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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: rich4eagle who wrote (224430)	2/2/2002 8:39:12 AM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

Actually, people who examine what happened do blame Clinton - Clinton was the failure that led to 9/11 - just another reason why he is so reviled: THE ZEITGEIST SHIFTS: The Philadelphia Inquirer inq.philly.com re-examines the Clinton legacy in the wake of September 11. What was once an outrageous allegation is slowly becoming conventional wisdom. Even Fareed Zakaria, washingtonpost.com who alternates between sharp analysis and worrying R.W. Appleitis, gets on message. In today’s Washington Post, he writes, “During the Clinton administration the CIA actually presented the National Security Council with a list of threats and asked that they be ranked according to priority. That would determine the time, money and effort that the agency would put in. A Clinton administration official recalls, ‘China, Iran, Iraq -- these were all No. 1. Terrorism was a 3.’ Despite several warnings and some effort, terrorism never quite made it to the top of the president's agenda.” Fareed ladles the blame around liberally, as he should. But ultimately he fingers the White House – under Clinton. andrewsullivan.com ...But now a debate is raging among historians and political experts over whether he has blood on his hands - whether, in essence, the events of Sept. 11 constitute a spreading stain on his legacy.... ....Presidential historian Allan Lichtman said: "Sept. 11 will shape our questions about the past. It's unfair that historians of Clinton will know about an event that he couldn't have foreseen, but that's always the way history works. We judge the past based on contemporary views. Today we fault Thomas Jefferson for having slaves." So the retrospective indictment looks like this: Clinton cared too little about foreign policy, and never met with his first CIA chief, James Woolsey; he was distracted by personal scandal at a time (1998) when bin Laden was making strides; he lacked the guts to use sustained military muscle; he didn't oppose the Taliban's efforts to seize power in Afghanistan; he spurned Sudan when that nation offered to hand over bin Laden in 1996. In general, said Fred Greenstein, author of eight books on the presidency, "Clinton's White House was disorganized and chaotic. It was like a kids' soccer game without rules. It was a presidency of loose ends. So there was very little chance he'd systematically address any problem - including terrorism."....

To: rich4eagle who wrote (224430)	2/3/2002 5:49:49 PM
From: Ann Corrigan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

wouldn't put the blame on Sept 11 on the Clinton Admin, the Bush Admin ignored plenty of warnings for seven months and was asleep at the switch on dday. So the blame lies on the mostly our intelligence and military community for worrying about the wrong things and not paying attention ***************************************************************************** You are not really laying any of the blame for Sept 11 at GW Bush's feet, are you? He hardly had time to find his way to the oval office by then. I agree the failure was with the intelligence community but the question is why were our intelligence agencies inadequate when they never were in the past? The reason is they had been weakened by liberal pressures to deal only with Mother Theresa types when gathering intelligence. That's ridiculous & leads to ineffectiveness.