GOPhound,
Clinton took terrorism far more seriously than any previous President, and took it more seriously every year of his presidency, over the previous year. In the late 1990s counterterrorism funding surged. Security was beefed up, and beefed up once again. T
It's time for some facts here:
1. Clinton did nothing after the embassy bombings in Africa
2. Clinton did nothing after the WTC bombing in'93
3. Clinton did nothing after the USS Cole attack
4. Clinton did nothing to force Saddam to comply with the UN Sanctions he agreed to after the end of the Gulf War
5. Clinton did not want Osama captured and brought to the US because in his own words "It was a political hot potato" and he didn't think it was our legal right to bring him here.
You can throw all the numbers around that you want, the Clinton administration was a tremendous failure in dealing with terrorism. He should have been killing these bastards after the first bombing in '93. Now Bush has to deal with this mess.
1. In 1998, the Clinton Administration demonstrated an atypically aggressive response toward terrorism after the assault on two U.S. embassies in Africa. In response, the U.S. launched cruise missiles on Aug. 20, 1998, striking a terrorism training complex in Afghanistan and destroying a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Khartoum, Sudan, that reportedly produced nerve gas. Past U.S. foreign policy has opted for the use of sanctions or a UN resolution authorizing the use of force, but the UN's flaccid dealings with Iraq, the lack of support from Muslim allies (most notably the Saudis' indifference to the 1996 truck bomb explosion that killed 19 U.S. service members), and the necessity of deterring attacks on other American embassies led to the U.S.'s more hawkish policy.
2. After the 1993 WTC attack which killed 6 people, security forces under Clinton increased counterterrorism funding, increased security at the World Trade Center, identified the perpetrators, and launched a worldwide manhunt. In February 1995, little over two years after the attack, Ramzi Yousef was apprehended in Pakistan. The threat from Mr. Yousef's gang was neutralized. Unlike Mr. bin Laden, the whereabouts of Mr. Yousef were not known, and unlike Mr. bin Laden, he was not openly being harbored by any regime. In September 2003, little after two years following the 9/11 attacks which killed three thousand people, the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden remained unknown. The threat from Al Qaeda remains clear and present.
3. After the USS Cole attacks, which killed seventeen, the military instituted procedures to make sure such an attack would never happen again. They increased pressure on Yemeni security forces and launched a broad manhunt that yielded arrests of six perpetrators and suspected members of Al Qaeda within months. Since then there have been no further such attacks on US vessels in the Middle East or elsewhere. In January 2001 when President Bush took office, he took no different approach to the Cole investigation than his predecessor had taken.
4. United States in December 1998 opened a prolonged attack on Iraq, unleashing more than 200 cruise missiles onto military installations and suspected weapons sites as punishment for Baghdad's refusal to allow the destruction of its chemical and biological weapons.
Clinton, speaking to the nation about an hour after the 4 p.m. CST attacks, said the United States was "delivering a powerful message to Saddam: If you act recklessly, you will pay a heavy price."
Clinton decided to attack after chief U.N. weapons inspector Richard Butler concluded that President Saddam Hussein had failed to live up to Iraq's November pledge to cooperate fully with inspections that began after a U.S.-led coalition defeated Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War.
The Pentagon ordered a buildup that will soon place 40,000 U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf. And British fighters were poised to participate in the strikes.
5. The CIA under Clinton trained and armed about 60 Pakistani commandos in 1999 with plans for them to enter Afghanistan and capture or kill Osama bin Laden, U.S. officials confirmed to CNN Wednesday. The plan -- which was developed with then-Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif -- was scrapped on orders of Gen. Pervez Musharraf after he took over Pakistan in a coup. Under the deal the Clinton administration made with Sharif, economic sanctions against Pakistan would have been lifted in exchange for the operation.
6. I don't recall Bush making the administration's handling of terrorism a campaign issue. And I don't recall any BUSH plans to capture bin laden before 9/11.
Sure you can vote Republican.
You are ignore all the facts and say Clinton didn't care about defending his people. You can all anyone who doesn't agree with you "the enemy within" and consider them hostile foreigners.
But you can't say he did nothing.
