You can't trust Republicans on national security -- and two things proved it yesterday:
1) In a powerful interview that aired yesterday, President Bill Clinton took on the extremist Republican propaganda about 9/11 -- and Fox News tried to cover up the fact that the Bush administration downgraded terrorism as a priority before September 11th and has failed to eliminate Osama bin Laden since the attacks.
2) An explosive report on the still-classified National Intelligence Estimate states that the "invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks" -- and Republicans have been trying to cover it up.
This is what we're fighting against every day -- an administration covering up of the Bush failure of 9/11 and covering up an honest look at the war in Iraq and the war on terror.
You know that Democrats have a real plan for destroying Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, fixing the mess in Iraq, and really securing us at home.
But we've always had those things -- the problem until now has been our willingness to stand up and fight for them in the face of fear mongering, bullying and intimidation from the other side.
That's why we're going on the offense on national security. The future of our party, and of our country, depends on the ability of Democrats to get a strong national security message out in all 50 states this year.
Here's the meat of the Fox News interview with President Clinton, where he's had enough of the right-wing revisionist history from the propaganda machine:
CLINTON: I'm being asked this on the Fox network. ABC just had a right-wing conservative run in their little Pathway to 9/11, falsely claiming it was based on the 9/11 Commission report, with three things asserted against me directly contradicted by the 9/11 Commission report. ... And I think it's very interesting that all the conservative Republicans, who now say I didn't do enough, claimed that I was too obsessed with bin Laden. All of President Bush's neo-cons thought I was too obsessed with bin Laden. They had no meetings on bin Laden for nine months after I left office. All the right-wingers who now say I didn't do enough said I did too much -- same people.
Over a quarter million Americans stood up to ABC and beat back the right-wing Republican 9/11 propaganda that tries to cover up the Bush administration's huge failures to protect America before and after the attacks.
Yesterday Bill Clinton did exactly what Democrats need to do in this election -- to stand up to the right-wing and tell the truth. We will not let the Republicans twist history and distort reality.
We're sick of playing defense against a Republican leadership that uses national security to scare people to win elections. We're not going to be pushed around, spun, and defamed by right-wing extremists and those whom they use to disseminate their propaganda.
Our plan for this election is to go on the offense -- to talk straight about the Republican failures and lay out a clear Democratic plan to take American foreign policy and national security in a better direction.
We have a fundamentally different vision for our security than the Party of Bush. We want a new direction in Iraq, more competent security at home, and the restoration of America's moral leadership in the world.
They failed to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, and five years after September 11th he still lives to taunt Americans.
They squandered America's moral authority and global leadership by launching a war of choice in Iraq instead of fighting the war on al Qaeda.
The calls of the 9/11 Commission Report and Hurricane Katrina simply did not awaken Republican leaders to our continuing vulnerabilities at home.
We've had enough, and we're going to run an honest campaign about the security of our country. People are smart and ready for real leadership --
Republicans have won two elections since 9/11 by instilling fear in people, and they're trying to do it again this year.
But it's not going to work. The Bush policies have failed. Iraq is sliding into civil war. Iran and North Korea are more dangerous than they were five and a half years ago. And the Taliban resurgence poses new threats in Afghanistan.
As President Clinton said on Fox News that we have a government "that thinks Afghanistan is only one-seventh as important as Iraq."
People have had enough. This administration cannot be trusted with our security.
Democrats are going to reclaim American leadership with a tough, smart plan to transform failed policies in Iraq, the Middle East and around the world.
We will increase the size of Special Forces to destroy Osama Bin Laden and terrorist networks like al Qaeda. We will implement the bipartisan 9/11 Commission proposal to secure America's borders and ports and screen every container. And we will fully man, train, and equip our National Guard and our police, firefighters and other first responders.
When it comes to national security, the Republicans have not led.
We will.
Thank you,
Gov. Howard Dean, M.D.
Democratic National Committee
P.S. -- Below are a few excerpts from President Clinton's interview. To make a donation to Democrats across the country committed to beating back right-wing propaganda, click here:
http://www.democrats.org/playingoffense
Excerpts from President Bill Clinton's interview on Fox News:
"I'm being asked this on the Fox network. ABC just had a right-wing conservative run in their little Pathway to 9/11, falsely claiming it was based on the 9/11 Commission report, with three things asserted against me directly contradicted by the 9/11 Commission report. ...
"And I think it's very interesting that all the conservative Republicans, who now say I didn't do enough, claimed that I was too obsessed with bin Laden. All of President Bush's neo-cons thought I was too obsessed with bin Laden. They had no meetings on bin Laden for nine months after I left office. All the right-wingers who now say I didn't do enough said I did too much -- same people. ...
"...I worked hard to try to kill him. I authorized a finding for the CIA to kill him. We contracted with people to kill him. I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since. And if I were still president, we'd have more than 20,000 troops there trying to kill him. ...
"Now, I've never criticized President Bush, and I don't think this is useful. But you know we do have a government that thinks Afghanistan is only one-seventh as important as Iraq. ...
"And you ask me about terror and al Qaeda with that sort of dismissive thing? When all you have to do is read Richard Clarke's book to look at what we did in a comprehensive, systematic way to try to protect the country against terror. ...
"And you've got that little smirk on your face and you think you're so clever. But I had responsibility for trying to protect this country. I tried and I failed to get bin Laden. I regret it. But I did try. And I did everything I thought I responsibly could. ...
"The entire military was against sending Special Forces in to Afghanistan and refueling by helicopter. And no one thought we could do it otherwise, because we could not get the CIA and the FBI to certify that al Qaeda was responsible while I was President. ...
"They had three times as much time to deal with it, and nobody ever asks them about it. I think that's strange."
