I have to agree, George Bush inherited a big problem.

the U.S.S. Cole was bombed by Al Quaeda in October of 2000. To the best of my knowledge, Clinton did very little about it.

George Bush took office in January, 2 months later.

What did he do about it?

Some of U Boyz hit the nail on the head. After 45 years of a Cold War the USA was ready to party as if it were "the end of history." When polled about foreign policy Americans turned a blind eye to the world situation and only thought about a rising stock market. So the USA elected the perfect party President, Bill Clinton. Clinton is notorious for checking which way the wind blows before saying anything let alone doing anything. The only thing Clinton succeded in doing was losing Congress for the Democrats for a decade with Hillarys Health Care fiasco. The only good sense that Clinton showed was by listening to Robert Rubens and Alan Greenspans advice, leave the economy alone stupid. So while the USA and Bill Clinton got high on a DOT. com bubble the world fermented and eventually exploded 9 months after Bill Clinton stole the towels from Airforce 1 as he left office. Talk about a Trailer Trash move.

Cognitive dissonance at its best. You are the type that someone simply does not argue with outside a 7-11 or down on the Venice boardwalk. Peace, brother...:cool:

Actually Pre-9/11 only the Democrats attempted to address the terrorist threat.

The most GWB was able to do was take 40 days of vacation in his first 9 months. He was alleged to have said he was 'tired of swatting at flies' in regard to Al Quaeda, but there's no evidence he went as far as swatting a fly.

The mindless mantra that Democrats were passive in regard to terrorism doesn't hold water. Accusing the other side of having your own weaknesses is a key tactic of this administration. Some people still may buy it, but the number has been dropping for about 7 years now...

GW Bush for all his faults is a man who sticks to his word and his friends. Sometimes he should of called his friends onto the carpet and demanded more of them or even cut them loose sooner. GW has also showed patience, maybe too much patience.

Iraq became an incremental problem, as one bad thing led to another. GW was giving time for his policies to work and it took time for them to be shown to be faliures. Nothing becomes apparent overnight, armchair generals often like to use hindsight. When it really became apparent that things had gone to he11 in a handbasket ole GW modified his approach in Iraq and instituted the "Surge." Which for all intents and purposes has been working.

Will any futher President be able to keep their campaign promises and pull all our troops out of Iraq. I don't think so. They will have to be there, like Korea for a long time acting as a stablizing agent in country and in region.

Some people will say that the USA should just pull out of everywhere and come home. However the cost of remaining the leading world power is that we are called upon to maintain world stability with our military presence. There is no other option available for world security, or at least not one that is acceptable to the USA. For the most part if the USA did pull out its military presence the forces of chaos and discord would rise.

Let's keep things honest. While Clinton left the country in a “pretty good financial position”, Bush II didn't inherit that position. What happened? Congress went on a spending spree. After all, It was an election year. Even McCain complained about how much the Republican Congress was spending at the time.

Is there crack in your pipe? Clinton spent 8 yrs looking for some strange & ignoring terrorists?

Ad hominems don't replace research. When Clinton sent 70 cruise missiles to kill OBL, the "right" mocked him.

Isn't it funny that NONE of the Liberal Posters here will EVEN make a comment on what I posted. How can one refute the truth?

Speeder
"The lead-filled asses of his dead-end supporters such as you are nothing but a further drag on America."

Did I say something to offend you?

I guess you are right, he should have bombed someone, anyone, his first month in office.

Was that the empty aspirin factory during the Monica problem?

I don't think you understood my question. What did Bush do in response to the bombing of the Cole?

But it's interesting that you agree that Bush's lack of response encouraged AQ to hit us on 9/11.

I must have missed your interpretation of that. I never agreed to anything you said. It must be hard to come into office with the information the previouse administration left you and do something they haven't done for eight years even though they had that information. That is my point and I am surprised I have to point that out to you.

"But it's interesting that you agree that Bush's lack of response encouraged AQ to hit us on 9/11."

and another thing, Bin Laden already talked about how weak we were after the Mogidishu fiasco that Clinton didn't handle.

Perhaps there is no response because it has been all said before ad nauseum. This blaming of one "party" by the other is all done in the light of 20/20 hindsight. What was a small and managable problem became a big one because of a bellicose attitude and the inability to back down and admit that course was not in the overall best interests of the Country.

They mocked him because the attack was based on flawed intelligence.:(

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Afghanistan_and_Sudan_(August_1998)

It is too bad the far left and right try so hard to indict each other...it is comical.

Edit. Link doesn't work. Text:

Officials later acknowledged, however, "that the evidence that prompted President Clinton to order the missile strike on the Shifa plant was not as solid as first portrayed. Indeed, officials later said that there was no proof that the plant had been manufacturing or storing nerve gas, as initially suspected by the Americans, or had been linked to Osama bin Laden, who was a resident of Khartoum in the 1980s."[2]. Unfortunately the factory was Sudan's primary source of pharmaceuticals, covering the majority of the Sudanese market. Werner Daum (Germany's ambassador to Sudan 1996–2000) wrote an article [3] in which he estimated that the attack "probably led to tens of thousands of deaths" of Sudanese civilians. The U.S. State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research wrote a report in 1999 questioning the attack on the factory, suggesting that the connection to bin Laden was not accurate; James Risen reported in the New York Times: "Now, the analysts renewed their doubts and told Assistant Secretary of State Phyllis Oakley that the C.I.A.'s evidence on which the attack was based was inadequate. Ms. Oakley asked them to double-check; perhaps there was some intelligence they had not yet seen. The answer came back quickly: There was no additional evidence. Ms. Oakley called a meeting of key aides and a consensus emerged: Contrary to what the Administration was saying, the case tying Al Shifa to Mr. bin Laden or to chemical weapons was weak."[4] The Chairman of El Shifa Pharmaceutical Industries, who is critical of the Sudanese government, more recently told reporters, "I had inventories of every chemical and records of every employee's history. There were no such [nerve gas] chemicals being made here."[5] Sudan has since invited the U.S. to conduct chemical tests at the site for evidence to support its claim that the plant might have been a chemical weapons factory; so far, the U.S. has refused the invitation to investigate. Nevertheless, the U.S. has refused to officially apologize for the attacks, suggesting that some privately still suspect that chemical weapons activity existed there.[6]

Yes, I understand that. the CIA knew where OBL was.

Between January and Sept 2001, what did Bush do in retaliation for the bombing fo the Cole?

He hasn't confided in me, maybe he was reading whatever information was left him.
If the CIA knew so much, why didn't Clinton act?

We already covered why Clinton didn't act, and that's not the issue here. Don't change the subject.

Bush took office in January armed with good information on the attack on the Cole, AQ and OBL.

Much of Bush's message in the last 2 weeks of October - Nov. was that he'll keep us safe from terrorism. Given that: Why did he do nothing with that information?

Please cover it again...I am not sure you are correct in your assumptions.

Edit: I hope this link works. It is long but worth the time.

http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Ch6.htm