Wiki Editor Helps Reveal Pre-9/11 CIA Mistakes 176
An anonymous reader writes "Kevin Fenton was reading the Department of Justice's 2004 Inspector General report on pre-9/11 intelligence failures. Parts of it didn't make sense to him, so he decided to add the information in the report to Paul Thompson's 9/11 timeline at the wiki-style website History Commons. Eventually, Fenton's work led him to uncover the identity of a CIA manager who ran the Bin Ladin unit before 9/11, when agents there deliberately withheld information about two 9/11 hijackers from the FBI. That manager was named Richard Earl Blee and he is now the subject of a documentary by Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy, of secrecykills.org, who confirmed his identity using techniques right out of the 70s film All the President's Men. Blee, along with Cofer Black and George Tenet, have found the work disturbing enough to release a joint statement denying some of the allegations."
So what is new? (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as I can tell, this is just one more example of how turf wars between the different agencies caused severe information gaps before 9/11. That was obviously a problem. However, after the last decade of the Patriot Act, I'm sufficiently worried by the government information sharing as part of a wider pattern, that part of me wants to go back to the silly turf wars as a de facto restraint on various government agencies becoming too powerful or having access to things they shouldn't.
But there's no real evidence of any sort of high-level conspiracy. This is just low-level bureaucratic infighting at its finest. You can see lots of examples of this in the 9/11 Report which details the many intelligence failures leading up to 9/11. Some of them seem like intelligence failures mainly due to hindsight bias where what the evidence meant became obvious only if you knew what happened, but others are genuine failures. There's really not that much new here.
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I'm sure someone in the chain recognized the credibility of the threat they were analyzing, and given how compartmentalized info is in the intelligence community, it was probably only a handful of people at most. A tacit standing agreement here and there, no phone calls or emails on the record, just an understanding and a recognition of the value of such an event in certain circles, and
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Re:So what is new? (Score:4, Interesting)
"no real evidence of any sort of high-level conspiracy"
The CIA made lots of mistakes. The single worst mistake they made, was when they allowed the White House to influence their reports, and even to edit the data to support political agendas. The CIA could well have denied some of the bullshit gushing from the White House. While they couldn't get away with using the direct language that I tend to use, there are many ways to tell the world that the White House is lying, while making it sound like you really respect the wisdom of the Pres, VP, etc.
I can forgive everything the CIA did and did not do - except for allowing Bush and Cheney to hijack the CIA's intelligence. They should have found a way to assert themselves, and to assert the real information.
Simple - didn't do their job (Score:2)
It wasn't "minor incompetance" - it was a complete and utter failure to be the sort of organisation it was supposed to be. Playing James Bond and acting like 19th century Austrian nobility is far more fun than actually working, and successive Presidents appeared to have a lot of trouble trying to get the CIA to do anyt
Wrong (Score:4, Informative)
This was not an example of turf wars.
This was a deliberate policy established during the Clinton Administration by Jamie Gorelick to wall off [wikipedia.org] information between the CIA/other foreign intelligence sources and the FBI/Local law enforcement.
Re:Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, and isn't this what most civil liberties advocates (who I count myself among) want? That is, the more that government agencies can cooperate with each other, the easier it is to arrest any one person.
I'm not trying to blame anyone, just predict that future news will cycle between:
"OMG! They missed the 9/11 attack because of stupid rules about info-sharing between agencies?"
and
"OMG! A totalitarian bill going through the Senate is going to let government agencies share their files on us, giving them unlimited power to raid your privacy."
Folks, there are tradeoffs.
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Good posts by both sycodon and DriedClexler. I was looking for it before posting, it's sad I had to go so far before finding somebody pointing out that it was policy not to "share."
There are tradeoffs. The word is an imperfect place, and it will never be a perfect place. If you want freedoms and personal liberties, not only do you have to accept the fact that people will do things you don't want them to do (so long as they don't violate your rights), but there will be security risks, as it will necessari
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I almost want someone to try it so we can finally make the TSA admit that they can't protect us without obviously doing more harm than any potential terrorists.
