I'm a firm believer that Bill Clinton got off way too easily when discussing the failures of pre-9/11 intelligence gathering and our lack of response when repeatedly provoked. Yes, we were attacked prior to Clinton entering office.

The kidnapping of our hostages in Iran and the Hezbollah attack in Beirut are but two glaring examples of pre-al-Qaida terror. The hostage taking was a nadir for our country and Jimmy Carter did not have the nerve or the military to respond. Ronald Reagan also did not respond to the attack that killed 240 Marines and others in Beirut, but at the time we were in the middle of a civil war and we had no idea which side was which and who our friends were and who were our enemies.

The attacks against our interests and military in the 1990's were a different story altogether. From Mogadishu to the first World Trade Center Bombing to he African embassy bombings to the Khobar Towers to finally a direct attack on a U.S. warship -- the USS Cole -- and still we did almost nothing. We said to Osama bin-Laden "attack, we won't respond" and he was emboldened enough to first allow planning for the Millenium bombings and the Bojinka plane bombings (both luckily stopped by heads-up policewomen) while funding the attacks on the WTC and Pentagon.

Now Michael Isikoff writes that Clinton lied on Fox during that finger-pointing charade with Chris Wallace:

The report also criticized intelligence problems when Bill Clinton was president, detailing political and legal "constraints" agency officials felt in the late 1990s. In September 2006, during a famous encounter with Fox News anchor Wallace, Clinton erupted in anger and waived his finger when asked about whether his administration had done enough to get bin Laden. "What did I do? What did I do?" Clinton said at one point. "I worked hard to try to kill him. I authorized a finding for the CIA to kill him. We contracted with people to kill him. I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since."

Clinton appeared to have been referring to a December 1999 Memorandum of Notification (MON) he signed that authorized the CIA to use lethal force to capture, not kill, bin Laden. But the inspector general's report made it clear that the agency never viewed the order as a license to "kill" bin Laden-one reason it never mounted more effective operations against him. "The restrictions in the authorities given the CIA with respect to bin Laden, while arguably, although ambiguously, relaxed for a period of time in late 1998 and early 1999, limited the range of permissible operations," the report stated. (Scheuer agreed with the inspector general's findings on this issue, but said if anything the report was overly diplomatic. "There was never any ambiguity," he said. "None of those authorities ever allowed us to kill anyone. At least that's what the CIA lawyers told us." A spokesman for the former president had no immediate comment.)

So, in effect, we just were treated to more Clinton spin. Note that the darling of the left, Michael Scheuer, makes perfectly clear that Clinton flat out lied while being interviewed by Wallace. There was never an order to kill Osama bin Laden and Clinton knew it when he was being interviewed. Instead he proceeded to make a big show and got major kudos for putting that Fox interviewer in his place. It was all a sham, which those of us who actually viewed Clinton with a realistic eye during the nineties knew from the start. I can see the Clinton team forming their response: "It depends on what the definition of "kill" means".

This only makes me bring up the question again: What did Sandy Berger shove in his pants and steal from the National Archives that he and Clinton didn't want the 9/11 Commission to see? Clinton had to know this report would eventually be released and he would be proven wrong once again. Surprisingly, he did have a comment, which means that the Clinton spin machine is triangulating something or looking for someone else to scapegoat as has been their M.O. for years.

As I've said before, 9/11 was not President Clinton's fault and it was not President Bush's fault. It was the fault of a terror network that used our freedoms against us. I do blame Clinton for destroying a military and an intelligence entity that could have prevented the attack from occurring had they been given the leadership and the tools needed. Sadly, the Clinton administration had people such as 9/11 Commission member Jamie Gorelick who hamstrung the intel agencies and contributed to our deep weaknesses.

Video of the Clinton-Wallace interview below to refresh your memory. Different thoughts here.