Chucky: Eh, alright, they WERE terrorist attacks:

http://www.cnn.com/2001/LAW/01/16/mcveighe...m.02/index.html
To show that McVeigh was connected to the Davidians:
"Prosecutors called it an act of revenge for an FBI clash with members of the Branch Davidian religious sect exactly two years earlier in Waco, Texas, that ended with the fiery deaths of some 80 Davidians."

And to reiterate that the Branch Davidian religious sect was, more or less, a very hostile force (whether you call that terrorism or not) and had a 51-day stand-off with FBI forces and did carry about 300 machine guns, assault rifles and other high-powered firearms.

http://www.cnn.com/2000/LAW/07/14/waco.ver...dict/index.html

What it boils down to is this. Either, what I believe, that the McVeigh bombing was more or less just a crazy man and much different from what most people would claim to be a "terrorist" (though your definition holds some validity).

Or, as you say, the McVeigh bombing was a terrorist bombing, and the organization he blew up the building for was a terrorist organization. With this, I ask the question, "Why, if the American people cared so much about this act of terrorism, that other possible violent religious sects not pursued for the safety of the people?" It seems that, if people truly cared, they would want these other, internal organizations (KKK?) to be found and brought to justice.

I would suspect that extremist organizations operating entirely within our borders are easier to keep tabs on, and are probably watched more than anyone knows.

When was the last KKK terror attack?

KKK is a joke, I would watch more the skin heads and militia groups than anyone, but still, they are far less frightening because there are so many ways for them to pop up on domestic radar if they try anything.

THe idea that Clinton did nothing about terrorists is a right wing fabrication: www.snopes.com

Claim: The Clinton administration failed to track down the perpetrators of several terrorist attacks against Americans.
Status: False.

Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2001]


After the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing, which killed six and injured 1,000, President Clinton promised that those responsible would be hunted down and punished.
After the 1995 bombing in Saudi Arabia, which killed five US military personnel, President Clinton promised that those responsible would be hunted down and punished.

After the 1996 al-Khobar towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 and injured 200 US military personnel, President Clinton promised that those responsible would be hunted down and punished.

After the 1998 bombing of US embassies in Africa, which killed 257 and injured 5,000, President Clinton promised that those responsible would be hunted down and punished.

After the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, which killed 17 and injured three US sailors, President Clinton promised that those responsible would be hunted down and punished.

Maybe if Mr Clinton had kept his promise, an estimated 7,000 more people would be alive today.




Origins: In
chronological order:


On 26 February 1993, a car loaded with 1,200 pounds of explosives blew up in a parking garage under the World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring about a thousand others. The blast did not, as its planners intended, bring down the towers — that was finally accomplished by flying two hijacked airliners into the twin towers on the morning of 11 September 2001.
Four followers of the Egyptian cleric Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman were captured, convicted of the World Trade Center bombing in March 1994, and sentenced to 240 years in prison each. The purported mastermind of the plot, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, was captured in 1995, convicted of the bombing in November 1997, and also sentenced to 240 years in prison. One additional suspect fled the U.S. and is believed to be living in Baghdad.


On 13 November 1995, a bomb was set off in a van parked in front of an American-run military training center in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh, killing five Americans and two Indians. Saudi Arabian authorities arrested four Saudi nationals whom they claim confessed to the bombings, but U.S. officials were denied permission to see or question the suspects before they were convicted and beheaded in May 1996.

On 25 June 1996, a booby-trapped truck loaded with 5,000 pounds of explosives was exploded outside the Khobar Towers apartment complex which housed United States military personnel in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing nineteen Americans and wounding about three hundred others. Once again, the U.S. investigation was hampered by the refusal of Saudi officials to allow the FBI to question suspects.
On 21 June 2001, just before the American statute of limitations would have expired, a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, indicted thirteen Saudis and an unidentified Lebanese chemist for the Khobar Towers bombing. The suspects remain in Saudi custody, beyond the reach of the American justice system. (Saudi Arabia has no extradition treaty with the U.S.)


On 7 August 1998, powerful car bombs exploded minutes apart outside the United States embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing 224 people and wounding about 5,000 others. Four participants with ties to Osama bin Laden were captured, convicted in U.S. federal court, and sentenced to life in prison without parole in October 2001. Fourteen other suspects indicted in the case remain at large, and three more are fighting extradition in London.

