Posted on 09/20/2002 6:17:53 PM PDT by USA21
Inhofe: Clinton Should be Held Accountable for Failure to Get Bin Laden
WASHINGTON-A senior member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence says ex-President Clinton should be held accountable for his decision during his presidency, to give terrorist leader Osama bin Laden a pass. That confession by the impeached 42nd president was revealed in a taped statement publicized exclusively by NewsMax.com
Reacting to that tape, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., in a statement relayed by his spokesman Gary Hoitsma, says Clinton’s comments constitute "an admission that he didn’t seriously go after Osama bin Laden,” although Clinton tried to justify it in "a self-serving” manner.
Inhofe, who is also the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support, tells NewsMax that Clinton "is admitting that he didn’t go after them [al-Qaeda] when he could have, and he’s making excuses as to why he couldn’t or wouldn’t.”
Asked how the former chief executive should be held accountable, Hoitsma, again speaking for the senator, replied, "We would want to do that in some way. It’s a matter of picking the right forum.” Presidents and ex-presidents are rarely called before congressional committees.
At the moment the Intelligence Committee is looking into some things that went on in the intelligence community leading up to 9/11, although that probe "is not a matter of holding anyone accountable for wrongdoing or anything like that,” Hoitsma notes.
Some lawmakers have privately complained to NewsMax.com that the Intelligence Committee channels so much of what it does through so many political filters so as to reach a consensus that very little is accomplished when it comes to pressing for accountability.
Senator Inhofe says "objectively,” during the Clinton presidency, "not very much was done to deal with some of the terrorist incidents that had happened during that time.” Each time terrorist acts were committed, they were viewed by the Clintonites as law enforcement issues "instead of acts of war against America.”
The Oklahoma conservative listed the first World Trade Center bombing in 1998, the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in 1996 (death toll: 17), the embassy bombings in Africa (killing over 200), and violent action against the USS Cole (leaving 17 American sailors dead).
These attacks on Clinton’s watch were "downplayed,” and there were "never serious consequences for the perpetrators.”
Inhofe sees 1998 as "the lost year,” when the entire country was focused on a single issue (the Monica Lewinsky scandal) "that had nothing to do with any serious public policy.”
As the senator sees it, this was "when the [then] president was lying to the country [and under oath] about his personal problems,” and "dragged the country through the trauma of an impeachment trial.”
Also...they had the FBI concentrating on home grown "terrorists" and black church burners and the CIA chasing copyright infringements for their hollywood friends.
-PJ
The Oklahoma conservative listed the first World Trade Center bombing in 1998
May be a typo - should be 1993.
Albania was on the list of terrorist countries and our ships were forbidden to enter their port. Suddenly they became our new best friends and we massacred thousands of Serbs on their behalf? We did to the environment there worse than Saddam Hussein did to the desert air when HE blew up the oil wells. We put so much debris into the Danube that the main transportation for goods was stopped for over a year. We blew up the water supply, the oil pipeline, and dropped cluster bombs on civilians in towns and on their trains.......NOT A WORD FROM ANYONE...........to our everlasting shame.
Yeah, and the senator rolled over in silence as Trent Lott told Henry Hyde that the Senate was going to shirk their constitutional responsibility to actually try the impeached president. I used to admire Inhofe, but since learning this, I have to think that he's another one who'll step aside when the political heat becomes too much.
Oh good lord--don't you remember the hysterical press and all those pictures of "the Highway of Death" and the cries of mercy for the poor beaten down Iraqis ? The Euroweenies and the bleeding-heart liberals kept screaming about "no mandate" or some such thing...we could only clear the Iraqis out of Kuwait, but pursuing them and going after Saddam was a big no-no. Yes, in hindsight, maybe Pres. Bush Sr. should have gone after him, the heck with all that whining, but the U.N. was promising to enact STRONG measures to ensure weapon destruction and a depleted military, to keep Saddam in line and help Iraq rebuild as a "better" country (ha-ha) Yeah--those sanctions and all that "inspection" really worked, eh ?
I believe that the act of letting these killers off the hook indicates just how obsessed Clinton was with OBL and terrorism in general.
You do know that there are hearings being shown right now on C-Span,right?
I guess I've been in a cave, or at least not reading the newspaper. I hope they undercover, and do something about, all the INS failures, in the addition to the CIA and FBI mistakes. Reading now some of the hearing articles, I see one good thing -- we had it within our reach to stop September 11. So if the CIA, FBI and INS are allowed to actually enforce the laws proactively, there is hope for our doing better next time.
-PJ
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