posted on April 23, 2003 09:59:24 PM new
Helen, thanks for the link, I'm getting sick of the righties who continue to villify Clinton by wasting email bandwidth with that drivel. How did he get into this thread anyhow?..Oh, I see it...never mind
posted on April 24, 2003 06:04:10 AM new
I think some people need to read ABOUT the snopes site. Yes, I agree they provide a great service through their site....but the site is run by only two people, a husband and a wife, who maintain this AS A HOBBY. This is NOT a business...it's two people. Does that make their opinions/take on every single decision [true/false] they make absolutely correct? NO, it doesn't.
Taken from their own site:
Q: How do I know the information you've presented is accurate?
A: We don't expect anyone to accept us as the ultimate authority on any topic, which is why our site's name indicates that it contains reference pages.
And you call us sheep for following BLINDLY?
Who knows these two California site owners may be liberals and their bias is showing when they make some 'calls'.
The question is not what a man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what he can love, and value, and appreciate. J. Ruskin
posted on April 24, 2003 06:08:50 AM new
Also taken from their site:
Many of the texts we discuss contain a mixture of truth, falsity, and exaggeration which cannot be accurately described by a single "True" or "False" rating. Therefore, our rating may be based upon what we have chosen as the single most important aspect of the text under discussion, which is summarized in the statement made after the "Claim:" heading at the top of the page. It is important to make note of the wording of that claim, since that is the statement to which our truth rating applies. Many legends present events that may have taken place in real life only a few times (or once, or even never) as if they were frequent, everyday occurrences, and we make a distinction between "This once happened" and "This is a common, on-going occurrence."
For example, many people have read warnings about the dangers posed by kidnappers who allegedly abduct children at malls or amusement parks by taking their victims into bathrooms, drugging them, cutting and dyeing their hair, changing their clothing, and smuggling them out exits disguised as the opposite sex. This legend is classified as false because we have found no credible evidence that a kidnapping has ever been pulled off using this scheme. Even if we did uncover evidence that such a kidnapping once took place, however, we would still classify the legend as false, because an essential feature of the legend is a warning that this type of kidnapping is a regular occurrence, and one real-life instance does not constitute a regular occurrence.
end/
And so does the fact they listed a child's kidnapping as false, mean that it's never occurred? No...it doesn't.
The question is not what a man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what he can love, and value, and appreciate. J. Ruskin
posted on April 24, 2003 07:34:25 AM new
That "Clinton promised" thing is a load of crap. Snopes rebuts it specifically, point by point. To attempt to refute the refutation by pasting general disclaimers from Snopes is stupid.
You picked up something from a forwarded email (probably.) It fit your preconceived notions, and, unhampered by any knowledge of the events in question on your part, you happily pasted it here, and now attempt to defend its veracity?
posted on April 24, 2003 07:37:12 AM newKlinton a legend? Only in his own mind. anyone that continues to praise Klinton needs a reality check of their own morals and standards
posted on April 24, 2003 08:02:57 AM new
So to be morally consistant and follow this successful program to it's reasonable conclusion the US needed to act against Yemen and Saudi Arabia just like it did against Afganistan.
(And maybe Iran-Syria-North Korea)
posted on April 24, 2003 08:39:50 AM newAbsolutely True
A squad of American soldiers was patrolling along the Iraqi border. To their dismay, they found the badly mangled dead body of an Iraqi soldier in a ditch along side the road.
A short distance up the road, they found a badly mangled American soldier in a ditch on the other side of the road, who was just barely alive.
They ran to him, cradled his blood-covered head and asked him what had happened.
"Well," he whispered, "I was walking down this road, armed to the teeth. I came across this heavily armed Iraqi border guard. I looked him right in the eye and shouted, "Saddam Hussein is an unprincipled, lying piece of stinking garbage!"
He looked me right in the eye and shouted back, "Bill Clinton, Tom Daschle, Ted Kennedy and most of your Democrats are unprincipled, lying pieces of stinking garbage, too!"
