no-one's ever accused me of being a Clinton admirer, but to be fair, the Clinton administration did more to prevent an Osama Bin Laden attack, than the Bush administration did, including delivering that infamous Memorandum, ignored by the incoming Bush administration
you're wrong about that Nick.
Bin Laden was behind the first WTC attack in 93, Al-Qaeda's shooting down a blackhawk in Somoalia , Four simulataneous car bombs at four US Embassy in South Africa in 98, even after a declaration of war Bin Laden published against the US in 1996 (Clintons still cut the HUMINT budget). It really frustrated me, when Al-Qaeda attacked USS Cole in 2000, while the Clintons were still in office and all Bill had to say was that they bombed a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan -b/c the intelligence was so good at the time, it was the best location. The truth is that it was an abandoned training camp, with no current activity and in part b/c intel had been cut so drastically and we were stretched thin with peace keeping missions.
I'm no fan of Bush, but the Clintons gutted the HUMINT intelligence budget in spite of Al-Qaeda's attacks against us. With the reduction of HUMIT (human intelligence, the ability for our agents to infiltrate and embed in enemies of the state to gather information before attack occurs) it crippled the intelligence community and left us hampered on 9/11.
I don't blame Bush for Al-Qaeda attacking us. I blame him for keeping a relic like Rumsfeld around, citing he's a good man. He was ineffective and out of touch and deluded into believing military readiness was as sufficient as Clinton thought it was (Check it - Bill's own secretary of defense William Cohen told Clinton and congress our military readiness was in jeopardy with the reduction in size and the expansion of peacekeeping missions).
I understand cutting down big military bases we did not need, but cutting the intelligence budget was Clinton's handiwork and 9/11 was in Bush's first 9 months in office - BEFORE he got his hands on the first fiscal budget (election year was November 2000 - fiscal budgets are typically passed in October).