Bush: 'The War Is Not Over'
September 12 2006
latimes.com
...Some in Washington took the occasion to advance a possible run for president. In a speech to the mostly conservative American Enterprise Institute, Newt Gingrich, the former Republican House speaker and potential candidate in 2008, criticized the administration.
"We are not where we wanted to be nor where we need to be," Gingrich said. "We have not captured Bin Laden. We have not defeated the Taliban…. We have not stopped the recruitment of young fanatics into terrorism."
Even those with less partisan interest in the debate seized the moment to advance an agenda. Republican Thomas H. Kean and Democrat Lee Hamilton — chairman and vice chairman of the bipartisan commission that investigated the attacks and the government's response — said bureaucracy had blocked implementation of many of the panel's recommendations to improve security and intelligence-gathering.
Former President Clinton, blamed in an ABC docudrama for failing to pay sufficient attention to looming Al Qaeda threats, addressed a Jewish charitable organization at a Washington hotel. Without mentioning Bush or the Republican Party, Clinton urged renewed efforts to stabilize Afghanistan, where the Taliban has recently gained strength.
"We need more troops," he said, noting there were almost seven times as many U.S. soldiers in Iraq as in Afghanistan. "We can't practice hit-and-run democracy."
Clinton also sounded a familiar Democratic theme that the nation is not as safe as it could be, faulting the administration for failing to improve inspections of ship and plane cargo, as well as of chemical and nuclear plants.
"They say it's a matter of costs, but it can't be," Clinton said. Hailing a new method for inspecting cargo electronically, he said the technology would cost $840 million a year, "and we've already spent over $300 billion on the war in Iraq."
Polls show that 95% of Americans surveyed remember exactly where they were when they learned of the attacks. For most of them, Monday was a day of remembering what few have forgotten, this time laced with a political message.... |
