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Doubtful. Gore would have taken Clinton's intelligence reports seriously that Bin Laden was planning a terror attack, and stopped it before it happened. Unlike W that couldn't care less, he was busy doing what he did best, he was on vacation.
9/11 never would have happened, so there never would have been a reason to invade Afghanistan let alone the false war in Iraq.
Absolutely. Gore would have had all hands on deck after Katrina, not ignore them for about a week like W did.
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That's not just kool-aid as one of your fellow liberal posters chided you for. That's a whole new level: krak-aid.
Remember that most of the planning for 9/11 took place when Clinton was still in office. For pity's sake the first WTC bombing took place in 1993. Why didn't Clinton, to whom you appear to attribute magical powers, step in & stop it.
Would Gore have gone to Iraq? Don't be so sure he woudn't have. You can find several videos on youtube where Gore excoriates HW Bush for being soft on Saddam. Here's one, there are several longer more detailed versions available:
Don't forget who Gore's running mate was: Joe Lieberman, so staunch a supporter of the Bush policies that he actually wound up having to leave the Democratic party.
Some of these lefty posters are so over the top it makes me wonder if they are not really right-wingers trying to mock the left. Tough to reallly tell....
According to Bruce Bartlett, a conservative econ-type, Gore actually did a bang-up job with his 'reinventing government' project. Unlike the Obama admin, those claims of reducing the numbers of federal employees (or at least restraining growth) were actually true under Clinton, at least the 2nd term.
Thus we might have seen more restrained spending with an R Congress and a D Pres. Gore. No bridge to nowwhere, etc. But we likely would have seen a 'green jobs' fiasco to rival Obama's. My best guess is that Gore-Lieberman would have done about as well with the War on Terror as Bush-Cheney. We might have been actually better off, only because the lefty haters would not have felt compelled to undermine a Pres. Gore when things went bad, as they did with W. Bush. There never would have been the ludicrous WMD controversy; it would have been a complete non-issue with a Pres. Gore instead of a Pres. Bush.
The housing bubble & crash might have been even worse under a Pres Gore since the Clinton Admin and Fannie execs were so tight, while the Bush admin was somewhat a natural enemy of Fannie.
Would 9/11 had still happened?
Would we have had several wars?
Would Katrina had gone a little better?
Would the economy had tanked?
What if...?
Discuss
Not sure if 9/11 would have been prevented, but I doubt we would have invaded Iraq, Afghanistan for sure.
Katrina would have had a much better response.
The economy would still have tanked, thanks to the repeal of Glass-Steagall act. When banks become casinos the crap is bound to hit the fan sooner or later.
In August 2002 Richard A. Clarke, former chief counter-terrorism adviser, discusses US strategy in dealing with islamic terrorists:
RICHARD CLARKE: Actually, I've got about seven points, let me just go through them quickly. Um, the first point, I think the overall point is, there was no plan on Al Qaeda that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration.
Second point is that the Clinton administration had a strategy in place, effectively dating from 1998. And there were a number of issues on the table since 1998. And they remained on the table when that administration went out of office -- issues like aiding the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, changing our Pakistan policy -- uh, changing our policy toward Uzbekistan. And in January 2001, the incoming Bush administration was briefed on the existing strategy. They were also briefed on these series of issues that had not been decided on in a couple of years.
And the third point is the Bush administration decided then, you know, in late January, to do two things. One, vigorously pursue the existing policy, including all of the lethal covert action findings, which we've now made public to some extent.
And the point is, while this big review was going on, there were still in effect, the lethal findings were still in effect. The second thing the administration decided to do is to initiate a process to look at those issues which had been on the table for a couple of years and get them decided.
So, point five, that process which was initiated in the first week in February, uh, decided in principle, uh in the spring to add to the existing Clinton strategy and to increase CIA resources, for example, for covert action, five-fold, to go after Al Qaeda.
The sixth point, the newly-appointed deputies -- and you had to remember, the deputies didn't get into office until late March, early April. The deputies then tasked the development of the implementation details, uh, of these new decisions that they were endorsing, and sending out to the principals.
Over the course of the summer -- last point -- they developed implementation details, the principals met at the end of the summer, approved them in their first meeting, changed the strategy by authorizing the increase in funding five-fold, changing the policy on Pakistan, changing the policy on Uzbekistan, changing the policy on the Northern Alliance assistance.
And then changed the strategy from one of rollback with Al Qaeda over the course of five years, which it had been, to a new strategy that called for the rapid elimination of Al Qaeda. That is in fact the timeline.
JIM ANGLE: You're saying that the Bush administration did not stop anything that the Clinton administration was doing while it was making these decisions, and by the end of the summer had increased money for covert action five-fold. Is that correct?
CLARKE: All of that's correct.
ANGLE: So, just to finish up if we could then, so what you're saying is that there was no -- one, there was no plan; two, there was no delay; and that actually the first changes since October of '98 were made in the spring months just after the administration came into office?
CLARKE: You got it. That's right.
Richard A. Clarke
Former chief counter-terrorism adviser
August, 2002
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