The Middle East....NRA, etc and arguing....

**Skinview** · 10-31-2012, 08:18 PM

Originally Posted by Naturist Mark

I told you wikipedia had some retroactive association in it. Yousef spent some time among the mujahedin in Afghanistan in the 80s - the CIA backed groups who drove the Soviets out. While it is true that al-Qaeda was formed from remnants of the mujaheddin (yes, al-Qaeda has some CIA roots - blowback is hell), it was not then al-Qaeda. In fact, the so-called "al-Qaeda training camp" that Ramzi Yousef trained in was actually a CIA training camp: http://books.google.com/books?id=9_G...T02vgeCo&hl=en

Blowback is hell.

From YOUR link:
"It is possible that some of bin Laden's money or the money of one of bin Laden's rich supporters found its way to Ramzi Yousef. Whether is did or not, the World Trade Center was a target bin Laden would want to see destroyed."

Hardly a ringing endorsement for your position. Do you have a source that actually supports your position?

**Naturist Mark** · 10-31-2012, 09:04 PM

Originally Posted by Skinview

From YOUR link:
"It is possible that some of bin Laden's money or the money of one of bin Laden's rich supporters found its way to Ramzi Yousef. Whether is did or not, the World Trade Center was a target bin Laden would want to see destroyed."

So now you are hanging your contention that Clinton should have ordered the assassination of Osama Bin Laden for his retroactive association to the WTC '93 bombing on the thin thread that some funding might or might not have come from Bin Laden or people like him?

In 2000 Clinton's Dept of Justice indicted OBL for a number of crimes spanning from 1988 to 2000 - but none of the counts was related to the 1993 WTC bombing. Now if it is true that Clinton should have targeted Bin Laden for WTC '93, it would have been included in the indictment.

Oddly enough, not all terrorism is due to Osama Bin Laden. The only connections between WTC '93 and Bin Laden or al-Qaeda are retroactive association.

**Skinview** · 10-31-2012, 09:39 PM

Originally Posted by Naturist Mark

Nope, the CIA, and all the other intelligence agencies said just the opposite, until they were coerced into agreeing with the administration. Following is a repost from 8 years ago where it was all laid out:

You are doing exactly what the Bush administration did. You have a conclusion that you want to believe is true. You look for evidence to support that view. You find what looks like evidence, taking bits out of context, distrusting and ignoring professionals who interpret it differently or doubt its veracity. Then you think you have this pile of evidence to support what you want to be true, and you proclaim it to be true. It ain't. Your conspiracy is as phantom as the WMDs. I read a link in your post. I plowed through the nine page article. The authors of that article, though they bashed the Bush administration, do not subscribe to your "Bush lied" theory, yet you are using that article to support your theory. From your link:

"There were, of course, good reasons to worry about Saddam Hussein’s possession of W.M.D.s. He had manufactured and used chemical weapons in the past, and had experimented with biological weapons; before the first Gulf War, he maintained a multibillion-dollar nuclear-weapons program. In addition, there were widespread doubts about the efficacy of the U.N. inspection teams, whose operations in Iraq were repeatedly challenged and disrupted by Saddam Hussein. Iraq was thought to have manufactured at least six thousand more chemical weapons than the U.N. could account for. And yet, as some former U.N. inspectors often predicted, the tons of chemical and biological weapons that the American public was led to expect have thus far proved illusory. As long as that remains the case, one question will be asked more and more insistently: How did the American intelligence community get it so wrong?

Part of the answer lies in decisions made early in the Bush Administration, before the events of September 11, 2001. In interviews with present and former intelligence officials, I was told that some senior Administration people, soon after coming to power, had bypassed the government’s customary procedures for vetting intelligence.

A retired C.I.A. officer described for me some of the questions that would normally arise in vetting: “Does dramatic information turned up by an overseas spy square with his access, or does it exceed his plausible reach? How does the agent behave? Is he on time for meetings?” The vetting process is especially important when one is dealing with foreign-agent reports—sensitive intelligence that can trigger profound policy decisions. In theory, no request for action should be taken directly to higher authorities—a process known as “stovepiping”—without the information on which it is based having been subjected to rigorous scrutiny.

