibility. The attacks happened 9 months into his watch and he wasted 40% of the year NOT taking steps to make the country safer.

It's the height of partisan hackery to blame Bill Clinton for something that occured 9 months after he left office. Ask yourself, if terrorists attacked the US right now, would you be consistent and blame Bush? After all, Obama still has 2 months until September.

Oh Please!

I don't defend Bush too much on anything - but most of his "vacations" were working vacations in Crawford. When presidents go to relax at Camp David no one calls it a vacation. When Bush goes to Crawford instead of Camp David it is suddenly a vacation..

They both should have done more. But I think Clinton should have nipped the problem in the bud.

 

[berettaman]

......and let's not forget that osama what handed to Janet Reno on a platter but she wasn't sure if it was legal. And are we talking the same Democrat Richard Clark of "Slam Dunk" fame?

 

[azmrb]

......and let's not forget that osama what handed to Janet Reno on a platter but she wasn't sure if it was legal. And are we talking the same Democrat Richard Clark of "Slam Dunk" fame?

and let's not forget who let osama get away at Tora Bora cause his gaze was directed at Iraq instead.

Also, "Slam Dunk" didn't come from Richard Clark, it came from CIA director
George SlamDunk Tenet.

 

[berettaman]

and let's not forget who let osama get away at Tora Bora cause his gaze was directed at Iraq instead.

The 25 Northern Alliance tribesmen with AK-47's pointed at the heads of the 6 Delta Force members while they talked cease-fire is who let osama get out of tora-bora.

 

[azmrb]

The 25 Northern Alliance tribesmen with AK-47's pointed at the heads of the 6 Delta Force members while they talked cease-fire is who let osama get out of tora-bora.

A former Delta Force commander, using the pen name "Dalton Fury", who was present at Tora Bora has revealed in a book that bin Laden escaped into Pakistan on or around December 16, 2001. Fury gives three reasons for why bin Laden was able to escape: (1) the US mistakenly thought that Pakistan was effectively guarding the border area, (2) NATO allies refused to allow the use of air-dropped GATOR mines, which would have helped seal bin Laden and his forces inside the Tora Bora area, and (3) overreliance on native Afghan military forces as the main force deployed against bin Laden and his fighters. Fury states that the Afghan forces would usually quit the battlefield in the evenings to break their Ramadan fasts, thereby allowing the al-Qaeda forces a chance to regroup, reposition, or escape.

Fury, in an interview on 60 Minutes, stated that his Delta Force team and CIA Paramilitary Officers traveled to Tora Bora after the CIA pinpointed bin Laden's location in that area. Fury's team proposed an operation in which they would assault bin Laden's suspected position from the rear, over the 14,000 foot high mountain separating Tora Bora from Pakistan. But, Fury's proposal was denied by unidentified officials at higher headquarters for unknown reasons. Fury then proposed the dropping of GATOR mines in the passes leading away from Tora Bora, but this was also denied. Forced to approach the al-Qaeda forces from the front, at one point Fury reports that his team was within 2,000 yards of bin Laden's suspected position, but withdrew because of uncertainty over the number of al-Qaeda fighters guarding bin Laden and a lack of support from allied Afghan troops.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tora_Bora

Are you telling me that if Obama had been president this wouldn't have been his fault?
Seriously?

 

[berettaman]

Conflicting information.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0210-05.htm

Published on Sunday, February 10, 2002 in the Boston Globe
How US Strategy in Tora Bora Failed
Deals by Afghan allies may have let Al Qaeda leaders escape

by John Donnelly

TORA BORA, Afghanistan - Inside the elementary school that was functioning as the US special forces command center, a US military adviser was livid. An Afghan commander had brokered a cease-fire at Tora Bora without consulting anyone.


''Why did you do the cease-fire?'' the American demanded to know, according to two participants. ''We don't want to stop the bombing.''


In December, anti-Taliban fighters gathered in Tora Bora, Afghanistan, as a bomber circled overhead. (Globe Staff Photo/Dominic Chavez)

He ordered the air assault against Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda forces to resume immediately, at 8 a.m. on Dec. 13, radioing a B-52 bomber overhead and asking that it deliver that message for all to see.

The pilot wrote a gigantic ''8 ON'' in the blue sky, using the plane's trail of exhaust.

Over the five days that followed, the air assault, combined with fighting by local Afghan troops, left 300 bodies scattered across the landscape. But the success of that operation - and the overall impression, at the end of the battle, of a routed terror group - mask the failings of the US mission.

A first on-the-ground examination of the Tora Bora battle (the Pentagon allowed no access during the fighting) reflected the dangers inherent in the US strategy of relying on double-crossing and power-grabbing warlords while US ground forces remained on the fringes of the fight. The tactics gave bin Laden and Al Qaeda leaders several opportunities to escape, and it is likely that they did.

''The Americans relied too much on these commanders. They were trapped by them,'' said Malik Haji Mohammed Nasir, the chief secretary for the Nangarhar Province and a village elder from the village of Agam, about 3 miles north of Tora Bora.

At key junctures of the battle, the Americans learned they had little or no control.

During the US and Afghan cease-fire of Dec. 12 - which an Afghan commander negotiated with Al Qaeda in hopes that some would surrender - several hundred Qaeda members slipped through the valleys and over the White Mountains into Pakistan, Afghan commanders say.................

 

[azmrb]

reflected the dangers inherent in the US strategy of relying on double-crossing and power-grabbing warlords while US ground forces remained on the fringes of the fight. The tactics gave bin Laden and Al Qaeda leaders several opportunities to escape, and it is likely that they did.

If that happened in 2009 you wouldn't blame Obama?

 

[berettaman]

If that happened in 2009 you wouldn't blame Obama?

No.Just like I don't blame Bush,I blame the Afgans.

''The Americans relied too much on these commanders. They were trapped by them,'' said Malik Haji Mohammed Nasir, the chief secretary for the Nangarhar Province and a village elder from the village of Agam, about 3 miles north of Tora Bora.

You know the afgans that had the 6 delta force members out numbered 5 to 1.
I'm saying that Mr Fury is trying to sell books."Oh we couldn't get an answer from HQ to press the attack".

So it was bush's war ineptitude that let bin laden get away? A pretty savoy way to massage the facts in the Bush-hating atmosphere.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,188521,00.html

The follies had only just begun. As al-Qaeda fighters scampered up the mountains in search of safe haven, one of the warlords, Haji Zaman, agreed to a cease-fire without bothering to consult the other two Afghan commanders or the U.S. Zaman claims the Arab-speaking fighters reached him via wireless and offered to surrender on the condition that they be turned over to the United Nations. "They said they had to get in contact with each other and would surrender group by group," Zaman says. He then announced the cease-fire, halted his troops' advance and gave the opposition until 8 a.m. to give themselves up.

And as for not being able to get permission to continue the attack?

As for the cease-fire, Air Force General Richard Myers, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,simply ignored it. "Just for the record," said Myers, "our military mission remains to destroy the al-Qaeda and the Taliban networks. So our operation from the air and the ground will continue until our mission is accomplished."

 

[azmrb]

Well:

Bin Laden got away at Tora Bora.
The Taliban escaped to Pakistan and continue to wreak havoc.
Mullah Omar is still on the loose.
We have more troops in Afghanistan, and more troops fighting now than ever before in Afghanistan.


It's difficult for me to blame that all on Afghan peasants.

Got to be some responsibility in there somewhere.



Of course, it doesn't have much to do with the title of this thread: GOP 2012