Expert: U.S. Knew al-Qaida Might Attack

July 9, 2003 10:39 AM EDT


WASHINGTON - The United States and the international community sat by for a decade as Afghanistan became "a terrorist Disneyland" where attackers were trained and assaults were planned, a terrorism expert testified Wednesday.

Rohan Gunaratna, head of terrorism research at the Institute for Defence and Strategic Studies in Singapore, told an independent terrorism investigative commission here that U.S. leaders had to know their homeland would eventually be targeted.

"You knew the intention of al-Qaida was to kill American people where they could be found, but still you did not act, and you paid a very heavy price for it," said Gunaratna, the lead-off witness at a full-day hearing on terrorism, al-Qaida and the Muslim world.

More: http://start.earthlink.net/newsarticle?cat=6&aid=709082604_5302_lead_story

:bounce:

It looks like the story has been freeped as it's only 10 minutes old, has 511 ratings and is rated at 3.62 right now. Please go there and give it a five, then come back here and report on the current standing to keep this thread on page one here.

The highest rated stories on Yahoo land on the front page, so this is very important.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030709/ap_on_go_co/sept_11_commission_25

Edited because I forgot to post the link! Whoops.

eom

This could well become a "blame it on Clinton" statement:

The United States and the international community sat by for a decade as Afghanistan became "a terrorist Disneyland" where attackers were trained and assaults were planned, a terrorism expert testified Wednesday.

to listen. Remember? Everything Clinton tried to do was turned into a "wag the dog" spin. If you're going to blame it on anyone, I'd blame it on the American Spectre, Scaife, Ted Olson and anyone who intentionally spread lies to create confusion and take down the president. They should be tried for sedition.

By your reasoning, Clinton cannot take credit for the glowing economy, then.

The fact of the matter is, all three presidents back to GB1 did not do enough to curtail this threat. Thousands of American lives were lost as a result. 9/11, Cole, Africa, WTC1...

I'm going out on a limb here, and maybe I'm only touching on things that need further explanation, and maybe I'm a tinfoil hatter who's so far out in left field. . .. but anyway.

Gut feeling and half-remembered details tell me that Clinton tried to do a lot of things, and one of them was to rein in an economy out of control but he was over-ruled on issues like Glass-Stiegal <sp> repeal, etc. After the bombardment he took on health care and then the 94 repuke victory, maybe there was a sense that some kind of collapse had to happen before anyone would come out of the irrationally exuberant mentality that was building the bubble. And I think, because for all his faults I still believe Bill Clinton is an intelligent human being, he recognized that the repukes were in charge of what was going on and he couldn't do anything to stop it. And maybe Hart-Rudman and the Gore report were ways of sidestepping the VWRC that would have attacked anything directly from the Clinton White House, but it didn't mean the bushnazis would have anything to do with it anyway.

By the time the get-Clinton-at-any-cost crusade of the VRWC was in full swing, virtually nothing the Clinton-Gore administration did was going to be seen in a favorable light. And maybe that's why Gore didn't fight harder in Nov/Dec 2000 -- maybe he knew, as Clinton did, that the repukes would stop at nothing, nothing at all, to get the presidency, and maybe he knew, as Clinton did, that there would have to be a catastrophe before anyone else woke up to what was going on.

If you can find it, read Janson and Eisenman's The Far Right, published in 1963 before Kennedy was assassinated. The VRWC has been weaving their evil web for a very long time, and their objectives and tactics and strategies were as clear in 1963 as they are in 2003. I'm not sure they can be taken down by outside forces; they may have to be left to self-destruct, and maybe -- just maybe; I'm only speculating -- that's what others are letting them do.

Most of the prosperity of the 90s was a sham, imho, in that it did not lay the groundwork for healthy sustained and sustainable economic growth. Between the dot com bubble and the Enron/WorldCom/Tyco scams, there wasn't a lot of real wealth created. There was, however, a lot of funny money "created" and redistributed, so people had jobs and took home paychecks, but they weren't "real" jobs. The real jobs were being exported, and the execs were taking home the big bucks in the form of real money stolen from the real people, and then the bubble burst and there was nothing inside it.

