The day of Clinton's scheduled impeachment, Dec. 18, 1998, he bombed Iraq. This accomplished two things: (1) It delayed his impeachment for one day, and (2) it got a lot of Democrats on record about the monumental danger of Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction.
So don't tell me impeachment "distracted" Clinton from his aggressive pursuit of terrorists. He never would have bombed anyone if it weren't for the Clinton-haters.
As soon as Clinton was no longer "distracted" by impeachment, he went right back to doing nothing in response to terrorism. In October 2000, al-Qaida bombed the USS Cole, killing 17 sailors and nearly sinking the ship.
Clinton did nothing. This is only an abbreviated list of Clinton's surrender to Islamic savagery. For a president who supposedly stayed up all night "working" and hated vacations, Clinton sure spent a lot of time sitting around on his butt while America was being attacked.
According to Rich Miniter, author of "Losing Bin Laden," Clinton's top national security advisers made the following classic Democrat excuses for doing nothing in response to the Cole attack:
Attorney General Janet Reno "thought retaliation might violate international law and was therefore against it."
CIA Director George Tenet "wanted more definitive proof that bin Laden was behind the attack, although he personally thought he was."
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright "was concerned about the reaction of world opinion to a retaliation against Muslims and the impact it would have in the final days of the Clinton Middle East peace process." (How did that turn out, by the way? Big success, I take it? Everybody over there all friendly with one another?)
Secretary of Defense William Cohen "did not consider the Cole attack 'sufficient provocation' for a military retaliation."
Less than a year after Clinton's final capitulation to Islamic terrorists, they staged the largest terrorist attack in history on U.S. soil. The Sept. 11 attack, planning for which began in the '90s, followed eight months of President Bush -- but eight years of Bill Clinton.
Clinton's own campaign adviser on Iraq, Laurie Mylroie, says Clinton and his advisers are "most culpable" for the intelligence failure that allowed 9/11 to happen.
Now, after five years of no terrorist attacks in America, Democrats are hoping we'll forget the consequences of the Democrat strategy of doing nothing in response to terrorism and abandon the Bush policies that have kept this nation safe since 9/11. But first, they need to rewrite history.
COPYRIGHT 2006 ANN COULTER