Yet another example of Bush dragging his feet over terrorism prior to 9/11 (nto to be confused with his current incompetence) :

Prowling the skies over Afghanistan in the months before President Bush took office, unmanned and unarmed Predator drones proved to be one of America’s major successes in its frustrating hunt for Osama bin Laden.

But the promising aircraft remained grounded under the new administration until after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, say current and former U.S. officials who describe a paralyzing internal debate over finances, arming the drones with deadly missiles and concern over who would take the blame if something went wrong.

As late as a week before the suicide attacks against New York and Washington, senior administration officials meeting at the White House had not yet resolved questions about plans to equip each Predator with as many as two Hellfire missiles to kill bin Laden, these officials told The Associated Press.

This came despite the remarkable successes in the fall 2000, including what many intelligence experts concluded were three separate sightings of bin Laden during a series of 11 Predator flights over the Afghan desert.

Ever since 9/11 liberals have been expected to drop the whole “Bush stealing control of the most powerful nation on earth” thing by repeating the line “Yeah, this would have happened regardless of who was president”. But the more news like this that comes out, the more I think that maybe it wouldn’t have happened with Al Gore in charge.

When the Clinton administration briefed Bush’s incoming team they reportedly told them that the biggest isse they’d be facing was terrorism. You’d think that would be enough to wake them up, but conservatives attitudes towards Clinton was so negative any good advice was met with rolling eyes. I guess they were too busy leaking news about “trashed offices” to worry about our safety.

Then the Hart-Rudman report came out that once again reiterated the urgency of terrorism issue. When the it was recieved by Bush, it was greeted with a silence so deafening you’d think it was an EPA report. Among the report’s reccomendations was the formation of a cabinet-level agency that would deal with the terrorist threat, an idea that Bush loves to take credit for now even though he opposed the idea for a year after 9/11.

After that, Bush recieved at least two specific warnings about terrorists hijacking planes and crashing them into buildings. Once again, Bush was much too busy planning his month long vacation to worry about a threat he didn’t take very seriously anyways.

And now it’s revealed that the Clinton administration had a program that was following Osama bin Laden around Afghanistan that was put on hold while Bush and his pals haggled over the bill. After all, how do you pay for security and a massive annual tax cut? Well, we all know which one Bush chose.

With President Gore in charge, how would things be different? Well, I think we can all agree that Gore would have continued most of the Clinton Administrations programs. (isn’t that why so many people voted against him in the first place?) So that would seemingly include an overall focus on terrorism. Even if Al wasn’t in the loop while VP, it’s a good bet that he would have taken the advice of Bill seriously. That means the Hart-Rudman report wouldn’t have fallen on deaf ears. That means he might have payed more attention to the warnings he recieved during summer 2001. And that means he wouldn’t have completely stopped the Predator drone program. So while it’s safe to assume that 9/11 would have probably happened with Gore in charge, who’s to say that Osama wasn’t just waiting for a nine month window when he wasn’t being chased around to enact his plans?