The Quadrangle

Issue date: 10/6/04 Section: Perspectives

William P. Still's article about George W. Bush and John Kerry is a waste of time for someone to bother reading. It is filled with inaccuracies, misrepresentations, and, at times, it is extremely offensive. Still rambles through the first couple of paragraphs describing the great job President Bush has done in regards to terrorism. He fails to mention that the largest terrorist attack in our countries history occurred on George W. Bush's watch! I didn't read anything in his article about the memo that was given to the president and members of his cabinet on August 6, 2001, which was entitled, "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the United States." Remember, President Bush spent the entire month of August (2001) on vacation at his ranch in Texas! While the terrorists were making their final preparations before the attack, this incompetent, so-called president, was taking a break from the job. At the time, Bush's one-month vacation was by far the longest that any sitting president had ever taken. Of course, the president found time to equal his vacation record in the summer of 2002. If George W. Bush had spent more time doing his job maybe the terrorist attacks on 9/11 could have been prevented. President Clinton and members of his administration stopped numerous attacks from occurring in their eight years on the job. For example, a massive plot to blow-up buildings and sites all over the United States on New Year's Eve in 1999 was broken up. Terrorists planned to denote bombs at Los Angeles International Airport, as well at the Seattle Space Needle, and at sites in New York City, but the Clinton administration stopped them. When Clinton left office, his Defense Secretary, William Cohen, warned the new administration of the threat that al-Qaeda posed. What did President Bush do with this information? Well, according to Bush's former Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O'Neill, the president was planning to attack Iraq from the day he took office on January 20, 2001, so I guess he had other priorities. Richard Clarke, the former National Coordinator for Counter-terrorism told "60 Minutes" last March, that President Bush did not take the threat from al-Qaeda seriously in his first 7 and a half months in office "We had a terrorist organization that was going after us," Clarke said to Lesley Stahl during the "60 Minutes" broadcast. "Al- Qaeda. That should have been the first item on the agenda. And it was pushed back and back and back for months. On January 24th, 2001, I wrote a memo to Condoleezza Rice asking for, urgently -- underlined urgently -- a Cabinet-level meeting to deal with the impending al-Qaeda attack. And that urgent memo-- wasn't acted on." If only the president had done something about that urgent memo, maybe that attacks could have been stopped. So please don't tell me that President Bush has done a great job when it comes to terrorism. 3,000 people learned that he was asleep at the switch before September 11, 2001.

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