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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (36456)	3/26/2004 7:52:18 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 793800

Clinton "Distracted" from Terror "By Threat of Impeachment" The Times blasts the "lack of urgency" of the Bush administration's pre-9/11 terror efforts in Thursday's lead editorial on Richard Clarke's testimony, "Assessing the Blame for 9/11." When the Times gets around to Bill Clinton (who, after all, served eight years, while the Bush administration had been in office less than eight months on 9-11-01), it offers a lame excuse for Clinton's inaction--he was distracted by impeachment proceedings! "Bill Clinton, distracted by the threat of impeachment, failed to educate the American people adequately about the nature of the danger, and what it might take to fight it," the Times writes. Clinton was also distracted by Monica Lewinsky, who was not part of a partisan Republican plot. The editorial continues: "Senior officials from the Clinton and Bush administration testified, one after another, that in the pre-9/11 world, they could not have gone further in trying to run down Mr. bin Laden because, they believed, the country and our allies would not have supported it. But there was at least no question about the Clinton administration's commitment to combat terrorism, and on occasion, like the December 1999 alert that appears to have averted an attack on the Los Angeles airport, it produced results. The attitude of the Bush administration seems harder to pin down." But as National Review editor Rich Lowry notes, Clarke's own book casts doubt on Clinton's commitment to fighting terrorism: "In his testimony yesterday, Clarke said that the Clinton administration had 'no higher priority' than fighting terror. No. In his own book, he says trying to force a Middle East peace agreement was more important to Clinton than retaliating for the attack against USS Cole." For the rest of the Times editorial on Clarke's testimony, click here. nytimes.com timeswatch.org