Quotes of the Morning: Safer Already

"’What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years,’ Rice said during a meeting with editors and reporters at the New York Post.
The newspaper published her comments after Mr. Clinton appeared on "Fox News Sunday" in a combative interview in which he defended his handling of the threat posed by Osama bin Laden and said he "worked hard" to have the al Qaeda leader killed.
‘That's the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now,’ Mr. Clinton said in the interview. ‘They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try, they did not try.’
Rice disputed his assessment.
‘The notion somehow for eight months the Bush administration sat there and didn't do that is just flatly false? and I think the 9/11 commission understood that,’ she said.
Rice also took exception to Mr. Clinton's statement that he ‘left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy’ for incoming officials when he left office.
‘We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al Qaeda,’ she told the newspaper, which is owned by News Corp., the same company that owns Fox News Channel.”
-ABC News, September 26, 2006

“So Condi is claiming that President Clinton lied and that no comprehensive strategy was left for them.. Hmm… Let’s look into that.”
-Skippy

“A memo received by United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice shortly after becoming National Security Advisor in 2001 directly contradicts statements she made to reporters yesterday, RAW STORY has learned.
‘We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al Qaeda,’ Rice told a reporter for the New York Post on Monday. ‘Big pieces were missing,’ Rice added, ‘like an approach to Pakistan that might work, because without Pakistan you weren't going to get Afghanistan.’
Rice made the comments in response to claims made Sunday by former President Bill Clinton, who argued that his administration had done more than the current one to address the al Qaeda problem before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. She stopped short of calling the former president a liar.
However, RAW STORY has found that just five days after President George W. Bush was sworn into office, a memo from counter-terrorism expert Richard A. Clarke to Rice included the 2000 document, ‘Strategy for Eliminating the Threat from the Jihadist Networks of al-Qida: Status and Prospects.’ This document devotes over 2 of its 13 pages of material to specifically addressing strategies for securing Pakistan's cooperation in airstrikes against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.”
-Raw Story, September 26, 2006

“I won’t say that Condi lied. I’ll just say that it looks like she didn’t do all of her required reading. You know, kind of like when Bush didn’t pay any attention to this…”
-Skippy

“Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the US”
-Presidential Daily Briefing, August 6, 2001

“Still… All’s well that end’s well. I mean, sure we lost a few thousand people that day in a horrific terrorist attack, but we are taking the War on Terror directly back to the source, Iraq, to eliminate it once and for all. We may have lost the battle of 9/11, but we are winning the War on Terror.”
-Skippy

“Although we cannot measure the extent of the spread with precision, a large body of all-source reporting indicates that activists identifying themselves as jihadists, although a small percentage of Muslims, are increasing in both number and geographic dispersion.”
-National Intelligence Estimate “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States”, April 2006

“Um, the war may need to go into extra innings though. It seems that they are making terrorists faster than we can kill them off.”
-Skippy

“If this trend continues, threats to US interests at home and abroad will become more diverse, leading to increasing attacks worldwide.”
-National Intelligence Estimate “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States”, April 2006

“So it sounds like the situation is getting less safe rather than more. Why are these Muslims so upset with us?”
-Skippy

“The Iraq conflict has become the ‘cause celebre’ for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement. Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight.
We assess that the underlying factors fueling the spread of the movement outweigh its vulnerabilities and are likely to do so for the duration of the timeframe of this Estimate.”
-National Intelligence Estimate “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States”, April 2006

“Iraq? That can’t be right. They can’t be upset with us for spreading American Freedom™ to the poor Iraqi people. We’re there to kill terrorists. The Iraqi people understand that (except the ones that we accidentally kill or torture). This makes it sound like the world is getting worse instead of better because of the War on Terra.”
-Skippy

“Anti-US and anti-globalization sentiment is on the rise and fueling other radical ideologies. This could prompt some leftist, nationalist, or separatist groups to adopt terrorist methods to attack US interests. The radicalization process is occurring more quickly, more widely, and more anonymously in the Internet age, raising the likelihood of surprise attacks by unknown groups whose members and supporters may be difficult to pinpoint.”
-National Intelligence Estimate “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States”, April 2006

“Dang. Well, you know what would help take global attention away from the Iraq War? We should invade Iran!”
-Skippy

“Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
-George Santayana

"I think it's clear that we are safe -- safer -- but not really yet safe.”
-Condoleeza Rice, September 10, 2006