Dole and Clinton on Scholarship Fund

CLINTON: The attacks that occurred until this one were basically variations on what happened 18 years ago in the suicide attack on our Marines in Lebanon. They were attacks on military targets like Khobar, for example, or on African embassies, at least American official targets, and they were physically away from us. What has happened here reflects the increasing radicalism, wealth and capacity of the terrorists, plus the increasing interdependence of the world. If you think about how wealthy Americans have gotten compared to most of the rest of the world, and Europeans, the Japanese in the last 10 to 15 years, from open borders, open trade, open travel, open communication, explosion of information technology, the wide dispersal of knowledge, if you collapse distances and tear down walls, and you benefit from it, when the walls and the distance aren't there, by definition, you're going to be more vulnerable at home than you ever were before to people who mean you harm. They finally got it done after all of the things that had been stopped. We had, you know, we had the first World Trade Center bombing. Those people were caught and arrested. We had the Oklahoma City. He was caught and executed. But this happened, and what I think that the real answer to your question is not whether it could have been a declaration of war, but the real answer to your question is whether we could have completely mobilized the country, everybody is focused, everybody's ideas. I know this is happening. You can't imagine how many people call me, just private citizens who are in various kinds of business dealing with pieces of this. They think they can make a contribution. Everybody is focused on it now, and I think this hit at home did that.

SHIPMAN: Do you think what do you think the answer is? Could we have mobilized the country or the world earlier?

CLINTON: Well, I think the I think the forces, I think, to a great extent, we were spending a lot of money on this. For example, for the last 3 years, we've been working on this bioterrorism issue. The question is are you spending enough, are you spending it in the right way, is it a high enough priority within every bureaucracy? There are all these thousand questions when you talk about mobilizing. I think the answer is this has concentrated us as never before and as nothing else could have because. Otherwise, you know, you keep thinking, well, something else could happen too. Now we know that this is the something else that everybody is thinking about.

DOLE: You know, you go back to Pearl Harbor, everybody remembers where they were on that day if they were alive, and the same on September 11th. But when it happens to innocent people--a military installation, even Pearl Harbor is one thing--but these are innocent people, I think it--I don't know if you could have mobilized before. You might have, if this president, and the Congress and everybody else would have gotten on board, but this did it in an instant. I mean, we were mobilized within an hour after the attack.

SHIPMAN: Have the two of you cried much or at all since September 11th?

DOLE: Well, I've shed tears, and I think and anybody who's watched this closely and hasn't shed a tear, I think they've, I don't know where they, where they live.