Posted on 03/23/2004 8:32:36 AM PST by presidio9
No kidding. We would still be waiting for protection if the Clinton Administration in the form of a Gore Presidency were still in power.
There was to be no reform and everything was kept as quiet as possible. THAT's the bias of the media!!!!!
I think it's obvious that he finally did something only because of his own political problems. By the way it worked - politically.
White House rebuts Clarke's charges
Moreover, Rice said that Clarke had failed to come up with a dynamic anti-terrorism strategy when asked to early in the Bush presidency. "What he gave me," Rice said on the CBS Early Show, "was a list of five ideas, most of which had been around since 1998, which were a kind of laundry list to, as he said, 'roll back Al-Qaeda over three to five years.' "
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1103678/posts
In March, the White House's Counterterrorism Security Group began drafting its own strategy for combating Al Qaeda. Mr. Clarke was still nominally in charge, but Bush aides were on the way to approving Mr. Clarke's recommendation that his group be divided into several new offices. On Oct. 12 [2000], an explosive-laden dinghy piloted by two suicide bombers exploded next to the American destroyer Cole in Yemen, killing 17 sailors. Intelligence analysts linked the bombing to Al Qaeda, but at a series of Cabinet-level meetings, Mr. Tenet of the C.I.A. and senior F.B.I. officials said the case was not conclusive. Mr. Clarke, the White House counterterrorism director, had no doubts about whom to punish. In late October [2000], officials said, he put on the table an idea he had been pushing for some time: bombing Mr. bin Laden's largest training camps in Afghanistan. With the administration locked in a fevered effort to broker a peace settlement in Israel, an election imminent and the two- term Clinton administration coming to a close, the recommendation went nowhere. Terrorism was not raised as an issue by either Vice President Al Gore or George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential campaign.
[snip]
In October 2000, the administration took another shot at killing Mr. bin Laden. When Mr. Berger called the president to tell him the effort had failed, he recalled, Mr. Clinton cursed. "Just keep trying," he said.
[Snip]
Administration officials say the president [Bush] was concerned about the growing threat and frustrated by the halfhearted efforts to thwart Al Qaeda. In July, Ms. Rice said, Mr. Bush likened the response to the Qaeda threat to "swatting at flies." He said he wanted a plan to "bring this guy down." The [Bush] administration's draft plan for fighting Al Qaeda included a $200 million C.I.A. program that, among other things, would arm the Taliban's enemies. Clinton administration officials had refused to provide significant money and arms to the Northern Alliance, which was composed mostly of ethnic minorities. [Clinton] Officials feared that large-scale support for the rebels would involve the United States too deeply in a civil war and anger Pakistan. President Bush's national security advisers approved the plan on Sept. 4 [2001], a senior administration official said, and it was to be presented to the president on Sept. 10. (However, the leader of the Northern Alliance was assassinated by Qaeda agents on Sept. 9.) Mr. Bush was traveling on Sept. 10 and did not receive it. The next day his senior national security aides gathered shortly before 9 a.m. for a staff meeting. At roughly the same moment, a hijacked Boeing 767 was plowing into the north tower of the World Trade Center.
RICHARD CLARKE National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counterterrorism, National Security Council
Policy Conference at Lansdowne Conference Center October 16, 1998
First, the list of the most active state sponsors of terrorism has noticeably shifted. Ten years ago, the list consisted of only Libya, Iraq, and Syria. They are all still in the business but not on the top of my list of the most active state sponsors. The two on the top of my list presently are Iran and Afghanistan.But, from General Schoomaker as reported by the Weekly Standard:Third, terrorists are acquiring new and dangerous weapons -- weapons of mass destruction and computer weapons.
National Security Adviser Sandy Berger wrote an article for the op-ed page of today's Washington Times about that bombing, providing the clearest rationale to date for what the United States did. He asks the following questions: What if you were the president of the United States and you were told four facts based on reliable intelligence. The facts were: Usama bin Ladin had attacked the United States and blown up two of its embassies; he was seeking chemical weapons; he had invested in Sudan's military-industrial complex; and Sudan's military-industrial complex was making VX nerve gas at a chemical plant called al-Shifa? Sandy Berger asks: What would you have done? What would Congress and the American people have said to the president if the United States had not blown up the factory, knowing those four facts?
