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Osama bin Who? (pg. 2)
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| ogvh5150 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Q5echo
some of Americas most notorious mob bosses, from Capone to Gotti, walk the streets for years untouched because the FBI doesn't have enough evidence, until one day...
why would the FBI voluntarily expose all their techniques and resources to try him in abstentia with no guaranties of an indictment much less a conviction? not only that, a warehouse full of circumstantial evidence does not guarantee a damn thing other than utter humiliation when acquitted. especially when the stakes are this high.
look at Saddam's trial. they knew they wouldn't be able to guarantee conviction on a myriad of abuses and crimes due to lack of evidence but decided to go with the one thing they knew that had the best chance. still no guarantees to this day. |
Since you just didn't even bother to read the articles cited in my previous reply, why should you even try to respond in an uninformed manner is beyond question.
American intelligence services have, to my knowledge, thwarted a few terror plots. One of them happened not too long ago in Miami with some Black Israelite types that were TALKING about blowing up the Sears Tower. They didn't have any explosives. They didn't have any training. They were all caught BEFORE the plan could have been carried out. Not to mention the alleged terror plot against the Holland Tunnel in New York City that's in the papers today.
So what's it gonna be? Either they (FBI,CIA, etc) know something or they no nothing. Without nary any evidence they can round groups of people but they can't find any evidence on the mastermind behind 9/11.
You mean to tell me they are building a case against a guy over six feet tall that walks with a cane. That needs frequent hospitalization. That they can't seem to find? But they don't have much evidence when they arrest al-CIAda wanna be's. You've got to be kidding right?:
| quote: | No one involved in the plot had set foot in the United States, Mr. Mershon said. Mr. Kelly said no bomb materials had been acquired and no reconnaissance had been conducted by the plotters.
New York Tunnel Plot Is Uncovered in Early Stage
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They knew enough to visit him in a Dubai hospital. Prior to that visit, he was wanted in connection for the embassy bombings in Africa but they never arrested him then before that pre-9/11 hospital visit. To let him just be with a $25US Million bounty on his head. I don't buy it.
Now we're supposed to believe that the intelligence services are just building a case against him against the events surrounding 9/11, so they're going to let him walk a free man?
Think for one minute the profoundness of those events prior to 9/11 before you reply.
In addition:
| quote: | Why I Resigned from the CIA
By Michael Scheuer
The Los Angeles Times
Sunday 05 December 2004
The agency did its job, but higher-ups endangered the nation.
The Central Intelligence Agency is the best place to work in the United States. No federal agency has a smarter, more dedicated or harder-working set of individuals than the CIA's women and men. I had intended to work at the CIA for the duration of my career, and I left it with deep regret and a great sense of personal loss. I was neither forced out nor pressed to resign. Resigning was my decision alone.
I cannot state these facts more clearly, and I fiercely deny the accusations that I am a disgruntled former employee. I am, however, a disgruntled American - one who decided that being a good citizen was no longer compatible with being a good member of the CIA's Senior Intelligence Service.
I do not profess a broad expertise in international affairs, but between January 1996 and June 1999 I was in charge of running operations against Al Qaeda from Washington. When it comes to this small slice of the large U.S. national security pie, I speak with firsthand experience (and for several score of CIA officers) when I state categorically that during this time senior White House officials repeatedly refused to act on sound intelligence that provided multiple chances to eliminate Osama bin Laden - either by capture or by U.S. military attack. I witnessed and documented, along with dozens of other CIA officers, instances where life-risking intelligence-gathering work of the agency's men and women in the field was wasted.
Because of classification issues, I argued this point only obliquely in my book "Imperial Hubris," but it is a fact - and fortunately, no American has to depend on my word alone. The 9/11 commission report documents most of the occasions on which senior U.S. bureaucrats and policymakers had the chance to attack Bin Laden in 1998-1999. It is mystifying that the American public has not been outraged over these missed opportunities.
In the most memorable and cloying moment of the 9/11 commission's public hearings, former White House terrorism advisor Richard Clarke apologized to the American people for the failure of the U.S. intelligence community to protect them. This statement has become, like the 9/11 report, American scripture - carved in stone, literally true and unquestionable.
Clearly, Clarke had the duty to apologize for the government's ineffectiveness as regards terrorism, but I reject his intimation that the clandestine service failed the nation.
Now, I must add that I was never charged with deciding whether to act against Bin Laden. That decision properly belongs solely to senior White House officials. However, as a now-private American citizen, it is my right to question their judgment; I am entitled to know why the protection of Americans - most selfishly, my own children and grandchildren - was not the top priority of the senior officials who refused to act on the opportunities to attack Bin Laden provided by the clandestine service.
Each of these officials have publicly argued that the intelligence was not "good enough" to act, but they almost always neglect to say that they were repeatedly advised that the intelligence was not going to get better and that Bin Laden was going to kill thousands of Americans if he was not stopped.
At each opportunity provided by the clandestine service, senior bureaucrats and policymakers decided not to act. The 9/11 report documents the fact that the chances to capture or attack Bin Laden were passed by because there were worries that shrapnel might hit a mosque and offend Muslim opinion; that a United Arab Emirates prince meeting Bin Laden clandestinely in the Afghan desert might be killed; and that the CIA might be accused of assassination if Bin Laden was killed in an effort to capture him.
Of course, it is not my opinion but that of the American people that counts. Perhaps a starting point is for Americans to ask why no member of Congress' Graham-Goss investigation or the Kean-Hamilton commissioners ever directly asked Clarke, former national security advisor Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, CIA Director George J. Tenet, former FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, former Secretary of State William S. Cohen or any of the rest of the witnesses why they never erred on the side of protecting Americans; why international opinion was ultimately more important than the Americans who leaped from the World Trade Center; and why the intelligence was "good enough" to save the life of an Arab prince dining with bin Laden, but not "good enough" to cause the government to act on behalf of Americans.
At day's end, it may be worth pausing the intelligence reform process long enough to determine what role personal failure, bureaucratic warfare - which the Department of Defense continues waging today - and a lack of moral courage played in getting the United States to 9/11. Lacking this accounting, the debate over intelligence reform will, I believe, simply lock into place a bureaucratic mind-set that believes intelligence is never "good enough" to take a risk to protect the lives of Americans.
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| quote: | The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com
No lack of good intelligence
By Michael F. Scheuer
Published February 16, 2005
Last week's revelation of 50 pre-September11,al Qaeda-related warnings to the Federal Aviation Administration, and the publication of an early 2001 National Security Council memo warning of the Osama bin Laden threat, point to the utter failure of the Goss-Graham and Kean-Hamilton commissions. Unable to stand up and state the obvious negligence and failure of senior intelligence community officials helped get America to September 11. The oblivious commissioners forced a reorganization of the intelligence community that increases bureaucracy and locks in the mentality that Americans are expendable.
The recent disclosures show, again, that there was no lack of good intelligence before September 11, no failure to "connect the dots." From late 1996 onward, for example, intelligence community leaders and senior NSC officials knew al Qaeda was seeking weapons of mass destruction in a professional manner; they also knew Soviet nuclear weapons were not secured. U.S. officials therefore knew bin Laden was seeking a nuclear capability that could be found in the Soviet arsenal. Common sense should have dictated immediate, vigorous and risk-taking efforts to destroy al Qaeda and secure Soviet weapons. None was attempted.
After 1996, the quality and quantity of intelligence about al Qaeda grew geometrically, as last week's disclosures begin to show, and yet senior officials refused to act. Indeed, the most caustic critics of the Bush administration's failure to attack al Qaeda sat squarely amid an avalanche of excellent intelligence about bin Laden's capabilities and location, read the material, screwed up their courage and did nothing. Indeed, an objective review of chances to capture or kill bin Laden finds nearly all occurred under Bill Clinton's watch not under Mr. Bush's eight to10 occasions from May 1998 to July 1999 alone, per the Kean-Hamilton report. Mr. Bush's sole chance to kill bin Laden came at Tora Bora in December 2001, but there the genetic timidity of U.S. Army generals forbid risking the lives of U.S. soldiers and sub-contracted the elimination of bin Laden to pro-bin Laden Afghan guerrillas.
To be fair, Mr. Bush's invasion of Iraq has made the anti-bin Laden war vastly more difficult and its outcome uncertain, but the fact that bin Laden is not long dead rests in the hands of Mr. Clinton's senior NSC and intelligence officials. On each chance to eliminate bin Laden documented by Kean-Hamilton, those officials decided the "intelligence was not good enough to act."
Read closely, the September 11 report shows that protecting Americans was not the top priority of these officials; their priority was keeping international opinion sweet and protecting an Arab prince whose family was buying billions of dollars of fighter aircraft. In terms of risk-taking, the Clinton administration's most dicey anti-terrorism operation surely was Former National Security Adviser Samuel Berger's reputed clandestine removal of bin Laden-related documents from the National Archives in his socks and undies. Nerves of steel and a thirst for daring-do but only when party rather than republic is at risk.
I have not directly blamed Mr. Clinton for the failures to act. While he is ultimately responsible, it seems clear from post-September 11 books, articles and testimony that he wanted action but was always dissuaded by NSC advisers, CIA Director George Tenet, and those paragons of risk aversion, the chairmen of the Joint Chiefs. And such a situation is not a Democratic-only problem. For a year before the Iraq invasion, U.S. intelligence gave the Bush administration precise locational data in northern Iraq for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. This top-tier terrorism target should now be a smoldering memory; instead, he is murdering U.S. soldiers and Marines. Why? Because Mr. Bush's advisers wanted to keep European opinion sweet. They wanted French and German forces for the Iraq invasion and feared killing al-Zarqawi might make the oh-so-sensitive Europeans throw a hissy fit.
One wonders if American parents know their sons and daughters have been killed by al-Zarqawi because the president's advisers were more interested in stopping Europeans from huffing off in a snit than in protecting their children? Ulysses S. Grant once wrote, "No man ought to win a victory who is not willing to run the risk of defeat." Now, thanks to the refusal of the two sets of commissioners to judge the culpability of senior personnel for September 11, America is stuck with a surfeit of the sort of officials Grant described. And, amazingly, those officials are leading the uneducated and massively disruptive reorganization of an intelligence community that delivered timely, accurate and detailed pre-September 11 reporting about al Qaeda, data on which many of the same individuals did not act. And, as a mocking coda to this misadventure, the Clinton administration's risk-averse veterans heap abuse and scorn on the Bush administration which, for all its many faults, has never had a tenth of the chances to eliminate bin Laden given to the Clintonians. Poor America.
Michael F. Scheuer resigned from CIA in late 2004 after a 22-year career. From 1996-99, he ran CIA's bin Laden operations. He is the author of "Through Our Enemies' Eyes" and "Imperial Hubris." |
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| Q5echo |
| quote: | Originally posted by ogvh5150
Since you just didn't even bother to read the articles cited in my previous reply, why should you even try to respond in an uninformed manner is beyond question. |
yeah i read it. i responded to it. is there anything unreasonable about my response to it? did i at least get the jist of the article? you tell me.
| quote: | | American intelligence services have, to my knowledge, thwarted a few terror plots. One of them happened not too long ago in Miami with some Black Israelite types that were TALKING about blowing up the Sears Tower. They didn't have any explosives. They didn't have any training. They were all caught BEFORE the plan could have been carried out. Not to mention the alleged terror plot against the Holland Tunnel in New York City that's in the papers today. |
in Miami they had an informant that had been in there little group. they will have their day in court to defend against conspiracy charges blah blah blah. the millenium plot to blow up LAX was pure textbook law enforcement same here. Holland Tunnel? i'm sure it was, again, textbook law enforcement. your trying to compare these events to Bin Laden and 9/11 and say why don't they indict Bin Laden in abstentia but your comparing apples to a grapefruit? from that article that i just didn't read they have already indicted him for the Kenya/Tanzania bombings.
