Posted on 10/29/2003 9:03:32 AM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
Gen. Wesley Clark's attempt to blame President Bush on Tuesday for leaving America vulnerable to the 9/11 attacks was the harshest assault yet on the White House by any of the nine announced presidential candidates. But it was not completely unprecedented. Two - and only two - prominent Democrats have previously attempted to blame Bush for 9/11: Bill and Hillary Clinton. The outrageousness of Clark's rhetorical broadside - where he said the Bush administration could not "walk away from its responsibility" for causing America's darkest day raises the pertinent question: Did the former first couple put Gen. Clark up to it? If Clark's assault on Bush wasn't the Clintons' idea in the first place, or didn't come from the small army of ex-Clinton aides who now dominate Clark's campaign - at the very least the ex-military man seems to have taken his cue on this topic from the two people who pushed him into the presidential race in the first place. And that would be Bill and Hillary. As early as November 2001, for instance, when the rubble at Ground Zero was still smoldering, Sen. Clinton tried to blame the Bush tax cut for leaving America vulnerable to Osama bin Laden's kamikaze attacks. "If we hadn't passed the big tax cut last spring, that I believe undermined our fiscal responsibility and our ability to deal with this new threat of terrorism, we wouldn't be in the fix we're in today," Hillary complained to CNN's Jonathan Karl. She was at in again a few months later, when news broke that Bush had been briefed a month before 9/11 on the possibility that al Qaeda's next attack might involve airplane hijackings. From the well of the Senate, Hillary announced, "I am simply here today on the floor of this hallowed chamber to seek answers to the questions being asked by my constituents, questions raised by one of our newspapers in New York with the headline 'Bush Knew.'... "The president knew what?" the former first lady bellowed. "My constituents would like to know the answer to that and many other questions, not to blame the president or any other American but just to know, to learn from experience, to do all we can today to ensure that a 9/11 never happens again." Sen. Clinton hinted darkly at the possibility of a 9/11 White House cover-up. "Why (do) we know today, May 16, about the warning [Bush] received. Why did we not know this on April 16 or March 16 or February or Jan. 16 or Aug. 16 of last year?" Hours later Sen. Clinton told reporters, "Clearly the public demands answers immediately. The people of New York deserve those answers more than anyone. I believe that getting the facts out would be the very best response to this troubling news." The prospect that 9/11 was Bush's fault was on Hillary's mind again last January, when she said during a New York radio interview, "I know that during the transition between the Clinton and Bush administrations that the outgoing administration told the incoming one that they would spend more time on terrorism and bin Laden than anything else." Without skipping a beat New York's junior Senator added, "That wasn't their priorities. Their priorities were different." Mr. Clinton, who has, since 9/11, made a habit of telling audiences that his aides thought he was "too obsession" with getting bin Laden, chimed in on the episode described by his wife earlier this month. "I told [Bush] that in my opinion, the biggest security problem was Osama bin Laden." Mr. Clinton claimed, however, that Bush refused to heed his warning, In fact, he said that Bush's failure to appreciate the gravity of his advice on bin Laden was "one of the two or three of the biggest disappointments that I had." So when Gen. Clark blames President Bush for 9/11, its worth remembering that the Clintons' political protege is only picking up where they left off.
Even if rhetorical, that's the silliest damn question I've heard yet. Wesley Clark is the Clinton's Stepford candidate.
The Clintons would never leave an email, phone, or fax trail to Clark...they don't have to. And they sure don't have to put Clark up to anything, that's why Clark's staff is made up of Clinton minders. It's their job make certain every word Clark utters follows the Clinton script.
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