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Hillary charges back in husband's defense
BY GLENN THRUSH Newsday Washington BureauSeptember 26, 2006, 9:31 PM EDT
WASHINGTON -- Hillary Rodham Clinton is emerging as her husband's key defender in the who-lost-Osama fight, but the senator's role as family protector could boomerang to hurt her career, Clinton-watchers say.Responding to negative remarks about Bill Clinton by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the senator went on the attack Tuesday, saying the former president was more responsive to pre-Sept. 11, 2001 intelligence than Bush or Rice.
"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 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 told reporters on Capitol Hill Tuesday.Sen. Clinton was referring to an August 2001 intelligence memo claiming al-Qaida wanted to hijack civilian airliners; Rice and other administration officials didn't take immediate action on the information.On Monday, Rice told the New York Post editorial board that Clinton failed to leave Bush "a comprehensive strategy to fight al-Qaida." Rice, in turn, was responding to the former president's stormy Sunday appearance on Fox News, in which he accused Bush of failing to address the bin Laden threat during the first eight months of the administration.The fury of the Clinton family counterattack has its roots, allies say, in the 2004 Swift Boat attacks on John Kerry. Both Clintons believe Kerry should have responded more decisively against the attacks and have been spoiling to give the GOP the kind of fight Kerry did not wage, according to Clinton allies."Hillary's not going to let the Republicans Swift-Boat her party, her husband or herself," said one of the senator's top aides, speaking on anonymity.In August, the Clintons first fired up their famed rapid-response operation to reply to a partly fictionalized ABC miniseries about Sept. 11 that portrayed President Clinton as distracted and unwilling to pursue bin Laden.Hillary Clinton spoke out against the network, but the comments Tuesday marked an intensification of her involvement in a battle between White Houses that shows no sign of abating.The former first lady's actions prove she's still Bill Clinton's political co-pilot and that he'll be a liability if he appears angry, defensive and draws her into his fights."It's part of this huge collection of baggage she hauls with her into a national campaign," GOP strategist Nelson War.field said. "Do voters really want to go back into four years of the national soap opera that is the Clintons in the White House?"Another top Republican strategist, who requested anonymity, said the episode "reminds people of how selfish Bill Clinton is and how she essentially works for him. ... It's not supposed to be be about him, it's supposed to be about her."But Sept. 11 Commission co-chairman Tom Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, thinks the senator won't be damaged because the public will ultimately decide that both presidents did the best they could to get bin Laden."Looking at it from the perspective of someone who's been around politics a long time ... can't imagine how it would have a detrimental effect on her," Kean said.
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Al Qaeda Leader Calls Bush a 'Lying Failure'
(CNSNews.com) - In a video posted on the Internet Friday, Al Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri called President Bush a "lying failure" for claiming that progress is being made in the war on terrorism. "Bush you are a lying failure and a charlatan. It has been 3 and-a-half years (since the arrests)...What happened to us? We have gained more strength and we are more insistant on martyrdom," al-Zawahri said, according to Reuters.
Sen. Clinton hits back at Rice over 9/11
WASHINGTON -- New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has struck back at Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the escalating political bickering over which president - Bill Clinton or George W. Bush - missed more opportunities to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks.
Clinton, D-N.Y., took aim at President Bush and Rice over their roles in 2001 before the attacks, part of a growing argument that ignited after former President Clinton gave a combative interview on "Fox News Sunday" in which he defended his efforts to kill Osama bin Laden.
"I think my husband did a great job in demonstrating that Democrats are not going to take these attacks," Hillary Clinton said Tuesday. "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."
The senator was referring to a classified brief given to Bush in August 2001, one that Democrats say showed the Bush administration did not do enough to combat the growing threat from al-Qaida.
When the brief was delivered, Rice was Bush's national security adviser, and Clinton's response was clearly designed to implicate her in the same criticisms that have been made of Bush.
Clinton's response came a day after Rice denied President Clinton's claim in the television interview that the Bush administration had not aggressively pursued al-Qaida before the attacks of 2001.
"What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years," Rice said during a meeting with editors and reporters at the New York Post. "The notion somehow for eight months the Bush administration sat there and didn't do that is just flatly false, and I think the 9/11 commission understood that."
Rice also took exception to President Clinton's statement that he "left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy" for incoming officials when he left office.
"We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al-Qaida," she told the newspaper, which is owned by News Corp., the company that owns Fox News Channel.
The former president was angered during the television interview when asked why he didn't do more to fight al-Qaida.
"That's the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now," Clinton said in the interview. "They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try. They did not try."
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