Re: Bill Clinton: "I could have killed" Osama bin Laden.
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That's it. Everything else is speculation, and if the US actually had a Pres at the time whose brainpower even slightly exceeded that of an average 3 y/o, the attacking planes would've been intercepted and shot down.
I seriously doubt it.
Because of the over down sizing of our military during the Clinton administration, there weren't enough aircraft to protect the CONUS air space.
It's the Air National Guard who's respobsiable for the CONUS air defense not the Air Force.
And when Air Force aircraft were scrambbled to intercept one of the hijacked aircraft, it was unarmed.
On 9-11-01 the state of California had one F-16 ANG squdron to defend the entire state of California and that squdron is based in northern California. The ANG couldn't even put up a CAP (combat air patrol) over Los Angeles or San Diego or over any place over SoCal.
The rest of the country had the same problems.
So how did the Bush administration respond with Clinton's military ?
In California, President Bush ordered the 3rd MAW based at MCAS Marimar (near San Diego) to provide a CAP over SoCal. Now that's not the job of the Marine Corps, Marine combat aircraft main mission is supporting the Marine rifleman, not doing Air Force or ANG stuff. But they were able to put a CAP over SoCal.
Now there was an aircraft carrier tied up to the North Island NAS in San Diego which Bush ordered to put to sea. The carrier was able to get underway and was at sea by sun down. (Could you see any of our carriers tied up in port today being able to put to sea under Obama's PC Navy ? :lamo) But the carriers Air Wing isn't based with in 500 miles of San Diego, they are based in northern Nevada and northern California. So they had to fly 600 miles to the carrier that was off the SoCal coast.
But with in 48 hours after the second plane hit the WTC, the Navy had it's FA-18's in the air providing a CAP over California.
What about all of those Air Force (not ANG) F-15's and F-16's we use to see flying over California before the Clinton administration ? Well most of those squdrons were deactivated, remember the liberals wanted a "peace devedend" after the Cold War. And all of those Air Force bases that had fighters were deactived, closed under BRAC during the Clinton administration. The same was true all over America including in the north east.
President Bush and his administration gets an "A" for it's response to 9-11.