[Alberta's Child]

"In retrospect, the wake-up call should have been the 1993 World Trade Center bombing," Michael Sheehan, counter-terrorism coordinator at the Clinton State Department, conceded to the New York Times.

This is a cute little case of a former Clinton official covering his @ss. There is no "retrospect" about this whatsoever -- many of the jurors in the recent trials involving terrorists in the embassy bombings in Africa and the bombing of those towers in Saudi Arabia have said that they were extremely pissed off when they heard about the clear threats that were made during the testomony of the terrorists in the 1993 WTC bombing. Some jurors were so outraged that they wished they could convict the prosecutors of malfeasance!

Mr. Morris said he told Mr. Clinton that he could neutralize such a line of attack by adopting tougher policies on terrorism and airport security.

If half of what Dick Morris says is true, then Bill Clinton has probably never had an original thought in his entire life. What a pathetic loser -- just a pile of sh!t between the Bushes.

[Saundra Duffy]

Bill Clinton is a RAPIST!

[Nightstalker]

A president who put his country ahead of himself would have settled the Paula Jones suit. He would have realized that the presidency is not a part-time job, and that it is more important to be free to tackle vital matters of state than to avoid the humiliation of a settled sexual harassment suit.

Clinton tried to settle the suit but was unsuccessful. Is Sullivan suggesting that the people behind the Jones suit are guilty of something?

[Valin]

To raise the question of former President Bill Clinton's record on terrorism in the wake of Sept. 11 is to invite a chorus of disapproval. For bringing the subject up, you will be accused of pathological "Clinton hatred," a vendetta, and so on and so forth.

Question, is this a bad thing? Or a sign of a moral center?

[Amore]

Excellent article, but I have a question about this statement: "The Clinton White House also allowed new constraints to be placed on the CIA, forbidding it from hiring or using any undercover agents with dubious or criminal pasts." I thought that order predated Clinton. Probably I'm wrong and Sullivan is right. Please someone tell me I'm wrong! I don't know when it occurred, but wasn't that primarily Church's doing?

[ken5050]

Every think what it means that the two best commentators on America politics are foreigners....Anndrew Sullivan and Mark Steyn....

[William Wallace]

Great article, thanks.

[William Wallace]

Heads up!

[TwakeIDFins]

Sullivan loves to take the Sudanese government at its word. It would have been difficult to believe that that corrupt bunch of thugs could deliver on their promises; and, of course, had bin Laden been delivered to the USA, there's little (short of assassination) that the US government could've done with him.

Sullivan knows that. Why he continues with his 20/20 hindsight, is beyond me. (Look at his history. Was he writing about the Great Terrorist Threat before 9/11? Hardly. Everyone was silent. Nobody gave a Flexile Flyer. [One very notable exception to that generalization is Jeff Jacoby, who argued in favor of strong action against world-wide Islamism well before 9/11.] I'm afraid that Sullivan's take on the issue is without credibility.)

[Pokey78]

Ping for the ASPL.

[TruthShallSetYouFree]

The Sudanese also offered to provide the United States with a massive intelligence file on al-Qaida's operations in Sudan and around the world. Astonishingly, the Clinton administration turned the offer down. They argued that there was no solid legal proof to indict bin Laden in the United States.

This epitomizes the problem of having one so lawyerly in the Oval Office. Yes, we've had lawyers there before, but Clinton took legalisms to the final frontier. Some lawyers parse words in a contract such as "inveterate" or "preliminary." Clinton parsed words like "alone" and "is." He built his entire line of defense on anything he was ever accused of by using the tools of lawyerly obfuscation (and, failing that, intimidation, blackmail, and Arkancide.) He was never able to state, "On the night in question, I was not in the same state as Paula Jones. I was in Utah, and I have the entire Mormon Tabernacle Choir as alibi witnesses." No, with Billy boy, it was always a misunderstanding, an unremembering, a half-truth, or an irrelevant truth used to hide a relevant crime. (A guy leaves the house, fills the car with gas, visits his mistress and comes home 90 minutes later. When asked where he was, he truthfully replies, "I filled the car with gas." With Clinton, what was omitted was always more important and more incriminating than what was said.)

So, with bin Laden, the notion of proof was too strong a burden. In war, the standard drops to somewhere below "preponderance of evidence" and not too much above "I have a hunch it's bin Laden." Clinton never got that. George W. Bush got it right away.

[aculeus]

Bump.

[WaterDragon]

Thanks for pinging me! This article is definitely one to get to everyone (I'll send them the address of the article posted at FR, of course), and an article to keep in my files. I suspect the Left is going to be attempting to do some serious re-writing of history down the road.

[BJungNan]

To raise the question of former President Bill Clinton's record on terrorism in the wake of Sept. 11 is to invite a chorus of disapproval. For bringing the subject up, you will be accused of pathological "Clinton hatred," a vendetta, and so on and so forth.

Why is it that Conservatives always find they have to qualify themselves. Just say it. What is the point of, "See, someone else said it, not just me" ?