The_Sorrow said:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/channel/inside911/
Anyone else watching this? It's pretty good so far and the topic of terrorism has always been of interest to me even way before 9/11. It also shows so far the many blunders of the Clinton administation when it came to hunting down OBL. One of the plans was CIA mission to capture OBL in a town in Afghanistan but the Clinton administration said no because they feared innocent civilian deaths. Couple of months later the bombings in Kenya and Tanazinia.
Part 2 is on right now, and the thing is I don't need to even watch the screen. Sept. 11 is laser-engraved into my brain; I can't actually watch too much of it, everytime I see the footage of the planes hitting the towers, and their ultimate collapse, I get physically ill.
Putting the blame for this on Clinton is wrong, simply because despite everything else, Clinton's balls weren't made of crystal. I suggest you read up on Osama bin Laden in the 90s, and how despite everything, there was no easy way to get our hands on him; even if we did, it was impossible to hang sustainable charges on the bastard. I don't know if you can recall, but before 9/11, evidence needed to be gathered before someone was locked up.
But since you're so intent on blaming the butterfly, let's do that. Let's take our Wayback Machine back to the 80s when we were gladly selling weapons to bin Laden and other fighters in Afghanistan, hoping to get the Communists out of the country. It's our dirty laundry, but you need to smell it. The west helped create bin Laden as he is today, all in fear of the USSR spreading its influence further. We sold weapons to Iraq to help them fight Iran, along with other countries. The joke would be funnier if it weren't so completely on the ball: "We knew Saddam
had weapons of mass destruction because we kept the receipts."
What happened that day was the culmination of decades of a middle east policy that can at best be described as rife with double-standards, and at worst completely focused on making sure we got our oil nice and cheap, damn the consequences. There's no absolute, one person to blame. What is true is that George W. Bush was the last line of defense against the attack. But while he was on the first of what would become 50+ vacations to his ranch while in office, he let it slip through his fingers. He and his staff were given a memo that quite literally spelled it out for them. That Osama was "determined to attack" inside the United States. Even that wasn't enough.
Condi Rice had the big brass ones to later say that since there were no details - that since the pieces weren't fit together for her - "no one could've known." A long, far cry from one of the President's own heroes, Harry Truman. Apparently, the Bush administration's view is "The buck stops there." The last chance to stop it, gone. All because of a lethal combination of stubborness and arrogance.
The_Sorrow said:
Wow, an incident here and there. Sure its sad but I would say terrorism overall has decreased since 9-11.
The U.S. State Department disagrees with you.
