On Friday, our friend Kent posted the following:

Just remember one thing Jason....the people who think like you, not the least of which is Bill Clinton, cost 3000 innocent people their lives on 9/11/2001. If you're too much of a simpleton to understand that, I truly pity you. You obviously don't understand anything about the history of this country or the history of the middle east either. We can't take the Bill Clinton approach and pop off a few cruise missles when we need points in the polls becauase we were banging an intern instead of doing our job running the country. Clinton's legacy is an embarrasment to this country.

So I did a little research afterwards.  Was Kent right?  Was it all Clinton's sole fault?!  I found the following:

One month before Clinton left office, Robert Oakley, ambassador for counterterrorism in the Reagan State Department told the Washington Post, "Overall, I give them very high marks."  Ironically, he went on to say "The only major criticism I have is the obsession with Osama, which made him stronger."  Of course Paul Bremer, Oakley's successor and the civilian administrator in Iraq said he believed that the Clinton administration "correctly focused on bin Laden."

Speaking of Reagan - let's look at his anti-terrorism record:  Radical Islamic terrorists killed more Americans during his administration than during the Bush Sr and Clinton years combined.  Between the 1983 embassy and Marine barracks bombings in Beirut and the destruction of Pam Am flight 103, nearly 500 American lives were lost.  Reagan's only direct response was a single bombing run against Libya in 1986.

He then supplied arms to violent Muslim extremists Afghani Mujahadeen as well as to American "allies" in Iraq and Iran.

Then we have George Bush Sr who as president continued to supply arms to Muslim extremists in Afghanistan (to fight the Russians!) and then once the Russians withdrew proceeded to promptly ignore Afghanistan, which allowed the Taliban and their anti-american training camps to take over.  But hey, wouldn't want to blame a Republican president.  After all, they didn't get caught having sex!

Then you have Clinton who tripled the counterterrorism budget for the FBI and more than doubled counterrorism funding overall.  And created our country's first top-level national security post to coordinate all federal counterterrorism activity.  The cad!  Hell, after Clinton struck targets in Sugan and Afghanistan with Tomahawk missles after our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were attacked, even Gingrich said "The President did exactly the right thing.  By doing this we're sending the signal there are no sanctuaries for terrorists."  Even Gingrich agreed with how Clinton handled it!  And Clinton issued a presidential directive authorizing the assassination of Osama bin Laden at that time as well.  Ironically, many Congressional Republicans seized on this to actually attack Clinton, citing it as a violation of Executive Order 12333 which was issued by Reagan prohibiting the assassination of foreign heads of state.  Of course, Osama was not actually a foreign head of state.

So Kent says terrorism is all Clinton's fault (oh yeah, and people like me according to Kent)?  After the USS Cole was attacked, Clinton put Richard Clarke in charge of coming up with a comprehensive plan to take out al Qaeda as one of the final projects of his administration (this was in October 2000).  This plan was submitted to Sand Berger and other national security principals on December 20, 2000.  Its plans included:  breaking up al Qaeda cells and arresting their personnel; attacking financial supports for its terrorist activities; freezing its assets; stopping its funding through fake charities; giving aid to governments having trouble with al Qaeda (such as Uzbekistan, the Phillipines and Yemen); and increasing covert activity in Afghanistan to take out al Qaeda training camps and reach bin Laden himself.  Does all this sound familiar?  It should, since a senior Bush administration official told Time Magazine in the August 12, 2002, issue - Clarke's plan amounted to "everything we've done since 9/11."

As this plan was completed within weeks of Bush taking office, it was handed over to the following administration to carry out - essentially handing them a war on terror. 

So Bush gets into office and has been given a plan to fight terror.  So what does his administration do with it?  Well, despite several warnings from Sandy Berger and Richard Clarke, they felt those wacky Clintonites had become a little obsessed with terrorism.  They were more interested in things like missle defense, for example.  And pulling out of the Kyoto treaty.  And limiting stem cell research.  On February 15, 2001, a commission led by Gary Hart and Warren Rudman issued its final report on national security warning that "mass casualty terrorism directed against the US homeland was of serious and growing concern."  This report also urged the creation of "a National Homeland Security Agency".  These suggestions caused some movement in Congress but were ignored at the time by the White House.  In fact, the Bush Administration's response was to announce a new task force on May 8, 2001, to develop a plan to counter domestic terrorist attacks.  This task force never met once. 

Of course, Bush probably didn't have time to put it into action - after all he spent 42 percent of his first seven months in office either at Camp David, the Bush compound in Kennebunkport, or at his ranch in Crawford Texas.  Fighting terrorists on the golf course, no doubt. 

On July 10, 2001, Kenneth Williams, a Phoenix FBI agent, sent a memo urging FBI Headquarters to contact other intelligence agencies to see if al Qaeda operatives might be trying to infiltrate the US civil aviation system after discovering a group of Middle Eastern students attempting admission at an Arizona flight school.  This report made it to Tenet briefed Condoleeza Rice soon after "that there was going to be a major attack."  So on July 16 - seven months after receiving it - Clarke's anti-al Qaeda plan was finally approved...to move on to the Principals Committee composed of Cheney, Rice, Tenet, Powell and Rumsfeld.  They were going to meet on it in August 2001, but too many members were planning time off for August so they moved the date back to September 7, 2001.  At this meeting the committee finally met  and decided to advise Bush to accept the plan - the plan created and completed under orders from President Clinton, where it then sat on his desk.  The events four days later would FINALLY get the plan activated.

On September 6, 2001, Congress proposed a boost of $600 million for antiterror programs, but because money was to come out of the missle defense program, Rumsfeld threatened a presidential veto.

On September 7, 2001, Ashcroft sent his Justice Department request to President Bush.  Despite including spending increases in sixty-eight different programs, NONE of them dealt with terrorism.  In a memo of his seven top priorities, again terrorism wasn't on the list.

So - we had the Reagan and Bush Sr administrations who actually armed would-be terrorists.  Then we had the Clinton administration that actually attacked terrorists and made long-range plans to stop terrorism.  And then we had the Bush Jr administration who, up until that awful day in September, repeatedly ignored terrorism as a priority. 

But Kent says its all Clinton's fault.

Whatever.  Try actually looking at a fact sometime, buddy.