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I almost want someone to try it so we can finally make the TSA admit that they can't protect us without obviously doing more harm than any potential terrorists.
That will never happen. They will do some more theater, and that will be the end of it.
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There's not much theater they can do if a terrorist body packs a bomb. Theyd have to use strong penetrating x-rays on travelers and the operators would necessarily be unqualified.
Ultrasound is right out since it requires actual skill to use that at all.
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There's not much theater they can do if a terrorist body packs a bomb.
The beauty of theater is that doesn't have to be effective. It just has to look good and nothing more. I have no doubt they'd come up with something to do.
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Technically, I think the pat-downs were implemented primarily as a way of punishing people who opted out of the cancer-box scanners. Also, I'm not entirely sure that the scanners were implemented as a response to the underwear bomber; the timing suggests that they were already in the works, and the underwear bomber provided a convenient excuse for the rollout.
Either way... a convenient way to justify it. I'm sure the government has a lot of things they've already been working on they'd love to implement given some scaremongering to gain public acceptance.
Re:Wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
"OMG! A totalitarian bill going through the Senate...Folks, there are tradeoffs."
Totalitarian governments kill millions of people (USSR, China, Germany, etc.)
Terrorists so far only seem to be able to kill a few thousand at a pop...
Put me down for prefers missing the occasional terrorist over totalitarian government.
Now if the government was more open and actually publicized the fact that terrorists were planning on hijacking planes as missiles (which we knew years before), it is possible 9/11 may have only lead to a few hundred deaths, if that. Instead, we got security through obscurity...
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Well, we all see how well that worked out eh?
Re:So what is new? (Score:5, Insightful)
But there's no real evidence of any sort of high-level conspiracy. This is just low-level bureaucratic infighting at its finest.
Doesn't that make it even more tragic?
We really screwed up. We panicked and essentially said "Bureaucracy is inefficient - lets add more!"
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The problem is naming them. (Score:5, Interesting)
The difference is that the people RESPONSIBLE for those turf wars are now being IDENTIFIED by NAME.
Look at how many "mistakes" were made on critical issues ... without anyone being identified or fired.
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When evidence is withheld from the public, that usually indicates a cover-up. But you did a very nice job of labeling any and all challenges to the official conspiracy theory as a bunch of loons. Good show!
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There's plenty, if you know where to look and how to interpret the information. Probably the most important thing to understand is that there are always two sides to a coin.
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We need to raise taxes on the job killers and the wealthy people that drive our economy off a cliff .
FTFY
Re:So what is new? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just so's you know, the problem isn't taxes, it's demand. Pumping money into the coffers of the wealthy---who are already doing quite well and hoarding almost unprecedented levels of cash---won't help. We've tried tax cuts for the wealthy (what, you didn't know that the rounds of stimulus were, depending on the country, 30-60% tax cuts?) and they aren't working: all it does is cut the revenue to the very programs that would help us get out of recession.
The "job creators" are the disenfranchised middle and lower classes. They're the ones who buy stuff, keeping stores open and others gainfully employed. They're the ones who need TARP programs for underwater mortgages, stable employment and a sense of stability. Not the rentiers who are doing quite well, thank you very much.
Re:So what is new? (Score:5, Insightful)
But, but, rich people drive nice cars and wear nice suits. They must know what they're talking about, when they say their too scared to hire people right now because their taxes and business taxes are at the lowest levels since 1926. How can they possible think of expanding business if things might change? They really need the government to lock down things so that nothing ever changes again and then turn over control of everything to them. Then they'll finally feel safe enough to start hiring more people. Mostly for private armies.
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Just so's you know, the problem isn't taxes, it's demand.
- Just so you know, the problem is not demand, it's supply.
You see, when 2 people trade they are not trading for money, they are trading for things they want. If 1 produces food and another produces fuel, they are trading food for fuel. They are doing so because they both benefit from the comparative advantage of each doing something better - more efficiently than the other.
