Daily News (NY)/Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service March 24, 2004
Failure to retaliate against bombing the Cole emboldened terrorists
By James Gordon Meek
WASHINGTON _ The failure of both the Clinton and Bush administrations to retaliate against Al Qaeda for bombing the destroyer Cole emboldened the terrorists, experts and victims' family members said yesterday.
"The Taliban and (Osama) Bin Laden thought they could blow us up, and we wouldn't blow them up," said defense analyst John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org. "If we'd hit back then, we might've put the fear of the Lord into them."
The Cole was nearly sunk by a suicide boat in the port of Aden, Yemen, on Oct. 12, 2000. Seventeen sailors died.
Although Al Qaeda was believed to be the culprit, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told the federal 9/11 panel Wednesday the U.S. did not strike back because it did not have proof.
That proof came several months later, during the tenure of the Bush administration, but the Bush White House also decided against avenging the bombing.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the U.S. would have "looked weak" to retaliate militarily in early 2001 because "too much time had passed." Rumsfeld's deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, told the panel that the Cole case was "stale" by then.
Several members of the 9/11 commission expressed frustration at a public hearing Wednesday that the Cole was never avenged, and yesterday, parents of two sailors killed on the Cole said they grew bitter listening to justifications for why America didn't pull the trigger.
"It disgusts me," said Dick Costelow of New Florence, Pa., whose son Richard, 35, died in the bombing. "Clinton should have retaliated. . . .But there's blame all around."
Ronald Francis, whose 19-year-old daughter, Kia, died on the Cole, said he was angered when witnesses said Clinton and Bush lacked immediate proof Al Qaeda did it.
"I don't buy nothing like that," said Francis, of Woodleaf, N.C.
Former White House terrorism czar Richard Clarke, who pushed for avenging the Cole, told the 9/11 commission the final proof that Al Qaeda bombed the Cole was "based on pretty much nothing but the evidence that we had available to us within two days (of the bombing)."
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