On 12 October 2000, two suicide bombers detonated an explosives-laden skiff next to the USS Cole while it was refueling in Aden, Yemen, blasting a hole in the ship that killed 17 sailors and injured 37 others. No suspects have yet been arrested or indicted. The investigation has been hampered by the refusal of Yemini officials to allow FBI agents access to Yemeni nationals and other suspects in custody in Yemen.
(The USS Cole bombing occurred one month before the 2000 presidential election, so even under the best of circumstances it was unlikely that the investigation could have been completed before the end of President Clinton's term of office three months later.)

In August 1998, President Clinton ordered missile strikes against targets in Afghanistan in an effort to hit Osama bin Laden, who had been linked to the embassy bombings in Africa (and was later connected to the attack on the USS Cole). The missiles reportedly missed bin Laden by a few hours, and Clinton was widely criticized by many who claimed he had ordered the strikes primarily to draw attention away from the Monica Lewinsky scandal. As John F. Harris wrote in The Washington Post:


In August 1998, when [Clinton] ordered missile strikes in an effort to kill Osama bin Laden, there was widespread speculation — from such people as Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) — that he was acting precipitously to draw attention away from the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal, then at full boil. Some said he was mistaken for personalizing the terrorism struggle so much around bin Laden. And when he ordered the closing of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House after domestic terrorism in Oklahoma City, some Republicans accused him of hysteria.
. . . the federal budget on anti-terror activities tripled during Clinton's watch, to about $6.7 billion. After the effort to kill bin Laden with missiles in August 1998 failed — he had apparently left a training camp in Afghanistan a few hours earlier — recent news reports have detailed numerous other instances, as late as December 2000, when Clinton was on the verge of unleashing the military again. In each case, the White House chose not to act because of uncertainty that intelligence was good enough to find bin Laden, and concern that a failed attack would only enhance his stature in the Arab world.

. . . people maintain Clinton should have adapted Bush's policy promising that regimes that harbor terrorism will be treated as severely as terrorists themselves, and threatening to evict the Taliban from power in Afghanistan unless leaders meet his demands to produce bin Laden and associates. But Clinton aides said such a policy — potentially involving a full-scale war in central Asia — was not plausible before politics the world over became transformed by one of history's most lethal acts of terrorism.

Clinton's former national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger . . . said there [was] little prospect . . . that Pakistan would have helped the United States wage war against bin Laden or the Taliban in 1998, even after such outrages as the bombing of U.S. embassies overseas.

Eh? I find your statement confusing. You say that extremist organizations operating within the US are easier to keep tabs on, so wouldn't the oklahoma bombing be a serious embarrassment to the FBI if that terrorist was so easy to keep track of? And as a result, wouldn't that make a bunch of American citizens afraid that other "easily" trackable organizations could pull off something similar? I would suspect a want for a serious crackdown by the American people. But none (that I know of) occured.

It wasn't a huge embarrassment because terror in the heartland was still so very new for us and the FBI.

And Okl. City DID spark a great deal of media scrutiny and public interest in militia groups and domestic terrorism. And I know that in the years after that, the FBI and ATF sought to broaden their investigative powers for terrorism.

I don't know what ever came of that though.

Cruising Ram, in that book you just wrote, I think you missed my point. I think Clinton should have gone into Afghanistan and manually uprooted Al Queda. Arresting the individual bombers clearly proved not to be enough, and I think Clinton had a clear duty to do something more, and in my book, not making the hard, necessary choice of invading a country (if necessary) to scourge a terror network IS doing nothing.

YOu missed the point of the reason for not going- there was no support to do so, from the American poeple or congress, and it would have been a disaster to go there with no homeland support. Even Bush took a few months of campaigning to build up to Afghanistan- what was it, late march with we finally moved on 9/11?

Your probably right, but If I could see a link that the okl. city bombing sparked an interest in militia groups and domestic terrorism (crackdowns/ questioning of possible domestic terrorist/ etc.), or that the FBI and ATF made distinct efforts to broaden their investigative powers, it would make my mind rest a lot easier.

And even if they did, it wasnt a big issue amongst the population for the upcoming relection of Clinton (If it was, send me a link).

