August's Can of Blogger Beer.

Is here and discusses our government's knowledge of Osama Bin Laden, what he was about, how difficult it is to prevent attacks hinted by vague warnings, and how it is silly to believe President Clinton did not know Al-Qaida was behind the USS Cole bombing.

In the summer of 1998 I was packing up to leave the UAE for good (I would return but my residency there was coming to an end). One day in June I came into the office to do something and found the ole warden notice from our embassy in Abu Dhabi. It warned us that Osama Bin Laden (and I do recall the notice named Osama bin Laden explicitly) was up to something. Then it went on to enumerate (yet again) the standard list of security precautions.

Okay, I get packed up and finally return to the USofA which was in early July. In early August I was up north watching some tv with my brother. The regularly scheduled programming we were watching broke in with a news alert. They announced the bombings in East Africa. The first words out of my mouth were: Osama Bin Laden! Momentarily later they announced the chief suspect Osama Bin Laden!

So, our intelligence agencies had an idea of what OBL was about. Our State Department had an idea of what OBL was about. Now of course, we do not know exactly how much they knew. Anyone can stand up and say I will attack the USA and what does it mean? Is it misinformation? Is he going to hit shipping, an embassy? Where? When? How? With whom? etc etc etc. So, I am not upset they were not able to prevent that attack (I am upset with those who attacked).

But what more did President Clinton want? I do not take him at his word for the above statement after all he supposedly knew enough to shoot some cruise missiles at empty tents in Afghanistan and a factory in The Sudan. Why did he suppose it was any other organization that put together the Cole bombing?

Source: Blogger Beer - Warden Notices and He Knew. August 17, 2005
The blog was touched off by a Belmont Club blog. The essential points of the blog are

1. A warning that terrorists plan to kidnap jet planes is way too vague to be able to do anything
2. That President Clinton's claim he knew not who carried out the USS Cole bombing was silliness.
3. That President Clinton had (or should have, his intelligence agencies and state dept certainly knew of it) similar warnings to what President Bush had about 9/11 prior to the East African embassy bombings.