And I don't think Clinton can take "credit" for that, but neither should he take the blame for it. That belongs to the speculators and investor class, the bubble-blowers and their repuke enablers.

But the policies that created, and then eventually popped, the bubble are the policies that the repukes promote. They came out of it smelling like roses -- Ebbers and Sullivan and Kozlowski and Skilling and Lay and Fastow and all the rest of those lying thieving rat bastards -- and they don't want any change to the policies that ravaged the working classes and the middle classes and the poor. These are the Gingrich policies, but they are also the policies of the Robert Welches -- he of the John Birch Society -- and company of the 1950s and 1960s, ultra far right conservatives on economic issues as well as social and foreign policy issues. They couldn't get those policies implemented in the 1960s and 1970s, so the VRWC changed their tactics, but not their objectives. With Reagan, they started to see the fruits of their long labors, and when Poppy got ousted by Slick Willie, it was just a matter of waiting it out, subverting it when possible, and taking the bull by the horns once they got their "boy" in the big house.

At best, Clinton mitigated some of the damage, kept some of the peace (he wasn't too successful in Rwanda or even in Kosovo), and suffered through what they tried to turn into his martyrdom. That he was able to do as much as he did is, I think, to his credit, but in many ways I do believe his hands were tied.

Sorry for the long rant. DU seems to have become the place of sound bytes instead of analysis these days, but thought I'd throw in my 8 cents worth.

I wish mine were as good. I also wish I were capable of the excellent rant, but I guess I'll have to settle for thanking you for yours.

"wag the dog" refers to creating a military distraction in order to take away attention from personal or pressing issues. When Clinton tried to attack bin Laden, the Republican party, instead of giving him support, accused him of wagging the dog to distract from the Monica Lewinsky issue -- which was a non-issue when you look at the big picture. The Republicans were not supportive during that time.

Clinton understood foreign policy better than this administration. Where he could, he pushed trade instead of embargos. Our economy was humming. One place where the Clinton Administration did break diplomatic ties was in Afghanistan. Soon after the Taliban began their regime, the Clinton administration knew they were trouble and in 1998, talks had broken off. The Bush Administration changed that the minute they came into office. A few months later, September 11th happened.

So my position stands.

You can't open your mouth if you're worried that they'll drag "blame Clinton" into it. They will and that's their problem, not ours. Besides which, I'm quite sure Clinton would be willing to accept some blame if * will accept his (much, much, much, much higher) share of the blame.

Why can't anybody say what's really happening here? Bush/Cheney & other thugs are ALWAYS stalling, on EVERYTHING. Yes Gov. Kean, they are stalling, it's what they do!

WHEN ASKED WHAT HE WOULD DO WITH IT HIS REPLY WAS "I WILL HAVE V-P LOOK INTO IT IN "october". october

This is known as an ---action---administration. "Trust me".

...is widely known to have handed an al Queda file to Condi Rice during the transition, and stated it was the most important security issue they would have to deal with.

The file apparently got filed, and wasn't looked at again until after 9/11.

Am I the only one who thinks this is anti-news with a pointless sensational headline?

"Expert: U.S. Knew Russia might attack." (but they didn't)

"Expert: U.S. Knew there might be a hurricane some day, and earthquakes as well... and that some kid's dog might get hit by a car."

No, really?

And the fact of the matter is, back before even Clinton's two terms we had special forces and CIA operatives taking action against al-Qaida around the globe on a daily basis.

Did we do enough? Well obviously not, but hind sight is always 20/20. Would any of us have been happy if * had launched a war against Afghanistan to take out al-Qaida and the Taliban in March or April of 2001?

Give me news about uranium and falsified docs, not this junk.

TYY