And I can cite the failures of the Bush administration from the same report, prior to 9/11, Bush dropped the ball:
From Clarke's 9/11 Commission testimony:
"My impression was that fighting terrorism, in general, and fighting al Qaeda, in particular were an extrodinarily high priority in the Clinton administration - certainly [there was] no higher priority...
I believe the Bush administration in the first eight months considered terrorism and important issue, but not an urgent issue...although I continued to say it was an urgent problem, I don't think it was ever treated that way..
Almost everything I ever asked for in the way of support from him [Sandy Berger] or from President Clinton, I got. We did enormously increase the counterterrorism budget of the federal government, started many programs, including the one that is now called Homeland Security.
My view was that this administration [Bush], while it listened to me, either didn't believe me that there was an urgent problem or was unprepared to act as if there were an urgent problem.
And I thought, if the administration doesn't believe it's national coordinator for counterterrorism when he says there's and urgent problem, and it's unprepared to act as though there were an urgent problem, then I should probably get another job.."
Clinton had failures, Bush had more, and more serious failures. 9/11 happened on Bush's watch, despite PLENTY of warnings... |
