Zeb, Rainjack,
Lumpy did a nice job of taking the time to respond to the whining about Clinton.
Really guys, finger pointing during times of crisis is not an admirable trait at all.
Oh yeah, Rainjack, glad you feel good about kvetching about a silly post. Woohoo, you are a master debater! Go forth and conquer something!!! 
P.S. Zeb, the smiley at the end denotes humor, my comment is not made in anger or hatred or whatever you see behind your polarized computer screen in Zebland.
[quote]vroom wrote:
Oh yeah, Rainjack, glad you feel good about kvetching about a silly post. Woohoo, you are a master debater! Go forth and conquer something!!!
[/quote]
Just returning the favor, vroom.
[quote]vroom wrote:
Lumpy did a nice job of taking the time to respond to the whining about Clinton.
[/quote]
I gotta disagree with you revisionists quite strongly on this point.
Lumpy said nothing about the first WTC attack - on Clinton’s watch. It’s like that never happened.
We knew it was Al Qaeda that bombed the Cole the day of the bombing, nothing happened and Clinton had 3-4 months to ignore it. He was President until the end of January 2001 - but did nothing but pardon criminals - or was that campaign contributors? I forget.
He had UBL dead to rights, but sat on his pimply ass, not wanting to mess up the economy - or piss off the French. I forget.
Back in those days, prior to 9/11, there wasn’t a national urgency to go and attack something either. Things changed. Try being a little bit fair for once.
I think it’s quite right to look before President Bush and onto President Clinton to see what could have been done to prevent 9/11. For this matter, however, we could look back further than that – certainly to Bush 1’s war, and prior to that to Reagan’s dealings with OBL, etc.
However, my question was regarding President Bush and whether or not he gave a potential terrorist threat enough attention. One might argue that he didn’t give the Presidency itself enough attention, being on vacation, what 45% or something (err on stat)?
My major qualm with Bush, however, is not necessarily how he acted prior to 9/11, but rather what he’s done since.
[quote]rainjack wrote:
Lumpy said nothing about the first WTC attack - on Clinton’s watch. It’s like that never happened. [/quote]
I said that it happened 38 days after Clinton took office. But instead of making excuses and blaming the previous administration, Clinton caught the perps and they are serving life sentences. Clinton never tried to pass it off as somebody else’s fault., like Team Bush does with the 9-11 attacks.
[quote]We knew it was Al Qaeda that bombed the Cole the day of the bombing, nothing happened and Clinton had 3-4 months to ignore it. He was President until the end of January 2001 - but did nothing but pardon criminals - or was that campaign contributors? I forget.
[/quote]
Let me refresh your memory. The Cole bombing happened in October 2000, less than a month before the Bush-Gore election in November. It was NOT immediately obvious who bombed the Cole. Clinton deployed the FBI and CIA to investigate. By the time the investigation concluded that Bin Laden was responsible, in early 2001, Bush had already been in office for a couple of months. At that time, it was decided (in Bush’s cabinet) that retaliation would be a bad idea because it was considered ‘old news’ and wasn’t recent enough to rationalize a miltary response (according to Richard Clarke’s explanation. If you have a different explanation for why Bush did nothing, lets hear it).
If you want to blame somebody for “doing nothing about the Cole bombing” then blame George Bush.
The idea that “George Bush is strong on defense” is pure partisan spin.
Oh Gawd! Am I gonna agree with Lumpy on something?
George Bush is aggressive, and he has changed the ideology of our defense policy, but damn I wish he was “stonger on defense”. Lump Biskit, I thought you were anti-war. Are you saying that Bush isn’t doing enough for our defense now? I would hate for you to have to agree with me about something… 
Lumpy -
To use your logic, There was nothing for Bush to do after 9/11 because the perpetrators were all dead.
If your gonna play the 20/20 hindsight game with Bush - then Clinton’s fair gain. An act of war was committed on our country in 1993, and Clinton treats it as if it were just a crime - and only prosecutes those immediately involved. Where is your outrage at him for not doing more?
You can say the Clinton has no play in our discussions of the war on terror, but you’d be a hypocrite. There were more acts of terror committed against the U.S. on Clinton’s watch than there has been on Bush’s, yet the blame all rests with Bush?
rainjack:
never ever bring up Bill Clinton in a debate. They hate when you do that! Clinton is no longer President. Therefore, you can never mention his name under any conditions! We have to act like he never existed.
Shame on you man.
vroom:
By the way, you don’t need to post the smiley face. I always assume your posts are for fun anyway. They are…aren’t they? Oh my…
BB- your comment about the Patriot Act suprised me… you seem like the last person in the world to want to eliminate judicial oversight to the extent that the PA did.
As for the rest of this crap, are we still on this? In November, it will be decided. “There can only be one,” and all that. And one side will be joyous, and the other will weep and gnash their teeth. So chill out.
[quote]nephorm wrote:
BB- your comment about the Patriot Act suprised me… you seem like the last person in the world to want to eliminate judicial oversight to the extent that the PA did.
[/quote]
nephorm:
From what I’ve seen, all the stuff about the Patriot Act has been wildly overblown. Even that case that was just decided, which the ACLU trumpeted as overturning some provision of the Patriot Act, actually was referencing a provision of a previous law.
Professor Owen Kerr posted on it at The Volokh Conspiracy:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_10_00.shtml#1096662683
[Addendum: For more on the ACLU overstatments concerning the Patriot Act, see here:
http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=259 ]
As far as judicial oversight, it hasn’t been removed – it still needs to happen, but the timing can be different. You still have judicial oversight of everything you did before the Patriot Act – at least that’s the way I understand it.
See, generally, these articles by Ramesh Ponnuru, one of the most articulate defenders of the Patriot Act:
http://www.nationalreview.com/ponnuru/ponnuru200403090920.asp