Still No Terror Attack In The US

[red states rule]

Look, regardless of whatever policy the US should choose to pursue, it is just foolhardy to ignore the effects of that policy. Even if you agree with the war in Iraq and believe we should stay there long-term, it is just sticking your head in the sand to pretend that this hasn't effected how we are perceived by much of the Muslim world (even if not in kind, certainly in degree).

We should at least be honest with ourselves about the implications of our actions, even if we believe we did the right thing.

I konw what must be done

Give peace a chance - kill the enemy

 

[maineman]

The terrorists were to busy hitting us overseas

Four attacks and Bill did nothing - except warn them not to do it again

and the first WTC attack happened on his watch

and are you suggesting that, in the time after 9/11, the terrorists have NOT been hitting us overseas?

 

[DeadCanDance]

The terrorists were to busy hitting us overseas

Four attacks and Bill did nothing - except warn them not to do it again

and the first WTC attack happened on his watch

Four attacks and Bill did nothing -

1993 WTC bombing - those responsible were found and put in prison.

1998 African Embassy bombings: Clinton bombed Afghanistan and Sudan. Repubs said Clinton was "wagging the dog". So even when clinton did use military force, you Cons evidently thought military force wasn't neccessary.

2000 USS Cole bombing: That was Bush's responsibility to take care of. American intelligence didn't conclude until December 2000 that it was al qaeda, Clinton was just on the verge of leaving office and thought it best to allow the incoming president to decide how to respond. Bush did nothing of course.

 

[mattskramer]

Four attacks and Bill did nothing -

1993 WTC bombing - those responsible were found and put in prison.

1998 African Embassy bombings: Clinton bombed Afghanistan and Sudan. Repubs said Clinton was "wagging the dog". So even when clinton did use military force, you Cons evidently thought military force wasn't neccessary.

2000 USS Cole bombing: That was Bush's responsibility to take care of. American intelligence didn't conclude until December 2000 that it was al qaeda, Clinton was just on the verge of leaving office and thought it best to allow the incoming president to decide how to respond. Bush did nothing of course.

Pesky little details like that seem to evade RSR. I wonder why. Oh well. RSR is wrong again, as usual, but you will not see him come to terms with it or even admit it.

 

[mattskramer]

and I had links to where RFK Jr and Al Gore said Bush's enviromental polices gave us Katrina

You are attributing the reportes leasd to what Delay said

Okay. What is the link to the site that said that RFK Jr and Al Gore said that Bush's environmental policies gave us Katrina. Let's see the quote. By te way, you never said whether or not you would give me credit for the article on DeLay. It did not have quotes. Therefore, I need not give you credit for the article on Cindy. It did not have quotes.

I found a site that claimed that Ann called Democrats:

http://www.therationalradical.com/matthews-coulter-transcript.htm

 

[mattskramer]

The only distinct, logical, and significant difference is you will blame Bush when things go wrong - but will not credit him when things go right

Hello!!!

I’ll post this for a third time:

WHEN I SEE THAT A BUSH POLICY THWART A TERRORIST ATTACK, I WILL GIVE BUSH CREDIT FOR IT!!

Is that clear enough for you????

 

[mattskramer]

For once, I am nearly aghast to hearing myself say, I think RSR is right (although not in his characterizations of you).

We can never know what would have happened if Bush had not implemented his policies (vague, I know, but you have to take them as a whole). It may be possible that many potential terror attacks have been thwarted before they even had a chance to develop. It is possible that terror attacks have been perpetrated elsewhere that would have been perpetrated here, but for our national security efforts. At the end of the day, not knowing what would have happened in an alternate universe, I can only say that Bush deserves a measure of credit for the fact that no major terrorist attack has been perpetrated in the US. That doesn't mean I agree with what he has done (I don't). It just means that I have to acknowledge that it might be working.

To use your analogy, one could say that Bush has done the equivalent of making sure that each home has a fire alarm or has outlawed smoking in bed. We can't say that a fire would necessarily have started anyway, but...

That said, I will blame Bush if there is an attack in the future, possibly even if it is after he leaves office. There can be no doubt that the war in Iraq has inflamed Muslim feelings against the US, and we have yet to see what will happen as a result of this.

