Bush didn't try to stop Bin Laden in 2001, now he's made terrorism worse

The White House is in a panic mode. They're trying to rebut the one-two punch thrown at them by Bill Clinton and the US intelligence community showing Bush is a complete failure at fighting terror:

Mr. Clinton noted that he rarely criticized Mr. Bush on the battle against terrorism, but then asserted that the Bush administration had done too little to fight Al Qaeda in its time in office before the Sept. 11 attacks.“They had eight months to try,” Mr. Clinton said. “They did not try.”The new intelligence report, the National Intelligence Estimate, implicitly questioned assertions from Bush administration officials that the United States is now safer from terrorism than it was before Sept. 11, 2001, if not yet entirely safe, and that it would be less so under Democratic leadership.

Bush has failed on national security since he took office, [even though he] intends to campaign for Republicans this year on his alleged anti-terror credentials. Every time he speaks about terror, the media better cover the truth: Bush has made the terror problem in the world worse because of Iraq. Instead of going after the real terror threat, he went to war against Saddam Hussein who had nothing to do with 9/11. Bush never goes after the real terror threat.And, it's not like he wasn't warned. Clinton mentioned Richard Clarke's book, Against All Enemies, during his interview on FOX. Read that book and you realize that Bush was warned that invading Iraq would incite the jihadists. This passage from Clarke on page 246 comports with the new intelligence report:

Nothing America could have done would have provided al Qaeda and its new generation of of cloned groups a better recruitment device than our unprovoked invasion of an oil-rich Arab country. Nothing else could have so well negated all our other positive acts and so closed Muslim eyes and ears to our subsequent calls for reform in their region. It was as if Usama bin Laden, hidden in some high mountain redoubt, were engaging in long-range mind control of George Bush, chanting "invade Iraq, you must invade Iraq."

Frightening words from the former terror czar that have proven to be true.

- Joe in DC, AmericaBlog