This is a post I made on another board recently regarding the same issues as the second post you mentioned:
Since there are so many right-wingers here that choose to alter the truth as to what exactly Bill Clinton did to combat terrorism, I thought it might be helpful to provide some actual FACT instead of the fiction that most of them attempt to vomit forth.
First, I will refer you to
http://www.snopes2.com/rumors/clinton.htm which does a great deal to disprove many of the false claims made by right-wing pundits as to how soft Clinton was on terrorism.
Then, I will remind you that Clintons administration was the first to freeze terrorist assets (with $254 million in Taliban assets frozen in 1999).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A52702-2001Oct12In 1996, Clinton succeeded in getting a bill passed which you would think the right wing would love "Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996." This goes largely unnoticed by the right-wing pundits who chose to pay more attention to blow jobs.
The official policy of the Clinton Whitehouse on terrorism also went greatly ignored, but much of it can be found at
http://www.cdt.org/policy/terrorism/adm-anti-terror-otl.htmlYou can see from the above that Clinton made great efforts and strides to stop terrorism. You will also see people mention the USS Cole bombing as evidence that Clinton was soft on terrorism. They fail to mention that this happened a mere 30 days before the election.
Why is it that none of them mention the 1993 WTC bombing as proof of Bush, Sr.'s lack of efforts on terrorism? After all, Bush had only been out of office 30 days when this attack occurred. Clintons administration tracked down the attackers in that case and brought them to justice.
In August of 1998, Clinton addressed congress via a letter in an attempt to freeze bin Laden's assets (yes, he came up with the idea long before Bush).
http://www.ict.org.il/documents/documentdet.cfm?docid=22 Yet this is greatly forgotten by the right.
In fact, republicans in congress watered down Clinton's anti-terrorism bill
http://www.angelfire.com/rant/sstewert/News/clintonbill.html(don't bitch about the angelfire site, check the sources instead).
It's also worth mentioning that contrary to popular belief, Clinton NEVER refused to accept bin Laden. He could not accept him at the one opportunity that was presented because there was no evidence with which to try him (this happened in 1996). The Sudanese government just wanted bin Laden gone, they told Clinton this, but there was no way at the time Clinton could do anything because there was no crime with which to charge him and no evidence with which to indict him. He tried to persuade Saudi Arabia to take him and hold him, THEY REFUSED. This is how bin Laden ended up in Afghanistan.
In fact, as I linked in an earlier post, Clinton had greenlighted the CIA to take any action necessary to stop bin Laden. The CIA had trained operatives in Pakistan to go into Afghanistan and take him out. But, a military coup in Pakistan stopped that from happening. The leader of that coup is still in power in Pakistan and is a good friend of the current administration.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/10/18/column.billpress/index.htmlClinton did more than any president before him to halt terrorism. To insinuate that he did otherwise is both a lie and an insult.
As to the money issue. . . I would rather spend a Trillion dollars making people well than $87 Billion making people dead.
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