Money is introduced into the system so it's easy to trade for things that are of not equal value, so a kitchen food processor is not t
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A lot of what you are saying used to make sense. Then we had to go and invent robots. Now a small percentage of people CAN produce everything everybody else needs to live. Economics is long overdue for a major rethinking. We have more people than work to go around, and its just going to keep getting worse. You can whine about it not being fair that poor people get stuff for free all you want, but eventually we are going to have to give a whole lot of people free stuff. If we don't, they are going to get rea
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"As a species we can either accept this and build a wonderful world where everybody can live a decent life without working if they want"
This is perhaps the most idiotic thing I have read all day. If everyone can live a decent life without working, then why would anyone want to work? Economics never have been and never will be a guaranteed thing that what you put in is what you get out. For every 1 person who works hard and succeeds, another 99 work hard and just make minor progress. If you extend those
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I'm at work so I'm not going to take the time to dig up sources, but I remember reading about studies where they found that most humans are happiest when they feel like they've accomplished something. Contrary to popular belief not everybody wants to just goof off all the time. The whole world wouldn't grind to a halt if you were able to have a decent life without working.
I think instead what would happen is we would see a huge resurgence in art and creativity. How many people do you know that have
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"You said yourself most people who work hard don't get shit for it. Why are we allowing a system to continue where 1% of the population gets to hold on to 90% of the resources? We keep telling our kids to work hard and they might win the billionaire lottery, even though we all know it is exceedingly unlikely."
Don't get me wrong, I don't like the system the way it is either, but the answer isn't to support those who do nothing, but to support those who want to contribute in non-conventional ways. Everything
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Another thought which I got distracted from mentioning is that many would still either have no dream or feel that they couldn't do it even if they felt that they could survive while pursuing it. Many of those people will fall back to the secondary position of hedonism as an approach to finding happiness. Hedonism in the context of a society that provides for people's needs without question is a recipe for abuse and waste. "Eat, drink and be marry for tomorrow you may die." would be the rallying cry for m
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The problem you have here is that you're working with an extremely simple model - 2 goods, one factor of production. The world is an exceedingly complex place.
You say "it cannot be that a small minority produce most of everything and then the large majority just consumes it." - but you are neglecting the effects of technology. In terms of consumer goods, production has become very efficient either due to technology (think robotics in the automotive plant) or cost-effective due to low wages. Using the H-O mo
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The problem you have here is that you're working with an extremely simple model - 2 goods, one factor of production. The world is an exceedingly complex place.
- I am trying to bring a point across.
Of-course world is complex, but the basic interaction in trade remains the same: I want YOU to produce something that is valuable in trade between YOU and ANY market participant.
It does not have to be me. But if I produce something and everybody else produces something, then by using money we just allow ourselves to exchange the goods we produce.
If HALF of the people produce and HALF of the people don't produce, I don't want to SHARE the SAME MONEY with them.
Do you un
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The problem is this: the basic interaction in trade doesn't work in the real world, even if you don't have a medium of exchange like currency. Factors of production are not equal, transportation costs make some goods non-tradeable, and economies of scale increase efficiency meaning labor/capital requirements change (land is considered part of capital in economics by the way). This has been shown by empirical studies.
Nowhere near half of the people don't produce - unemployment is at 9% in the US. Unless you'
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Your shit-splattering posts are making slashdot a less enjoyable place for a lot of people.
It's not that some moderators don't like your "real economic message", it's that you're unable to limit yourself to talking about it in suitable stories. Also, it might have something to do with the fact that you have
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Obviously, some mods disagree.
Sure, the whole thread may be off-topic. But I'd say it's human nature to preferentially downmod the ones that take up all the screen real-estate and make the rest of the (on-topic) article discussion harder to find.
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> Economies are created by private individuals who work to live better, that's all there is to it.
By using any means neccessary. Not controling the market too much actually made all the mess. You see, it's some of those private individuals who used government to make themselves richer. You have connections, you create lobbies, and it's mostly not even malevolent initially. Even with Terry Pratchett's insights about gold and money, you still have to remember, the most fraudulent thing about it is, that it
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Not controling the market too much actually made all the mess.
- Not controlling the GOVERNMENT made all the mess.
