[WhiteGuy]

Another poster here commented the following: (I paraphrase)

The clifton administration had our highly paid intel experts zeroed in on osmama binLaden and the el-kida's back in the late 90's.

The clifton administration did nothing to solve the problem.

Beginning in January 2001, president bush was commander in chief.

Based on the intel gathered by the CIA, NSA, etc, there was the same clear danger, yet no action was taken to weaken or eliminate the el-kida terrorist group.

I don't understand this.

Someone please help me out here, this isn't true is it?

[GraniteStateConservative]

What I recall is that the Clinton WH had drawn up some plans but we didn't trust them to be useful so we drew up our own, which were ready in August of 2001.

[txrangerette]

Depends on the meaning of..."no
action was taken". The Bush folks
had been developing a plan to go
after al-Qaeda, & it had just been
shown to the Pres. the day before
9-11.

Please don't believe political
lies against this good man.

[cwb]

One of the problems might've been that this desperation and danger may have never made it to the desk of the president. When Bush took over, Clinton's people were still all over the place...usually in all the high places were decisions are made. If these people believed as Clinton...and that going after OBL was a violation of legal statutes, they most certainly wouldn't have passed their concerns onto Bush.

Hell, Janet Reno and her higher-ups in the Justice Department came down hard on Clinton for bombing Sudan and Afghanistan. It is hard to tell what Bush knew...but as we saw even after 9/11, we had legal beavers obstructing military operations that never made it to the top...ala the (I think) Mullah Omar spotting that was disengaged by some lawyer-type from the military. From what I understand, Rumsfeld put his foot through a glass when he found out that someone passed on it.

[alnick]

Beginning in January 2001, president bush was commander in chief. Based on the intel gathered by the CIA, NSA, etc, there was the same clear danger, yet no action was taken to weaken or eliminate the el-kida terrorist group. I don't understand this.

It took a few months to put something together, but Rice had the plan to take out the Taliban and AQ on President Bush's desk on 9/10/01. Bush acted, but he had only eight months and that wasn't enough time to get past planning stages.