Why didn Bush respond to the USS Cole bombing?
CLARKE: I suggested, beginning in January of 2001, that … there was an open issue which should be decided about whether or not the Bush administration should retaliate for the Cole attack [which occurred in October 2000]. Unfortunately, there was no interest, no acceptance of that proposition. And I was told on a couple of occasions, “Well, you know, that happened on the Clinton administration’s watch.” I didn’t think it made any difference. I thought the Bush administration, now that it had the CIA saying it was al Qaeda, should have responded. RICE: I do not believe to this day that it would have been a good thing to respond to the Cole, given the kinds of options that we were going to have. … We really thought that the Cole incident was passed, that you didn’t want to respond tit-for-tat. … Just responding to another attack in an insufficient way we thought would actually probably embolden the terrorists — they had been emboldened by everything else that had been done to them
