Yeah, I write software for a living. Sometimes 60-70 hours per week from my house. I probabaly need to get out more.
You can either view as it could have also been strengthening our position with the Northern Alliance, the non-Taliban south, and just the regular Afghans during their 3 year drought, helping out all listed just because it was the right thing to do, or if it was wrong regardless that it again started with Clinton since it said we were the second biggest donor for the second year in a row. At least with the Bush admin they had only 5 months in power before making this decision Clinton had years. It would also not surprise me that the balance that the article said was given earlier in the year was part of Clinton's last budget. Again although I think it was more about help, like Jetstorm wrote Clinton could be embarrassed by a lot of things coming out about 9-11, and I do not think this AID stuff hurts Bush at all for reason I listed.
First of all, the northern alliance controlled only about 5 percent of the country prior to 9/11. You posted links suggesting that Clinton should have had the prescience to kill Bin Laden. You suggested that Clinton should have known *years* before 9/11. Yet, Bush provided aid to Afganistan knowing full well that the Taliban controlled at least 90 percent of the county and knowing full well that Bin Laden was in country and supported by the Taliban. Bush could have stopped it at any time. This aid almost certainly got into the hands of the Taliban and Bin Laden. My guess is that the aid was in part to fight the drug war. People die all over the world and we generally do nothing if it isn't in our interests. Why was Afganistan any different? So, you criticize Clinton for his failure to get Bin Laden YEARS before the fact, and you give Bush a pass. Bush did not take Bin Laden seriously. Terrorism was not his first order of business. Tax cuts and missile defense were his main agenda. Bush could have easily come out and said that the fight against terrorism is the new priority. We should increase funding of the CIA. He did not do that. Also, if the information about 9/11 would prove embarassing to Clinton and not Bush, Carl Rove would have leaked it already. They had no problem leaking national secrets about CIA operatives.
I guess you missed where I said I believed it was about the help. You just do not get about giving food and by-passing the Taliban. It was quite clear in the link you provided. Also, How do increases in defense spending not protect the US against all enemies? Regardless to take your incorrect view of giving food, Clinton had 8 years in office to get it right by your standard but you are holding Bush to a higher standard to get it "right" in his first 5 months of office. We are still finding out what Clinton knew during his Presidency, so how could Bush know everything in 5 months. But again I still think your view on giving food in May of 2001 is ridiculus. It does not even match the article that you posted as proof. By the way the links I posted were about a book from a former WSJ reporter. He does not just suggest that Clinton should have known to kill Bin Laden but also that Clinton had several opportunities to have Bin Laden handed to him including once in 1996 which was when 9-11 planning started. The book also talks about Clinton's basic inaction after the first WTC attack and the Embassy and Cole bombings. Do you think Bush would have passed up an offer to have Bin Laden handed to him? You are willing to believe that Bush scared the US into war but not willing to believe that Clinton did not scare us enough about Bin Laden. Also you brought up that the reason Bush will not release 9-11 information was because he would get embarrassed, and you then put down Jetstorm's view that it was Clinton that would get embarrassed. Yet you can only bring up that Bush gave food to the Afghan people, which Clinton had started. Rove does not have to leak anything. It is all coming out on its own.
lsu_buzz this is not a programming question but I'm hoping you might know something about this. I have a P4 2.4 gig computer with 512k ram running red hat 9.0 Wanting to upgrade the memory I bought an identical 512k stick (pc 2700 333mgh 512 DDR) When I boot it up with the additional memory the bios finds the new memory but the OS dosen't find it and it won't completely boot up. I get a blank black screen with a flashing cursor where there should be a command line. Any ideas? When I remove the extra stick of ram it boots up normally.
I run RedHat 8.0 with 512M memory. I did not upgrade to 9.0 because they made some significant changes to the kernel (multi-threading), and I am not sure if the bugs are fully worked out yet. I am no longer a hardware guy. My expertise is primarily software design. However, I would simply try swapping out memory modules. Remove your old module and replace with the new one. Then try booting up to test your system with the new module. This should tell you if the new module is good or not. If this works, it may well be 9.0 issue because Linux should *easily* handle 1 GIG of memory. I would try RedHat's site or one of the linux newsgroups. Some of the guys that hang out on the newsgroups are really good at this stuff.
