Clinton's Legacy - The World Trade Center

TruthNews Commentary, September 14, 2001

Bill Clinton, more than any president in recent memory, has been obsessed with his legacy. Even before his impeachment, he had his advisors working overtime to determine how he could best be remembered by history.

Well, now Clinton has his legacy. It's the smoking hole that was once the World Trade Center. Other than the villains themselves, it is Clinton himself and his advisors that are most to blame for the terrorist attacks of September 11.

Clinton faced terrorist attacks many times during his administration. Muslim terrorists tried early in the Clinton administration to blow up the World Trade Center and assassinate former President Bush. Osama Bin Laden, the prime suspect in the September 11 attacks, attacked the U.S. at least three times during the Clinton regime:

• In 1996, Muslim terrorists exploded a truck bomb outside an Air Force housing complex in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 airmen and wounding hundreds more. The Saudis have obstructed the investigation, and the bombing is officially still unsolved, but Bin Laden, the scion of a wealthy Saudi family, is one of the prime suspects.

• In 1998, Muslim terrorists blew up the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 212 people and wounding thousands. This time, Clinton blamed Bin Laden in public, and the FBI put the fugitive millionaire at the top of its 10 most wanted list.

• Last October, the American destroyer USS Cole was attacked by Muslim suicide bombers in Yemen, killing 17 sailors and wounding 39.

And what did our Commander-in-Chief do about these atrocities? In the first attack, on the Air Force barracks in Saudi Arabia, Clinton sacked the general in command of the unit in Saudi, even though an Air Force investigation absolved the general of blame. The Air Force Chief of Staff, Gen. Ronald Fogleman, resigned in protest. No action was taken against the perpetrators.

To retaliate for the African embassy attack, Clinton sent cruise missiles to destroy a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan and blow up empty tents in Afghanistan. The retaliation was widely viewed as an attempt to divert attention from the Monica Lewinsky affair.

In the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, Clinton said, "We will find out who was responsible and hold them accountable." However, Clinton was more concerned with negotiating a peace treaty between the Israelis and Palestinians, and saw the Cole attack as a distraction from his efforts to win a Nobel Peace Prize and burnish his tarnished legacy. Consequently, the president did nothing to follow up on his promise to "find out who was responsible and hold them accountable" in the three months he had left in office.

Clinton, in fighting terrorism, spoke big and did little. This lack of action on the part of the U.S. could only have been an further encouragement to Bin Laden and other would-be attackers of the U.S. Clinton also did his best to destroy the military that President Bush must now use to take on the Taliban. The erstwhile commander-in-chief squandered military resources on futile military interventions around the globe and generated a budget surplus by reducing military readiness.

So look out your window, Mr. Ex-President. The smoking hole that was once the World Trade Center is your legacy.

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