If these are new trends, what is the United States doing about it? In May, the president signed a security directive, Presidential Decision Directive 62, which is partially classified and contains three new initiatives the United States is undertaking in addition to all of the counterterrorism programs it has pursued for many years. The first program is active, ongoing, everyday disruption of terrorist groups. Whereas I cannot go into detail about what actions the United States is taking to disrupt terrorist groups, the basic philosophy behind this policy mirrors community policing belief: Get them off the streets, round them up. It has worked with friendly governments, friendly police, and friendly intelligence agencies. Long before our embassies in Africa were attacked on August 7, 1998, the United States began implementing this presidential directive. Since the embassies were attacked, we have disrupted bin Ladin terrorist groups, or cells. Where possible and appropriate, the United States will bring the terrorists back to this country and put them on trial. That statement is not an empty promise.
AS TERRORIST ATTACKS escalated in the 1990s, White House rhetoric intensified. President Clinton met each successive outrage with a vow to punish the perpetrators. After the Cole bombing in 2000, for example, he pledged to "find out who is responsible and hold them accountable." And to prove he was serious, he issued an increasingly tough series of Presidential Decision Directives. The United States would "deter and preempt...individuals who perpetrate or plan to perpetrate such acts," said Directive 39, in June 1995. Offensive measures would be used against foreign terrorists posing a threat to America, said Directive 62, in May 1998. Joint Staff contingency plans were revised to provide for offensive and preemptive options. And after al Qaeda's bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, President Clinton signed a secret "finding" authorizing lethal covert operations against bin Laden.Back to the speach:[snip]
These examples, among others, depict an increasingly aggressive, lethal, and preemptive counterterrorist policy. But not one of these operations--all authorized by President Clinton--was ever executed. General Schoomaker's explanation is devastating. "The presidential directives that were issued," he said, "and the subsequent findings and authorities, in my view, were done to check off boxes. The president signed things that everybody involved knew full well were never going to happen. You're checking off boxes, and have all this activity going on, but the fact is that there's very low probability of it ever coming to fruition. . . ." And he added: "The military, by the way, didn't want to touch it. There was great reluctance in the Pentagon."
The United States is engaged and busy with new policies and programs, but there are still those who do not yet understand U.S. policy on terrorism. To preempt some of the most frequently asked questions about U.S. terrorism policy -- which sometimes are statements posing as questions -- I thought I would offer the answers first.Is not terrorism, like war, just really politics by other means? Is a little bit of terrorism not, after all, a fact of life? Is not terrorism always there like death and taxes? Can we really sustain our enthusiasm and our resources against terrorism, or do we only get involved after U.S. embassies get blown up in Africa, then tend to forget about it?
Are not terrorists really a little bit smarter and more adaptive than governments and always capable of outsmarting stodgy, old, bureaucratic governments? Is not it sometimes better to give in a little to terrorism rather than being so ideological about opposing it? Finally, is it not true that just as crime does pay, terrorism really does pay?
Presidential Decision Directive 62 offers President Bill Clinton's answers to those questions. One, the United States will never accept terrorism as a legitimate means of political activity. Two, the United States will never tolerate any terrorism at any level. Three, the United States will always be energetic at rooting out terrorism. Four, the United States will adopt, adapt, adjust, and seek to stay ahead of terrorists. Five, the United States will never appease terrorism or make concessions to terrorists. Finally, as the president, the attorney general and the secretary of state said publicly, the United States will punish those who engage in terrorism no matter how long it takes, no matter how much money it costs, and no matter where they seek to hide. The terrorism policy of the Clinton administration is not just what we say. It is what we do and will continue to do every day.
This is a lie. The Republicans questioned the effectiveness of sending million dollar cruise missles hundreds of miles to blow up underidentified targets. The saw Clinton's actions for what they were: A cynical attempt to deflect attention from other issues, rather than an honest strategy for eliminating UBL. They were right. If Clinton wanted UBL, he could have had him when the Sudanese offered him to us three years after his first attack on the Trade Center.
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