I don't buy the argument that the aid 'by-passed' the Taliban. They controlled most of the country. My argument is not whether the aid was wrong at the time. My argument is that with 20/20 hindsight, it was wrong. I am using Republican standards of judgement here. You criticize Clinton because he 'passed up' all of these chances to kill Bin Laden. Implicit in your argument is that Clinton should have known better, and that the tradeoffs for not attacking Bin Laden earlier were not worth it. Then you give Bush a pass for sending aid into a region that was tightly controlled by Bin Laden and the Taliban. Aid that could have easily fallen into their control and helped them stay in power. If the warning signs were so crystal clear from 1996 - 2000, Bush did not need 9 months to figure out the policy. I think both administrations will get embarrased by the 9/11 investigation. Furthermore, my argument about aid is not meant to show that it is embarassing to Bush. It is meant to show that Bush had no idea of the danger we were facing. Furthermore, given Bush's tight connections with the Saudis as well as the Bush family business connections with the Bin Laden family via the Carlye Group, I would bet there is a lot of embarassing information on Bush that has yet to be released. And yes, Carl Rove would have no problem releasing national secrets to further the GOP cause. This administration purposely leaked national secrets about a CIA operative, and nothing will ever be done about it. Someone should go to jail, but I am not convinced it will happen.
Again it was food. The Taliban would have stayed in power with or without the food aid until we went over there after 9-11. You got on to me for comparing scaring the elderly to scaring the country, but here you are comparing Clinton passing up chances with Bin Laden to Bush giving to giving $43 million in food aid. I know more was given earlier in the year but was probably part of Clinton's budget. What warnings signs, under Clinton BL attacked our troops in Somalia, WTC, Embassies, USS Cole and Clinton did not take up Sudan offer to hand him over. Those are not warning signs those were attacks. The only hindsight is now knowing how many chances Clinton had to act on Bin Laden but did not. We have aided resistant groups several times in the past over the ruling power including Afghanistan when it was occupied by the USSR. Did we aid the USSR as well? I do not buy the Bush link to Bin Laden's family there has been no proof, but even if there was are you saying his family is guilty as well. As for Rove I said that he does need to leak in this matter as it is all coming out on its own. The same CIA agent who is letting her picture, a "fuzzy" one, be in an upcoming magazine with a story. Funny thing about this "leak" was that Novak's article had been out for awhile until someone decided it was the right time to try and blame it on Bush. No one in the public really knew who this guy's wife was until the Democrats and her husband decided it was the right time to bring it up. The most any one has proven is that when Novak was doing a story on the Ambassador he ask why he, a Democrat, was chosen to go to Africa, and the person said that his wife worked for the CIA. Robert Novak
When Bush came into power, Osama Bin Laden was the last thing on his mind. The FBI asked Ashcroft for increased funding for its counter-terrorism unit. Ashoft responded by *reducing* the anti-terriorism budget by $58 million. This is well documented. I did a little research on the Sudan issue. It always seemed a little weird that Sudan would offer up Bin Laden and want to be our best friend. We refuse, and we then hit them with a missile strike sometime later. It doesn't make a lot of sense. So educate me on this issue. 1. When was the information first made public that Sudan made the offer and wanted to become our new best friend? 2. Did Sudan offer to give Bin Laden to us or transfer him to Saudi Arabia? 3. Why didn't Clinton take them up on the offer? 4. Who provided the evidence that Sudan made the offer?
I think the links that have parts from the book "Losing Bin Laden" in the earlier post would help with parts of your questions. So you drop the ridiculous food argument and now move to Bush did not care about Bin Laden because of cuts to anti-terrorism program. You claim Bush lied about Iraq, which implies that he knew that there were no WMDs before the war but offer no proof. Here are some more links. Some do bring up an offer for him to go to Saudi Arabia another link A little more forgiving link cached LATimes http://observer.guardian.co.uk/waronterrorism/story/0,1373,560675,00.html Miniter foxnews