Market is controlled by the veto and vote of an individual. One buys iPad because he likes it, another person buys Samsung Galaxy because they like it. Somebody is selling more, somebody is selling less.
Then you have gov't intervention, it protects companies with limited liability, with patents, copyrights, you name it. All of a sudden you are a consumer (in Germany) who cannot BUY a Samsung Galaxy pad because government said so.
How is that beneficial to
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Yawn, I guess the govenment interference in the Australian economy, which prevented even a recession in our country has no relevance.
Its really boring finding the same falacious economic theories repeated endlessly you know.
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That used to be at least ostensibly true back before the banks became so terrified of the high default rate that they stopped lending it out.
These days, putting money in the bank is effectively taking money out of c
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Interesting point tho. If I ran a bank, and if the government was giving me money for free by way of an effective zero percent lending rate, I think I'd take as much as I could get, and sit on it (by way of investing in Treasury Bonds) until interest rates went up. I'm of the mind that the interest rate is way too low to stimulate any meaningful economic activity, because a low interest rate stimulates demand for loans (
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the level of demand that previously existed was predicated largely upon homeowners withdrawing equity from their homes
Do you have anything other than assertion to back that up?
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I haven't had time to dig up the direct stats, but will later today - but it isn't speculation on my part. Here's at least some data: between 2001 and Sept 2007, over $350 billion worth of credit card debt was transferred to home equity loans (which, interestingly, gets the borrower a tax break, because mortgage interest in the US is deductible). That's according to the Rochester Institute of Technology, altho I could only find it quoted, not the direct
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The problem with defeating Obama is that you will get a fucking Tea Party endorsed candidate in the white house. While we can certainly do better than Obama, the tea party aint that. I would rather have 4 more years of pain under Obama than face the end of America as we know it that could happen if a tea party traitor becomes president.
On the plus side, Obama's political career will be over when he gets out of office. This means that if he does get reelected, he may not be beholden to the corporate interest
Re:So what is new? (Score:5, Insightful)
We need to cut taxes on the job creators
That might work if the jobs they were creating were in the U.S., and not in China and India.
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CONgress is America's enemy far more than the taliban. Talban kills individuals. CONgress is killing America.
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Just so you know, all job-creating activities (investigating business opportunities, hiring people, et cetera) are already tax deductible. Lowering taxes on the money extracted from a business into a personal account decreases the chance that jobs will be created, by reducing the tax advantages of doing so.
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Although the general business activities expenses are mostly deductible, there are many issues that still prevent job sitmulus (as opposed to natural job creation that results when demand goes up, which isn't happening currently in this economy).
First of all, lowering the cost of new entry-level employees (when they are the least productive), is something that would stimulate job creation. Unfortunatly, this is kept artificially high by higher "living-wage" laws. Not that the jobs that are created are all
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We need to cut taxes on the job creators and the wealthy people that drive our economy. We need to slash funding to effectively kill off those branches of government that are bad, and they will be neutered and die on the "vine".
The wealthy people are the ones destroying your economy and freedoms, you fuckard. Or do you think all the bankers, CEOs and politicians are poor die-hard communists?
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All video content confiscated except four frames from the many surrounding the pentagon?
Actually, more has been released. There's really not much to see. You have some low fps cameras trying to catch a fast-moving object. The Pentagon missile theory breaks down under its own weight. I mean, if the evil conspiracy had already lobbed two planes at the WTC, why would they bother doing so much to make it look like a plane at the Pentagon instead of just lobbing another plane at the Pentagon?
All evidenciary building materials confiscated and destroyed at the crime scene around the trade center plaza?
There was plenty of debris that was later taken back and tested. NYC was in a bit of a hurry to get that ma
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Got any documents on this? For me this was the only really smelly thing about 9/11, there is no way you could cover up the logistics of blowing up a building like that, but to cover up a building not build to code is somewhat easier, only have to lose a memo, br
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The thing to ask about any conspiracy is to take each individual claim and ask 'Did this actually further any claimed aim of the conspiracy?'.
Let's pretend for a second that the government was behind 9/11?
