Woo hoo! On Tuesday, Hillary Clinton delivered
a forceful rebuttal to the lies that Condi Rice spouted about the Bushies and their (in)attention to terrorism before 9/11.
In unusually blunt terms, Senator Clinton questioned the current administration's response to an intelligence briefing President Bush received about a month before the 9/11 attacks. It mentioned that Al Qaeda was intent on striking the United States using hijacked planes.
"I'm certain that if my husband and his national security team had been shown a classified report entitled `Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States,' he would have taken it more seriously than history suggests it was taken by our current president and his national security team," she said during an appearance on Capitol Hill.
Yes! That's the message! Clinton tried; Bush didn't try.
"I think my husband did a great job in demonstrating that Democrats are not going to take these attacks," she said.
But wait, there's more!
And Hillary's spokesman said, hey, I want a piece of that, too...
Philippe Reines, a spokesman for Senator Clinton, noted that the 9/11 Commission Report found that after President Clinton received intelligence warnings in 1998, he immediately mobilized his National Security Council, the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. while also increasing security and putting airports and airlines on high alert. By contrast, he said, the commission found no indication of any further discussion before Sept. 11 among President Bush and his top advisers of the possibility of a threat of an attack by Al Qaeda in the United States, even after Mr. Bush received an August 2001 briefing that Mr. bin Laden intended to attack inside the United States.
"President Clinton saw the warnings and took action," Mr. Reines said. "President Bush saw the warnings and took no action."
Beautiful. Take notes, fellow Democrats:
Senator Clinton made her comments at a news conference on the Hill, where Democrats argued that President Bush's handling of the war in Iraq and its aftermath had actually made America more vulnerable to terrorist attacks.
"Their policies are failing, our military is breaking and the American people are demanding a change," she said. "The administration has lost focus on winning the war on Iraq, and all Washington Republicans can focus on is winning elections here at home."