Young Marco Rubio is said by people who probably have trouble matching their socks to be the foreign-policy savant in the Republican field, probably on the basis of all those committee hearings he didn't attend. Anyway, he demonstrated his inimitable gravitas in the middle of the lengthy squabble over whether or not George W. Bush actually was president on September 11, 2001. This was the answer given by Young Marco Rubio, who is Ready To Lead.

I just want to say, at least on behalf of me and my family, I thank God all the time it was George W. Bush in the White House on 9/11 and not Al Gore.

(I wish Al Gore had been president on August 6, 2001. He'd have read the damn briefing paper.)

And you can—I think you can look back in hindsight and say a couple of things, but he kept us safe. And not only did he keep us safe, but no matter what you want to say about weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein was in violation of U.N. resolutions, in open violation, and the world wouldn't do anything about it, and George W. Bush enforced what the international community refused to do. And again, he kept us safe, and I am forever grateful to what he did for this country…The World Trade Center came down because Bill Clinton didn't kill Osama bin Laden when he had the chance to kill him.

This is, of course, despicable. Starting on August 7, 1998, when bombs destroyed two American embassies in Africa and killed 224 people, and throughout the rest of his presidency, President Clinton devoted more attention to the growing threat posed by bin Laden and what would become known as al Qaeda than he did to practically anything else, including his own blossoming legal troubles. On August 20, he ordered a cruise missile attack on a training camp near Khost in Afghanistan. Let author Lawrence Wright take the story from there:

"Bin Laden had made the decision to go to Khost only the night before," he writes. "But as he and his companions were driving through Vardak province, they happened to pause at a crossroads. 'Where do you think, my friends, we should go,' bin Laden asked. 'Khost or Kabul?' His bodyguard and others voted for Kabul, where they could visit friends. 'Then, with God's help, let us go to Kabul,' bin Laden decreed—a decision that may have saved his life."

The response of the Republicans in Congress was to accuse Clinton of launching the attack to divert attention from the gathering frenzy for his impeachment. It was called "wag the dog." Young Marco can look it up.

There also is no question that, upon being installed by the Supreme Court, George W. Bush and his administration made a decision to de-emphasize counterterrorism in its law-enforcement plans. It was part of the reason Richard Clarke got demoted. It was the reason outgoing national-security adviser Sandy Berger told his successor in that job, Condoleezza Rice, that she'd be spending more time on the bin Laden problem than on anything else. It was why Paul Wolfowitz blew off Clarke at the Bush administration's first cabinet meeting. And it was why C-Plus Augustus felt comfortable leaving his August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing for later.

On Sunday, Rubio visited the Overlook Hotel, and my man Chuck Todd, who always has been the caretaker, asked Rubio about what he'd said on Saturday. He remained uninformed, or mendacious.

CHUCK TODD: So I'm actually still not quite clear. Are you putting 9/11 on Bill Clinton?

MARCO RUBIO: No, I'm putting it on his decision not to take out bin Laden, absolutely. This is what happens when you have a chance to take out the leader of a terrorist organization, and you failed to do so. And the results are something like 9/11.

Sometime late in 1998, President Clinton issued a finding that authorized the killing of Osama bin Laden, even to the extent of shooting down a civilian aircraft on which the al Qaeda leader might be traveling. There never was a "decision not to take out bin Laden." Young Marco Rubio is both wrong and despicable here. Whoever is working his levers on this issue really needs to read up.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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