Editorial Comments:

As the final days of the Clinton Administration pass; Americans can finally take a deep 'clean' breath of fresh air; after experiencing the verminous years of Clintonian government; it is about time. But, damage assessment tells me that we have problems in River City.

The Clinton-Gore Machine has damaged America at home and abroad. Our position as 'leader' for the cause of Democracy annoints us with certain responsibilites. We have the mandate to lead by example. Our moral leadership is just as important as our military or political leadership.

By necessity; we must be able to look at dictators and thugs who run some of the worlds governments and be able to stand on a platform of 'Do The Right Thing'...when our President is incapable of doing this even in his own office and life and political dealings; then our power at the negotiation table is weakened. Gore contributed to the weakening of America's ability to negotiate thru his post election activities.

Politician's at Gore's level of government have always been required to make the choice of personal gain or take the high-road that would not damage the United States and it's ability to be the world leader.

When someone at the level of Al Gore fights on his knees then he brings all of us down to his level and wallows us in the same mud he finds himself. And honor is sometimes confused with pridefulness and courage can be confused with stubbornness. This is the situation in which Al Gore found himself. The rhetoric that Gore's team and his followers resorted to has damaged American credibility around the globe; add this to Clinton's trials and tribulations and these days make the past history of 'The Ugly American' look like child's play...

America can purchase many things with our great wealth and resources. But, we never could afford the Clinton-Gore team; because reputations can not be purchased at any price...they are earned.

Personally I do not think America or the world in general will ever recover from the scandals and damage caused by Clinton-Gore. I hope I am wrong. History reminds me that all things pass away; and I honestly hope that most of this will become a side note in history. But, history has also taught me other lessons.

When America has shown a tendency to be caught up in it's own ills and scandals; the world keeps turning. And, what I see going on around us; is not a pretty sight.

American's need to quit looking at ourselves following this election and start paying attention to the world scene and the ripples of discontent around us. We do not have an isolationist government but we as American's are wearing 'blinders' and history itself shows us that the messages that finally wakes us up are usually unpleasant...

The period of relative 'peace' since the Gulf War has reinforced our laziness on the world front and right now thanks to Clinton-Gore our military is at it's weakest point...

I sincerely hope that George W. Bush will begin a process which will strengthen our intelligence resources at home and abroad; that he will expand their funding and their mission; that he will seek to secure our southern borders and our coastal waterways; that he will empower our military to rebuild and re-arm and prepare us for the confrontations of the future.

We should always be aware of the fact that Peace is the by-product of readiness...and it can not and will not exist on it's own without the pillars of freedom, justice and military might.

Just a word or two about this Anthrax situation. Something about this whole situation stinks; like a dead skunk in the middle of the road. We just can't seem to get around the smell; though we really know if we run over it; well, it isn't going to really hurt us...just stink more. The same thing goes for this Anthrax Scare.

The more this story is flamed to fire by oxygen wielding news media and government officials the more it has that smoking smell of of a dead shoe. Something to me just isn't right.

Ed Diamond and editor at Newsweek and one of my seminar instructors in my past life of a print journalist; he used to define Journalistic Instinct as the 'Clink and Clunk' of News.

I think it has been proven by now that to deliver Anthrax in an airborne state in the quanities it would take to poison America is next to impossible. I guess an aerial burst from some homemade mortar would do the job for a specific area; but, the more common form of the disease is completely treatable. And that is the most likely scenario of delivery. Plus the fact that Anthrax is not contageous makes it a high risk; low casualty weapon; which is exactly what terrorists do not want.

The physical damage has been light (unless you happen to be the unfortunate man who died from the disease in Florida) but, the psychological damage will linger for years.

I have a somewhat educated guess about this Anthrax Business. It is my feeling that we are dealing with a domestic American source for this Anthrax. I think the media and government was targeted not only to scare people but to get even for some grudge against our society. I could be wrong and this might be a branch of some terrorist cell; but if it is I for one will be surprised.

From what I am hearing and what I noticed about the wording of the notes in the envelopes as disclosed on TV leads me to believe someone with a 'grudge' is trying to use this current situation for their own ends.