Firstly, no, people don't get to combine conspiracy theories. You don't get to have a theory saying 'It was the most massive false flag operation in existence' and at the same time claim it was an attempt to make a few billion dollars by the owners of the WTC. If the government wanted to fly airplanes in
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Hey, idjit, the stock trading thing is exactly the sort of nonsense I was talking about. Why the fuck would the government try to make a few billion in stock trades during 9/11? They obviously wouldn't, so now you're got to bring extra people that the US has inexplicably informed in advance, and who jeopardize the entire conspiracy.
Of course, such trading did happen, and it's entirely possible that the people who did it knew enough about the attacks...but that does not, in any way, point to the US governme
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People were investigated for stock trades made pre-9/11. It was determined to be a coincidence [snopes.com]. The excessive trading on America Airlines on Sept 6 was due to a weird strategy that had the same people buying a shitload of their stock on Sept 10, which was hardly a way to make money. The United stock trades were due to a newsletter the previous day.
As for the SEC, look up "plausible deniability". It's easier to ignore current criminal wrongdoing than past cases for which you have a mountain of evidence and
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Yeah, I know.
I was just pointing out that a lot of the 'evidence' doesn't even make sense to actually accomplish the goals of the supposed conspiracy. Why hit the Pentagon with a missile instead of airplane? Why, as the other poster claim, risk the entire conspiracy with fricking stock trades? And, no, they didn't need to blow up the incredibly ineffectual SEC.
If the US government was going to hijack airplanes as a pretense for war, they would, you know, actually hijack them. Or, even better, cut off comm
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Oh, and I forgot to address the 'explosives' nonsense in the other post.
There is absolutely no reason for the US government to destroy the WTC. If they were trying to create a 'national emergency', that does not require the collapse of the WTC at all.
Just flying airplanes into it was enough. Nothing in their supposed plan required it to go down. The buildings were frickin unusable either way, and planting explosives is incredibly risky for a dozen reasons. (In fact, if you're going to plant explosive, the
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Seriously? There's not enough facepalms to cover the stupidity of truthers. I had a hope that slashdot would be one site with few. I was wrong.
I personally know three airline pilots. They all confirm that once the plane is airborne, there's not much skill needed to fly it. A few hours of training i FlightSim really does get you most of the way.
(Yeah, I'm just addressing that one issue. The rest is so beyond moronic that I don't need spending time debunking the crap. A simple google search suffices for most
So (Score:5, Insightful)
Deliberately screwing something up is still called a "mistake" when it leads to thousands of easily-prevented deaths?
I guess if I intentionally sabotage a project I'm working on I can claim a mistake was made too. I am just as sure that I will get fired regardless.
If just ONE person gets fired or becomes unemployable due to this it would be a sign that some kind of credibility still exists in our federal law enforcement/security agencies. But, I doubt it's ever going to happen.
"well, back in my day we didn't eat babies..." (Score:3)
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Which is the problem. Rather than focusing on increasing the quality of the information that they're processing, they've focused on increasing the volume hoping that something will rise to the surface. The problem is that even as they get more and more materials the number of people available to analyse it hasn't increased by a similar amount. Leading to the unfortunate situation where there's a lot of intelligence information out there that isn't analysed, and a lot of people losing privacy needlessly.
Acco
credibility? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:credibility? (Score:4, Informative)
Clinton was impeached, he just wasn't convicted. Same with Andrew Johnson.
Re:credibility? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yup, and they didn't convict because they're all damned hypocrites, and they had to hound the man and burn millions of dollars only to try and get him for something that occurred during the investigation and not something revealed as a result of the investigation.
tl;dr: the Republican witch hunt was worthless, and so was the impeachment.
