If I remember correctly, Clinton did try to go after bin Ladin and Iraq (for dissing the inspectors), and all we heard about was the "Wag the Dog" bullshit. Oh and they impeached him for total nonsense during this time, which helped to almost nuetralize him. Oh and we had a republican House of Representatives. What the fuck do you think Obama would be able to do under similar circumstances? I hope we never find out. Hell, it's going to be hard enough for Obama to work with the Democrats we have, as they have almost completely bought into the republican world view.

Now I am not saying that Clinton, or FDR, or any President has not done some sleazy shit in the name of protection our country, and we should never allow any President unlimited powers in national security, but I am quite certain that we would have dealt with all of this differently under a Gore Presidency. The three biggest differences would be no war in Iraq, a much bigger coalition in Afganistan (hopefully led by nations in the region), and an energy policy that would have thinking of the future, rather than playing catch up under the worst economic catastropy in the past 79 years.

has always been noted here. He did not fucking "forget" about the embassy bombings. He kept trying till the end of his Presidency to get the terrorists. Of course we know the GOP would try to pin it on him, of course they would, but it would not make it valid. Go back to Free Republican you Republican Clinton-hating piece of trash.

August 20, 1998- President Clinton has defended his decision to order attacks against targets in Sudan and Afghanistan, but the countries concerned have reacted with anger.

 Speaking hours after attacks were launched in retaliation for the US embassy bombings which killed 250 people, Mr Clinton said the US was taking a stand against terror organisations who "wrap murder in the cloak of righteousness".

Mr Clinton said that there was "compelling evidence that further attacks were planned by a network of Islamist terrorists."

"Our target was terror, our motive was clear," he said.

SNIP

Reaction in the US itself was split between politicians backing the president and those suggesting that the timing might have been related to Mr Clinton's continuing problems in the Monica Lewinsky affair.

Bin Laden blamed

In his address, Mr Clinton named exiled Saudi Arabian dissident Osama bin Laden as the mastermind behind the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.

"There is convincing information from our intelligence community that bin Laden's terrorist network was responsible for these (embassy) bombings," Mr Clinton said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/155252 .stm

Washington, D.C., February 10, 2005 - The National Security Archive today posted the widely-debated, but previously unavailable, January 25, 2001, memo from counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke to national security advisor Condoleezza Rice - the first terrorism strategy paper of the Bush administration. The document was central to debates in the 9/11 hearings over the Bush administration's policies and actions on terrorism before September 11, 2001. Clarke's memo requests an immediate meeting of the National Security Council's Principals Committee to discuss broad strategies for combating al-Qaeda by giving counterterrorism aid to the Northern Alliance and Uzbekistan, expanding the counterterrorism budget and responding to the U.S.S. Cole attack. Despite Clarke's request, there was no Principals Committee meeting on al-Qaeda until September 4, 2001.

The January 25, 2001, memo, recently released to the National Security Archive by the National Security Council, bears a declassification stamp of April 7, 2004, one day prior to Rice's testimony before the 9/11 Commission on April 8, 2004. Responding to claims that she ignored the al-Qaeda threat before September 11, Rice stated in a March 22, 2004 Washington Post op-ed, "No al Qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration."

Two days after Rice's March 22 op-ed, Clarke told the 9/11 Commission, "there's a lot of debate about whether it's a plan or a strategy or a series of options -- but all of the things we recommended back in January were those things on the table in September. They were done. They were done after September 11th. They were all done. I didn't really understand why they couldn't have been done in February."

Also attached to the original Clarke memo are two Clinton-era documents relating to al-Qaeda. The first, "Tab A December 2000 Paper: Strategy for Eliminating the Threat from the Jihadist Networks of al-Qida: Status and Prospects," was released to the National Security Archive along with the Clarke memo. "Tab B, September 1998 Paper: Pol-Mil Plan for al-Qida," also known as the Delenda Plan, was attached to the original memo, but was not released to the Archive and remains under request with the National Security Council.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAE BB147/index.htm

Want to try that again?