Originally Posted By: Friendly Neighborhood Ray-man
always liberals to blame, huh? I think the complaint about Bush's spending have to do with his pushing for a Cold War-esque missile shield while ignoring CIA reports like "Bin Laden determined to attack the US." Bush spent a record number of vacation days at the ranch in those first 7 months after he was sworn in, and even after 9/11 he's spent a record number of vacation days hanging out at the ranch. I guess 9/11 changed everything except for his love of taking time off.
6 minutes into the video, you can see a bemused Rumsfeld reacting to Senator Levin criticizing missle defense and ignoring the most likely threat: terrorism.
Also if you click the video, you can access the TIME article where it shows it was the BUSH Administration who ignored the Cole bombing and mocked the outgoing Clinton Administration for being "obsessed with osama".
While Clinton spent that time being "obsessed with Osama" and his Administration was seeing him as a growing threat, the GOP was obsessed with Monica. All that 'Osama obsession' of course came to a halt on January 2001.
But of course after 9/11, the lie meisters of the right went furiously to work to portray these incompetents as the party of counterterrorism. Despite having a long record of thwarting Clinton's anti terror legislation for years. Suddenly it became "Clinton did nothing".
The basic plot-line was this: because he was distracted by the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Bill Clinton failed to prevent 9/11.
The most curious and in some ways the most infuriating aspect of this slapdash theory, is that the Right Wingers who have advocated it—who try to sneak it into our collective consciousness through entertainment, or who sandbag Mr. Clinton with it at news interviews—have simply skipped past its most glaring flaw.
Had it been true that Clinton had been distracted from the hunt for bin Laden in 1998 because of the Monica Lewinsky nonsense, why did these same people not applaud him for having bombed bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan and Sudan on Aug. 20, of that year? For mentioning bin Laden by name as he did so?
That day, Republican Senator Grams of Minnesota invoked the movie "Wag The Dog."
Republican Senator Coats of Indiana questioned Mr. Clinton’s judgment.
Republican Senator Ashcroft of Missouri—the future attorney general—echoed Coats.
Even Republican Senator Arlen Specter questioned the timing.
And of course, were it true Clinton had been “distracted” by the Lewinsky witch-hunt, who on earth conducted the Lewinsky witch-hunt?
Who turned the political discourse of this nation on its head for two years?
Who corrupted the political media?
Who made it impossible for us to even bring back on the air, the counter-terrorism analysts like Dr. Richard Haass, and James Dunegan, who had warned, at this very hour, on this very network, in early 1998, of cells from the Middle East who sought to attack us, here?
Who preempted them in order to strangle us with the trivia that was, “All Monica All The Time”?
