Posted on 04/08/2004 9:03:44 AM PDT by presidio9
Some people are saying that the Sept. 11 attacks came about because Clinton didn't pay enough attention to terrorism during his terms in office.
That's just a lie. Before the attacks, Clinton paid far more attention to terrorism than Bush did. This is not to say that the attacks were Bush's fault. I'm just saying they weren't Clinton's.
Fact: Clinton stopped an al-Qaeda terrorist attack in America in 1999. The story of Ahmed Ressam, who was stopped at the Canadian border in December 1999 on his way to blow up Los Angeles International Airport with a car full of explosives is well-known. And Richard Clarke, chief of counter-terrorism under Clinton and Bush, told "60 Minutes" why it wasn't just luck:
On March 30, CBS News reported on the interview, saying that when the CIA heard rumblings of a domestic terrorist attack by al-Qaeda in 1999, "Clarke says [President] Clinton ordered his Cabinet to go to battle stations, meaning they went on high alert, holding meetings nearly every day.
"That, Clarke says, helped thwart a major attack on Los Angeles International Airport, when an al Qaeda operative was stopped at the border with Canada, driving a car full of explosives.
"Clarke harshly criticizes President Bush for not going to battle stations when the CIA warned him of a comparable threat in the months before Sept. 11: 'He never thought it was important enough for him to hold a meeting on the subject, or for him to order his National Security Adviser to hold a Cabinet-level meeting on the subject.'
"Finally, says Clarke, 'The cabinet meeting I asked for [on al-Qaeda] right after the inauguration took place-one week prior to 9/11.'"
The Bush administration has criticized other parts of Clarke's interview, but not the chain of events just described.
This is not to say that the attacks were Bush's fault. I'm just saying they weren't Clinton's.
Fact: Clinton destroyed the rest of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction programs in 1998. In his report to Congress on Oct. 2 of last year, Bush's chief weapons inspector, David Kay, asserted that the reason his team was unable to find any WMDs was because Iraq's capability to produce such weapons was "reduced-if not entirely destroyed-during operations Desert Storm and Desert Fox [Clinton's 1998 airstrikes], 13 years of UN sanctions and UN inspections." Republicans at the time claimed Clinton was only trying to divert attention from the all-important Lewinsky affair. But we still haven't found any WMDs because Clinton blew them up. If, as Bush claims, preventing Hussein from having weapons of mass destruction is an essential part of the war on terrorism, then Clinton seems to have done the job six years ago without losing a single soldier. Mission accomplished.
Fact: Clinton ordered a missile strike against an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan in 1998, missing Osama bin Laden by an hour, but killing some of the leaders. And the Washington Post reported on Oct. 3, 2001 that Clinton had also approved CIA training of 60 Pakistani commandos to kill or capture bin Laden, a mission that was scrubbed when Nawaz Sharif, the then-Prime Minister of Pakistan, was deposed in a military coup.
In addition, "Special Forces troops and helicopter gunships were kept on alert in the region, ready to launch a raid if solid intelligence pinpointed bin Laden's whereabouts." That continued until...Bush became president.
There's more. As AP reported on June 24, 2003, "When President Bush took office in January 2001, the White House was told that Predator drones had recently spotted bin Laden as many as three times and officials were urged to arm the unmanned planes with missiles to kill the al-Qaeda leader.
"But the administration failed to get drones back into the Afghan skies until after the Sept. 11 attacks later that year, current and former U.S. officials say...The drones were one component of a broader plan that [Richard] Clarke, a career government employee, had devised in the final days of the Clinton administration to go after al-Qaeda after the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole. Clinton officials decided just before Christmas 2000 to forward the plan to the incoming Bush administration rather than implement it during Clinton's final days, the officials said."
Clinton was aware of the problem and had a plan to deal with it. He told Bush about it and Bush did nothing until after Sept. 11. This is not to say that the attacks were Bush's fault. I'm just saying they weren't Clinton's. See?
I know there are some readers out there who are thinking that somehow I am twisting the evidence, that Clinton was still "soft on terrorism," that all this is just all a bunch of liberal "Bush-bashing." You know who you are.
But you don't have to take my word for it. Take the word of Condoleeza Rice, Bush's national security advisor.
As it happens, on Sept. 11, 2001, Rice was scheduled to give a foreign policy speech outlining what the Bush administration thought was the major threat to America: ballistic missiles. The Bush administration thought what we needed was a missile defense "shield." According to last Thursday's Washington Post, the text of her speech (which wasn't delivered, due to the terrorist attacks) was to criticize the Clinton administration for paying too much attention to counter-terrorism, at the expense of missile defense.
That fits. After all, only four days earlier, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he would recommend a presidential veto if the (then) Democratic-controlled Senate pursued efforts to shift $600 million from missile defense to counter-terrorism.
This is in stark contrast to the characterization of the Clinton administration, as reported in a May 27, 2002, Newsweek article that described then-National Security Advisor Sandy Berger as "totally preoccupied with fears of a domestic attack."
The article goes on to say that "[w]hen, in January 2001, Berger gave Rice her handover briefing, he covered the bin Laden threat in detail, and, sources say, warned her: 'You will be spending more time on this issue than on any other.' Rice was alarmed by what she heard, and asked for a strategy review. But the effort was marginalized and scarcely mentioned in ensuing months as the administration committed itself to other priorities, like national missile defense (NMD) and Iraq."
And what was Bush doing all this time? According to the Aug. 7, 2001, Washington Post, "By the time President Bush returns to Washington on Labor Day after the longest presidential vacation in 32 years, he will have spent all or part of 54 days since the inauguration at his parched but beloved ranch. That's almost a quarter of his presidency. Throw in four days last month at his parents' seaside estate in Kennebunkport, Maine, and 38 full or partial days at the presidential retreat at Camp David, and Bush will have spent 42 percent of his presidency at vacation spots or en route." The vacation in question ended eight days before Sept. 11.
This is not to say that the attacks were Bush's fault. I'm just saying they weren't Clinton's.
Har. Har. Har. That was stopped by an alert Customs agent.
OK VOTE
Yeah, he used a million dollar missile to destroy a ten-dollar tent and hit a camel in the butt.
And the Washington Post reported on Oct. 3, 2001 that Clinton had also approved CIA training of 60 Pakistani commandos to kill or capture bin Laden
Wow. Sixty, count 'em, SIXTY Pakistani commandos. To hunt down and kill a man surrounded by fanatical bodyguards in a good sized, mountainous country filled with tribesmen who don't trust anyone from the next village, let alone Pakistanis. That would have been a fiasco right up there with Bay of Pigs and Carter's hostage rescue attempt.
The name Clinton comes up and someone mentions lying? Lessee now, who is the well-known liar?
"I did not have sexual relations with that woman -- Ms. Lewinsky -- not once. Never."
No, an alert agent at a border crossing became suspicious of the person being questioned as he tried to enter the US. Clinton had nothing to do with it.
'nuf said
That's an out and out lie; Sandy Berger and Madeleine Albright BOTH said that there was NO plan handed over to the Bush administration.
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