Government itself is an easy target especially in the aftermath of the Clinton years. Clinton and the lack of guts and will power on Capital Hill to prosecute him to the maximum degree turned a lot of people away from the American ideal. Thank God we have a President today who represents the very best of America in George W. Bush; but the fall-out from the Clinton years is long from over. People do not like or trust government much anymore. Though they are rock solid patriots of 'America'.

Our government has become a governing body of people who are America's new 'royalty' which includes the rich and famous. All laws apply to citizens unless you fit into one of those three catagories. And then there is the ever present over-taxation of the average man and woman on the streets and a general feeling of impotent control over the day to day life of citizens. Government always has been and always will be an easy target of discontent. If government continues along the lines it is going then that discontent will just get stronger. And then we have the American media.

The media is not well liked in many 'patriotic circles'. Especially after Desert Storm when popular opinion by and large across the nation turned on the media for detailing too much information about military operations and putting American soldiers in harms way. Americans saw a different way that war 'news' would be covered from those days forward. And they didn't like it.

One of the things which has happened to the News media is the fact that they have almost completely dropped the word 'news' from their identification thru their own actions. You can simply call them the 'media' or better yet the 'entertainment media'. Because in today's world the news shows are designed to be somewhat informative but completely 'entertaining'. Ratings of news broadcasts is what caused this. And the dive for the advertising dollar.

You think all those sharks off the Florida coast looked scary. A room full of advertising executives plying the water for their market share would put all those sharks to shame. A real journalist who would wade in against the tide of that hoarde wouldn't stand a chance at all. My point in reference to this situation goes back to the days when Ted Koppel interviewed 'Kermit the Frog' to describe a world wide crash of the Stock Market.

Though this situation was in place long before then; it was 'Kermit the Frog' who personally did me in from a standpoint of ever completely trusting the news again to just be the news and nothing but the news. I never liked 'Kermit the Frog' much after that either.

I guess the powers that be felt that using the 'Frog' would help the common man understand the stock market crash better than just the facts. Which says a great deal more about the accomplishments of our public education system than we are willing to admit. So, during prime time in front of the eyes of the world the news media took the public dive into wallowdom by stripping away their credibility and having Ted Koppel interview a 'frog'. And it wasn't even a real frog.

As the Morning Show Host in a small market Radio zone of no-where Texas; I came to work the next day to find a pre-recorded tape and a script which would have me doing a 'local' version of the 'Kermit' interview with a hillbilly imposter substituting a poor characterization of the famous frog. My job would be to mimic Ted Koppel's stupidity during my morning drive show at the peak of rush hour, which meant 43,000 Ford pickups, a couple of Bull hauler trucks and 3000 teachers on their way to work; all changing sides of town at the same time for their daily morning ritutual.

I knew in the long run I would have to look at myself in the mirror everyday and I didn't want to see Kermit the Frog looking back at me. Maybe Ted Koppel has nightmares I don't know. I sleep pretty well. So Kermit went in the dumper and I read the market news from the news wire. That is what news wires are for. The facts and nothing but the facts. There is no room in my world for the Kermit Frogs of the universe.

And as a matter of fact I wonder if 'Kermit the Frog' has really been behind this Anthrax thing? It has been a long time since we have heard from him 'officially'. Maybe he became a disgruntled newsman. I have nightmares thinking they will bring back 'Kermit' to explain the World Trade Center Bombings. I for one would not be surprised at either scenario. I tend not to trust frogs real or otherwise.

But, more to the point; I think there is about as much of a chance that terrorists have spread this Anthrax around America as there is that Kermit did it himself.

I could be wrong but my opinion is; this is going to turn out to be a home grown problem from the drug company infested areas around New Jersey. Some disgruntled citizen with a cock-eyed view of reality. Some citizen with a view of government and the news media who thinks he is helping more than he is hurting America. Someone with a grudge who sees this as an opportunity to get even for the wrongs he or she feels. Someone who doesn't know or doesn't care how much he really has hurt America.