"We were standing there shaking hands when the truck hit us."
posted on April 24, 2003 08:47:13 AM new No donny - it's all in the way a person interrupts what is said. As the part of their site I quoted said:
Therefore, our rating may be based upon what we have chosen as the single most important aspect of the text under discussion....
Take the child kidnapping case they use as an example. I know of at least two cases where this did happen to children. One was the son of John Walsh and the other was a little girl left unattended in a casino. The site owners are saying they would still deny that happening, even if it were proved true to them, for the ONLY reason that it didn't happen frequently....which is what THEY focused on... Not because it didn't happen at all.
Because two people, on their HOBBY website, decide that clinton did take action, doesn't mean that others [b]seeing[/i] it differently are false/incorrect. Their own words state that what he did was 'ask' SA to turn the terrorists over on one case, and be allowed to be questioned another set of terrorists in another. BUT when they [SA] says NO....he just accepts that. To some, myself included, that is INACTION. Just letting it go. So maybe if YOU'RE aware of what he did other than let it go...you'd like to share that with me.
Because to me it sure looks like inaction compared to when Afghanistan said 'no we're not turning them [those we felt were responsible for 9-11] over to you' and Bush took action.
The question is not what a man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what he can love, and value, and appreciate. J. Ruskin
posted on April 24, 2003 09:47:01 AM new
"So maybe if YOU'RE aware of what he did other than let it go...you'd like to share that with me."
I'm supposed to share with you that 5 people were convincted for the 1993 WTC bombing in the 1990's, and the rest of it?
"Take the child kidnapping case they use as an example. I know of at least two cases where this did happen to children. One was the son of John Walsh and the other was a little girl left unattended in a casino."
"...abduct children at malls or amusement parks by taking their victims into bathrooms, drugging them, cutting and dyeing their hair, changing their clothing, and smuggling them out exits disguised as the opposite sex."
How about you share with me how Adam Walsh was dragged into a bathroom at Walmart, his hair cut and dyed, clothes changed to the opposite gender, and smuggled out of the store? Or, that little girl in the casino, how she was drugged in the bathroom, her hair cut and dyed, her clothes changed, and smuggled out disguised as a boy.. and then, what, smuggled back into the casino, replaced in the bathroom, hair re-attachd, undyed, and clothes changed back so she cuold be found dead in that bathroom?
This is the example you've used twice to discredit Snopes. So let's hear some more about how you know this has happened twice, though Snopes says it has never happened. 'Cause I don't know if this scenario ever happened to a child.. but I know damn well it never happened to Adam Walsh or that girl in the casino.
Like I said.. You pick up trashy disseminated stuff, because it fits what you want to believe. Then you pass it around.. And even when it's shown to be lies, you try to defend it. It was shown to be bogus, give it up.
posted on April 24, 2003 10:11:39 AM new
Donny - That paragraph doesn't say each and everyone of those criteria HAVE to be met. They used that as an example as to how they make their decisions on different topics.
You're obviously not going to accept that anyone can not see a subject in exactly the same way. See something differently than two California's of unknown political leaning, that you happen to agree with.
Even they say:
Q: How do I know the information you've presented is accurate?
A: We don't expect anyone to accept us as the ultimate authority on any topic, which is why our site's name indicates that it contains reference pages.
So....I didn't accept it. Period.
You and others choose to accept them as the ultimate authority in regards to their statements about every subject. In this case they say that clinton did do something...and I'm saying he didn't. They appear to me to be excuse the fact by saying 'he couldn't do anything, the Saudi's wouldn't cooperate. I'm saying that didn't stop Bush.
While their's is a helpful site, it is still just two American's opinions and their choice of what information they choose to focus on. In this case, they focused on the accusation that nothing was done. They say 'false'. But in three examples out of 5 on their site, anyone can read NOTHING WAS DONE.
That's why so many people have supported President Bush in his handling of both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. They're tired of inaction when terrorists attack our country.
posted on April 24, 2003 10:21:25 AM new
So you're saying that the 1993 WTC people weren't arrested and convicted, and the others in the other incidents who were arrested and convicted also weren't arrested and convicted.. is that right?
posted on April 24, 2003 10:31:45 AM new
No, that's not what I'm saying at all.
