Last I heard, that was a complete right wing myth; never happened. Clinton and his subordinates tried to warn the incoming administration about Bin Laden; the Bush response was to order the State Deptartment to leave Osama alone. My belief is they wanted a terrorist attack as a pretext, which is why I didn’t mention 9-11 as a blunder of the Bush Administration; I think it was a success of Bush’s, not a failure. After all, it happened, and it got him what he wanted.
If Clinton tried to warn Bush, then that necessarily means that Clinton knew.
Clinton knew bin Laden was trying to attack the United States, of course. I think Der Trihs is saying the myth is that he was offered bin Laden.
Your figuers are correct, but your interpretation of them is wrongheaded and melodramatic because they’re out of context. (You don’t mention, for example, that Roosevelt subsequently pushed marginal rates upwards to 90%.) Many exigent factors contributed to the oversimplification that you’ve given here, such as the Dust Bowl drought, the European economic collapse, Congress passing RFC legislation without passing banking legislation, and so on.
Yes.
There never really was an offer on the table. Some third world conman contacted the CIA and offered to deliver bin Laden if he was paid a sizable reward - in advance. He was checked out and the CIA basically said we’d be better off using our money to respond to Nigerian email offers. So the “offer” was declined.
Years later, for political reasons, it suited some people to claim that Clinton had a legitimate offer to capture bin Laden and didn’t take it.
And even if bin Laden had been killed, wouldn’t we still have had to invade Iraq because of their WMD program?
Lots of people knew, but it doesn’t matter if Bush didn’t want to listen.
Jeez . . . Starr actually listened to those people?! That’s not partisanship, that’s an indicator of clinical brain death!
Maybe I shouldn’t laugh at that because the Administration is probably planning to finance the war aganst Iran and/or North Korea with the windfall from the Nigerian prince. 
I’ll mention one which I think will be seen as a blunder in the next 20 years: Ronald Reagan granting amnesty to illegal immigrants.
Some conservatives are already starting to snipe at Regan for this one.
Immigration politcs are going to be huge in the next 20 years, I predict.
And Lincoln was our shortest president.
And Taft was our most svelte president.
And Reagan was our youngest president.
Makes sense to me.
How do you know he didn’t listen? Maybe he heard just like Clinton heard. Why is it the assumption that it was okay for Clinton to disregard what he knew but for Bush not same same?
Doubtless, it makes sense to you to compare opinions with empirical observations as well.
Terrorist attacks using airliners under the Clinton Administration: 0
Terrorist attacks using airliners under the Bush Administration: 4
Why are you assuming Clinton “disregarded” anything?
I’d like to add Reagan to the list of Top 10 Presidential blunderers for his stupid “solution” to the looming Savings & Loan collapse, which was massive deregulation. Didn’t do a damn thing to help and made things worse by destabilizing an already shaky situation, resulting in a $150 billion bill for the federal govt. when over 1000 S&Ls collapsed. Just more stupid conservative ideology passing for solutions.
I’m confused here. IIRC, Reagan’s deregulation of the S&Ls (while still leaving in place the federal deposit guarantees) was not even purportedly a solution to an existing problem – it was what directly caused the S&L crisis!
(Consistent economic libertarians would have abolished both the federal regulations and the deposit guarantees at the same time.)
No, there was an existing problem. S&Ls were restricted on the investments they could make. They were required to only make “safe” investments. The long term result was that other financial institutions were free to make riskier investments which had higher returns (if they succeeded). As a result, S&Ls were losing customers who preferred to put their money in institutions with higher yields.
So the solution was to deregulate the S&Ls. In the short term, this allowed them to make earn more returns and attract customers. In the longer term, the principle that higher returns = higher risks eventually overwhelmed them. The S&Ls had to compete in offering the highest possible returns to keep their customers from deserting them for another S&L so they had to take riskier and riskier investments to earn those returns. (In addition there were some outright crooks who saw an opportunity to make their personal fortunes in an unregulated industry.) Inevitably, most S&Ls eventually hit some bad luck, had failed investments, and went bankrupt.
Man, reading some of the posts in this thread, one would believe Monica came into the Oval office with a revolver and a knife, yelling, ‘Go down on tyrants!’ before fellatiating the Commander-in-Chief at gun point.
Didn’t Clinton ignore claims of genocide in The Congo? I think down the road that could look like the start of America letting Africa tear itself apart.
I don’t think Clinton disregarded bin Laden - he took him very seriously. According to Clinton’s book, he briefed W when he was about to leave the White House, and told Bush that in his view bin Laden was the number one international threat. He also said Bush didn’t seem too interested.
Lying under oath notwithstanding, I’d believe Clinton’s version of things, based on his track record, over Bush’.