| quote: | | So what's it gonna be? Either they (FBI,CIA, etc) know something or they no nothing. Without nary any evidence they can round groups of people but they can't find any evidence on the mastermind behind 9/11. |
this is not a zero-sum game. and who said they "can't find evidence"? that article that i just didn't read didn't say that.
| quote: | | You mean to tell me they are building a case against a guy over six feet tall that walks with a cane. That needs frequent hospitalization. That they can't seem to find? But they don't have much evidence when they arrest al-CIAda wanna be's. |
yes. whats so hard to understand about that? welcome to the American justice system.
| quote: | | They knew enough to visit him in a Dubai hospital. Prior to that visit, he was wanted in connection for the embassy bombings in Africa but they never arrested him then before that pre-9/11 hospital visit. To let him just be with a $25US Million bounty on his head. I don't buy it. |
you sure you don't have your timeline f**ked up?
you like Michael Scheuer? i assume you do; your letting him speak for you. i do to.
he is upset about the closing down of Alec Station for much more rational reasons than the incoherent conspiracy theory you're trying to float.
this is what he said 8 hours ago.
| quote: | "I don't think anyone could have expected to see the success of such an organisation," he said. For observers familiar with the disunity of the Palestinians and other Arab causes, al-Qaida was a departure from the known.
"One of the things that really slowed down the western response to Sunni extremists, but al-Qaida specifically, is that when intelligence agents looked at a group made up of Yemenis, Egyptians, Saudis, Algerians and converts, the natural response was to say, 'That is not going to last 10 minutes. They can't get along together.' It took a long time for people to realise we were seeing an animal of a very unique nature. We haven't even begun to understand where our enemy is coming from."
>source< |
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| ogvh5150 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Q5echo
yes. whats so hard to understand about that? welcome to the American justice system. |
So what is the solution for the justice system? No due process? Military tribunals? Star chambers? Summary execution? This sounds great to those that think things like due process should be taken away.
| quote: | | you sure you don't have your timeline f**ked up? |
Osama was met by CIA in a Dubai hospital when undergoing dialysis. He was already wanted for the USS Cole and embassy bombings in that July 2001 meeting. Why he wasn't arrested and taken into custody at THAT point in time is what people, including you, are IGNORING.
| quote: | | you like Michael Scheuer? i assume you do; your letting him speak for you. i do to. |
All I did was quote him. I don't worship the guy. I also don't believe everything he writes. See below.
| quote: | | he is upset about the closing down of Alec Station for much more rational reasons than the incoherent conspiracy theory you're trying to float. |
It's easy to throw the words conspiracy theory around when you offer nothing objective nor informative. So obviously you've fallen for the conspiracy theory that Osama was the mastermind of 9/11, but you choose to ignore that by making a mild ad hominem statement.
The proof is there. Why do you think there is a consolidation of several agencies that make of Homeland Security? After all they complained all along that the intel is not being shared and therefore Osama supposedly got away with the worst event in the first year of the millenia. To this day, FIVE plus years later, they STILL CAN'T FIND HIM with all the NEW RESOURCES such as Homeland Security. Please you've got to be kidding when you want me to believe as you do.
| quote: | | this is what he said 8 hours ago. |
Yeah let us ignore what he said a year or two ago where the intellegence services had their man but chose to let him walk the streets.
Scheuers inflections of the White House trying to keep Europeans happy doesn't make any sense to me though. This administration will do their best to pass the blame on to anyone it choses to. It will not appease other countries. Remember this man was ex-CIA.
So if this administration and the one BEFORE it chose not to arrest Osama then something is wrong when people don't see this by implying the "system" has faults.
