DO AS WE SAY WE DID, NOT AS WE SAID WE WERE:

Al Qaeda absent from final Clinton report (James G. Lakely, 4/06/04, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

The final policy paper on national security that President Clinton submitted to Congress -- 45,000 words long -- makes no mention of al Qaeda and refers to Osama bin Laden by name just four times.

The scarce references to bin Laden and his terror network undercut claims by former White House terrorism analyst Richard A. Clarke that the Clinton administration considered al Qaeda an "urgent" threat, while President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, "ignored" it.

The Clinton document, titled "A National Security Strategy for a Global Age," is dated December 2000 and is the final official assessment of national security policy and strategy by the Clinton team. The document is publicly available, though no U.S. media outlets have examined it in the context of Mr. Clarke's testimony and new book. [...]

President Bush yesterday denied the accusation that his administration had made dealing with al Qaeda a low priority.

"Let me just be very clear about this: Had we had the information that was necessary to stop an attack, I'd have stopped the attack," Mr. Bush said, adding that after September 11, "the stakes had changed."

Strangely enough, even a partisan Republican might assume that if Bill Clinton had really thought al Qaeda was a serious threat to attack America he'd have done something more than bomb an aspirin factory.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 6, 2004 4:19 PM