] But to hold Bush's eight months in office as
] having been more responsible for al Qaeda's emergence
] than Clinton's eight years in office -- not to mention the
] Carter and Reagan administrations' responsibility for encouraging
] militant Islam -- strikes us as strange reasoning. Sept. 11 was
] planned, and it was being implemented while Clinton was president.
] Bush simply adopted wholesale -- and extended -- Clinton's
] errors.
]
] This is not an argument for Clinton or Bush. Given the
] mood of the country, it is unlikely that any president would have
] done much differently.

Stratfor on the present debate in Washington. This seems a little more political then I'm used to from them. (Are they really qualified to make wholesale judgments on the management decisions made by the Bush Administration? If so, why aren't they running for office?)

However, it is interesting and there are a number of realistic observations made that many people on this site could use to read. An observation I found striking: Clinton is blaming his lack of action in the Middle East on the "public's mood." The "public's mood" was very much spun by the government at the time away from the matter at hand. But no one is going to say that in Congress. Maybe they did underestimate the problem. Maybe they were trying to deal with it using some sort of black op that ended up failing. The only certainty is that we'll never know.

The current attempt to prove some spectacular failure by Bush before the war makes political sense, but it is intellectually incoherent and misses the places where Bush made genuine errors.