Posted on 04/28/2007 11:23:50 AM PDT by K-oneTexas
Bill Clinton's Disastrous Record of Fighting Terror Terrorism by Kathy Miller April 28, 2007
Rudy Guiliani struck a nerve with the Democrats recently when he stated that if a Democrat is elected president in 2008, America will be at risk for another terrorist attack on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001.
Guiliani stated that “They were at war with us before we realized it, going back to ’90s with all the Americans killed by the PLO and Hezbollah and Hamas,” he said. “They came here and killed us in 1993 [with the first attack on New York’s World Trade Center, in which six people died], and we didn’t get it. We didn’t get it that this was a war. Then Sept. 11, 2001, happened, and we got it.”
Hillary responded by saying, “We have to protect our country from terrorism — it shouldn’t be a Democratic fight or a Republican fight,” Clinton said. “The plain truth is that this administration has done too little to protect our ports, make our mass transit safer and protect our cities. They have isolated us in the world and have let al Qaeda regroup.”
But the plain truth is, her husband had a disastrous record of handling terrorists threats, and did very little to protect our nation.
On February 26, 1993 terrorists attacked the World Trade Center during the Clinton administration. The explosion caused 6 deaths, 1,042 injuries, and nearly $600 million in property damage. Bill Clinton never visited the World Trade Center sight after the attack, and during his weekly radio address, advised Americans to “not over react.”
The attack was the first attack on US soil since the attack on Pearl Harbor, and was clearly an act of war. It was planned by a group of conspirators including Ramzi Yousef, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, El Sayyid Nosair, Mahmud Abouhalima, Mohammad Salameh, Nidal Ayyad, Ahmad Ajaj, and Abdul Rahman Yasin. They received financing from al-Qaeda member Khaled Shaikh Mohammed, Yousef's uncle, who was the mastermind behind the 9-11 attacks.
Ramzi Yousef was later found with an Iraqi passport in Pakistan. According to phone records, Mohammad Salameh made 46 phone calls to Iraq after the attack. The FBI believed that Yousef was possibly an Iraqi intelligence agent who worked for Saddam. They believed that Saddam was likely behind the attack since the attack happened on the second anniversary of the end of the Gulf War, and the attack was his revenge for the war.
Abdul Rahman Yasin fled to Iraqafter the attack. He was the only member of the al Qaeda cell that detonated the 1993 World Trade Center bomb to remain at large in the Clinton years.
In the spring of 1994, a Jordanian stringer working for ABC News spotted Abdul Rahman Yasin outside his father's house in Baghdad and learned from neighbors that he worked for the Iraqi government. As recently as May 1998, FBI director Louis Freeh affirmed that Yasin was in Iraq.
Yet the Clinton administration made no serious attempt to secure Yasin's extradition. Baghdad might well have refused to turn him over, but the US could have used Yasin's presence in Iraq to isolate and condemn the Iraqi regime. It was as if the administration did not want to draw attention to aspects of the case which suggested an Iraqi link to the Trade Center bombing.
US forces recently discovered a cache of documents in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, that show that Iraq gave Mr. Yasin both a house and monthly salary.
According to Laurie Mylroie who served as Clinton's adviser on Iraq during the 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton’s decision to hit Baghdad with cruise missiles on June 26, 1993, was made in part because he believed Iraq had been involved in the first World Trade Center bombing four months earlier. New York FBI really believed Iraq was behind the Trade Center bombing -- Clinton avoided raising the possibility the public might demand that the United States do a lot more than just bomb one building, and Clinton didn't want to do more. Clinton wanted to focus on domestic politics, including health policy, according to Mylroie.
Five weeks after the World Trade Center bombing, four suspects were under arrest. The mastermind, Ramzi Yousef, had fled. Still, at that point in early April 1993, the FBI proclaimed that it had captured most of those involved. The bombing, it claimed, was the work of a loose group of fundamentalists with no ties to any state. The predictable media frenzy followed and, perhaps as a result, some obvious questions were not asked. How could the government know so early in the investigation that those it had arrested had no ties to any state? If the government knew so much so soon, then why did one of those arrested never stand trial for the bombing, and why were three others indicted much later? In short, the Justice Department determined that the bombing had no state sponsorship even before it decided definitively who had been involved.
Yet by responding to state-sponsored terrorism solely by arresting and trying individual perpetrators, the US government, in effect, invites such states to commit acts of terror in such a way as to leave behind a few relatively minor figures to be arrested, tried, and convicted. This makes it unlikely that the larger, more important, and more difficult question of state sponsorship will ever be addressed.
