The Saudi thing is widely being blamed on Bush… and yes, he shouldn’t be hiding this report. But the key meeting cited took place in Jan. 2000… which means the FBI under Clinton didn’t do its job for a year. The fact that it continued what it was already doing under Clinton in the early months of the Bush admin. is hardly an indictment of Bush, but the mainstream press has painted it this way.

Do you see how Clinton’s policies, one after the other, were crafted to give safe haven to America’s terrorist enemies? He arranged for bin Laden to have a free hand within Afghanistan with that rule change on human intelligence.

Al Qaeda had help at the very highest level of our government. The most powerful man in the world worked actively and with malice to bring America down from without and within.

Clinton was not accidentally a lousy President, he was a spy and a collaborator with America’s enemies.

Tom;

Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity.

Clinton is about as much to blame for failing to identify terrorist plans leading to 9/11 as Bush I is to blame for leaving Saddam in power to persecute the people of Iraq for another 12 years. This is especially appalling when one considers that Bush I had Saddam in his fingertips at the end of Gulf War I and did nothing.

Furthermore, let’s not forget that Clinton had enough intelligence to come within a hair of taking out Osama in a surgical airstrike. Even though Clinton missed his target by a few short hours, he’s come closer to getting rid of Public Enemy #1 than GWB has come to ridding the world of either Osama or Saddam using the whole might (and a good bit of blood and sacrifice) of the US armed forces.

Seems like Clinton did better with the intelligence he had than Bush is doing now with (what is it now?) 30+ of the top 52 most wanted deck-of-cards Iraqi thugs at the disposal of his unfettered “intelligence-extraction” agents.

Yep, Clinton came closer to getting Osama and balked multiple times. Care to tell me the number of times Bush had Osama in his sights and didn’t follow through?

And I’m sorry, but 30+ of the top Iraqis is now a BAD thing versus Clinton’s failed policy on Iraq?

Jimmy, you’re out of your mind if you think Clinton’s 8-year head start for the terrorists was better than what Bush is giving them now. Out of your mind. Stark, raving looney.

And how do you think Usama got away so narrowly? Hmmm? Ole Bill didn’t miss him by accident.

“Hello, Usama? Yeah, buddy, it’s Bill over here in Washington. Yes, the Lewinski one, right. Anyway, old buddy, you have like maybe two hours to clear out of your favorite camp before I have to blow it all to Hell, so you might want to pick up your gear and scoot. Oh, you want a little more time? Ok, well would ten hours do ya? Ok, ten it is. Luck and all that Allah stuff to you, buddy.”

Seriously, Clinton had no intention of killing Usama, any more than he intended to keep nuclear weapons away from the North Koreans or missile techology away from the Chinese. He didn’t attack until he knew Usama was gone and how is it exactly that Usama knew to leave just at that exact time? Clinton is a traitor in the most horrific sense.

What this stark, raving, loony man knows is the following: 1) Clinton wasn’t the only one who knew the evil of Osama and Saddam but did relatively little to rid the world of this evil. His two predecessors in office failed in this respect, too. There’s enough bi-partisan blame to go around here. 2) George W. Bush himself did nothing to Saddam or Osama until after 9/11. What he did do after 9/11 was impressive, but … 3) Osama and Saddam (and Mullah Omar, for that matter) are still alive and directing attacks on our soldiers and planning more attacks on the U.S. - if our intelligence is to be believed. 4) The Clintons (both of them) were (and continue to be, much to the chagrin of the anti-war crowd) ardent supporters of GWB’s war against Al Qaida and against Saddam.

I know that I’m probably wasting my time on this, but Jimmy, if you’re going to make assertions that Clinton’s predecessors knew of Osama’s evil you ought to think about offering some evidence. Because here’s the thing—Osama didn’t attack the US until 1993. In case you don’t quite get the timeline, both Bush 41 and Reagan were out of office by then. Osama didn’t issue his fatwa against the US until 1998, which was before Bush 43 took office. Prior to 1993, Osama may have been known to be up to no good, but he hadn’t set himself up as the arch enemy of America that we know today.

As for the Clintons, they’re saying they support the war on one side of their mouths but saying things like we deserved 9-11 with the other side (check your facts—Bill Clinton did say that last year). Their level of support has depended to a great extent on their audience.

So you’re still looney.

