Next!

So now the new Big Lie is beginning to emerge, this time from the pen of a new source, retired Bush Admistration anti-terrorism adviser Richard Clarke: the ascendance of Al Qaeda is now George W. Bush’s fault.

"Frankly," he said, "I find it outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11. Maybe. We'll never know."

So it goes like this: President Bush let the events of September eleventh happen because, in the eight months between his inauguration and 9/11, he did “nothing” about Al Qaeda. That’s right, "nothing." Is this the same nothing that the Clinton administration did in eight years, after five Al Qaeda attacks on the US and its assets, hundreds of dead Americans, Kenyans and Tanzanians and thousands of wounded/permanently disfigured and disabled, unanswered, unavenged?

My question to Mr. Clarke—a holdover from the Reagan, Bush Senior and Clinton Administrations--is this: did the Clinton Administration have evidence of an Al Qaeda cell (Mohammad Atta and co.) operating in the United States? If so, were investigations started and ongoing during the change of administrations? I ask, because, as we now know, the planning for 9/11 didn't start on George W. Bush's inauguration day.

Also, I suppose that the Bush administration was supposed find the missing files from the Federal Bureau of Investigation that seem to have disappeared on January 29, 2001, find and appoint a new director for the disheveled organization—recall that the present director, Robert Mueller, was confirmed in August 2001--and then use it to crack open a domestic terror organization, the same one that the outgoing administration couldn’t manage to catch even when its leader was handed to them on a silver platter. I guess many must have higher estimates of the abilities of the Bush Administration to protect the nation than they did of its predecessor. Yeah, that’s it.

I also suppose that Operations Infinite Justice, and Mountain Storm and all the hard work done in Afghanistan between the two operations mean “nothing,” since the adminstration did "nothing" before 9/11. (Was that Leftist whining that I heard, something about "preemption?") I suppose that the fact that Saddam Hussein was providing rewards to the families of suicide bombers in Israel was to be expected. I suppose that Hussein’s Iraq was the hub for every Islamist terrorist group on the planet is no big deal. And, I suppose that the fact that our military under the direction of the Bush Administration took Hussein out was “nothing.”

Democrats, please. Is your nitpicking of the Bush Administration efforts to fight terrorism and your efforts to deflect the shortcomings of your comrades onto this administration making Americans safer? Or is it just business; the standard election year politics-as-usual?

Well, check this out: these times are not the usual ones. These are do-or-die times.

My beef with Islamists is personal, times two, baby, and anything that’s done to keep them from their deserved fate only serves the interests of these evil people. Don’t think so? Keep on attempting to undermine this administration’s effort, then. Enjoy dhimmitude afterward.

Comments

[dff]

In fifty years, after we've defeated terrorism, after the Democratic Party no longer exists, historians will acknowledge what everyone already knows: the Clinton administration, thanks to its gutless ineptitude, gave us 9/11.

Clarke is a moonbat.

[Ith]

I can't blog today because of switching hosting companies, and I'm going NUTS! So many things today had me itching to rant big time.

[deep breath] [deep breath]

I thought all my ranty posts yesterday would have worked it out of my system :)

[Helen]

Thanks for posting that link to the World Trade Center atrocity, Baldi. I still hurt every time I think of it. I'd just come to NY when the center was being built. One of my first after school jobs was one I did in there, filing. After I graduated from college, I worked in 2 World Trade for a while. It was a lovely place. I still remember the soup and little hard rolls I'd buy there for lunch. There were a couple of great bookstores in the Center that I'd haunt and a music store where I bought my first recording of Handel's Messiah.

I burn everytime I think about the idiots who can't build anything, but who want to destroy everything.

Guess I'll have to do confession and absolution again.

[walter]

Juliette, please. Clarke isn't a Democrat. By your logic, unless he criticized Clinton, then his arguments are bunk, correct? If you watched the show or read the transcript, you will see the following:

By June 2001, there still hadn't been a Cabinet-level meeting on terrorism, even though U.S. intelligence was picking up an unprecedented level of ominous chatter.

The CIA director warned the White House, Clarke points out. "George Tenet was saying to the White House, saying to the president - because he briefed him every morning - a major al Qaeda attack is going to happen against the United States somewhere in the world in the weeks and months ahead. He said that in June, July, August."

Yes, the WTC and Pentagon attacks were probably in the planning for a while, but the operation leadin up to them seems to have started the prior summer...after Bush became President.

