Cheney is right: we were asking for 9/11
■"Weak Responses Led to 9/11, Cheney Asserts: Inadequate Retaliation Seen in 7 Cases," by Sam Coates, Washington Post, 4 October 2005, p. A17.
I don't typically agree with the Vice Prez, but he has a point here: our pinprick retaliations to terrorist strikes over the 1980s and 1990s DID get us 9/11. I mean, they bomb one of our naval ships in the Middle East and we send over FBI agents to investigate, like that scene in Monty Python's "Holy Grail" where the history professor is attacked onscreen by a knight, leading to a bunch of bobbies later stopping a battle royal by arresting several of King Arthur's men. It's just weird and asymmetrical, like throwing a yellow flag in a combat zone ("Clipping, 15 yards!").
But that's what we did for many years. They waged war, we did CSI.
The nasty seven? Marine barracks bombing in 1983, the killing of U.S. soldiers in Somalia 1993, WTC in 93, Saudi military training center bombing in 95, Khobar Towers in 96 (also in Saudi Arabia), the two U.S. embassy bombings in Africa (1998), and the USS Cole attack in 2000.