I saw an
online story that summed it up: "...seems likely to revive some long-running disputes over whether the Clinton or Bush administration has more to answer for...". Of course!
Rove's and the Republitics standard play--terrorize Americans--ain't being bought by the people anymore. So they reach to the previous play. Clinton! But we can fight "Clinton" with Clinton. The transcript of President Clinton's 2000 State of the Union
A third challenge we have is to keep this inexorable march of technology from giving terrorists and potentially hostile nations the means to undermine our defenses. ...
Then he says what exactly we have to do:
We must meet this threat by making effective agreements to restrain nuclear and missile programs in North Korea, curbing the flow of lethal technology to Iran, preventing Iraq from threatening its neighbors, increasing our preparedness against chemical and biological attack, protecting our vital computer systems from hackers and criminals, and developing a system to defend against new missile threats, while working to preserve our ABM missile treaty with Russia.
We must do all these things.
Let's see, how many of those has Bush accomplished? You've gotta read/see this. Although right here we have more straight-talk about our situation than you'd hear in a hundred Sundays of Bush.
...I predict to you, when most of us are long gone but some time in the next 10 to 20 years, the major security threat this country will face will come from the enemies of the nation state: the narcotraffickers and the terrorists and the organized criminals, who will be organized together, working together, with increasing access to ever-more sophisticated chemical and biological weapons. ...
I also want to ask you for a constructive bipartisan dialog this year to work to build a consensus which I hope will eventually lead to the ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.
Don't this just break your heart, blow your mind, feel like a fresh breeze, prove just how very very low our nation has sunk?
I don't love everything he talks about, or much of what he did for that matter, but he really wanted to provide a vision of the best possible for America and the World. Imagine the Republicult saying this:
The American people watching us at home, with the help of all the commentators, can tell, from who stands and who sits and who claps and who doesn't, that there's still modest differences of opinion in this room. [Laughter] But I want to thank you for something, every one of you. I want to thank you for the extraordinary support you have given, Republicans and Democrats alike, to our men and women in uniform. I thank you for that.
Woe is America, we've sunk so low.
I swear he also gave a speech at the UN ('96?) where he addressed terrorism broadly, but either I'm imagining that or I haven't hit the magical google combination that will bring me a reference.
So this is from President Clinton's 1999 SOTU:
...As we work for peace, we must also meet threats to our Nation's security, including increased dangers from outlaw nations and terrorism. We will defend our security wherever we are threatened, as we did this summer when we struck at Usama bin Ladin's network of terror.
...We must work to keep terrorists from disrupting computer networks. We must work to prepare local communities for biological and chemical emergenices, to support research into vaccines and treatments.
We must increase our efforts to restrain the spread of nuclear weapons and missiles, from Korea to India and Pakistan.
...We must expand our work with Russia, Ukraine, and other former Soviet nations to safeguard nuclear materials and technology so they never fall into the wrong hands. Our balanced budget will increase funding for these critical efforts by almost two-thirds over the next 5 years.
Yeah, that balanced budget reference threw me off too. Reminds me it's even worse when you look beyond how Bush has lost three wars and consider his domestic policies as well.
I haven't read 1998's SOTU yet, but right here we can see the President loudly telling the Republitics, indeed all America, we've got to do something about terrorism. Instead they spent two years trying to use the law to pull a coup d'etat. Then they gave us Bush.
PS: You can see the videos here: