Chris Wallace Has Never Asked A Bush Administration Official About The USS Cole

The USS Cole was bombed on October 12, 2000. As Clinton noted in his interview with Fox, “The CIA and the FBI refused to certify that Bin Laden was responsible” until early 2001 which foreclosed the possibility of a full response during his administration.

The Bush administration, on the other hand, had 8 months prior to 9/11/01 to respond to the USS bombing and did nothing.*

In an interview to air Sunday, September 24, Fox News Host Chris Wallace asked Bill Clinton why he didn’t respond to the USS Cole. Clinton said it was a “legitimate question” but challenged Wallace: “I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked why didn’t you do anything about the Cole.” First, Wallace responded, “we asked.” When pressed further by Clinton, Wallace demurred: “I — with Iraq and Afghanistan there’s plenty of stuff to ask.”

Neither Chris Wallace, nor his predecessor, Tony Snow ever asked anyone in the Bush administration why they failed to respond to the bombing of the USS Cole, according to a Lexis-Nexis database search. Wallace and Snow have had plenty of opportunities:

– Vice President Dick Cheney has been on Fox News Sunday 6 times.

– Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been on Fox News Sunday 9 times.

– Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been on Fox News Sunday 23 times.

– National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley has been on Fox News Sunday 4 times.



*After all its efforts to paint John Kerry as a flip-flopper, Fox News might be especially sensitive about the Bush flip-flop highlighted in the report.

The flip-flop concerns Bush's pre-election promise that he would retaliate for the bombing of the USS Cole. Appearing on CNN, 25 days before the election, Bush told CNN, "I hope that we can gather enough intelligence to figure out who did the act and take the necessary action. There must be a consequence." [See 9/11 Commission Report, p. 201.]

According to the commission report, National Security Adviser Condi Rice testified that there "was never a formal, recorded decision not to retaliate specifically for the Cole attack." Although the administration never thought the matter important enough to actually sit down and discuss, Rice said the consensus was that a "tit for tat" response would be counterproductive. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was not interested in punishing al Qaeda for the attack because, the report said, he "thought that too much time had passed and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, thought that the Cole attack was 'stale.'" (p. 202)

Too late to avenge the lives of 17 American sailors? Too stale? And so the Crawford cowboy who talked tough before the election just let the matter drop.

http://www.newshounds.us/2004/07/22/bush_flipflop_on_retaliation_for_terror.php