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Re:credibility? (Score:4, Informative)
Clinton got impeached for getting a bj from a fat chick,
That's not true. Clinton was impeached for two things, neither of which was the physical encounter with Monica Lewinsky. The first thing he was impeached for was Perjury before a Grand Jury. The act that spawned this article of impeachment was when he claimed under oath in Judge Susan Webber Wright's grand jury that he had never had intimate relations with any person who was subordinate to him. The second thing he was impeached for was Obstruction of Justice. That acts that spawned this article of impeachment was when he encouraged Lewinsky to file a false affidavit, when he encouraged her to lie under oath, when he plotted with his secretary to hide a box of gifts he had given to Lewinsky, when he attempted to get Lewinsky a job so that she would not provide truthful testimony, when he lied to White House staff, and when he allowed his attorney to make false statements on his behalf.
~Loyal
Re:credibility? (Score:5, Insightful)
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How stupid do you think we are?
I had only suspicions before, but after reading your latest comment I'm pretty confident that you are quite stupid.
Everybody knows exactly what happened to Clinton. So edit the statement to read "Clinton got impeached for lying about getting a bj from a fat chick" and it still carries the same meaning.
To idiots, perhaps, but not in law. When some poor, hungry schmuck steals food and gets caught, he's not charged with "being poor"; he's charged with theft.
Clinton was impeached for an act that was of no consequence to the nation.
He was impeached for lying to a Grand Jury about "an act that was of no consequence to the nation." That was his own damn fault.
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Wrong. He was impeached because he made the Republicans look bad during the government shutdowns, so they found an excuse to hurt him back.
It was never about whether Clinton broke the law or not, it was simply low politics.
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So, obviously the situation was exploited a bit politically. However, the fact was that he did break the law.
He was sued for sexual harassment. He offered testimony that he did not have a pattern of doing this. Clearly a pattern of sexual harassment is COMPLETELY relevant in a sexual harassment lawsuit. Then it became apparent that he had lied under oath.
The issue wasn't that he slept with somebody. The issue was that he denied sexually harassing somebody in court, and relied in his defense on not havi
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Clinton was impeached for an act that was of no consequence to the nation.
That's not true. The president is the head of the executive branch of the government. The job of the executive is to carry out the laws of the United States. Instead of seeing to it that the laws were carried out, President Clinton violated those laws and suborned others to do so as well. This is the same level of consequences if the judiciary were to find for whomever paid them the most bribe money.
~Loyal
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And yet, actions by others which fall far deeper on the spectrum of rights violations are not prosecuted. When there's only one recent example of impeachment, and its for such an absolutely reasonable yet relatively trivial reason, its not too much of a stretch to wonder why that particular act deserved to be singled out.
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If I lived in a community where there were a great many murders and only occasionally one was solved, I wouldn't ask, "gee, why is this particular murderer being singled out?" The answer there is obvious: because he murdered someone. The question I'd ask instead is, "gee, why is everyone else getting away with it?"
I don't wonder at all why Clinton was impeached. I wonder why other Presidents haven't been.
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Because it wouldn't do any good. Obama's decided that nobody from the Bush Administration gets prosecuted. Not for torture, not for lying us into a war, not for extraordinary rendition, not for illegal wiretapping.
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You're right (Score:2)
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In other words, the first count was for lying about a bj and the second was for asking someone to back up his lie about a bj.
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In other words, the first count was for lying about a bj
The first count was not about lying about a bj. In fact President Clinton went on national television and stated, "I'm going to say this again: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Monica Lewinsky." Were you aware that he was not impeached for doing that? The reason that he wasn't impeached for that is because it's probably not an impeachable offense. The impeachment was for lying about a material fact while under oath. In other words:
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The impeachment was for lying about a material fact while under oath. In other words: Perjury.
Right, he lied about a bj.
The impeachment was for going to his secretary, after he was specifically instructed by the judge not to speak with anyone involved in the case about it, and trying to influence her testimony and get her help hiding the box of gifts.
Right again, he asked someone to back up his lie about a bj.
I'm not saying he was perfect by any means, he should have just kept it in his pants. At the end of the day though, he lied about a bj and got impeached. Since then, we've had a president lie about WMD's in Iraq in order to drag us into an expensive and pointless war (that we're STILL in) and as a result, nothing.
At least he didn't conspire to lie about WMDs in order to drag us into a war somewhere.
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Right, he lied about a bj. Right again, he asked someone to back up his lie about a bj.
