Letter Of The Day

comes from my old school chum and the father of my neighbor across the street (small towns have that way of doing things like this).

Thirty-eight days into Bill Clinton’s presidency, the WTC was bombed. No one blamed George Bush Sr. Clinton’s Justice Department captured those responsible and put them in prison. No less than 22 planned Al-Qaeda attacks (20 in this country) were thwarted by these arrests.

Clinton tripled the counter-terrorism budget for the FBI, created a national security post and introduced two anti-terrorism bills, all fought by the Republicans in Congress. In 1998, in retaliation for U.S. Embassy attacks in Kenya and Tanzania, Clinton hit targets in Sudan and Afghanistan.

The Sudanese government never offered up bin Laden. A man named Mansoor Ijaz claimed he knew a Sudan general who could deliver him and suggested sanctions against Sudan be lifted. Sudan’s regime has killed more than two million Christians, deals in slave trade and state-sponsored terrorism. Sandy Berger deemed him unreliable.

U.S. policy deals with governments, not individuals. After the USS Cole attack, Clinton had Richard Clarke devise a comprehensive plan to eliminate al-Qaida. In December 2000, that plan was presented by Sandy Berger to the incoming Bush administration. It was ignored for nine months. In Bush’s first seven months in office, he was away on vacation 42 percent of the time.

In February 2001, the Hart-Rudman report on national security, which cited a very real terrorist threat, was also ignored by Bush’s people. Repeated FBI warnings involving al-Qaida, flight schools, airplanes and terrorists’ chatter were ignored.

Meetings between Clarke, Berger and the Bush administration were continually postponed. Repeated requests by Thomas Pickard of the FBI for manpower and money increases were denied by Attorney General Ashcroft and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. Finally on Sept. 4, 2001, Clarke’s plan reached the Principal’s Committee and they decided to advise Bush to accept it. One week later, the WTC fell. The next day, they blamed Clinton.

What?

--Gene Beller

attribution