Klintoon's shamefull 911 hangover.
In a commentary today in the Wall Street Journal, former FBI Director
Louis Freeh refers - indirectly, of course - to Bill Clinton's failure
to deal with terrorism.
He writes:
"Al Qaeda was at war with the U.S. even before Sept. 11, 2001. In
August 1998, it attacked our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In
December 1999, one of al Qaeda's soldiers, Ahmed Ressam, entered the
U.S. to bomb Los Angeles airport. In October 2000, al Qaeda attacked
the USS Cole in the port of Aden. The question before the 9/11
Commission is why our political leadership declared war back on al
Qaeda only after Sept. 11, 2001...
I believe that any president and Congress faced with the reality of
Sept. 11 would have acted swiftly and overwhelmingly as did President
Bush and the 107th Congress. They are to be commended. However, those
who came before President Bush can only be faulted if they had had the
political means and the will of the nation to declare a war back then,
but failed to do so. The fact that terrorism and the war being waged by
al Qaeda was not even an issue in the 2000 presidential campaign
strongly suggests that the political will to declare and fight this war
didn't exist before Sept. 11. ..."
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/4/12/131124.shtml
President Clinton and his national security team ignored several
opportunities to capture Osama bin Laden and his terrorist associates,
including one as late as last year.
I know because I negotiated more than one of the opportunities.
From 1996 to 1998, I opened unofficial channels between Sudan and the
Clinton administration. I met with officials in both countries,
including Clinton, U.S. National Security Advisor Samuel R. "Sandy"
Berger and Sudan's president and intelligence chief. President Omar
Hassan Ahmed Bashir, who wanted terrorism sanctions against Sudan
lifted, offered the arrest and extradition of Bin Laden and detailed
intelligence data about the global networks constructed by Egypt's
Islamic Jihad, Iran's Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas.
Among those in the networks were the two hijackers who piloted
commercial airliners into the World Trade Center.
The silence of the Clinton administration in responding to these offers
was deafening.
http://www.infowars.com/saved%20pages/Prior_Knowledge/Clinton_let_bin_laden.htm
The unearthing of documents directly linking Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda
organization to Saddam Hussein this weekend may have hermetically
sealed the Bush administration's case that dismantling Iraq's Baathist
enterprise was in part necessary to undo terrorism's dynamic duo. But
closing that case may reopen a Pandora's box for ex-Clinton
administration officials who still believe their policy prescriptions
protected U.S. national interests against the growing threat of
terrorism during the past decade.
http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/354
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