Clinton wasn't allowed to give the order to apprehend Osama bin Laden because the Republican-majority Congress wouldn't authorize the funds to send the troops to go get him.
The National Rifle Association sponsored a Republican bill to defeat Clinton's effort to pass a mandate to add a distinctive chemical "fingerprint" to all manufactured explosive compounds, in order to trace from where they came. The fissible material in US nuclear weapons all have a "fingerprint" of where the uranium was enriched, some labs leave in too much dueteranium, some too little cobalt, etc. This would have gone a long way toward shutting down places which manufacture C-4 and other plastic explosives illicitly.
3 YEARS before Sept 11, 2001, the Republican Congress defeated a measure (heavily influenced by the airline industry as being much too costly) to install better scanning equipment, train more security personnel and to restrict some forms of personal knives (TO INCLUDE BOX CUTTERS) and cutting implements. Airlines said it would be too expensive to put in place. Of course, with Republicans in charge, any time it's a corporate question of safety or profit, WHICH choice do YOU think CEOs are going to make?
You might remember the World Trade Center was first bombed just 39 DAYS after President Clinton took office. Why didn't George HW Bush catch Osama bin Laden, who was obviously planning this attack on US soil while Bush HIMSELF was in office? By contrast, George W Bush had TEN MONTHS to do something about the reports he was getting regarding the plans Muslims were making to attack the WTC again. His response to a National Intelligence Estimate entitled, "Osama bin Laden Determined to Attack Within the US"?
Go on vacation to Texas.
Of course, AFTER Sept 11, 2001, George W. Bush was on TV every night, saying, "I Want Osama bin Laden, dead or alive" and "we're gonna smoke bin Laden outa his cave", neither of which he's accomplished at this point, over 6 years after the attacks. Did Clinton ever go on TV and say such "cowboy movie" drivel? Of course not. Did Clinton ever go on TV and declare it was "Mission: Accomplished" even though the Taliban militia still controls vast portions of Afghanistan? Did Clinton stop looking for the admitted murderer of almost 3,000 US citizens and tell the American People, "I just don't think about him that much anymore"?
After the attacks, it wasn't Clinton's Justice Department who stopped relatives of the victims from suing relatives of the Saudi terrorists', it was Bush's Justice Dept. It was also Bush who resisted allowing an independent 9/11 Commission from forming to investigate the attacks, it was Bush who refused to turn over essential files until forced to by court order, and it was Bush who refused to testify to that commission under oath or on the record, as to why he ignored so many warnings from both the FBI and the CIA, not Clinton. It was also Bush who, during an FAA ban on air travel immediately after 9/11, allowed hundreds of members of bin Laden's family and their entourages to fly out without so much as getting a statement from them on the record in the bin Laden investigation. It's Bush who gives the Iraqi people BILLIONS of your hard-earned tax dollars, while threatening to veto a plan to insure another 5 million low income children here in the US, who gives Iraq HUNDREDS of millions for rebuilding, while most of New Orleans sits underwater two years after Hurricane Katrina, public schools, bridges and levees all over the country are collapsing left and right, almost 3/4 of the average US citizens do not have access to reasonable, cost effective healthcare, our kids are placing in the high-30th position for education worldwide, CEOs outsource hundreds of millions of jobs to India and Mexico while Bush congratulates himself for creating less than a million jobs per year here in the US, over 70?f which are service-sector entry level positions, during Bush's tenure, mortgage foreclosures and bankruptcies have almost tripled, gas prices are at historic highs, people cannot afford prescriptions, often choosing between getting well and getting fed, not to mention a ridiculous "War on Terror", a war which was supposed to last 6 months and cost the US taxpayer no more than $87 Billion, is now in its 4th year and has cost over half a trillion dollars, that's TRILLION, with a TEE, dollars, money borrowed from Communist China (and which of course must be eventually repaid, but not by BUSH, oh no, he's great at BREAKING it, but when it comes to BUYING it, that's the next President's [and the taxpayers, naturally] headache), how Republicans are the only party who understand security, but 6 years after Sept 11, the US borders are less secure now than they were THEN, because Bush seems to think it makes sense to jail US Border Patrol guards who do their jobs, but pardon bureaucrats who keep CIA agents from doing their jobs, by telling the enemy who they are in a time of war (this used to be known as TREASON, but when your patriotic "War President" is a "man" who couldn't be bothered to finish his OWN military obligation during a time of war either, I guess this is the bizarro world we live in nowadays).
I have an idea. No more Republicans can be elected until they pay the US citizens back the over $NINE TRILLION they squandered in the last 7 years.
Answered By: Bert T - 9/30/2007 |