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Originally posted by sgtclub
Compete yes. But the President sets the agenda, and if it was such a high priority, Clarke should have been able to compete more successfully. The problem is that it was not the highest priority to say the least.
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All you are saying is that it could have been a higher priority, and that is true. We all see that now. But no one -- with the possible exception of Richard Clarke -- thought at the time it should have been the highest priority.
Please remember, too, that Clinton's Administration was one in which power was less centralized than the current one. Republicans back then liked this, because they did not like Clinton. For example, the FBI was tight with GOP Senators, and had its own agenda. The GOP was hardly inclined to give Janet Reno and Bill Clinton more control over the FBI. Likewise, the military was not exactly prepared to march lockstep behind Clinton, and the GOP supported them in this. So, when Clarke ran into opposition from the Navy when he wanted to station submarines off Pakistan to be able to launch cruise missiles on short notice, he had a relatively hard time getting this done. This was the entire point of the conservative efforts to weaken the Clinton presidency through schemes like the Arkansas Project and the Starr investigations, so let us not hear conservatives complain about it now.
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Fictive? Go back and look at the WSJ editorial page in the mid-1990s (pre-Lewinsky). I'm not saying that the entire GOP congress was pushing, but there was a loud group that was.
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Pushing for what? And cite, please.
Contra Hank, invading Afghanistan was on no one's agenda until after 9/11.
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Incidentally, the timing of the bombing was very coincidental, wasn't it?
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As I recall from one of those books (
The Age of Sacred Terror, maybe?) others like Defense Secretary William Cohen, a Republican, offered to speak publicly to make clear that they received usable info just then, and Clinton said, no, he was the president and would take the heat.
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Clinton may have taken it more seriously than Bush, but not by a lot or at least his actions didn't reflect it.
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If you would read one of these books, you would actually know what actions he took.
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You also have to remember that Bush was only in office for 9 months when 9/11 occured, so to the same extent it's not fair to judge by hindsight, it's also not fair to judge a guy who was on the job 8 years with one on the job for 9 months.
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You can judge him by what he did with those nine months: nada. Does the billions spent on missile defense make you feel safer?
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And yes, I know, Burger et all met with Bush and stressed terrorism, but frankly, if I was Bush, I'm not sure it would have meant all that much to me.
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You may think Bush is stupid: I don't. I just think he had other priorities, and doesn't want to hear facts that don't fit with his priorities.