I'm trying to make a distinction that their 'call' on this subject was made because they were focusing on the statement that clinton did "NOTHING". They point out where they see that as inaccurate as they see something was done IN TWO CASES. So how I see this is that they are calling it 'false' because it was not TOTALLY accurate. But you seem to be avoiding the three examples they give where nothing was done.
As an example: If I started passing around an email without listing the child's name [but I'm referring to Adam] where in my email I said "Mother shopping at Walmart, son abducted, body found later". They, IMO, most likely would declare that 'FALSE', for ONLY the reason that it didn't happen at Walmart, but rather it happened at Sears.
The question is not what a man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what he can love, and value, and appreciate. J. Ruskin
posted on April 24, 2003 10:41:32 AM new
"As an example: If I started passing around an email without listing the child's name [but I'm referring to Adam] where in my email I said "Mother shopping at Walmart, son abducted, body found later". They, IMO, most likely would declare that 'FALSE', for ONLY the reason that it didn't happen at Walmart, but rather it happened at Sears."
... Well, Linda, that would be false. A fact is a fact, and Walmart is not Sears. Likewise, an assertion that Clinton did nothing in all these cases, where the facts show that in at least several the suspects were tried and convicted isn't a matter of interpretation, or even interruption.
And you really need to get off this child abduction thing...
"...abduct children at malls or amusement parks by taking their victims into bathrooms, drugging them, cutting and dyeing their hair, changing their clothing, and smuggling them out exits disguised as the opposite sex."
There's no other way to read this but that all the criteria are there.
You just can't admit that the email was trash, you were wrong, and wrong again with this child kidnapping example. You should quit now, before you embarass yourself further by bringing in some other flat-out falseness to bolster your argument, but don't stop on my account, I'd love to hear what you'd come up with next.
(changed bolding for clarity)
[ edited by donny on Apr 24, 2003 10:43 AM ]
posted on April 24, 2003 10:49:16 AM new
A fact is not always a fact. What Linda K is trying to put forward is that there are facts, and then there are material facts. In her example, the Walmart issue may not be material in all situations.
If you were warning and instructing mothers on how to protect their children while shopping, then the WalMart "fact" is immaterial. If you were reporting the situation to the police, then the WalMart fact is material.
posted on April 24, 2003 10:56:08 AM new
Clinton's failure to mobilize America to confront foreign terror after the 1993 attack led directly to 9-11 disaster.
WHEN the terrorist gang controlled by Bin Laden exploded a bomb in the World Trade Center in 1993 killing six and injuring 650 others, President Clinton did not even visit the site of the attack. In his radio address the next day, he expressed his grief and outrage and four days later visited New Jersey where he sent a message to New Yorkers saluting our courage. Other than those statements, he remained aloof and uninvolved.
The attack occurred in the second month of Clinton's presidency. Issues like gays in the military, the recession, and withdrawing our troops from Somalia loomed larger than the 1993 attack. Clinton deliberately remained removed from the attack perhaps in the hope that he would not be blamed so early in his presidency.
Where Bush insisted, from the outset, that the Trade Center attack that took place on his watch was a declaration of war by foreign terrorists against the United States, Clinton treated the attack as a criminal justice situation not unlike the subsequent bombing of the Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City. But while in Oklahoma, he connected emotionally with the victims, he had nothing to do with them in 1993.
His failure to mobilize America to confront foreign terror after the 1993 attack had dire consequences and led directly to the 2001 disaster. Two years after the 1993 attack, Sudan, sick of sheltering Bin Laden, offered to turn him over to the United States for prosecution. But, without the president breathing down their neck, investigators had not yet discovered that Bin Laden was behind the 1993 attack. Claiming that we lacked evidence to proceed, the US refused Sudan's offer and suggested they turn him over to the Saudis instead. In doing so, the US was disingenuous. We knew full well that the Saudi Arabian kingdom could not afford politically to prosecute their home-grown terrorist.