Unlike, the Clinton White House in 1999, the Bush people did not take Clarke's advice and go on high alert.

But, of course, none of this matters, does it? Love Bush and hate anyone who criticizes his presidency because they're all Democrats.

[IB Bill]

It's unfair to blame anyone but the terrorists for 9-11. There's plenty to go around. Our FBI and CIA didn't share information, and weren't allow to share info, we weren't checking carefully the people coming into this country, a government bureaucracy that still approved a student visa for one of the hijackers six months after 9-11.

The closest thing I've come to blaming anyone was the pilots (and I hate to say that) for turning over the planes while still alive. (At least, the pilots were alive in at least one plane, based on the Barbara Olson phone call.)

It was inconceivable to me (even the morning of 9-11 as the attacks were happening) that anyone would turn over essentially a giant smart bomb in a metropolitan area. Whatever happened to "don't give up the ship?" I just assumed that applied to civilian aviation, too. You never give up the ship, even if you have to sink it.

Unfortunately, fighting terrorism is not the kind of thing that lends itself to political solutions. Essentially, you need to pool information, figure out who the bad guys are, and then hunt them down and kill them. Politics can do nothing but interfere.

Our country is deeply divided politically, and the divisions are so profound that people think nothing of politicizing this as if it were Vietnam. This isn't Vietnam. If we don't get serious, and stay serious, about terrorism, we're going to lose a city or maybe a dozen cities to nukes. Or smaller acts of terror here and there could require checkpoints, so that going to work and going to the mall will be like entering an airport.

This isn't a game. Clinton isn't at fault; he tried one policy -- good. Now we know it's limitations. The next administration learns from the mistakes and moves on. That's how you actually get results.

[og]

Getting to be time to get our hands dirty. Taking the high road is getting us killed. Politically and strategically. No use in having dogs of war unless you use them when it's indicated, It's indicated. Now.

[Fausta]

Turns out Viacom, CBS's parent company, published the book http://www.drudgereport.com/cbsrc.htm. Imagine that.
The brilliant Chris Muir's Saturday, March 20, strip http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/Default.aspx lays it on the line, about the World Trade Center.

[Jim]

This is simply rearview-mirror driving. In retrospect, should the current administration have been considerably more aggressive with regard to al-Qaeda and other purveyors of terror prior to September 11, 2001? Of course. That's also true of the Clinton administration, and, in my opinion, of every administration back to the Carter administration, and perhaps before then.

That's in retrospect, though. You can't manage in retrospect. Moreover, I strongly suspect that many of those who are most vocal today about how this is the President's "fault" or "doing" are those who would have been most vocal in opposition to any actions that would have prevented the events of September 11, 2001.

[Jerry]

Other one paerty states in the world are not such great examples of democracy - if that's what you want.

[baldilocks]

What gives you the idea that that is what anyone wants, Jerry? No one is suggesting the destruction of Democrats. They aren't babies. They're responsible for their own existence.

They can get smart or self-destruct.

[Russell]

Hindsight is 20/20

But, I am confused.

Bush is being blamed for preemptive strike against Saddam, and being blamed for not doing a preemptive strike against Bin Laden?

Is this one of those "damned if you, damned if you don't" typr things?

[Marty]

Just a small factual correction. The name Operation Infinite Justice lasted a few days and Operation Freedom's Light died even more quickly, before Operation Enduring Freedom was agreed to.

That's why it's OEF (Operation Enduring Freedom) and OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom).

tschuss, Dax!

[baldilocks]

Marty: The operations in Afghanistan and Iraq both fall under "Enduring Freedom?"

[joel]

Thanks for the link to the Trade Center site.

Yes, I think it is despicable to play politics with this tragedy. I hope other voters, who live in states whose electoral votes really count (not here in Maryland. There are only ten states who will decide a close election.) feel the same way.

Note that GB didn't blame the Clinton Administration for the attacks. He blamed the terrorists, God bless him.

In this age of weapons of mass destruction (including airliners) ALL terrorists must be killed. Not arrested. Not persuaded. Killed. Ruthlessly. When all terrorists are dead, there will be no terror. Israel missed a great chance to reduce the ranks of Hamas by not bombing the funeral. If some guy is helping terrorists, kill him, too. No remorse. There are no degrees of guilt in this war.

Like some blogger put it, after the Hamas leader got what he gave others:
"Get out the pigskin shitsack."