But there was no intelligence investigation of the World Trade Center bombing. The CIA is, after all, prohibited from operating in America. Of course, a crack inter-agency team could have been established to examine the question of state sponsorship. But Clinton administration officials set up no such team.
In 1994, Bill Clinton hushed up a federal report that warned of possible terrorist strikes, including how hijackers could use airliners to hit landmarks such as the Pentagon or White House.
The Clinton administration never released "Terror 2000" to the public, purportedly because of concerns in the State Department it would cause panic. The Sept. 17, 2001 story by UPI Pentagon correspondent Pam Hess said the report, which was obtained exclusively by United Press International, not only outlined the changing face of terrorism but also seemed to predict the scope and timing of the attacks carried out against the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
"Targets such as the World Trade Center not only provide the requisite casualties but because of their symbolic nature provide more bang for the buck. In order to maximize their odds for success, terrorist groups will likely consider mounting multiple, simultaneous operations with the aim of overtaxing a government's ability to respond, as well as to demonstrate their professionalism and reach," states "Terror 2000." The report was compiled in 1994 after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, from research and interviews of 41 intelligence, government and private industry experts, including foreign governments such as Israel and Russia. The report was distributed to the Defense Department, State Department, FEMA, intelligence communities and members of Congress on June 24, 1994, according to author Marvin Cetron.
On March 8, 1995, two US diplomats are killed in Karachi, Pakistan. Bill Clinton had no response to the attacks.
On June 25, 1996 a fuel truck explodes outside the United States military's Khobar Towers building, killing 19 military personnel and wounding 515. Bill Clinton had no response to the attacks.
On November 12, 1997 four US businessmen are killed in Karachi, Pakistan by members of the Islamic Revolutionary Council. President Clinton had no response to the attacks.
On August 7, 1998, in near simultaneous explosions at US Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, Al Qaeda terrorists kill 291 and wound 5,000 in Kenya and kill 10 and wound 77 in Tanzania .
In response to the attack, on August 22, 1998, President Clinton launched airstrikes on Afghanistan and a Shifa Pharmaceutical company in Sudan. According to a New York Times article Clinton admits that the air missiles were not aimed at Bin Laden. "Let our actions today send this message loud and clear," Clinton said in an address from the Oval Office. "There are no expendable American targets. There will be no sanctuary for terrorists." Apparently the strike was to just send a message, but not to kill Bin Laden.
To justify the Sudanese plant as a target, Clinton aides said it was involved in the production of deadly VX nerve gas. Officials further determined that Bin Laden owned a stake in the operation and that its manager had traveled to Baghdad to learn bomb-making techniques from Saddam's weapons scientists.
In 1998 an indictment was issued against Bin Laden. The indictment said: "Al Qaeda also forged alliances with the National Islamic Front in the Sudan and with the government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hezbollah for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States. In addition, al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the government of Iraq." (Note: It was later determined that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was responsible for the Embassy bombings.)
On December 4, 1998, Bill Clinton received a Presidential Daily Briefing entitled, "Bin Laden Preparing to Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks". This was almost 3 years before the 9-11 attacks.
After Bill Clinton learned of the link between al Qaeda and Iraq, On December 16, 1998, Bill Clinton launched military strikes against Iraq. The president said “Iraq's refusal to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors presented a threat to the entire world. "Saddam (Hussein) must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons," Clinton said.
Clinton also called Hussein a threat to his people and to the security of the world. "The best way to end that threat once and for all is with a new Iraqi government -- a government ready to live in peace with its neighbors, a government that respects the rights of its people," Clinton said.
President Clinton announced a new policy toward Iraq of "regime change." On October 31, 1998 the president signed into law H.R. 4655, the "Iraq Liberation Act." The new Act appropriated funds to Iraqi opposition groups in the hope of removing Saddam Hussein from power and replacing his regime with a democracy. In September, 1999 Bill Clinton received a federal report that warned that terrorists could hijack a plane and crash it into the Pentagon or another government building.
The report, titled "Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why?," cautioned that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network might seek revenge for the 1998 US air strike on bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan.
"Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House," the September 1999 report said. In the late summer of 2000, an Egyptian informant warns US intelligence that al-Qaeda will attack an American warship. [PBS Frontline, 10/3/2002]
In late September two weeks before the attack on the Cole, in fact, two days before the attack on the Cole, [Able Danger] saw an increase of activity that led them to say to the senior leadership in the Pentagon at that time, in the Clinton administration, there’s something going to happen in Yemen and we better be on high alert, but it was discounted.
On October 12, 2000 The USS. Cole, a destroyer in the United States Navy, is rammed by a boat full of explosives in the harbor of Aden, Yemen. 17 sailors are killed and 39 more are injured.
On October 18, 2000, investigators in Yemen uncovered evidence suggesting the bomb attack on the warship USS Cole had been a meticulously organized conspiracy, which a leading US terrorism expert said may have been a joint operation between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.
On November 7, 2000, In the wake of the USS Cole bombing, National Security Adviser Sandy Berger met with Defense Secretary William Cohen to discuss a new approach to targeting bin Laden. Berger says, “We’ve been hit many times, and we’ll be hit again, yet we have no option beyond cruise missiles.” He once again brings up the idea of a “boots on the ground” option—a Delta Force special operation to get bin Laden. A plan is drawn up but the order to execute it is never given. Cohen and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Henry Shelton oppose the plan.
By December 21, the CIA reports that it strongly suspects that al-Qaeda was behind the bombing, but fails to definitively make that conclusion. That makes such an attack politically difficult. Says a former senior Clinton aide, “If we had done anything, say, two weeks before the election, we’d be accused of helping [presidential candidate] Al Gore.
In December 2000, the military not only drew up plans to directly target bin Laden, but also comes up with a larger plan looking at alternatives to assassination. Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, the director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, prepared a plan to incorporate military, economic, diplomatic, and political activities to pressure the Taliban to expel bin Laden. A “Phased Campaign Concept” calls for wider-ranging military strikes against the Taliban and other targets, but doesn’t include contingency plans for an invasion of Afghanistan. The concept is briefed to Deputy National Security Adviser Donald Kerrick and other officials, but it is never acted on. Former CIA terror analyst Michael Scheur claimed that Bill Clinton had at least 8 to 10 changes to kill or capture Bill Laden, but Bill Clinton refused to have him killed or captured.
On March 16, 2004, NBC News had exclusively obtained a secret CIA videotape of what is believed to be Osama bin Laden a year before 9/11. Lisa Myers explores: Why didn't the United States strike, and why was he never killed or captured? Watch NBC exclusive video
Rudy was right to criticize the Democrats, and he should continue to hit Hillary on her husband’s infectiveness in fighting terror. Kathy Miller writes for the The Hillary Project.
Great excuse to have the Clintons back in the White House!! LOL...better yet appointed an position again...the outright dishonesty with We the People is amazing isn’t it?
America doesn’t care about this anymore; we’re in the midst of the Democrats becoming the “National Enquirer”, with investigation after investigation into Republicans, without any crimes being committed, without any evidence, etc., but simply to keep Americans informed with spiced-up attacks continuously trumpeted on all the MSM they can find.......
bump
If Hillary is highlighting her experience in the White House as a qualification for the presidency, she has to take responsibility for the failures as well.
Even if you are not a Rudy fan, even do not want to vote for him, this article exemplifies why its really good to have him running...he sums up terrorism hitting the US very well from 9/11 and WTC 93 too.
How much of this stuff was in that all comprehensive, meticulously researched 9/11 Report???
The frosh Senator from NY could write legislation to fix this problem. What is she waiting for?
Great summary. Unless I missed it, the author failed to mention that bin Laden declared war against the US, in writing, in 1996.
“Clinton wanted to focus on domestic politics...”
Thus Monica et al. He was so good at it.
I know people who honestly believe that Bill was the best president we ever had.
I am so stunned when I hear people say it.
There was never a larger crook in power, except maybe FDR
bookmark
True. But FDR had more balls when it came to war. Another Clinton in The White House will be a disaster for The Republic.
I've read articles indicating that the death toll would have been much higher if the explosion had done what it was expected to. The plan, as I understand it, was to topple one tower into the other, taking them both down simultaneously. Doing so would not have allowed any evacuation to take place.
The more I learn, the only reason FDR fought was to empower Russia.
She also wouldn't let him back in the White House..There aren't enough bedrooms.
My mistake..Bill doesn't need a bedroom..just carpet.
That may be. But he still had more balls than Clinton.
By the way, I am no fan of FDR. He engineered the welfare state.
Good job, Kathy Miller, but I doubt it will get very far with the sheeple.
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