I disagree. As for the fire analogy, there would be rule breakers. Some people might break the rules and smoke in bed. The Bush administration would be eager to present us with examples, to the extent that it could without hurting national security, to prove that it is stopping terrorist attacks.

 

[ReillyT]

I disagree. As for the fire analogy, there would be rule breakers. Some people might break the rules and smoke in bed. The Bush administration would be eager to present us with examples, to the extent that it could without hurting national security, to prove that it is stopping terrorist attacks.

Believe me. I am no Bush fan. However, it is entirely possible that our security forces (at home and overseas) and police are breaking up terrorist rings still in their infancy, or are making it much more difficult for terrorist rings to even develop. Also, things like the terrorist watch list (which I also have some qualms about) are quite likely preventing potential terrorists from entering the country in the first place. If we really were doing a good job at disrupting terrorist networks, I don't think we would hear about it that much, because ideally, we would disrupt long before they got close enough for an imminent attack to be foiled. Of course, it is almost impossible to prove the negative, and I can't say for certain that Bush's policies have changed anything, but on this, I am willing to give him the credit.

In the final analysis, there have been no further major attacks. I doubt that no one has tried, so I can only assume that they were stopped or decided to place their efforts elsewhere (perhaps Iraq).

 

[Vintij]

Okay. What is the link to the site that said that RFK Jr and Al Gore said that Bush's environmental policies gave us Katrina. Let's see the quote. By te way, you never said whether or not you would give me credit for the article on DeLay. It did not have quotes. Therefore, I need not give you credit for the article on Cindy. It did not have quotes.

I found a site that claimed that Ann called Democrats:

http://www.therationalradical.com/matthews-coulter-transcript.htm

I dont see how any republican can talk about katrina. Wasnt it jerry falwell who said that gays caused katrina? Was fallwell not a major contributor to evangelical politicians like BUSH?

 

[maineman]

credit.

In the final analysis, there have been no further major attacks.

there were no further major attacks on American soil during the Clinton administration past WTC '93 which happened a month after he took over, but God knows the republicans hang that on HIM...yet, in the same breath, whine that 9/11 was Clinton's fault because Bush was still a newbie.

fucking hypocrites.

 

[ReillyT]

there were no further major attacks on American soil during the Clinton administration past WTC '93 which happened a month after he took over, but God knows the republicans hang that on HIM...yet, in the same breath, whine that 9/11 was Clinton's fault because Bush was still a newbie.

fucking hypocrites.

Perhaps they are. I think BC deserves the credit here as well, although I think that Bush and Clinton both deserve a share of blame for 9/11.

 

[maineman]

Perhaps they are. I think BC deserves the credit here as well, although I think that Bush and Clinton both deserve a share of blame for 9/11.

and GHWB deserves the lion's share of the blame for WTC'93.

 

[ReillyT]

and GHWB deserves the lion's share of the blame for WTC'93.

It happened in February, so I would have to agree with that.

 

[mattskramer]

I dont see how any republican can talk about katrina. Wasnt it jerry falwell who said that gays caused katrina? Was fallwell not a major contributor to evangelical politicians like BUSH?

No. You are confusing it with 9-11. Falwell blamed 9-11 on abortion rights advocates, feminists, and homosexuals, among others.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200411290008

 

[mattskramer]

Believe me. I am no Bush fan. However, it is entirely possible that our security forces (at home and overseas) and police are breaking up terrorist rings still in their infancy, or are making it much more difficult for terrorist rings to even develop. Also, things like the terrorist watch list (which I also have some qualms about) are quite likely preventing potential terrorists from entering the country in the first place. If we really were doing a good job at disrupting terrorist networks, I don't think we would hear about it that much, because ideally, we would disrupt long before they got close enough for an imminent attack to be foiled. Of course, it is almost impossible to prove the negative, and I can't say for certain that Bush's policies have changed anything, but on this, I am willing to give him the credit.

In the final analysis, there have been no further major attacks. I doubt that no one has tried, so I can only assume that they were stopped or decided to place their efforts elsewhere (perhaps Iraq).

