The Editor, Sir:

As an American who lived and worked in Jamaica for a number of years, I still read The Gleaner to keep up with your beautiful country. I would like to comment on your editorial, 'U.S. policy post 9/11'.

There is no person walking this earth today in the western democracies who bears more responsibility for 9/11 than William Jefferson Clinton. When it came to fighting the threat from radical Islam, Clinton turned his head in the other direction during the entire eight years of the soap opera that was his presidency.

Asleep at the switch

While he was asleep at the switch, Clinton allowed the threat of terrorism to fester, with bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan mushrooming under the full eye of America's satellites, culminating with the horrific attack on 9/11, which was planned by al-Qaida during Clinton's years.

Clinton treated the 1993 attack on the WTC as a police matter, not the act of international terrorism that it truly was, merely telling the country to "stay calm." Then came the 1996 attack on the U.S. military complex and Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 Americans and wounded hundreds more, followed by the 1998 terrorist bombing of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing 258 people, with more than 5,000 injured. Finally, in October 2000, the destroyer USS Cole was bombed as it sat in the Yemeni port of Aden, killing 17 U.S. sailors.

It's time for Clinton and his party to accept responsibility for their failure to act. He left office in 2000 smelling like a rose, leaving the whole mess in the lap of President Bush.

I am, etc.,

GARY D. DiSCALA

Greenwich, CT

gardis72@gmail.com