Guest blogged by Joseph Cannon
As you probably know, ABC plans to commemorate 9/11 with a lying "docudrama" designed to portray Bill Clinton as soft on terrorism. As a small counter to such assaults on history, AmericaBlog reminds us the the Republicans once had a very different attitude toward terrorism.
In July of 1996, Clinton asked Congress for increased wiretapping authority in order to catch terrorists --- unlike Bush, who simply assumed such powers, consulting his lawyers instead of the legislators. The Republicans smacked down the idea, citing the dangers of increased presidential powers.
They also fired up their base with dark tales of a Clinton power-grab, using terror as a excuse. You can relive this history as I did --- by firing up Google Groups in order to see what Clinton's conservative opponents were saying about terrorism ten years ago.
Below, you will find a hastily-compiled selection of excerpts. Some of these comments were written directly for usenet, others are quotes from web sites or printed sources. In order to convey an impressionistic sense of how conservatives thought at that time, I've decided to forego names and dates; if you want full context, fire up Google for yourself. All the quotes appeared somewhere on usenet during 1996.
Those of you old enough to recall those days will testify that these sentiments were widely shared in conservative circles. The change in attitude is almost as stunning as the attempt to change history itself. As you read, ask yourself if you can imagine any of our modern death-to-Islam types saying such things about Bush or the current world situation:
Anti-terrorist hysteria has become the excuse for governmental attempts to circumvent online freedom of expression, guaranteed by constitutions, laws, and the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
It was to be expected that laws made under such circumstances of semi-hysteria would be imperfect and threatening to the liberties of innocent American citizens whose only "crime" was belonging to a "suspect" group or class whose opinions were not "politically correct." Such we believe was the case with the original "Terror Bill", and such we believe to be the case today with the legislation proposed by the Clinton Administration in the wake of the downing of TWA Flight 800 and the Olympic bombing in Atlanta.
Clinton could SAVE several billions instead of spending a meagerly $100 million by curbing U.S. terrorism with its predictable response from others. How? Stop what we're doing around the world.
--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---