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.
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.” |
