Political Quotes

“There is an interesting article I would like to reference that talks a little bit about what the previous administration did during the 1990s. The article is ``Show Stoppers,'' and it is out of the Weekly Standard, January 26, 2004. It is written by Richard Shultz, who is director of International Security Studies at the Fletcher school, Tufts University, and director of research at the Consortium for the Study of Intelligence in Washington, D.C. He brings up an interesting point. America has the best trained military in the world, regular Army; but then we also have some very special folks, Special Operations folks. Remember, the policy as he lays out here was that we were prepared to preemptively and offensively attack those individuals who we thought might be a threat to the United States. We knew who they were. The Clinton administration identified al Qaeda; they identified bin Laden as being threats. We heard that in our quotes tonight. But what Richard Shultz goes on to point out, he says not once during the 1990s, even though we on occasion might have known where bin Laden was, we knew where his terrorist camps were, not once did we take and use our Special Operations forces to neutralize the capability of these folks who we were relatively confident and who the Clinton administration were selling the American people on that these were a threat to the American public and to our military and to our allies around the world.”