If anyone here owns Bill Clinton's, My Life,

[ZombieHorde]

would you be willing to look on page 935 to see if he mentions Al Qaeda?

If you have actually read the book, does he mention Al Qaeda, and if he does, what does he say about them?

Some posters seem to be suggesting Al Qaeda was fabricated by the Bush administration, but I believe Bill Clinton suggests otherwise.

edit: I have to go to school, so I will not be able to check back for a while.

[closeupready]

1. I don't have it handy, but I can check later.

Though by then, someone will have provided the answer, lol. :D

[Richardo]

2. "Some posters" are total fucking idiots then.

They've never heard of Richard Clarke?

[closeupready]

3. Oh, and as to your specific point, I recall references to al-qaida from the mid-90's,

specifically after the first WTC bombing. Prosecutors charged that THAT bombing (1993) was connected with al-qaida, IIRC, and further, that the plans were to bring the WTC down, and yet further, there were stories on Drudge (which I read in the late 90's) that al-qaida was going to try yet again to bring down the WTC.

So no, al-qaida has been around for many years.

[ZombieHorde]

15. I also thought I remembered similar events, but I don't always trust my memory. nt

[Soylent Brice]

4. here:

"2000: Warned Bush that biggest problem was Al Qaeda & Osama

President-elect Bush came to the White House for the same meeting I had had with his father 8 years earlier. We talked about the campaign, White House operations, and national security. He was putting together an experienced team from past Republican administrations who believed that the biggest security issues were the need for national missile defense and Iraq. I told him that based on the last 8 years, I thought his biggest security problems, in order, would be Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda; the absence of peace in the Middle East; the standoff between nuclear powers in India and Pakistan; and the ties of the Pakistanis to the Taliban and al Qaeda; North Korea; and then Iraq. I said that my biggest disappointment was not getting bin Laden, that we still might achieve an agreement in the Middle East, and that we had almost tied up a deal with North Korea to end its missile program.
He listened to what I had to say without much comment, then changed the subject to how I did the job.

Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.935 Jun 21, 2004"

source: http://archives.ontheissues.org/Archive/My_Life_Homeland_Security.htm

[ZombieHorde]

16. Awesome, thank you. nt

[Soylent Brice]

40. welcome. n/t

[Not Me]

5. From his book (page 935)

"The next day, President-elect Bush came to the White House for the same meeting I had with his father 8 years earlier. We talked about the campaign, White House operations, and national security. He was putting together an experienced team from past Republican administrations who believed that the biggest security threat were the need for national millile defense and Iraq. I told him that based on the last eight years, I thought his biggest security problems, in order, would be Osama bin Ladin and al Qaeda; the absence of peace in the Middle East; the standoff between nuclear powers India and Pakistan, and the ties of the Pakistanis to the Taliban and al Qaeda; North Korea; and them Iraq. I said that my biggest disappointment was not getting bin Ladin, that we still might achieve an agreement in the Middle East, and that we had almost tied up a deal with North Korea to end its missile program, bu that he would probably have to go there to close the deal."

[Cleita]

7. So instead of closing the deal with North Korea to end its missile program,

Bush rattles sables instead and calls them part of the axis of evil, causing Kim Jong Il to go back to his missile system. Good work Dubya the Dummy.

[SDuderstadt]

29. Rattles sables?

He rattled a fur at them?

[Cleita]

31. Sabers?n/t

[SDuderstadt]

32. Well, rattling sabers would be more effective.....n/t

[Cleita]

33. Good. Now we are back to the purpose of the thread. n/t

[SDuderstadt]

34. Thanks for demonstrating your lack of...

humor.

[Cleita]

36. Humor?

Rudeness in pointing out a typo isn't humor. Your intent is to disrupt and distract from the issue.

[ZombieHorde]

17. dupe

[ZombieHorde]

23. Thank you for looking that up for me. nt

[Cleita]

6. I remember reading about Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden in the Los Angeles

Times for the first time I believe in the late eighties or early nineties. The article was about the star wars missile defense system that Reagan, Bush and the Republicans were trying to force on us. The Op Ed writer, whose name I can't remember now, posited that Russia was not the problem so we didn't need to build missiles, but Osama bin Laden and a network of terrorist organized like the IRA in cells that would be the new danger to us in the future. This little bit of information was completely ignored and never revisited until 9/11 by both media, government and populace.

[ZombieHorde]

24. Interesting. nt

[SDuderstadt]

30. Well, that's not true....

unless you ignore the African Embassy bombings, as well as the attack on the U.S.S. Cole.

[Cleita]

37. When you want to make sense, please post what exactly you are talking

about and what relation it has to SDIs.

[Codeine]

38. It wasn't ignored.

I'd read plenty about al Qaeda in regular mainstream media sources prior to 9/11. :shrug: They were the ones that blew up the Cole, for example.