Bryan, yours is one of the few blogs I read regularly. I find it both stimulating and challenging. Why would engaging in debate be a waste of time if there are still points to be made, even if the likelihood of conversion is minimal? As far as evidence on Osama, his whole life as a holy warrior has been to rid the Muslim holy lands of infidels, which includes all of the Christian west, including the U.S. Is this so hard to believe? Does there need to be a “fatwa” or a direct attack on the U.S. to serve as evidence of his evil, Islamo-fascist nature? Are you suggesting that Osama was “not” evil prior to 1993? Are you suggesting that Osama was not a threat to the U.S. until he ordered a direct attack against the U.S.? All general accounts of Osama’s life and thinking point out that at least post-1979, Osama’s Islamo-fascist bent was clear and well-known. At one level, you are right, Osama didn’t bite the hand that fed him until the Cold War was definitively over and the food was yanked from under him. But he was definitely an angry, rabid, dog who had only hatred for the Christian west and the U.S. - ever. But I maintain that the evidence of his evil nature does not need a destructive attack against the U.S. to be manifest to anyone with common sense. If you really think Reagan and Bush I thought Osama wasn’t evil, then go on record and say so. I think they’d probably echo FDR who once said of one nasty dictator: “He may be an SOB, but at least he’s our SOB.” What’s a bit surprising to me, looney that I am, is that according to the thread of your own logic, which demands either a direct and unprovoked attack on the U.S. or a fatwa against the U.S., Saddam Hussein can be considered neither evil nor one of America’s arch enemies. As you well know, this is just bunk. Saddam was an evil SOB when he first entered the scene of Iraqi politics and he still is. Osama was an evil SOB when he first went on his holy crusade against the Soviets in 1979. We don’t need an attack on the U.S. or a fatwa to tell us that. By the way, speaking of Saddam, I notice that you conveniently ignore the fact that the very same Saddam who took American lives in Gulf War I, (and we certainly knew he was evil then!) was left to live for Gulf War II by Bush I. Bush I may have had good reasons for doing so (though I can’t think of any), but I certainly don’t think then Gov. Clinton can be blamed for that, as much as Clinton deserves blame for many other failings. By the way, perhaps I’m missing the citation, but I can’t find any source where Clinton said that “we deserved 9/11.” I’d be most appreciative if you could point me to this source.

Here is the speech, which Clinton delivered at Georgetown University November 7, 2001. Relevant passage: Clinton is talking about the history of terrorism as a strategy, and blames people living today for the sins of the past:

Those of us who come from various European lineages are not blameless. Indeed, in the first Crusade, when the Christian soldiers took Jerusalem, they first burned a synagogue with 300 Jews in it, and proceeded to kill every woman and child who was Muslim on the Temple mound. The contemporaneous descriptions of the event describe soldiers walking on the Temple mound, a holy place to Christians, with blood running up to their knees. I can tell you that that story is still being told to today in the Middle East and we are still paying for it. Here in the United States, we were founded as a nation that practiced slavery and slaves were, quite frequently, killed even though they were innocent. This country once looked the other way when significant numbers of Native Americans were dispossessed and killed to get their land or their mineral rights or because they were thought of as less than fully human and we are still paying the price today. Even in the 20th century in America people were terrorized or killed because of their race. And even today, though we have continued to walk, sometimes to stumble, in the right direction, we still have the occasional hate crime rooted in race, religion, or sexual orientation. So terror has a long history.

He is buying into the ME propaganda that’s used to whip up anger against us for things people did hundreds of years ago. He is also suggesting that 9-11 was payback for the Crusades (“we are still paying for it”).

So why do I think I’m wasting my time in debate? Because I sit here day after day dispensing out facts, and folks like you just ignore them and believe whatever suits your preconceived notions. You can take a reader to the facts, but you can’t make them think. I’m just extremely tired of it all—the lying, weasley, back-stabbing, dictator-protecting left is hell bent on losing this war if it means getting Bush out of office. People on our side end up spending valuable time knocking down phony charges—charges that the accusers probably know are phony—when we could be going about the business of figuring out ways to combat the enemy more effectively. I just don’t think it’s really worth it, when there’s precisely .001% chance that it will make a difference. The Dems and the media will continue to lie lie lie lie and the gullible will continue to believe them, no matter that I or any other blogger does about it.

Thanks for the link to Clinton’s speech. Call me dense, but Clinton never once said that we “deserved 9/11.” In fact the bulk of the speech was that we needed to support the war on terror and to defeat the terrorists. If you call your spin on Clinton’s speech (“we are still paying for it”) as reporting the “fact” that Clinton said we “deserved 9/11,” then you obviously deserve a job at the New York Times. Your hatred of Clinton is blinding your objectivity. Your interpretation of Clinton’s speech is just that: your interpretation. It is not “fact.”