How Clinton Left Ticking Terror Time Bombs For Bush To Discover
As Bill Clinton left office in January 2001, America was outraged by his final insult to the integrity of his office-the pardons he granted to the rich, corrupt, and underserving. But only months later we learned of his final, horrific insult to us-that he had bequeathed to George W. Bush three ticking time bombs that would shortly explode: al Qaeda, Iraq, and North Korea.
How much did he know? Everything he needed to. Al Qaeda was no unknown force to Bill Clinton: The terrorist group had struck the United States repeatedly on his watch, bombing the World Trade Center, the U.S.S. Cole, two U.S. military barracks in Saudi Arabia, and our embassies in Africa. Iraq had kicked out U.N. weapons inspectors, and it was diverting most of the $2 billion per year it was getting in oil money to buy and develop arms. And American intelligence had found that North Korea was secretly building nuclear weapons in vast, under-ground caverns, violating a commitment it made to Clinton in 1994.
Clinton knew where all three time bombs lay. But Clinton had done little to catch al Qaeda; he'd done nothing to rein in Iraq; and he had actively covered for North Korea as it violated its treaty commitments.
On the war on terror, Clinton was an utter and total failure. His record of inaction is bad enough, but his inability to grasp the dimensions of the issue, as I witnessed it in our conversations, was worse. In our time this may have become a trite phrase, but there's simply no other way to put it: He just didn't get it.
Clinton knew every statistic, argument, and nuance of the issues he had made his own-welfare reform, deficit reduction, student performance, Head Start availability, crime, export promotion, and so on. But on terrorism, during his first term-the period I witnessed firsthand-he knew little and cared less.
All our terrorist problems were born during the Clinton years.
Full article:
http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=106130
Uncle
As Bill Clinton left office in January 2001, America was outraged by his final insult to the integrity of his office-the pardons he granted to the rich, corrupt, and underserving. But only months later we learned of his final, horrific insult to us-that he had bequeathed to George W. Bush three ticking time bombs that would shortly explode: al Qaeda, Iraq, and North Korea.
How much did he know? Everything he needed to. Al Qaeda was no unknown force to Bill Clinton: The terrorist group had struck the United States repeatedly on his watch, bombing the World Trade Center, the U.S.S. Cole, two U.S. military barracks in Saudi Arabia, and our embassies in Africa. Iraq had kicked out U.N. weapons inspectors, and it was diverting most of the $2 billion per year it was getting in oil money to buy and develop arms. And American intelligence had found that North Korea was secretly building nuclear weapons in vast, under-ground caverns, violating a commitment it made to Clinton in 1994.
Clinton knew where all three time bombs lay. But Clinton had done little to catch al Qaeda; he'd done nothing to rein in Iraq; and he had actively covered for North Korea as it violated its treaty commitments.
On the war on terror, Clinton was an utter and total failure. His record of inaction is bad enough, but his inability to grasp the dimensions of the issue, as I witnessed it in our conversations, was worse. In our time this may have become a trite phrase, but there's simply no other way to put it: He just didn't get it.
Clinton knew every statistic, argument, and nuance of the issues he had made his own-welfare reform, deficit reduction, student performance, Head Start availability, crime, export promotion, and so on. But on terrorism, during his first term-the period I witnessed firsthand-he knew little and cared less.
All our terrorist problems were born during the Clinton years.
Full article:
http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=106130
Uncle
