Bush wasn't president when Trump made this statement in 2000. No one said the government had no efforts to stop terrorism. There was little to no information to help prevent this event. As we all know, but some are choosing to forget, is that there were tidbits of information strewn across agencies but not shared. There was no inter-departmentental efforts in place to tie together a warning in one area about a guy flying planes in Minnesota flight schools who didn't care about landing with a warning that might come through the CIA about terror suspects and planes. The government was set up to not communicate internally. This is not GWB's fault. While I dislike the concept of Homeland Security as we have now, the grouping of all these agencies was the correct thing to do and is a credit to that administration to realize what was wrong and to solve it quickly. To put one person in charge over the FBI, CIA and other agencies, to breakdown the communication walls and to create new chain of responsibility. Of course, now it's a mess as government agencies tend to do, but the core of the terror focus looks to largely remain in place.
What too many here are forgetting is this is the equivalent of the warning: A crime is inevitable in your hometown. It could happen somewhere and sometime in the next six months. If you don't stop it, it's your fault. That's the new thinking here on Freerepublic.
I am frankly disgusted with the lack of depth in the new thinking among some all of a sudden. I've been pretty excited about what Trump is accomplishing, but this is a turn for the worse. His initial statement is fine. Now, he's bordering on sounding like Michael Moore.
No one said the government had no efforts to stop terrorism. So what efforts were taken?
If you don't stop it, it's your fault.
First rule of leadership: the buck stops at the top. Blaming the Clinton administration for 9 months of inaction isn't a good position to take.
Sure, you can spread blame around, but you can't argue that terrorism was Bush's top priority-- at least not until after 911. It's just not there. There was nothing stopping the chief executive from ordering the FBI to reveal any information they might have.