Why Does Clinton Escape 9/11 Blame?
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Posted on 04/26/2004 10:11:56 PM PDT by JohnHuang2
In recent weeks, a long-brewing conspiratorial question managed to make its way off of loony web sites and onto the front page of the paper of record, the New York Times: What did Bush know, and when did he know it, before 9/11?
Seemingly lost in the “discussion” is any similar treatment of the former president with such what-and-when-did-he-know questions. Not about 9/11, but about Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, or simply the general threat posed by radical Islam.
These are crucial questions, and they cannot be ignored.
Two days after Condoleezza Rice testified before the 9/11 Commission, the New York Times announced in the lead of a front-page, above-the-fold story that Bush was warned in an August 6 briefing “that supporters of Osama bin Laden planned an attack within the United States with explosives and wanted to hijack airplanes.” The article then went so far as to suggest that Condi lied in her testimony when referring to the document as “historical.”
Never mind that the document was “historical”—a fact revealed when the White House released the formerly top-secret briefing hours after the Times story ran—or that even the most rabid Democrat couldn’t have contorted the contents of it in any manner more damning to Bush than the paper itself did.
Some have argued that the treatment is justified because the Times was simply reporting news as it breaks, leading one to believe that Clinton could be fair game under like circumstances.
But when that theory came up for a real-life test, the Times flunked. Badly.
Roughly a week after the flap over the August 6, 2001 briefing dominated the national discussion, we learned that the CIA had warned in a classified memo, according to the Associated Press, “that Islamic extremists likely would strike on U.S. soil at landmarks in Washington or New York, or through the airline industry.”
The same AP story also reveals, “And in 1997, the CIA updated its intelligence estimate to ensure bin Laden appeared on its very first page as an emerging threat, cautioning that his growing movement might translate into attacks on U.S. soil.”
The man who was running the show when the CIA made these assessments? Clinton, of course—though you wouldn’t know it from the Times or the AP, which didn’t even mention the former president in its story.
Not that news outlets have an obligation to pin blame for 9/11 on Clinton, to be sure. Even most conservative commentators and politicians, for that matter, have not tried to directly scapegoat the former president.
The Clinton legacy, however, cannot be dismissed in any analysis of 9/11. The United States was struck repeatedly under his watch—and our inaction did not go unnoticed.
Despite the apparent involvement of both Iraq and al Qaeda, the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 was treated as a police matter, not as the international terrorist attack it was. The Khobar Towers U.S. military housing complex was bombed by Islamic extremists three years later, and the United States did nothing.
When al Qaeda killed more than 200 people in 1998 by blowing up two U.S. Embassies in East Africa, Clinton’s “response” was bombing empty training camps in Afghanistan and somebody else’s pharmaceutical plant in Sudan.
And when 17 servicemen were killed and 39 injured in what could only be construed as an act of war on the U.S.S. Cole in 2000, the response was an FBI investigation.
The historical record should make it clear to anyone not blinded by partisanship that Bush is not to blame for 9/11. Neither is Clinton, though. The terrorists are.
Could more have been done before 9/11? Absolutely.
The United States could have used more force to punish those who attack us—and in the process, possibly deter future attacks. Or we could have aggressively pursued the threat posed by radical Islam, particularly inside our borders. But considering the hue and cry over “racial profiling” even after 9/11, almost any such efforts would have been squashed by the P.C. police.
The job of the 9/11 Commission should not be to delve into high-profile finger-pointing. What matters is what lessons we need to learn—and what mistakes we must not repeat.
Mr. Mowbray, it's like this. If it wasn't for double-standards, Liberals would have no standards at all.
Please FReepmail me if you want on or off my infrequent ‘miscellaneous’ ping list.
President Bush is their target.
Their problem is they can't shoot straight and their guns backfire.
So they wallow in their own misery assuming we will do the same.
I vaguely remember that. They promptly printed the correction in the following week's Sunday crossword puzzle didn't they?
Well, obviously because the Left owns the press.
But I think also because the RATS just don't have a message that resounds with the public, and the Republicans do. Mud-slinging is pretty much all they have to work with, and they naturally tend to throw any bucket of mud they can fabricate.
They were given everything to scream about in the Clintoonery years, they did little if anything with it....
many of us here talked about what the consequences of the Clintoonery years of weak policies and oversight....way, way back, before even the Monica years...back when Drudge came on board...
none of us would ever have imagined that it would be our own Trade Towers bombed , that we would be in the beginnings of a long, cold war with Islamists at this point....
we knew bad things were coming because of the Toon....we just didn't know what....
Gorelick Memo Allegedly Impeded Probe of Clinton Fundraising Scandal
And we're supposed to believe that they're the "Newspaper of Record"?
I remember some co-workers at my last job who labeled me a "right-wing extremist" because I said that the Slimes is a disreputable paper and I most definitely do NOT accept their word as authoritative on anything. I also refused to accept that Bob Herbert and Paul Krugman are honest, intelligent and tell the truth without injecting their opinions. That didn't go over too well with the lefties.
My professor actually had the nerve to make Krugman required reading. I lambasted the obvious bias and he went ballistic, it was quite funny to watch him explain why Krugman isn't a pinko, but he admitted that he hates Bush. I quit the class. I feel he didn't deserve my tuition, or anyone else's for that matter.
Why Does Clinton Escape 9/11 Blame?
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Rampant '60s liberalism was not the underlying rationale for The Gorelick Wall. Rather, The Gorelick Wall was the underlying rationale for--The Gorelick Wall was (insofar as '60s liberalism was the Wall's apparent impetus) a cynical cover for --the willful, methodical malpractice and malfeasance that was the product of the virulent clinton strain of rampant '60s liberalism. While it is true that The Gorelick Wall was the convenient device of a cowardly self-serving president, The Wall's aiding and abetting of al Qaeda was largely incidental, (the pervasiveness of the clintons' Nobel-Peace-Prize calculus notwithstanding). The Wall was engineered primarily to protect a corrupt self-serving president. The metastasis of al Qaeda and 9/11 were simply the cost of doing business, clinton-style. Further confirmation of the Wall-as-cover-for-clinton-corruption thesis: Conversely, that it never occurred to anyone on the commission that Gorelick's flagrant conflict of interest renders her presence on the commission beyond farce calls into question the commission's judgment if not its integrity. Washington's mutual protection racket writ large, I suspect. The Gorelick Wall is consistent with, and an international extension of, two essential acts committed in tandem, Filegate, the simultaneous empowering of the clintons and disemboweling of clinton adversaries, and the clinton Putsch, the firing and replacement of every U.S. attorney extant. Filegate and the clinton Putsch, The Common Man Allegations of international clinton crimes swirling around the White House in 1995 and beyond support The-Wall-as-cover-for-international-clinton-crimes thesis. Once the clintons' own U.S. attorneys were in place, once the opposition was disemboweled by the knowledge that their raw FBI files had been in the possession of the clintons, once domestic law enforcement was effectively blinded to foreign data by Gorelick's Wall, the clintons were free to methodically and seditiously and with impunity auction off America's security, sovereignty and economy to the highest foreign bidder.
e would have it backwards and miss the point entirely if we were to attribute The Gorelick Wall and the attendant metastasis of al Qaeda during the clintons' watch, (which, incidentally, was then in its incipient stage and stoppable), to the '60s liberal mindset.
committed in tandem,
the product of a careful criminal calculus,
at once empowered clinton
and disemboweled his opponents.
clinton was now free to betray with abandon
not only our trust,
but the Constitution as well.
Mia T
February, 1998
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