IT FIGURES. The guilty ones are the first to point the finger. Now the same Democrats who for eight years slashed the military, crippled the CIA, blamed America for the enemies it made, opposed the projection of American power (missiles and smart bombs excepted) into terrorist regions like Afghanistan and Iraq, dismissed acts of war as individual misdeeds, rejected airport security on "racial profiling" grounds, defended a commander-in-chief who put his libido above the security of his citizens, and still oppose essential defense measures like holding suspects and imposing immigration controls - these same obstructers and appeasers are now in full war cry against the President and are hoping to pin him with responsibility for the September 11 attack.

Not every Democrat is as kooky or anti-American as Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) who sits with Democratic connivance on the International Relations Committee and spent the week before 9-11 joining hands in South Africa with Iranians and other Islamo-fascists to condemn the United States, then came home to accuse Bush of plotting 9-11 so that his friends in the Carlyle Group could make war profits on defense contracts. But more mainstream Democrats -- the Leahys and the Boxers and other equally left and determined antagonists of American power -- are far more significant players in the debacle of 9/11. And no one is more singularly responsible for America's vulnerability on that fateful day than the Democratic president, Bill Clinton, and his White House staff.

It is appropriate therefore that the crowning irony of the present Democrat attack is that it is the Clinton Administration not George Bush who knew of the plot to use airliners as bombs to blow up American buildings, that they knew it in 1995, that they did nothing about it, and that they kept this information from the Bush security team.

a.. The first World Trade Center bombing was on February 26, 1993, one month into the Clinton Administration. The terrorists - Egyptians and Palestinians -- blew a hole six stories deep beneath the North Tower intending to topple it onto the South Tower and kill 250,000 people. It was - in the words of the definitive account - "the most ambitious terrorist attack ever attempted, anywhere, ever." Clinton did nothing. He did not even visit the site. Worse, he allowed the attack to be categorized as a criminal act by individuals, even though its mastermind - as the administration soon discovered -- was an Iraqi intelligence agent named Ramzi Youssef.

a.. The second attack took place 10 months later in Mogadishu, Somalia. It was an attack on American military forces who were in country to bring food to the starving Somalis. In the battle, which has been memorialized in Black Hawk Down, eighteen American soldiers were killed and the body of one was dragged through the streets in a gesture designed to formally humiliate the world's greatest super power. Clinton's response? He turned tail and ran.

a.. In 1995, Ramzi Youssef was captured in the Philippines with plans to use commercial airliners to blow up CIA headquarters among other targets. This al-Qaeda plot was termed "Operation Bojinka," which means "the big bang." After the discovery of "Operation Bojinka," Al Gore was appointed to head a task force to tighten airport security. Its key recommendations, which would have prevented 9/11, were rejected by the White House on the grounds that they might be construed as "racial profiling."

a.. In 1996 the Khobar Towers - a barracks housing U.S. soldiers was blown up in Saudia Arabia by Iranian and Palestinian terrorists acting on behalf of al-Qaeda. Nineteen U.S. servicemen were killed but the Saudis refused to cooperate in tracking down the killers. The Clinton Administration did nothing.

a.. In 1998, the year of Lewinsky, al-Qaeda blew up the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania- under any circumstances an act of war. Two-hundred-and-forty-five people were killed and 6,000 injured, mainly Africans. Clinton's response? The infamous strike on a medicine factory in the Sudan and a spray of missiles into an emptied terrorist camp in Khost.

a.. Every year that these terrorist attacks were taking place, Democrat congressional leaders supported bills to cut U.S. intelligence funding and/or hamstring CIA operations, and/or prevent the tightening of immigration controls - all of which would have strengthened American defenses against an al-Qaeda attack.

a.. Meanwhile, the principle ally of Saddam Hussein, the architect of suicide bombing, the creator of the first terrorist training camps, and the apostle of terror as a redemptive social cause -- Yasser Arafat -- was a "partner in peace" and the most frequent guest at the Clinton White House among foreign heads of state.

