Well, mistakes are made, things go wrong, etc., etc. — but [Richard] Clarke and Co. have never been willing to extend that realistic sense of the difficulties inherit in targeting one man to the Bush administration.

--Rich Lowry today at National Review Online

[Kathryn Jean] Lopez: ...Rich, you write, "On September 11, Clinton's most important legacy arrived in horrifying form, and settled in a pile of rubble seven stories high in downtown Manhattan." Is that fair to blame Bill Clinton for 9/11?

Lowry: Well, obviously, Osama bin Laden was responsible for 9/11. But the September 11th attacks were clearly Clinton's most consequential legacy. The way he had hamstrung the CIA, handcuffed the FBI, neglected airport security, and, most importantly, left a nest of terrorist training camps in Afghanistan unmolested — knowing, knowing they were there — created the ticking time bomb that went off on September 11th. Should Bush have done more during the eight months he was in office? Absolutely. But much of his work would have been — and has been — undoing the mistakes of the Clinton administration.

--interview with Rich Lowry about his book Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years, National Review Online, October 16, 2003