Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[sarai]

From that Link:

"...Real evidence of bin Laden's unique capability arrived only with the synchronized embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998....

...At this point, the Clinton administration acted pretty darn fast, building up retaliation capability against a shadowy enemy ensconced in a no man's land in a politically hyper-sensitive region of the world. From 1998 onward, according to an earlier Post story, Clinton stationed two submarines in the Indian Ocean so as to be able to strike within six hours of reliable intelligence on bin Laden's location. The first 1998 cruise missiles fired into Afghanistan and Sudan reportedly missed bin Laden by just one hour. Looking to score political points at home, Republicans spun these attacks as a political ploy by the president to distract attention from the Lewinsky scandal; and the public, having just seen the eerily coincidental Wag the Dog, swallowed the spin....

...If Bush's advisers hadn't been so instinctively dismissive of all things Clinton, they might have had a policy within a month or two of Bush's inauguration, maximum....

...The only Middle East issue that the Bush administration apparently gave a damn about was Saddam Hussein....

...It's no secret why Iraq loomed so large: Saddam's continued existence was a stain on Bush's father's proudest presidential moment, the Gulf War....

...In the final analysis, it appears that whatever his flaws, Clinton responded in kind to the Al Qaeda threat as it existed in his time. Yet Bush -- who presided through the summer of 2001 when U.S. embassies across the world were buzzing with word of an impending attack -- did not. It's all there in the Times and the Post, if you're willing to see it."

http://www.prospect.org/print-friendly/webfeatures/2002/01/page-a-01-23.html