I'm a little bit confused how you can say this:
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AT LEAST one third of this document deals with what Clinton has done to prevent TERRORISM and how he is CONCERNED for it in the future
The word terrorism appears in about 30 paragraphs in the entire document. Out of about 450 paragraphs. That's closer to 6.5% of the content. Um... And many of the paragraphs containing references to terrorism were in sections of the document specifically mentioning areas of the world. I don't think the mentions of terrorism in sections about N. Korea, Japan, Bosnia, and Africa count towards supporting the assertin that Bush's administration was adequately informed of the threat posed by Bin Laden and Al-queda.
Interestingly enough, in the section where the document addresses security issues by region, the section about the Middle East, only mentions Isreal and Palestine, and contains not one mention of terrorism. Africa has a lone mention of Libya and terrorism there. SouthWest Asia is where Iraq and Iran are mentioned (with some terrorism mentioned in relation to those nations). South Asia mentions Afghanistan and the Taliban (and terrrorists!), but only 2 out of the 6 paragraphs are about that nation. The rest deal with India and Pakistan and the dangers present with and between those nations.
So I guess they are mentioned in one third of one region which composes just one small part of the document.
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While he doesnt mention AL-QUEDA by name he mentions USAMA BIN LADEN several times as the head of the most worrysome TERRORIST organization.
Sure. "Several times" is correct. His name appears 5 times in the document. Three of them in one of the two paragraphs about Afghanistan. Um... So three paragraphs in the entire document mention the guy. Only one of the paragraphs mentions his "terrorist organization", and does so in the past tense.
I want to requote this section because it's very telling. The language is important.
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When terrorism occurs, despite our best efforts, we can neither forget the crime nor ever give up on bringing its perpetrators to justice. We make no concessions to terrorists. Since 1993, a dozen terrorist fugitives have been apprehended overseas and rendered, formally or informally, to the United States to answer for their crimes. These include the perpetrators of the World Trade Center bombing, the attack outside CIA headquarters, and an attack on a Pan Am flight more than 18 years ago. In 1998, the U.S. Armed Forces carried out strikes against a chemical weapons target and an active terrorist base operated by Usama bin Ladin, whose terror network had carried out bombings of American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam and planned still other attacks against Americans. We will likewise pursue the criminals responsible for the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen.
Note the mention of "...Usama bin Ladin, whose terror network had carried out bombings of American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam and planned still other attacks against Americans"
No "are presumably planning more attacks against Americans". Nope. They "planned" attacks. Nothing forward looking here. In fact, the mention is as part of a sentance about strikes by us *against* Bin Ladin, and follows the mention of a string of arrests and such of a bunch of other terrorists responsible for other events. Reading this, it sounds as though the document is claiming that Bin Ladin was somehow neutralized by those attacks. There's certainly a spin to it that implies a lack of immediate threat from him and his organization.
It really looks more like they wanted to make it look like they'd done alot about terrorism, while actively hiding their failures. If they'd included the fact that many of these acts were commited by one group (al-queda), led by Bin Ladin (who was still at large), it would make the arrests of a half dozen little guys seem less important wouldn't it? Had they been focused more on reporting the actual danger this organization presented instead of making it look like they'd done alot to combat terrorism, maybe the Bush administration would have taken Al-queda more seriously?
Heck. Just mentioning the damn organization's name would have been a huge start.
Honestly, if you were reading this report, and you didn't know then what you do today, you'd put Bin Ladin pretty far down the list of important security issues. Way behind issues like nuclear weapons deals with Russia, problems with N. Korea, issues with India and Pakistan, and probably 30 other issues that get more page space then Bin Ladin did. Even out of the terrorism issues, he's just one of many listed in the document.