Please present me with information of terrorist rings being broken up. Where are reports of these disruptions? Where are the smoldering embers that the fireman caught before there became an inferno? I’ll give him the credit if I get the information.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Please present me with information of terrorist rings being broken up. Where are reports of these disruptions? Where are the smoldering embers that the fireman caught before there became an inferno? I’ll give him the credit if I get the information.

There have been several high profile cases . One in Florida and another in New York just recently, but of course you and your liberal buddies all claim those were just innocent bystanders and or idiots and the Government was hyping the bust for publicity. Same with every time the threat level is raised and no attack occurs, or even just because the level was raised.

You people wouldn't believe this Government thwarted an attack if they found a nuclear warhead in some building in some major city. You would claim the "military"was ordered to plant it there to make news.

Just like no WMD's claim in Iraq, short of a nuclear tipped missile with New York stenciled on it and the coordinates programmed in, you lot simply ignore the evidence and the truth. The Government , according to you is lying, BUT every time some AQ type says something, your all hot to trot about how it is true.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Also as i recall padilla and another guy were caught and are on trial even now... but of course those do not count either, right?

 

[ReillyT]

Please present me with information of terrorist rings being broken up. Where are reports of these disruptions? Where are the smoldering embers that the fireman caught before there became an inferno? I’ll give him the credit if I get the information.

I know that in the past several years I have heard the Bush administration claim credit for breaking terrorist rings both at home and overseas. I will try to find some links for you. I don't really pay attention to these sorts of bulletins, because (esp. after Guatenomo (sp?)) I don't really trust my government when it says it has captured or thwarted a terrorist attack. RGSGT is right about that.

However, since 9/11, I feel confident that there must have been other terrorist groups or cells plotting attacks, and for whatever reason, we haven't yet been hit. For lack of anyone else, I give Bush credit for this.

Anyway, I will try to find you those links, but I myself will be cynical about them, so I would assume that you might be as well.

 

[Annie]

Please present me with information of terrorist rings being broken up. Where are reports of these disruptions? Where are the smoldering embers that the fireman caught before there became an inferno? I’ll give him the credit if I get the information.

Here's one:

http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_3_preventing_terrorism.html

...


Al-Qaida in Hollywood?

A source of both frustration and pride within the LAPD, the “Hollywood case”—details of which haven’t yet become public—shows how good police work can break up terrorist networks. But this tangled saga also highlights unanswered questions that continue to surround the 9/11 plot. Two senior detectives from the LAPD’s Anti-Terrorism Intelligence Section agreed to discuss the case, provided that they weren’t identified by name, since both remain active terrorism investigators.

The inquiry, they say, began three days after 9/11, when the manager of an apartment building in the heart of Hollywood called the police about a group of French-speaking North Africans who kept rotating into and out of one of his units. Immediately after 9/11, he told police, the men shaved their beards, changed out of traditional Islamic garb, and stopped praying openly and attending the King Fahd mosque, one of the area’s largest, in neighboring Culver City. The manager also claimed that he’d seen the renters remove a license plate from their car, which they pushed to a side street, off the busier boulevard where they usually parked it.

The police quietly sent an officer with a bomb-sniffing dog. The car was clean, but the police impounded it, anyway, for failing to display its plates. They became more suspicious after a series of visits to the apartment. Located in a slightly run-down four-story building in a soon-to-be-gentrified neighborhood, it had no furniture save bedrolls on the floor—“earmarks of a classic safe house,” one of the detectives points out. Posters of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, a known al-Qaida target, and New York’s glittering skyline adorned the walls. One officer spotted a pair of suitcases in the hallway: the luggage tags showed that they had been on a plane coming from Germany.

Learning that 9/11 bomber Mohammad Atta had belonged to a radical cell in Hamburg, “we knew enough to be worried,” a detective recalls. One of the North Africans, questioned by the police, claimed that the luggage belonged to his brother, who had recently arrived from Germany. But the police found no trace of the brother, either at the apartment or anywhere in L.A.

The North Africans told other inconsistent stories. Virtually all were jobless; several had registered to obtain pilot’s licenses or shown an interest in doing so. (The police later learned that enrolling in pilot’s school was a quick way of securing a student visa.) One was already a pilot. A police check of public records disclosed that he had claimed on an application to have attended a Florida flight school that, it later turned out, one of the 9/11 hijackers had also attended. Public records also showed that he had registered at an address in Arizona, not far from where a second hijacker had gone to flight school. “It wasn’t enough for the FBI at the start, but it was for us,” a detective notes.

