President George W. Bush underscored his concern in a May 8 statement: "The threat of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons being used against the United States - while not immediate - is very real."
With Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ripping apart obsolete defense doctrines to keep the United States on the cutting edge of world leadership, others, with a much lower profile, are working on a more fundamental issue: homeland security.
After years of dithering under Clinton, say defense specialists, the Bush White House is taking the matter seriously. "Virtually every vital service: water supplies, transportation, energy, banking and finance, telecommunications, public health - all of these rely on computer and fiber-optic lines, the switches and routers that come from them," notes National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice. These are vulnerable. In the short time since his inauguration in January, Bush has instructed government offices to coordinate for homeland security and defense, and assigned Vice President Richard Cheney to head a group to draft a national terrorism-response plan by October 1.
~ June 18, 2001 ~
Dec. 18, 2000: the Electoral College officially elected George W. Bush - America's 43rd President.
Dec. 19, 2000: Clinton went to Kofi Annan and asked that the UN place tougher sanctions on Afghanistan if the Taliban didn't hand over Bin Laden in 30 days. Clinton and Annan both knew how the Taliban and Bin Laden would react to this - Kofi, who didn't delay for 6 months, allowed the vote immediately, pulled the UN workers out of Afghanistan as he announced the new threat to the Taliban: ===========
"Today, the United Nations removed all its remaining relief workers from the country, fearing a backlash from the Taliban, who will be almost completely isolated diplomatically when the resolution takes effect in 30 days, a grace period during which the Taliban could avoid sanctions by meeting the Council's demands." - Tough Sanctions Imposed on Taliban Government Split UN, by Barbara Crossette, New York Times, Dec. 20, 2000.
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Dec. 20, 2000: UN announced tougher sanctions on the Taliban - to go into effect in 30 days - just in time for
January 20, 2001: President-elect GW Bush's Inaugeration Day.
"One morning at the nub end of Bill Clinton's presidency, Clinton chief of staff John Podesta walked into a senior staff meeting in the Roosevelt Room waving a copy of USA Today. Holding the paper aloft, Podesta read the headline out loud, "Clinton actions annoy Bush." The article detailed the new rules and Executive Orders the outgoing President was issuing in his final days, actions aimed in equal measure at locking in Clinton's legacy (in areas like environmental protection) and bedeviling his successor. "What's Bush so annoyed about?" Podesta asked with a devilish smile. "He's got four years to try to undo all the stuff we've done." Link. "We laid a few traps,"