I see. And Nixon resigned rather than be impeached for a third-rate burglary attempt he didn't even know about and a simple lapse of memory?
~Loyal
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Clinton got impeached because he helped the Republicans make themselves look bad when they were having the government shutdowns. The BJ and perjury were merely excuses to hurt him back and thereby get more Republicans elected.
A BJ is certainly worse than torture, illegal wiretapping, and starting a war on false pretenses, gods know.
It was simply politics, as anyone with half a brain knows.
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your story doesn't make sense. why would he be telling a judge if he has had intimate relations with any person who was subordinate to him?
It happened because someone, probably Hillary Clinton, attempted to destroy the reputation of Paula Jones. Ms. Jones brought suit against President Clinton for violation of her civil rights. She claimed that, as governor, she had her brought to his hotel room, dropped his pants, and told her to "kiss it". Ms. Jones attorneys attempted to bolster her claim by proving t
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THAT'S RIGHT. There's a list somewhere of all the lies you can tell under oath.
I would like to see it. Where can I find it?
If the judge asks me, "Do you like me? Do you like being here" I will look him in the eye and say "Sure I like you. There might be other places I'd rather be, but I like being here and given a chance to defend myself against charges of wrongdoing." Is that true: obviously not. Obviously I wouldn't like the judge, and would not like being there.
The judge wouldn't ask you any such questi
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While he kind of comes off as an ass for ignoring the obvious lesson from political history and the horrible injustice of it all, I have to stand up for him FOR TELLING THE TRUTH. I'm a little funny about the truth.
By contrast, I think you're probably an upstanding person, and someone with whom I could enjoy a beer or three. My treat. Assuming we can work out the logistics. And assuming you're willing to drink with an ass.
~Loyal
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I believe CIA were tracking al-Mihdha and buddies both inside and outside of the US in the months leading up to the attacks. FBI had other pieces of the puzzle, but since they were foreign nationals, they were the primary responsibility of the CIA, even when they were on US soil. Perhaps CIA thought they were on to something bigger and didn't want to compromise their surveillance op too soon, thus the rules on operational secrecy would demand continued compartmentalization.
So it seems the failure here was a
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The problem is finding the source of that mistake. Either you accept the possibility that a series of individually inane omissions added up to a giant clusterfuck, or you choose to believe the theory that a handful of people acted strategically to trigger the "right mistakes", which sent the remaining players along a predictable path toward the desired outcome. Like a big meat-powered Rube Goldberg machine of doom...
Given the level of stupidity inherent in any large enough organisation, I'm not quite read
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All the President's Men (Score:2)
That manager was named Richard Earl Blee and he is now the subject of a documentary by Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy, of secrecykills.org, who confirmed his identity using techniques right out of the 70s film All the President's Men.
They had an FBI Associate Director feed them information?
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I didn't say he looked like Alex Trebek, I said he was Alex Trebek!
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That manager was named Richard Earl Blee and he is now the subject of a documentary by Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy, of secrecykills.org, who confirmed his identity using techniques right out of the 70s film All the President's Men.
They had an FBI Associate Director feed them information?
Well, if you listen to the interview @ http://secrecy-kills.s3.amazonaws.com/BleePodcast1.m4a [amazonaws.com] George Tenet--former CIA director--slipped up and gave the information necessary to identify Richard Earl Blee: His last initial and the fact he was a controversial son of former CIA officers. The last initial and the other information was enough to narrow it down to one person. So drop the "Associate," an "ex-" and change the acronym, and yes, exactly.
Where's the beef? (Score:2)
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That doesn't sound like a theory, just a conspiracy.
No it is a theory, or a collection of theories. Mostly the theories deal with specific details rather than just "A conspiracy to execute a false flag attack on our own citizens in order to justify taking control of some of the largest oil reserves on the planet?", just like gravity is fairly evident but a theory about the specifics from a major physicist can still be highly valuable and informative. Perhaps gravity is a bad example. I still wouldn't totally discard the box cutters theory either. While it ma
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I do not
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The problem is he's describing it in terms of the red ones with yellow spots.
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