The LAPD put the apartment and its residents—as well as their friends and associates, some 250 people in all—under surveillance. Eventually, it assigned more than 150 investigators and support employees to the case. Their focus eventually narrowed to a core of eight or ten suspects. “We knew we were dealing with a network of some kind,” a detective says. But investigators couldn’t prove that the group that they were watching was, as they suspected, an al-Qaida support cell in the heart of Hollywood.

When the police discovered that two of the men initially questioned were in the country illegally, they arrested them. One by one, others under surveillance were quietly arrested on various criminal charges—identity theft, illegal gun possession, and marriage and insurance fraud—none of which even mentioned terrorism. In some cases, immigration authorities deported the men on immigration charges. In other cases, suspects pleaded guilty and went to jail, or voluntarily left the country. One of the two men originally arrested on immigration charges bailed himself out of jail. The second secretly tried to obtain firearms in prison. Deported in 2002, both have now disappeared.

The investigation soon focused on a man who seemed to be at the cell’s hub—Qualid Benomrane, a North African taxi driver mentioned in a footnote of the 9/11 Commission Report. Arrested on immigration charges in early 2002, he told the police that prior to the attacks he had driven “two Saudis” around L.A. and to San Diego’s Sea World, after being introduced to them by Fahad al-Thumairy, a diplomat at the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles. Benomrane also told police that someone at the consulate had asked al-Thumairy to take care of the two men.

According to the 9/11 report, Benomrane, shown pictures of Khaled al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, two of the 9/11 hijackers, at first pulled their photos out of the group he was shown, but later claimed not to recognize them. The 9/11 commission investigators concluded that “the hypothesis that Benomrane’s ‘two Saudis’ were Hazmi and Midhar” couldn’t be substantiated.

But the LAPD detectives who investigated the case remain convinced that Benomrane and al-Thumairy were militants in the al-Qaida support network and that Benomrane’s passengers were, in fact, the two hijackers. “Our investigation found, for instance, that Benomrane had taken photos of the structural supports of the Golden Gate Bridge during a trip to northern California,” a detective says. The LAPD also discovered that Benomrane had taken his two Saudi passengers to a gas station where one of the two San Diego–based hijackers had worked before heading east to carry out his deadly mission. (The FBI, which participated in the investigation, declined comment since the inquiry was classified, but a commission investigator said that the bureau has no record of such a side trip.)

The LAPD investigators decided to question Benomrane in jail once more, but they never got the chance: he was deported on the eve of their visit to see him (a textbook example of one part of government’s not talking to another). Benomrane, too, has disappeared. But using standard policing tactics and procedures, the LAPD investigators broke up what they believe was a cell that supported al-Qaida’s 9/11 mission in ways still not fully understood. “We did all the right things without knowing it,” a detective notes, calling the case the LAPD’s “coming of age” in counterterrorism.

“Only the police are close enough to the ground to be able to go after terrorists like this by using standard criminal investigations,” argues Stephan C. Margolis, who now heads the LAPD’s Anti-Terrorism Intelligence Section. “The FBI has 12,000 agents for the entire country, only some of whom do counterterrorism. Local and state law enforcement includes some 800,000 people who know their territory. We are destined to be frontline soldiers in what could be a very long and complicated war.”

...

Then of course were those at Fort Dix, those that wanted to hit Sear's Towers, those that wanted the tunnels of NY...

 

[ReillyT]

Please present me with information of terrorist rings being broken up. Where are reports of these disruptions? Where are the smoldering embers that the fireman caught before there became an inferno? I’ll give him the credit if I get the information.

Here are some links.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18999503/

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/08/10/us.security/index.html (Actually, British security here).

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6682409 References the potential Miami group attack and some overseas attacks.



http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2006&m=February&x=20060209175513cpataruk0.1249201

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,117414,00.html [This was the US Embassy in Jordan]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/05/08/fortdix.plot/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

Anyway, there are some. I didn't read them too closely, and I always wonder if it is a real terrorist cell, or just a couple of incompetent wackjobs, but for what it is worth.