Vote tomorrow!

[Kaan]

but G you have to understand... your friend one day can (and historically will) become your enemy. that is understood in the world... but when you drastically cut budgets... pulling agents from the field... you hurt your first hand intell gathering. i'll take alot of shit for this... but if clinton didnt cut our intell budget... 9/11 would have been much less likely. you cant possibly think we were working with the best intell out there when we had half the budget of the previous administration.

[Kaan]

cutting an intell budget, especially as much as he did, i would hazard to say goes against what he swares to do as a president... to protect the united states.

[G.Irish]

I agree that cutting the intel budget was a bad move. I don't where and how he made the cuts but in light of the several terrorist attacks around the world that was certainly a foolhardy decision. The USS Cole, the 1st World Trade Center bombing, and several embassy attacks around the world should have been his clue.

Bush didn't exactly jump up to prevent 9/11 either. He could have re-increased the intel budget at the time, or maybe his cabinet could've paid more attention to the threats they were receiving. Maybe they could've looked into the interagency communication problems that had been repeatedly brought to their attention. But they didn't, probably because they didn't realize how urgent the threat was, despite the report titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack America" from the CIA.

We cannot ignore the fact that we should not be supporting certain types of people. Bin Laden was one of them. Noreaga was another. Pinochet, Saddam, the Nicaraguan Contras; all bad guys that we should not have been supporting in the first place. Sometimes we have to make strange alliances but we need to do so carefully otherwise we may find ourselves cleaning up an even messier situation in the future.

We had several opportunities to head off 9/11 tacitly or explicitly but many people dropped the ball along the way. Reagan, Clinton, Bush Jr. and Sr. all played their parts. If any of them had known something like this would happen I'm sure they all would have done things differently but none of them had the benefit of hindsight. I'm sure Bush Jr. especially would've broken his neck to do things differently if he knew that our intel failures and the lack of airport security would cause a catastrophic attack like 9/11.

Right now the big thing that bothers me is that for all the millions we've spent on Homeland Security we haven't even begun to really address port security. I hope whoever gets elected takes care of this oversight.

[Mike]

done voting! woot!

[Kaan]

the intell budget was increased in little bushes first budget to be passed... but you cant just insert intell agents as fast as you can take them out. thats just a fact. we (some of us) were in school during 9/11... and i might have been the only one in the club to take a class with jerry pangburn... that semester, and previous semesters. in our counter terrorism class, the semester before 9/11 we talked about the budget cut... for weeks in class. the only conclusion was a there would be an attack... AND that it would take more than 15 years to redevelope the contacts and deep cover we had all over the world. college kids figured this out... and clinton and his goons couldnt?

btw pangburn ran both the NYC and DC FBI offices... but was the lead investigator for water gate.... he is now offically retired from the FBI and JMU... but is still a FBI counter intell consultant.

without that budget cut we could have known about the first WTC bombing, the bombing of the cole, and the exact flights used in 9/11 before it happend. we went from a hands on intell gathering community to one relying on secondary intell from informants... the few we had left.

[G.Irish]

Wait a minute, when was this budget cut? Because the first world trade center bombing happened in February of 1993, about 1 month after Clinton was sworn in.

Don't get me wrong, Clinton deserves some of the blame. But again many, many things we have done or did not do led to 9/11 not just Clinton making a foolish budget cut.

[Kaan]

february 94.... but dont quote me i'll have to go look it up.

[Ryan T]

without that budget cut we could have known about the first WTC bombing, the bombing of the cole, and the exact flights used in 9/11 before it happend. we went from a hands on intell gathering community to one relying on secondary intell from informants... the few we had left.

Or we could have not known about the bombing of the cole and been caught with our pants down on 9/11 just the same. There is no way to proove that if there was no budget cut we could have prevented any of those attacks.

[Evan]

--1st Trade Center bombing. Clinton did nothing
--Clinton slashes intelligence budgets
--USS Cole Bombing. Clinton did nothing
--Osama is out in the open, we literally have a gun pointed at his head. Clinton says dont take him out


You really cant get any closer to "it was his fucking fault"

The whole "we supported him 20 years ago" argument doesnt show anything except that the person making the argument doesnt understand global politics. Just because he was an enemy of our enemy a really long time ago doesnt mean we let him blow up our buildings and ships and choose not to take him out when we have the chance.

[Kaan]

Or we could have not known about the bombing of the cole and been caught with our pants down on 9/11 just the same. There is no way to proove that if there was no budget cut we could have prevented any of those attacks.

we may not have known... but the likelyhood of knowing would have been much higher. you cant argue that with half the budget of the previous administrations that we would know as much as pervious administrations.... in the intell game money talks and bullshit gets our asses blown up. intell is a pricey thing... you have to pay to put people in possitions to get picked up and go undercover... you have to pay informants for information... the fact is when you cut a budget like that... people have to come out of the field... your ability to collect intell is hurt, the amount and quality suffers.

[Kaan]

before the cut we had a higher probability of gather more quality information.... that still holds true today.... that budget cut killed the ability of the intell of this country to do its job for a very long time.

[ButtDyno]

Can you get more specific than "Clinton cut intelligence money and that's the reason everything bad that happened in the last 10 years happened"?

