Yahoo! News Message Boards Politics News: "Clinton focused more on terrorism than any previous president. One month before leaving office, his administration was praised by two former Reagan counterterrorism officials. Robert Oakley, ambassador for counterterrorism in the Reagan State Department, ?Overall, I give them very high marks. The only major criticism I have is the obsession with Osama, which made him stronger.? Oakley?s successor, Paul Bremer disagreed. He said he believed the Clinton administration had ?correctly focused on bin Laden.?
Let?s compare Clinton?s responses to that of Reagan. Under Reagan, more Americans were killed by radical Islamic terrorists than under Bush Sr and Clinton combined. Between the 1983 embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut and Pan Am 103, nearly 500 American lives were lost. Reagan?s response was one single bombing run against Libya in 1986. He also supplied arms to Muslim extremists among the Afghani Mujahedeen as well as Iran and Iraq.
On to Bush Sr. You may remember that no one blamed Bush for the bombing of the World Trade Center by radical Islamic terrorists. After all, it did happen on Clinton?s watch. He had been president for 38 days. In his four State of the Union speeches, GHWB said the word ?terror? only once, and it was in the context of ?environmental terrorism? perpetrated when Saddam set fire to the oil fields.
Now for Clinton. The way Clinton responded to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center was to capture, try, convict, and imprison those responsible. Ramzi Yousef, Abdul Hakim Murad, and Wali Khan Amin Shah are all currently behind bars. The Clinton administration also thwarted a number of terrorist plots, including plans to kill the Pope, blow up twelve"