The justice system works. If you've ever been through it, you will know from firsthand experience.
When people imply that it doesn't work it's because they want it to change. Therefore change comes with a price. Who is going to pay the price is what's not on the minds of those that ask for change. Just blind retribution.
Like the old saying goes be careful what you wish for. |
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| venomX |
| I do come here every once and a while to try and get a good read, and i have more or less weeded out the incoherentness of some by use of the handy ignore function, but i am always impressed by reading the qoutes of how lovely it is to attacked arguments that go to such lenght in order to document the sources with arguments fit for a five year old child with downs syndrome :wtf: |
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| Purple |
| quote: | Originally posted by venomX
I do come here every once and a while to try and get a good read, and i have more or less weeded out the incoherentness of some by use of the handy ignore function, but i am always impressed by reading the qoutes of how lovely it is to attacked arguments that go to such lenght in order to document the sources with arguments fit for a five year old child with downs syndrome :wtf: |
You spelled 'lenght' wrong, the correct spelling is 'length'.:haha: |
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| MisterOpus1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Q5echo
shut up |
Ahh, good refutation as always.
| quote: | | thank you. lets be a little more ambiguous next time |
About? Do you mean whether or not I feel it appropriate to rid this program that specifically focused on it's time and $ on catching bin Laden either from nonexistence (which I doubt) or consolodating it to other terrorist programs in general? I think I made my reply relatively clear: no, I don't think that's appropriate considering this was the bastard that attacked us in the first place and is still on the loose.
Are you still confused about my sentiments on the matter?
| quote: | | i'll answer those questions with a question. after some 10 odd years, have we caught Bin Laden? |
Well since we're answering questions with questions, are you somehow implying that it's appropriate to ignore this man, one who's group attacked us on our soil and killed thousands of innocent American and international people, simply because he's just so gosh darn wiley?
| quote: | | let me guess those questions lead you nowhere else but to bash the administration because no one spoon feeds you ? |
I'm wondering how anyone else can read your reply in any way other than seemingly defending the sincere inaction towards hunting down this head terrorist who just so happens to likely be inhabiting in a country of one of our supposed "allies".
| quote: | | i'll save you the trouble. your party would have never invaded Afghanistan. they can't even invade Ohio.:D |
Can you name me any Congressional Democrats who did not vote towards attacking the Taliban in Afghanistan? And then can you compare that Democratic "nay" record to the Democratic "yeah" record on the matter?
And when you're finished with that, can you once again explain to me why this Administration felt it appropriate to take their eye off hunting down their primary target (bin Laden), gave that hunting power to the corrupt Afghan warlords whom we were told were not going to effectively catch him, and then divert our intelligence and manpower to another country that had nothing to do with the terrorist group that actually attacked us in the first place? |
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| MisterOpus1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Fir3start3r
Either your fingers are typing too fast for your brain or are we witnessing the worse comparison from you ever?
I'm not even sure where you're getting at with this since they're diametrically polar ends of thought.
Unless of course I'm supposed to dig out that dusty tin foil hat and imagine Osama is actually some ghostly computer animated Max Headroom of terrorism; the creation of some neo-cons (god I love that word) to push their oil agenda.
Somehow I don't picture you in that shallow gene pool...;) :p |
Well I certainly appreciate the compliment, but I was attempting to demonstrate (admittedly rather poorly) the similarities and consequences of extremism. Now I could include the extremist fringe on the Left as well, but my contention is that extremists such as those listed above share much more similarities versus Leftist extremists who have a much less grip on media outlets in general.
It's admittedly a digression from the topic, and perhaps worthy of a separate thread in of itself if you would prefer. |
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| venomX |
| quote: | Originally posted by Purple
You spelled 'lenght' wrong, the correct spelling is 'length'.:haha: |
Yes you have correctly identified the spelling mistake, here's yer cookie. |
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| Purple |
| quote: | Originally posted by venomX
Yes you have correctly identified the spelling mistake, here's yer cookie. |
Thanks for the cookie!:) |
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| Fir3start3r |
| quote: | Originally posted by MisterOpus1
It's admittedly a digression from the topic, and perhaps worthy of a separate thread in of itself if you would prefer. |
A wingnut gallery thread? lol!
