[Kosh]

I f******king knew it.

[MP-Ryan]

That video is a retired Colonel giving his opinion; nothing there to indicate it was official policy.  As for the quote above the video, I didn't even see Powell, nevermind hear him say that.

The colonel is saying what a lot of people think, but it's all opinion at this juncture.

[General Battuta]

This just looks like an opinion piece.

[Klaustrophobia]

out of office for 2 years and everything is STILL bush's fault. 

[Nuclear1]

Well, he did kinda drive the country into the ground and let Osama escape from Tora Bora while taking us on a slight detour into a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 beyond the manufactured reasons that Bush forced down our throats and diverted a trillion dollars and six thousand lives that could have been used to hunt down Osama.

But yeah, blaming Bush for problems that Bush is responsible for is so immature.

[Kosh]

That video is a retired Colonel giving his opinion; nothing there to indicate it was official policy.  As for the quote above the video, I didn't even see Powell, nevermind hear him say that.

The colonel is saying what a lot of people think, but it's all opinion at this juncture.

Given that very few resources were actually put on the ground at that time to go find him, and given that Bush himself stated that finding Bin Laden wasn't a priority.

"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."
- G.W. Bush, 3/13/02

Seems like a pretty strong correlation to me.

[mxlm]

Well, we got him and the wars aren't over, so I guess we can discount that part.

I suppose it might have been a bit harder to go into Iraq, but given that it was trivially easy for the administration to sell the public on the war, a bit harder wouldn't have mattered at all.

[newman]

out of office for 2 years and everything is still bush's fault.

Fixed this for you

[Nuke]

out of office for 2 years and everything is STILL bush's fault. 

go by that logic and you can blame the clinton administration as well. they more or less had osama in their sights and didnt take the shot, granted 9/11 handnt happened yet. sometimes i think bush was more interested in saddam than he should have been, and perhaps allocated resources away from osama to get him, but thats about as far as my anti bush sentiment goes. bush would have acted on intel about osama if only to bolster his reputation or the reputation of his party, because thats how politics works. obama certainly is gonna use the killing of bin laden to his benefit when he comes up for re-election.

[headdie]

out of office for 2 years and everything is STILL bush's fault. 

go by that logic and you can blame the clinton administration as well. they more or less had osama in their sights and didnt take the shot, granted 9/11 handnt happened yet. sometimes i think bush was more interested in saddam than he should have been, and perhaps allocated resources away from osama to get him, but thats about as far as my anti bush sentiment goes. bush would have acted on intel about osama if only to bolster his reputation or the reputation of his party, because thats how politics works. obama certainly is gonna use the killing of bin laden to his benefit when he comes up for re-election.

you know why dont you, Iraq was his dad's war which Bush senior ballsed up, between that, OIL and hindsight it was inevitable Bush Jr would try it

[Snail]

Bush Sr. didn't balls up the first Gulf War, he just knew when to stop so that he didn't get drawn into a bigger cluster****.

[Nuke]

out of office for 2 years and everything is STILL bush's fault. 

go by that logic and you can blame the clinton administration as well. they more or less had osama in their sights and didnt take the shot, granted 9/11 handnt happened yet. sometimes i think bush was more interested in saddam than he should have been, and perhaps allocated resources away from osama to get him, but thats about as far as my anti bush sentiment goes. bush would have acted on intel about osama if only to bolster his reputation or the reputation of his party, because thats how politics works. obama certainly is gonna use the killing of bin laden to his benefit when he comes up for re-election.

you know why dont you, Iraq was his dad's war which Bush senior ballsed up, between that, OIL and hindsight it was inevitable Bush Jr would try it

its not a stretch of the imagination to say that bush jr was merely trying to settle a score for bush sr. but thats beside the point. nothing gets a politician huge brownie points more than killing a national enemy. bush did it to saddam, and obama did it to osama. politicians love brownie points.

[Luis Dias]

bush jr was spam trolled by the neo cons, who "explain'd" bush why 911 happened, and it all had to do with the lack of democracy in the ME. If you want to place guilt in iraq's war, do it on Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Darth Vader, et al. Bush jr was just giving you a stupid face to divert your attention.

[karajorma]

go by that logic and you can blame the clinton administration as well. they more or less had osama in their sights and didnt take the shot

When?

[Nuke]

when i read it in the ****ing news years ago.

[Bobboau]

Clinton has said it himself, that he had a few chances to get Bin Laden before he was big.

[headdie]

problem is during the Clinton years bin laden was a pita but not enough to take action like that.  The only reason the Pakistan raid hasn't resulted in the US getting politically clobbered is because of the profile of Bin Laden after 9/11.

[karajorma]

Clinton has said it himself, that he had a few chances to get Bin Laden before he was big.

I'd be interested in knowing exactly when and how considering that Clinton is also on the record as saying that unlike Bush at least he was trying to find him during the last year or so of his presidency.

[Bobboau]

it was a few years before, for instance when the Saudis kicked him out they offered to give him to us, but at the time we didn't have a solid legal case to tie him to the crimes he had committed so Clinton let him go.

[Nuclear1]

Clinton has said it himself, that he had a few chances to get Bin Laden before he was big.

I'd be interested in knowing exactly when and how considering that Clinton is also on the record as saying that unlike Bush at least he was trying to find him during the last year or so of his presidency.

The 9/11 Commission and Richard Clarke's book covered Clinton's involvement in going after bin Laden and confirmed that Clinton wanted Osama dead.  Clinton also went on air shortly after the 1998 Embassy Bombings and said his priority was hunting him, but this was about the same time that Republicans were busy trying to impeach him.  He also said similar things after the USS Cole attack in 2000.

He also sums it up pretty in this interview.