I am saying that, when Clinton heard of the possibility of a terrorist attack on America timed to coincide with Y2K, he met daily with the heads of the CIA and the FBI and personally demanded that they shake the tree and roust out the intelligence community to make every effort to prevent the attack. And that effort was successful.
I am saying that, similarly, in August of '01, George Bush was told that Osama was determined to strike within our borders.... and, in contrast to Clinton's reaction, George said, "thanks for the report...you've covered your ass.... now get out of my way, I've got a tee time" and continued on with his vacation while our enemies were training right under our noses....while FBI field officers were sending reports to their superiors that they were really concerned about arabs learning to fly jetliners but not caring about learning how to land them..... but those reports remained up in the tree, because there was no one in the oval office demanding that the trees be shaken.... the oval office was empty and the golf course in Crawford was well utilitized.
That is what I am saying. Am I saying that if Bush had been as diligent about the august PDB as Clinton had been about Y2K that 9/11 definitely would not have happened? of course not.... we'll never know, will we? I am saying that the response of those two presidents to the threats imposed by islamic extremism were totally different - especially in the early days of the Bush presidency prior to 9/11. Clinton tried to get Osama ...Bush ignored him. Clinton ordered CIA predator drone overflights of Afghanistan to continually be on the lookout for Osama, Bush cancelled those flights soon after taking office. My guess is that President Gore would have taken an approach to Osama bin Laden that was more in line with Clinton's approach than Bush's pre-9/11 approach. That is my opinion... that is why I said "9/11 PROBABLY wouldn't have happened".