Clinton was removed, uninvolved, and distant where the war on terror was concerned. CIA director Woolsey now reveals that he never had a private personal meeting with Clinton during the first two years of his tenure as head of the CIA - exactly the key period in investigating the 1993 attack.
I had a good illustration of Clinton's remoteness from terrorist issues in 1996 when Dick Holbrooke called me, several months after the terrorist attack on US barracks in Ridyah, Saudi Arabia. Holbrooke, who told me that he had never had the opportunity to speak with Clinton directly during the months that he was negotiating the Dayton peace accords in Bosnia, asked that I get hold of the president to pass along a message. Holbrooke said that he had information that the terrorists were planning another attack in Ridyah and that our troops were highly vulnerable.
"They are stuck in the same buildings the terrorists attacked last time," Holbrook told me. "All that has changed is that there are more formidable concrete barriers against car bombs. But a bigger bomb would be just as lethal. They need to be dispersed and camped in the desert in tents with a secured perimeter," he warned.
I called the president and passed along Holbrooke's message. He had no idea that the troops were still in the barracks and said that he had ordered them dispersed to the desert six weeks before. "I've got a meeting with the Joint Chiefs in the morning," the president said "I'll raise hell with them."
Shockingly, he was so little involved in protecting our troops - already the object of a terrorist attack - that he had no idea that his order had not been executed until I happened to call.
Clinton was a one-thing-at-a-time president. Capable of intense focus on the issue du jour, he neglected all back burner concerns. And terror was always on the back burner.
Throughout the first part of his second term, Clinton was immobilized by impeachment. Battling desperately to save his presidency, he simply had neither the time nor the mental energy to immerse himself in a war against terror. Blame him for the perjury that caused impeachment. Blame the GOP for pursuing him. Blame whoever you want, but we were without a president from January, 1998 until April, 1999.
Thereafter, his administration was almost wholly devoted to electing Hillary to the Senate and, to a lesser extent, to making Gore president. Once again, terrorism was not the priority.
In Final Clinton Days, a Chance to Attack Bin Laden Was Rejected
WASHINGTON (AP) - In the waning days of the Clinton presidency, senior officials received specific intelligence about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and weighed a military plan to strike the suspected terrorist mastermind's location. The administration ultimately opted against an attack.
The information spurred a high-level debate inside the White House in December 2000 about whether the classified information provided the last best chance for President Clinton to punish bin Laden before he left office, the officials said.
Now nine month later, officials are discussing the incident as bin Laden's name increasingly is being connected with Tuesday's suicide attacks in New York and Washington.
Some in Congress have expressed anger that the United States has not been able to put bin Laden more on the defensive in Afghanistan with military strikes after years of intelligence linking him to global acts of terrorism against Americans.
"We should have put bin Laden on the defensive so he would be thinking about how we are going to get him rather than him plotting massive terrorist plots," Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said.
Officials said the Clinton administration in its closing months reviewed several opportunities to possibly strike at bin Laden, but never felt they had enough information to risk such an operation.
"There were a couple of points, including in December, where there was intelligence indicative of bin Laden's whereabouts. But I can categorically tell you that at no point was it ripe enough to act," former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger told The Associated Press.
Officials said the December meeting was the most pointed in a series of discussions over several months. Several officials familiar with the debate said top military and national security officials convened in the White House to discuss the options.
One individual familiar with the discussions, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the meeting was prompted by "eyes-on intelligence" about bin Laden's whereabouts - a term used to indicate a human or satellite spotting.
According to officials:
-Military officials presented a possible military strike option, and the pros and cons were debated.
-Among the concerns voiced was whether the intelligence wasn't already stale given bin Laden's tendency to move quickly and go into hiding. There also was discussion of possible collateral damage if such an attack occurred.
-Ultimately, the president and aides decided not to strike. Berger and one other official said military officials never made a formal recommendation to proceed with the attack.
"There was never a recommendation from the Pentagon," Berger said.
Military strikes were aimed at bin Laden once before. After U.S. embassies were bombed in Africa three years ago, Washington retaliated with a missile attack in August 1998, sending more than 70 Tomahawk cruise missiles into eastern Afghanistan targeting training camps operated by bin Laden.
