Nice revisionism there.
When BUsh took over we were being targeted for 9/11. Terrorism was a problem Clinton refused to face. We were about to enter a recession thanks to Clinton's raising taxes.
The day Bush left household incomes were at a level not seen since.
Gov't debt had not risen by 80%
The Middle East was no aflame with Islamic radicals burning and destroying
Russia was not expanding into Ukraine and Syria
We are far worse off now.
It's pretty obvious that you decide a position on everything based upon your politics. How in the hell you came up blaming Bill Clinton is a real puzzle. The FBI, the CIA and some military experts told Bush that an attack on our country using commercial aircraft was a distinct possibility. The hijackers actually trained on how to fly the planes but refused to learn landing procedures. Condoleezza Rice personally handed Bush a memo to that effect. George Bush was too busy working on his two tax cuts for the wealthy to pay attention to any kind of military warning.
Now....a little history for you:
The Barracks Bombings October 23, 1983 in Beruit Lebanon occurred when two truck bombs struck separate buildings housing US and French military forces—killing 299 American and French servicemen. A then obscure group calling itself
Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the bombings. Our U S marines had determined their location and had artillery weapons set to take them out. What did ol' movie star do? He pulled all our military out of the country. There's no way of knowing but chances are pretty good that if we had taken their asses all the way out then we wouldn't have had to put up with all the bull shit today. This letter to Bill Clinton will explain in detail what the Republicans were trying to do and it wasn't stop terrorism, quite the contrary:
December 18, 1998
The Honorable William J. Clinton
President of the United States
Washington, DC
Dear Mr. President,
We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War. In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course
for meeting this threat. We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power. We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor. The policy of containment of Saddam Hussein has been steadily eroding over the past several months. As recent events have demonstrated, we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections. Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons of mass destruction, therefore, has substantially diminished. Even if full inspections were eventually to resume, which now seems highly unlikely, experience has shown that it is difficult if not impossible to monitor Iraq's chemical and biological weapons production. The lengthy period during which the inspectors will have been unable to enter many Iraqi facilities has made it even less likely that they will be able to uncover all of Saddam's secrets. As a result, in the not-too-distant future we will be unable to determine with any reasonable level of confidence whether Iraq does or does not possess such weapons. Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously destabilizing effect on the entire Middle East. It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world's supply of oil will all be put at hazard. As you have rightly declared, Mr. President, the security of the world in the first part of the 21st century will be determined largely by how we handle this threat. Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.
We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council. We urge you to act decisively. If you act now to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept a course of weakness and drift, we put our interests and our future at risk.
Sincerely,
Elliott Abrams Richard L. Armitag William J. Bennett
Jeffrey Bergner John Bolton Paula Dobriansky
Francis Fukuyama Robert Kagan Zalmay Khalilzad
William Kristol Richard Perle Peter W.Rodman
Donald Rumsfeld William Schneider, Jr. Vin Weber
Paul Wolfowitz R. James Woolsey
Robert B. Zoellick
