Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Daseal
Cpayne if they enjoy the 8 years they had under clinton, I'll enjoy 8 years of no attacks on our soil and a strong foreign policy. I'm fine with that.
|
Here's a list of attacks against US interests attributed to Al-Qaeda under Clinton's watch.
February 26, 1993: An explosion in the basement of the World Trade Center towers in New York kills six people and injures about 1,000. The blast causes major damage to the buildings' foundations; some 55,000 people are working in the towers at the time.
November 13, 1995: A car bomb explodes in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in front of a building of the Saudi National Guard where US military advisors work. Five US soldiers and two Indian nationals are killed and more than 60 people wounded.
June 25, 1996: A truck loaded with two tonnes of explosives destroys a building at the US military base of Khobar near the town of Dhahran in Saudi Arabia. Nineteen US nationals are killed and 386 are wounded.
August 7, 1998: US embassies in the east African cities of Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam are hit by near-simultaneous bomb attacks which kill 224 people, almost all of them Africans, and injure over 5,000. The toll in Nairobi is 213 dead and over 5,000 injured; in Dar-es-Salaam 11 dead and over 70 injured. Of the total dead, 12 are US nationals.
October 12, 2000: A suicide attack on the destroyer USS Cole kills 17 US sailors and injures 38 in the Yemeni port of Aden.
The research, communication, and planning for attacks on 9/11 were conducted for years prior to 9/11. The Clinton administration cut funding to the CIA, the FBI, and the military in general. September 11, 2001 comes and we're attacked. You can blame 8 months on Bush all you want, but you also have to blame 8 years on Clinton to be fair.
Louis Freeh, FBI director from 93-01, came to Clinton in the oval office one day during Clinton's second term seeking support in changing some restrictive laws. He found it wrong that if the CIA knew something about a terror plot it was legally barred from informing the FBI about it. Freeh wanted this wall to be broken. Clinton said there was nothing he could do and refused. Freeh then asked if there if he could make it so that the agencies could share information to stop terror plots, but just not be able to prosecute the plotters. Clinton also refused this request.
Under George W. Bush, this is no longer the case. Agencies can now share information. An example of this is the plot to blow up the Brooklyn bridge. The FBI heard some 'chatter' with Brooklyn bridge in it. It then informed the NYPD who put up 24 hour surveillance on it. The FBI in the meantime tracked down the guy who was going to execute the plot. He had aborted the mission because of the surveillance being applied by the police. The FBI found detailed engineering and explosive diagrams in the guy's apartment. If this had taken place in 2000 the person in the FBI who gave the order to inform the local police would have been charged and prosecuted with a felony. Kind of rediculous, don't you think?