Quote: Matter-eater Man said: (Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne argues that) By choosing to intervene in the terror debate in a way that no one could miss, Clinton forced an argument about the past that had up to now been largely a one-sided propaganda war waged by the right.
It's absolutely preposterous for Dionne or MEM to argue that the debate over who was to blame for 9/11 has been dominated by the right.
Yes, this month, especially with the controversy generated by the airing of ABC's "Path to 9/11," there has been a lot of conservative criticism of Clinton's record on terrorism. But to say that the debate over the past five years has been one-sided is absurd.
How many times have we heard in the mainstream media that Richard Clarke handed the Bush administration a plan for "rolling back" the al Qaeda threat and that it was dismissed? That Clarke couldn't get a meeting on counterterrorism strategy, because the Bush administration didn't see it as a priority? That Bush was too busy relaxing on his Texas ranch to read "Bin Laden Determined To Attack U.S."? That 9/11 could have been avoided if Bush acted on the intelligence we had?
If anything Clinton has been getting a free pass on terrorism, especially given the fact that al Qaeda grew for eight years while he was President, and he was Commander-in-Chief during the first World Trade Center bombing, the Khobar Towers bombing, the U.S. Embassy bombings, and the attack on the U.S.S. Cole.