What years.. what bills.. what agencies.. etc etc.

He's the president... if there were cuts in intelligence spending, presumably they got through the House in order to get onto his desk.

I'm not saying the tech isn't out there, I'm saying I'd lik to see it

john

[Maengelito]

fucking bush

thats the plan tonight... she can be shaved too for all i care really

[Kaan]

clinton years = democratic control of the house and senate

[Maengelito]

cutting intel budgets is no good but let me just establish something. covert intelligence is such a small slice of the pie. intel comes from all over the place whether its a trade show, satellite photos, walk in informants, open source publications, signals and measurements, etc.

--USS Cole Bombing. Clinton did nothing

not true! clinton launched tomahawk missles at a vacated terrorist training camp which did nothing... cmon evan :wink:

[G.Irish]

--Osama is out in the open, we literally have a gun pointed at his head. Clinton says dont take him out

Ah yes not taking out Bin Laden. Kind of like how Bush had him cornered in the mountains but pulled the troops and intelligence off that mission to go to Iraq? From the horse's mouth:

"We haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is," Bush said during the 2002 news conference. "I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run."

Again, I'm not saying everything is Bush's fault but it certainly is not all Clinton's fault. What about the 1st World Trade Center bombing? It happened 1 month after inauguration so you have to point the finger at the previous administration.

I think Clinton failed to escalate the U.S. response to global terrorism as high as he should have. There was a growing trend after the Gulf War of global violence and we might have been able to counteract it but our official response was fairly weak. We don't know what we were doing covertly (much the same as the Cold War) so I can't speak of that but either way 9/11 happened so whatever we were doing wasn't enough.

We could go back and back and trade blame for things people did and things people didn't do but the basic truth here is that where we are now is not the result of only one president's deeds or misdeeds.

[Kaan]

August 10 1993 - clintons first economic plan passes the house 218 to 216... gore uses his swing vote in the senate(aug 6th)....

i'm pretty sure this is the bill that was contested but now i have to dig deeper for you liberal tree hugers :wink:

[ButtDyno]

Okay, so the part where Clinton "slashed" the intelligence budget hasn't quite been established yet. Keep us posted, bc I still want to know what exactly happened.

Anyhoo

clinton years = democratic control of the house and senate

Ummm..

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Clinton only had 2 years of Democratic control. The 'pubs had 6 years of Congressional control on his watch - remember the Contract With America and Newt Gingrich and the 1994 elections? So they had 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 and most of 2000 to propose giving more money to the intelligence community. And if they did that, AND Clinton vetoed it, then you've got something.

john

[Evan]

Ah yes not taking out Bin Laden. Kind of like how Bush had him cornered in the mountains but pulled the troops and intelligence off that mission to go to Iraq?

"Uh..I think he is over somewhere in those mountains" does not mean "cornered"
And recent intelligence suggests he was not at Tora Bora at that time at all
(and shame on you for parroting the kerry party line without further insight)

We literally had Osama under clinton. As in, he is in that truck right there, press the button and he is dead.
Big difference.

Again, I'm not saying everything is Bush's fault but it certainly is not all Clinton's fault. What about the 1st World Trade Center bombing? It happened 1 month after inauguration so you have to point the finger at the previous administration.

I didnt say it was his fault that it happened, it was his fault that he didnt do anything about it. It was his fault he didnt do shit against the terrorists that did it. You sure as hell cant say that about GWB.

Why is it that the media and democrats have no problems holding bush to a 20/20 hindsight, but always weasel their way out when the tables are turned?

To be honest, I dont blame clinton terribly for the intelligence cuts of the early and mid 90s. The situation at that time was that of coming off the cold war, and GB Sr. actually started the intel cuts. What I do blame him on is failing to act and nip much of the terrorism threat in the bud, even after being hit with 2 attacks.

What worries me more that all this talk about what did happen with clinton, is Kerry's repeated insistence on Intel budget cuts over his senate career, and what that will mean if he gets elected to president. In 1994 after Clinton had already cut the budgets by 1.2 bil, Kerry called the budget "madness" and wanted to cut it by an additional 6 billion.
Kerry tried again in 95 to cut 1.5 billion from the intel budget, but the bill was so not even Ted Kennedy agreed with him.
In 1997 said before the senate ÔÇ£Now that [the Cold War] struggle is over, why is it that our vast intelligence apparatus continues to grow?ÔÇØ
Kerry has also called the National Reconnaissance Office "wasteful" even recently.

[ButtDyno]

What worries me more that all this talk about what did happen with clinton, is Kerry's repeated insistence on Intel budget cuts over his senate career, and what that will mean if he gets elected to president. In 1994 after Clinton had already cut the budgets by 1.2 bil, Kerry called the budget "madness" and wanted to cut it by an additional 6 billion.
Kerry tried again in 95 to cut 1.5 billion from the intel budget, but the bill was so not even Ted Kennedy agreed with him.
In 1997 said before the senate ÔÇ£Now that [the Cold War] struggle is over, why is it that our vast intelligence apparatus continues to grow?ÔÇØ
Kerry has also called the National Reconnaissance Office "wasteful" even recently.

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