Rice challenges Clinton on terror record [View All]

[kurth]

NEW YORK --Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice challenged former President Clinton's claim that he did more than many of his conservative critics to pursue Osama bin Laden, and she accused President Bush's predecessor of leaving no comprehensive plan to fight al-Qaida.

"What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years," Rice said Monday during a meeting with editors and reporters at the New York Post.

The newspaper published her comments Tuesday, after Clinton appeared on "Fox News Sunday" in a combative interview in which he defended his handling of the threat posed by bin Laden and said he "worked hard" to have the al-Qaida leader killed.

"That's the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now," Clinton said in the interview. "They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try, they did not try."...

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/09/26/rice_challenges_clinton_911_comments/

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Let's check:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/08/clarke.rice/index.html

Clarke vs. Rice: Excerpts from testimony
Thursday, April 8, 2004

Why didn't Bush respond to the USS Cole bombing?

CLARKE: I suggested, beginning in January of 2001, that ... there was an open issue which should be decided about whether or not the Bush administration should retaliate for the Cole attack .

Unfortunately, there was no interest, no acceptance of that proposition. And I was told on a couple of occasions, "Well, you know, that happened on the Clinton administration's watch."

I didn't think it made any difference. I thought the Bush administration, now that it had the CIA saying it was al Qaeda, should have responded.

RICE: I do not believe to this day that it would have been a good thing to respond to the Cole, given the kinds of options that we were going to have. ... We really thought that the Cole incident was passed, that you didn't want to respond tit-for-tat. ...