It may be hard to believe if you read this space regularly, but I HATED the Republicans of the '90s for exploiting Clinton's dalliance with Monica and thought there were no bigger hypocrites on the face of the Earth. I even rooted for Al Gore to come out victorious in the Florida mess and still believe that more people either voted for, or intended to vote for him in that state than they did for Bush.

That being said, I now have a total disrespect (not quite hate) for the Democrats and others on the left for their ridiculous bashing of Bush regarding his administrations actions prior to 9/11. Their feelings are aptly summarized in this rant in today's Newsday: Pre-9/11 doings are coming to light

The left has spent the better part of the last year criticizing Bush from relying on, or even twisting intelligence data in order to justify the invasion of Iraq. And yet, one memo comes to light saying that there is uncorroborated information that was 3 years old about one possible hijacking and this should have been taken as gospel in order to start killing and jailing (until then) innocent Muslim men all over the world. As if this alone wouldn't have created some kind of world uproar.

Talking about facts in the memo, not rumors, it mentions that there were 70 full field investigations in place already by the FBI. Sounds like it was being taken care of, doesn't it? As usual, the criticism leveled as Bush is that he knew it was going to happen and that he knew what had to be done and he didn't. Yet no specific action is suggested, just that he should have furrowed his brow a little more and maybe yelled at a few people to keep moving faster.

And we still don't know what other threats were around at the time - it's not like the President could just ignore China, Russia or G-d knows what else was happening in the world at the time for the possibility of something that had never happened before.

Anyway, I'm just sick of it. As sick of it as when the Republican leadership kept resigning in the 90's when their secret extra-marital affairs were brought to light.

See this too if you think that Bush was uniquely lax on the terrorist threat.