Despite the fact that Republicans had fought Democrats for eight years over the military and intelligence budgets, over immigration and security issues, despite the alliances that leftwing Democrats had made with America's enemies in the UN, despite the obstructionism of Senate Judiciary chairman Patrick Leahy in opposing domestic security measures and efforts by the Justice Department to bring al-Qaeda to heel, Republicans refused to point a partisan finger on issues of war and peace. Now their self-restraint has come back to haunt them as the Democrats seek to shift the blame they have done so much to earn to the shoulders of their political opponents.

The Democratic attack on George Bush is based on an intelligence analysis he received a month before 9/11, which indicated that al-Qaeda terrorists were planning to hijack planes. The described threats in this analysis came under the category "general" meaning they did not specify time, place or method, and they were uncorroborated. The reports the President received in the months prior to 9/11 described targets that were mainly overseas - in the Arabian Peninsula, Israel, Italy, Paris, Rome and Turkey. On the slim reed of the existence of a possible hijacking threat in the United States - included with all these others -- the Democrats have built their treacherous case.

Yet hijackings occur and have occurred for forty years. On most occasions they are stopped. Nine of the 9/11 hijackers were hauled out of airport security lines as they were boarding the fatal flights that September. But because airport security had not been tightened - and could not be tightened without a battle royal with Democrats over "racial profiling" the al-Qaeda hijackers were allowed to continue and carry out their sinister design. Shutting down the U.S. airline industry or sounding a national alarm that would produce the same effect in August 2001 on the basis of a vague report that a hijacking was possible is something no administration has ever done in 40 years of hijacking incidents. Yet this is the logic behind the Democrats' present "investigation."

If, on the other hand, Bush had known what the Clinton Administration knew - that al-Qaeda had plans to use commercial airliners as bombs and fly them into buildings - specifically the CIA -- this would be a serious charge. But they did not know it, because the Clinton team never told them.

Although the Clinton security team knew that Operation Bojinka included blowing up the CIA building in Langley, Virginia, it kept this information from the rest of the government. When Dale Watson, chief of the FBI's International Terrorism Operations Section testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in February 1998, he withheld this vital information. He identified Operation Bojinka only as a plot to blow up U.S. air carriers, and assured the senators that the FBI had the situation under control.

It is possible that Clinton never received the information about Operation Bojinka, since his lack of interest in national security matters throughout the course of his administration has been noted by many - including his chief political advisor Dick Morris, and his chief "biographer" Joe Klein. February 1998 - the date of the FBI testimony -- is also the month after Monica Lewinsky became a national celebrity.

The fact that Bush didn't know about plans to hijack planes and run them into tall buildings was confirmed by Condoleeza Rice at her recent press conference:

Dr. Rice: Hijacking before 9/11 and hijacking after 9/11 do mean two very, very different things. And so focusing on it before 9/11 - perhaps it's clear that after 9/11 you would have looked at this differently, but certainly not before 9/11.

Q: And no discussion in this briefing, or any others, about the possibility of al-Qaeda hijacking, and the fact that there have been active investigations into the possibility of a CIA building plot, or an Eiffel Tower plot. Never came up?

On September 10, 2001 a document landed on the President's desk that he had commissioned months before. It was a plan to dismantle and destroy al-Qaeda and had taken months to prepare. It was necessary because the Clinton administration had drawn up no such plan in the eight years before.

The charge now being led by the Democrats against the nation's commander-in-chief as he attempts to protect its citizens against the next certain terrorist attack is worse than unconscionable. It is one more Democratic stake driven into the heart of the nation's security. Limiting the damage, defending his authority, in order to protect Americans from further harm is now the daunting task before the President and his team.

Finally some action has taken place to tromp on the Clinton Worms and those like them. These critters have infested our intelligence agencies for far too long. To be honest it hasn't been only Clinton's fault. He was just the last creep to try and destroy America. Night-crawlers prowl in the dark.

The Bush administration receives an A+ for moving ahead with policies that will ensure a future defense against those who would destroy our daily lives. The changes will not come over night; but they are in place. Thank goodness for right thinking. All creepy crawlies take note. Your days are numbered.