Friday, September 15, 2006

What's the Difference?

What's the Difference?

Well, what do you know? 

 Recently released "secret" documents reveal that the previous Democrat government, under the guileless leadership of the slippery-but-popular President Bill Clinton, had ample warning about the potential threat from one Mr. Osama Bin Ladin. It seems that the terrorist threat from that particular individual's chosen country club, otherwise known as "El Qaeda," was already well known in the "intelligence" community during the Clinton administration. 

Many sounded the alarm, but most were ignored. During Mr. Clinton's "cigar trial," the administration did begin to make noises suggesting it was taking the situation seriously (Wag the Dog?), but when the president finally decided to launch several cruise missiles to Bin Ladin's known location, he first called Osama's friends in Pakistan to warn them (ostensibly to prevent a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan due to the unexplained presence of missiles flying over their airspace.) 

Of course, when the missiles arrived at their destination, Osama and company were long (at least two hours) gone. 

Since that time, many opportunities to curtail El Qaeda's operations, mainly by taking out their leadership, have been passed over due to a certain hesitancy on the part of the politicians in and over the intelligence community to believe reports from anyone but a red-blooded member of the US intelligence community. 

Virtually all opportunities to destroy the terrorist leadership have been missed due to the inability of the intelligence community to confirm these reports from people on the ground in the areas where the terrorists are residing. 

 Pardon me, but isn't it a little difficult to confirm these reports? Western intel will never even get close to these men! If the West is going to win, the West has to start trusting friends "over there." 

This brings me to the whole point of today's rant: What is the difference between the present US administration and the previous US administration? The Democrats rather loudly decry the present Republican administration for not catching Osama Bin Laden and his friends, but the Democrats are crossing their fingers and hoping everyone has forgotten that THEY had the best opportunity to take out Bin Laden and prevent the 9-11 tragedy than anyone so far, and they blew it! 

 The truth is, the Bush administration has been left with the unenviable task of picking up the pieces dropped by its predecessor.