The liberals are stuck by their own logic:
IF the leftists' "logic" about the value of such historical information in the PDB (Presidential Daily Briefing) about terrorists' plans, had such weight that "The President was warned; and he should have done something more about it!",
THEN that same leftists' "logic" also applies to the historical warnings about Iraq having WMD's, and "The President was warned; and he should have done something more about it!."
He did.
(November 8, 2001)
...One ex-CIA official told Franklin Foer of The New Republic that under Clinton appointee John Deutsch, the agency had "become very politically correct."
And just last year (2000), the National Commission on Terrorism — chaired by former Reagan counterterrorism head Paul Bremer — issued a report with the eerily foreboding image of the Twin Towers on its cover. A bipartisan effort — led by Jon Kyl and Dianne Feinstein — was made to attach the recommendations of the panel to an intelligence authorization bill. But Sen. Patrick Leahy feared a threat to "civil liberties" and torpedoed the effort. After the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, Kyl and Feinstein tried yet again. This time, Leahy was content with emaciating the proposals instead of defeating them outright. The weakened proposals died as the House realized "it wasn't worth taking up." President Clinton certainly could have encouraged Sen. Leahy to drop his opposition, but he didn't.
In 1996, President Clinton charged Al Gore with improving airline security. But the commission he led "focused on civil liberties" and "not effectiveness," according to the Boston Globe. The commission concluded that "no profile [of passengers] should contain or be based on... race, religion, or national origin." The FAA also decided, in 1999, to seal its passenger screening system from law-enforcement databases — thus preventing the FBI from notifying airlines that suspected terrorists were on board.
When bin Laden fled from the Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996, "some officials," according to the Washington Post, "raised the possibility of shooting down his aircraft." But the plan was never pursued, in part because "it was inconceivable" that President Clinton would approve of it.
What President Clinton did do, of course, is launch a series of cruise-missile attacks on Afghanistan and the Sudan around the time of his grand-jury testimony in August of 1998. Put aside any talk of "wagging the dog." This low-risk, low-damage effort helped bin Laden in the Muslim world. He looked strong, and we looked weak. We looked (and, of course, were) averse to casualties. It fit a pattern of tepid American responses to serious attacks on our interests — the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center (which the Clinton administration treated as a criminal matter and not an act of war), Khobar Towers, embassy bombings. The Muslim world senses weakness and feeds on it; they tremble only before resolution and strength. As one senior Defense Department official put it, "I wish we'd recognized [that we were at war] then and started the campaign then that we've started now."
Dec. 18, 2000: the Electoral College elected George W. Bush America's 43rd President-elect.
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.
"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.
Dec. 20, 2000: UN announced* tougher sanctions on the Taliban - to go into effect in 30 days (*after a speedy UN vote)...
...just in time for Inaugeration Day, Jan. 21, 2001.
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...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," chirps a happy Clinton aide.....