The U.S. attacks killed about 20 followers but bin Laden escaped unhurt. Since then he has been forced by Afghanistan's Taliban rulers to stop giving interviews and making statements.
Boston Globe: Clinton-Lewinsky Affair Complicated Attempts to Get bin Laden
President Clinton's affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky may have interfered with his administration's failed attempts to eliminate Mideast terrorist Osama bin Laden, the Boston Globe reported Friday.
The liberal sister paper of the New York Times also raised questions about whether the ex-president's reckless personal behavior ultimately contributed to the deaths of 6,700 Americans in last week's terrorist attacks on the U.S.
"He authorized the attack (on bin Laden) on the same August weekend in 1998 he confessed his affair with Lewinsky to his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton," the Globe said.
The paper called the confession of adultery an "added strain" for the president, noting that, "Some wonder whether he wasn't distracted by the legal and political quagmire of the Monica S. Lewinsky case" at the time he launched 75 cruise missiles into Sudan and Afghanistan.
"He met with national security and military advisers to plan the attacks between sessions with lawyers to prepare for his [Lewinsky] grand jury testimony," the Globe said.
"I think it is entirely possible that was a distraction," said Massachusett's Senator John Kerry, referring to Clinton's attempts to juggle his Lewinsky cover-up with military efforts to take out the terrorist who would later prove so deadly to U.S. civilians.
Others disagreed. Former Clinton national security official Nancy Soderberg insisted to the Globe that her ex-boss was able to "compartmentalize" the Lewinsky sex scandal while mapping out a strategy to get bin Laden.
She did not cite the best known example of Clinton's ability to compartmentalize sex and national security: a 1995 Oval Office phone call where he discussed troop deployment to Bosnia with Rep. Sonny Callahan.
The conversation was carried out while Ms. Lewinsky performed a sex act on the president.
Another Clinton Tale? Did he really come close to taking out Osama bin Laden?
September 24, 2001 10:00 a.m.
In recent days, as it has become increasingly clear that Islamic terrorist Osama bin Laden is behind the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, former president Bill Clinton has made a series of public statements claiming his administration came close to killing bin Laden during a cruise-missile raid in 1998.
Touring the rubble of lower Manhattan on September 13, Clinton said, "The best shot we had at him was when I bombed his training camps in 1998. We just missed him by a matter of hours, maybe even less than an hour."
A few days later, on NBC, Clinton said, "We had quite good intelligence that he and his top lieutenants would be in his training camp. So I ordered the cruise-missile attacks, and we didn't tell anybody, including the Pakistanis, whose airspace we had to travel over, until the last minute. And unfortunately we missed them, apparently not by very long....We never had another chance where the intelligence was as reliable to justify military action."
The former president's statements left the impression that he was hot on the trail of bin Laden and came excruciatingly close to killing him. But one of Clinton's top military commanders, who was deeply involved in the Afghanistan operation, has a different recollection. In an interview with National Review Online, retired general Anthony Zinni, commander of U.S. forces in the region at the time, described the 1998 cruise-missile raid as a "million-to-one-shot."
"There was a possibility [bin Laden] could have been there," Zinni recalls. "My intelligence people did not put a lot of faith in that....As I was given this mission to do, I did not see that anyone had any degree of assurance or reliability that that was going to happen."
posted on April 24, 2003 11:26:18 AM new
Did I forget to mention that for each country invaded...uh liberated, the shipping would be at least $80 billion dollars?
posted on April 24, 2003 11:42:07 AM newis trying to put forward how very kind you are....I would have described it as 'is miserably struggling and failing to say'. Do you accept PP?
The question is not what a man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what he can love, and value, and appreciate. J. Ruskin
posted on May 1, 2003 04:43:53 AM new
"Did I forget to mention that for each country invaded...uh liberated, the shipping would be at least $80 billion dollars?"
A Small price to pay for their freedom and our security.
Amen,
Reverend Colin
No donny 