The point is not that the President and his senior aides were consciously lying. What was taking place was much more systematic—and potentially just as troublesome. Kenneth Pollack, a former National Security Council expert on Iraq, whose book “The Threatening Storm” generally supported the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein, told me that what the Bush people did was “dismantle the existing filtering process that for fifty years had been preventing the policymakers from getting bad information. They created stovepipes to get the information they wanted directly to the top leadership. Their position is that the professional bureaucracy is deliberately and maliciously keeping information from them."
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/200.../031027fa_fact

**Skinview** · 10-31-2012, 10:03 PM

Originally Posted by Naturist Mark

So now you are hanging your contention that Clinton should have ordered the assassination of Osama Bin Laden for his retroactive association to the WTC '93 bombing on the thin thread that some funding might or might not have come from Bin Laden or people like him?

No, I backed off from that earlier. What I am saying is that you should back off from your assertion that bin Laden didn't have a role in the bombing. We have some reason to suspect that he did.

When the WTC was destroyed on 9/11, I immediately suspected Osama bin Laden was behind it, before his name popped out of the mouth of one journalist or anyone from the Bush administration. Bin Laden was the best known terrorist to the public. He had a history of repeated attacks on the US. If I can figure out bin Laden could be behind something like 9/11 while I sit in my living room, then the Clinton administration sure as hell ought to have known.

**Naturist Mark** · 11-01-2012, 03:54 PM

Originally Posted by Skinview

When the WTC was destroyed on 9/11, I immediately suspected Osama bin Laden was behind it, before his name popped out of the mouth of one journalist or anyone from the Bush administration. Bin Laden was the best known terrorist to the public. He had a history of repeated attacks on the US. If I can figure out bin Laden could be behind something like 9/11 while I sit in my living room, then the Clinton administration sure as hell ought to have known.

So did I, this after the USS Cole bombing and the African embassy attacks - OBL was already the #1 terrorist on everybody's most wanted list. But in 1993 he was pretty much unknown in the west, his terrorism was almost entirely directed against other Muslims and he was not yet targeting the west.

It wasn't until 1996 that OBL turned his eye towards the west, issuing a fatwa calling for all western troops and interests to be expelled from Muslim lands. It wasn't until 1998 that al-Qaeda began active terrorist operations against Western interests as opposed to their operations against fellow Muslims - which has always been the vast bulk of their activities.

The only significant action before 1998 of al-Qaeda targetting westerners was a 1992 attack on a hotel in Yemen, which al-Qaeda later claimed was a successful effort to scare American soldiers away from assisting in Somali famine relief. Only problem was the Americans were at a different hotel and no one took notice, so you'll have to take al-Qaeda's word on the matter long after the fact. Both the WTC '93 bombing and the 1995 Bojinka plot were not run by al-Qaeda and are now counted among its deeds by retroactive association.

Bojinka was funded in part from sources that were also funding al-Qaeda, apparently including Bin Laden himself, and it is clear that the aborted Bojinka plot is what brought KSM to prominence and paved the way for his high level entrance into the al-Qaeda leadership in 1999. As a result of Bojinka OBL began to recruit KSM, who resisted aligning himself solely with Al-Qaeda. They met several times from 1996 on, but KSM didn't actually join al-Qaeda until 1999 - after the African embassy bombings - that's what it took for OBL to convince KSM that al-Qaeda was actually serious about targeting the USA. I wouldn't object to characterizing Bojinka as being 'associated' with al-Qaeda, but it was clearly KSM's show, not al-Qaeda's. And keep in mind, that was well after 1993. Bojinka and WTC '93 were not al-Qaeda operations, you can't find any contemporaneous accounts describing any connection to al-Qaeda, only later accounts connect them via retroactive association.

**Gloria** · 11-01-2012, 04:28 PM