Whacking a Bee-Hive with a stick (part I)

Bush and Co can blame Faux news for the re-evaluation of their Administration’s (in)action in the 8 months leading up to 9-11. Rice has gone on national television and lied, making a claim which is thoroughly in conflict with what the 9-11 report concluded. (As noted by Think Progress and America Blog/).

Luckily, Clinton’s record is easily trackable – much of his presidency was during the ‘online’ boom, and there are lots of news archives.

Also, let’s not forget, as those on the right like to remind us daily, 9-11 changed everything. If you look back over the history of Clinton, Bush I and Reagan, Clinton clearly took the terrorist threat more seriously than the previous presidents. (In fairness, the terrorist threat arguably was not as severe under Bush I and Reagan. Or, at least, not as immediate). The GOP is screaming Clinton had 8 years to deal with the terrorist threat, but that’s a lie wrapped around the truth. When Clinton took office, as with Bush and Reagan before him, our concepts of terrorism were different. The concept evolved during Clinton’s years in office and, the evidence shows, Clinton evolved with them.

So, it’s important to understand the timeline, as the terrorist threat evolved. When the first World Trade Center attack occurred, in 1993 (arguably what should have been our first ‘wake up call’), there wasn’t any precedence for it. In fact, when it first occurred nobody thought it was terrorism.

And, it should also be noted, those directly involved were arrested and prosecuted, and are now in jail. While we, today, are sure of Bin Laden’s string pulling – at the time, any such connection was guessing at best. In fact, in 1999 the state department’s bio on Bin Laden, doesn’t even mention the World Trade center. 1999 is also the first year thatAl-Qaida was added to the list of terrorist organizations.

In 1996, Clinton asked for expanded wire tapping capability. As I’ve noted earlier, this was not ‘Warrantless’ tapping, but person specific tapping. So, rather than tap a specific number, they could tap whatever phone was being used by the suspect.

Ironically, this request was partially based off of what we thought were foreign terrorist acts, which turned out not to be so. Such as the Olympic Bombing, and TWA 800.

By the way, Republicans refused.

Still, it’s apparent Clinton was starting to understand the threat by ‘rogue’ groups, and was making moves to combat the problem.

Then the GOP became obsessed with a presidential blow job, and utilizes it to weaken the president during this critical juncture. Above it all, though, Clinton continued to take the threat seriously. As we’ll see in Part II.