Posted on 05/18/2002 8:35:48 PM PDT by areafiftyone
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said Saturday she doesn't intend to "point fingers or place blame" in urging President Bush to reveal how much he knew in the weeks before the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
"Are we better prepared today than we were before Sept. 11?" the former first lady said during a trip to upstate New York. "If an FBI office somewhere in America sent in a report about suspicions, how would it be treated today? Where would it go? Who would be the decision-maker?
"Those are the kinds of questions that I think we have to ask and we have to be part of. It's not just for the executive branch to do it. The Congress and the people have to know what's happening as well."
The White House singled out Mrs. Clinton in launching an attack Friday on congressional Democrats who criticized the Republican administration's handling of terrorism warnings last summer. Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer accused her of trying to undermine the administration in her Senate speech Thursday in which she called on Bush to explain why he didn't make the threats public.
"The point is not to point fingers or place blame but to be sure we have learned and we are better prepared -- that's my goal," Clinton said during a visit to a car wash in the Rochester suburb of Chili to talk about the health-insurance burdens facing small businesses.
"We want to make sure we've done everything that we can and that the entire government is cooperating," she added. "It is hard, and I know this, to get the different departments and agencies all on the same page trying to move in the same direction, but we don't have any choice now. This is an imperative. Our national security, our homeland security depends on it."
The White House acknowledged that the CIA briefed Bush on Aug. 6 about an al-Qaida hijacking threat. An earlier report by an FBI field office that may never have reached Bush warned that many Middle Eastern men were training in at least one U.S. flight school.
The administration said the information was not specific and there was no intelligence before Sept. 11 that al-Qaida planned to use commercial planes as vessels of destruction.
She's visiting car washes? HA! How funny!
Hey Senator Witch how about if an embassy in a hostile port sent word a disturbance {serious threat} was about to occur in that port, about how long would it take to reach a ship scheduled to make a fuel stop there? What did Bill Clinton know about Yemen and when did he know it? They knew exactally where the threat was that time why didn't your husband act fast enough?
It gives the simpleminded yet another chance to get a clue about her true uhhh, lack of character.
GO AWAY B#$%@
I for one will not sit quietly while they pull stunts like this that create division, mistrust and suspicion of our president. We need to be fighting terrorism instead of fighting among ourselves and I do note exactly who was involved. This is one of their best cheap shots - do they have nothing other than cheap shots?
The Democrats haven't figured ithis out and they will never figure it out.
The American public DEMANDS unity to the cause and they can know partisan politics for the sake of political advantage when they see it.
People are no longer locked into the major networks for information. We are thinking for ourselves.
Thank God Al Gore was not President on 9/11/2001. (Sure glad he invented the internet though.)
Burying a failed tactic is an excellent goal for a crass politician.
I think it is likleys the overnight polls that showed the attacks on Bush were backfiring big time.
There are very few things that Adolf Hitler with which I agree. But he certainly knew about the publics reactions to appeals. Hitler described the relationship of leader/public as if it were a male/female relationship. I have found many examples to prove that comparison not far wrong.
The problem with painting a candidate unjustly and incorrectly is is backfires if he is elected. Smears are fine if the candidate is defeated. They come home to roost if the candidate is elected in spite of the smears.
Each attack on Bush by the democrats has been followed by a pull back from the attack. The reason is always the same. The attack on Bush was counter productive.
In times of crisis there is a point at which a president ceases to be "The President" and becomes "My President" for a majority of the people. If is is a Democratic president he becomes "My President" to the left and the middle. If it is a Republican President he becomes "My President" for the right and the middle.
For just a moment consider your reaction to what happens when someone else attacks "Your _______________" (fill in the blank). Attacking anything that you label as "YOURS" is counter productive.
The leftist media fails to understand that in his measured reaction to 911, and in his character and solid behaviour, Dubya has become "MY President" to solid majority of Americans.
The Right and the Center now call Bush "My President". The Democrats want to move the center back to calling Bush "The President". They fail to understand that when you attack "My President" you have attacked what the voter considers to be "HIS". That is not real bright.
Bush Sr. is the prime example of a regression from "MY" to "THE". To fall from MY to The a president has to appear to be ignoring problems or making the problems worse.
Dubya saw what that did to his Dad. He has covered all the bases.
The Democrats attack and then backtrack. That tells us a lot. Politicians only backtrack when the attack was worse than a failure... it was counter productive.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.