That actually sounds like a good idea...:disbelief |
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| ogvh5150 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Fir3start3r
A wingnut gallery thread? lol!
That actually sounds like a good idea...:disbelief |
Ya could try wetting your feet at libertyforum.com; plenty of wingnuts for you to shake a stick at. |
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| Q5echo |
| quote: | Originally posted by ogvh5150
So what is the solution for the justice system? No due process? Military tribunals? Star chambers? Summary execution? This sounds great to those that think things like due process should be taken away. |
i'm not saying there is anything fundamentally wrong with the American justice system. due process for who? Bin Laden? what exactly do you think he's on the FBI's 10 most wanted terrorists? all the due process has been given in absentia up until the point of capture. what more do you want?
wait. you think Bin Laden works for the CIA. right?
| quote: | | Osama was met by CIA in a Dubai hospital when undergoing dialysis. He was already wanted for the USS Cole and embassy bombings in that July 2001 meeting. Why he wasn't arrested and taken into custody at THAT point in time is what people, including you, are IGNORING. |
i'm ignoring it because it's nothing more than hearsay. an internet rumor. make me believe it.
| quote: | | I also don't believe everything he writes. See below. |
no, you believe what he says that fits your version of what you think is the story. of course you don't worship him because some of the stuff he says doesn't fit your version. this guy is known to be the foremost intelligence officer hunting Bin Laden for over a decade. he's been critical of everyone from Powell to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs publicly. he developed and headed Alec Station and you are intellectually willing to give him that credibility...you believe every thing he says until...he doesn't jive with your ideology. now what? he's on the take too?
just what exactly do you not believe he says is true?
| quote: | | It's easy to throw the words conspiracy theory around when you offer nothing objective nor informative. So obviously you've fallen for the conspiracy theory that Osama the mastermind of 9/11, but you choose to ignore that |
It's easy to throw a conspiracy theory around when you offer nothing objective nor informative. So obviously you've fallen for the conspiracy theory that Osama not the mastermind of 9/11, but you choose to ignore that.
see how easy that is.
| quote: | | The proof is there. |
don't you think it's weird only special people like you can see it? it's called delusion. it can be clinical.
| quote: | | Why do you think there is a consolidation of several agencies that make of Homeland Security? |
because it obviously didn't work well under the previous administration. (rapid flooding of an entire major city built under sea level doesn't count j/k). you know the next president or Congress or both is free to dissolve Homeland Security at any time.
why do you think there was a consolidation?
| quote: | | Please you've got to be kidding when you want me to believe as you do. |
to be honest i don't want you to believe what i say is true. i want you to figure it out on your own over time when it finally fails to make anymore sense to you.
| quote: | | Yeah let us ignore what he said a year or two ago where the intellegence services had their man but chose to let him walk the streets. |
did you notice that he never mentioned the CIA in Dubai story that you put so much faith in?
| quote: | Scheuers inflections of the White House trying to keep Europeans happy doesn't make any sense to me though. This administration will do their best to pass the blame on to anyone it choses to. It will not appease other countries. Remember this man was ex-CIA.
So if this administration and the one BEFORE it chose not to arrest Osama then something is wrong when people don't see this by implying the "system" has faults. |
i know he's ex-CIA. he knows more than most. like i said, he's critical of a lot of people. but mostly for Clinton and what he basically describes as piss poor policy decisions and nothing else. he's not a politician. thats where you take up where he leaves off and go off into bizzarro world. where 2+2 has to equall 7 because an article on the internet said so.
| quote: | | The justice system works. If you've ever been through it, you will know from firsthand experience. |
yeah, i'm not sure what this means. i am sure you're full of though. |
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