And overall (getting back on topic), I still dont see how Clintons stance on terrorism could be considered one of his bad policies when they werent overly neglent from what other presidents have done. If anything, he was trying to focus on terrorism to take away some of the heat from from his alleged sexual exploits.

"In August 1998, when [Clinton] ordered missile strikes in an effort to kill Osama bin Laden, there was widespread speculation — from such people as Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) — that he was acting precipitously to draw attention away from the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal"

Thus, I remain adamantely unconvinced that Clintons policy on terrorism could be considered a blunder.

The bombing itself was a terrorist act. The terrorist act was not related to Koresh. McVeigh (sp?) was not a Davidian. His (or whoever else might have been involved) response might have been perpetuated outrage at the government slaughter of innocents (unless you believe hording guns should be a capital, executable offense) at the Davidian compound, or Ruby Ridge. That doesn't make McVeigh a Davidian any more than it would make him a member of the Weaver family.

To get back on topic...I would say that one of the ways Clinton ''contributed" to terrorism was to leave us in the Middle East, patrolling the no fly zones for a decade, and enraging the Arab nations with our perpetual presence there.

Edited to add: Oh, and he drastically cut back on intelligence, and changed security standards. It became easier, under Clinton, to obtain a security clearance...most (if not all) security measures became very lax by previous standards.

The national health care push was good but doomed to failure at that time. Now that many citizens have lost insurance through unemployment, another push is forming. The timing may be right on this go-round.

NAFTA isn't the problem. The problem is that outsourcing jobs to overseas outfits is accelerating, eating into more of the professions, and has no check/control over the practice. In other words, nobody has anywhere to go when jobs evaporate. Guess we can all be freelancers? This is a wash when it comes to Clinton. Bush has the same issue and no solutions.

Except tax cuts. That's the only solution for anything domestic. Oh yeah, and giving money to religious groups.

I know the right wing wants to hang Clinton on the terrorist issue, but nobody has provided evidence that Bush or any Republican had any other plan to handle terrorism. 20-20 hindsight. Besides, Osama is still out there and Al Queda is still active. Don't get too uppity on this issue.

Clinton's preference for negotiation over nation-building (although Bush did criticism him for being arrogant and wanting to nation-build *before* the election) was good. Or better, he had good negotiators and a more solid agenda. I think when it came to policy, Clinton was more upfront than Bush has been or ever will be.

The current NK issue, acerbated by Bush policy, hasn't worked through yet. You don't know what kinds of "appeasements" are coming next, from Bush. At least Clinton didn't stir up the hornet's nest.

Clinton did lie. Bush has been caught in a lie. That's a wash, but lying to us is bad policy. It's common policy--to be expected. It just really hurts when the lie is caught.

Americorps was good policy. We'll probably need a lot of that in the years to come.

Reengineering government was a good policy. Anybody remember that one? Al Gore was the point guy.

NOT opening public lands to oil/gas exploration was a good policy for the environment. Wyoming is suffering now from the effects of coal-bed methane extraction. Ranchers are starting to get ticked off as their cattle and horses drink tainted water and their ranches get torn up.

But then, if your main motivation in life is to get rich, maybe the Bush policy is better than Clinton's.

The worst policy Clinton had was his lack of ability to take the opportunity he was given. Had he kept his eye on the ball and not the babe, we might not be in the messes we are in.

But that's just speculation. We have to play the cards dealt. What is more important is future policy, not past.

Terrorism against america predates clinton, as does our mixed bag response to it.

Reagan and Bush I had Pan Am 103 by libya, the Beirut Marine bombing, many kidnappings and murders of individual americans and a handful of small bombings like the german nightclub bombing (the only one generating a one day military response).

Clinton basically copied the Reagan model of anti-terrorism. Legal prosecution in general and a single one-day bombing campaign. (clinton/afghanstan/sudan...reagan/libya).

But clinton haters dont really care about the history of failed US policies, its all about the rant.

The FT in NAFTA doesn't actually stand for Free Trade. In fact I don't actually know what it stands for, but it is not Free Trade. Couldn't be. Look at the Idea. Let's sign an international agreement to Free the Trading Programs. Anytime a treaty is signed for anything, you can be sure that Freedoms are fleeting.