[Cleita]

41. If it wasn't ignored, why did we have 9/11?

:shrug:

[Codeine]

42. LOL!

You're absolutely right that the dimwits in charge ignored it, but the media certainly covered it.

[frazzled]

8. You can also check the google book version and search for 'al Qaeda' references

Although the google books is a preview (i.e., not complete), there are still a dozen or more al Qaeda references or passages that turn up in a search

http://books.google.com/books?id=PVmJqiW4mpMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Bill+Clinton+my+life&source=bl&ots=iHMFDe8PsH&sig=4SpgoxKWjWqS9altr63jjoARfN4&hl=en&ei=FEPDS43YI8LknAf5vM2VCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CDAQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q&f=false

[ZombieHorde]

22. Great link, thank you. nt

[RaleighNCDUer]

9. I'll check when I get home. nt

[NoPasaran]

10. I pulled my actual copy of the book off the shelf

And I can confirm that page 935 has the text already quoted by a couple of posts above referencing on-line sources.

[ZombieHorde]

21. Excellent, thank you. nt

[Ozymanithrax]

11. As I understand it Al Qa'edah goes back to 1988

Al Qa'edah
In 1988 he noticed that he was backward in his documentation and was not able to give answers to some families asking about their loved ones gone missing in Afghanistan. He decided to make the matter much more organized and arranged for proper documentation. He made a tracking record of the visitors, be they mujahedeen or charity or simple visitors. Their movement between the guesthouse and the camps had to be recorded as well as their first arrival and final departure. The whole complex was then termed Al-Qa'edah which is an Arabic word meaning "The Base." Al-Qa'edah was very much public knowledge. It was funny to see some people triumphing because they discovered it!

It wasn't, at the time, a terrorist organization. But it did exist long before Bush, and was active during the Clinton Administration. The first attack for which they took responsibility was an attack on hotels in Yemen in December of 1992. That would have placed the attack during the reign of Presideint Bush I.

[ZombieHorde]

20. Thank you. nt

[Robb]

26. Further, actually. Sort of.

Sawt al-Qa'idah ("Voice of the Base") was a Marxist underground newsletter in the early 1970's -- in Iraq.

Edited to add: the Iraq Communist Party has a history back to the end of World War II, and was not always "underground." Al-Qa'idah in the 70's was sort of a resurgence of Marxism with fundamentalism; al-Qa'idah being better translated as "the fundamentals."

[Ozymanithrax]

27. YEs, but the 1988 version was actually run by Ossama Bin Laden..

and is origin of the organizaiton that caused so much grief through Clinton and Bush II terms.

So far as I know, Bin Laden had no relationship a Marxist newsletter in the early 1970's. He was born to a very wealth family in 1957, and had not yet entered college when that paper existed.

[Robb]

28. Of course.

The "Minutemen" who dolled up to loiter on the Mexican border recently weren't descendants of the Colonial Militia, either. The name had some resonance, and I don't think it was chosen at random, is all. :hi:

[karynnj]

12. Note that this book was written in 2004 - There is no way Al Qaeda would NOT have been used as the

name for OBL and people associated with him - even if in the past that name were not used. If you really wanted to test your thesis, you would look for a pre- 20001 reference to Al Qaeda.

Now a quick search of the NYT in the 1990s, pulls up pages of links. Here, for your reading "pleasure" is one. http://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/05/world/us-indictment-detonated-an-explosive-device.html?scp=2&sq=Al+Qaeda&st=nyt So, unless Bush controlled the NYT in the 1990s - the answer is - as would be expected - it was NOT a Bush fabrication

[ZombieHorde]

19. Thanks for the link. nt

[Zomby Woof]

13. I have it within arm's reach of my desk

Yes, he does mention them specifically. He was relating the security briefings he had with Chimp's transition team, and Clinton said his team made it clear to Chimp's that Osama bin Laden and al Queda were the top 2 security threats facing the U.S.

[ZombieHorde]

18. Thank you. nt

[Whisp]

14. just something to keep in mind...

Bush Sr. wounded Iraq in the Gulf war. The first cut. Clinton sanctioned and bled them for 8 years, and Idiot the Junior came in to finish them off.

this is a co-ordinated and orchestrated assault on a sovereign country by both parties/presidents. Keep that in mind when you are believing in something just because Billy sez so.

[Codeine]

39. The UN sanctioned them, actually. nt

[formercia]

25. It's all about the Oil in the Caspian Basin

Afghanistan was the obvious choice to put a pipeline because it was closer to Asian Markets. It wouldn't matter who was living in Afghanistan. Either let the pipeline through or we will kill them all and let God sort them out, as Junior might have put it.

[applegrove]

35. bin Laden and Al Qaeda were #1 on the CIA hit list at the end of Clinton's term.

60 Minutes did a story on the CIA and it mentioned bin Laden was at the top of the list.