Polls & Research

Americans Assess Blame for Bin Laden’s Actions

- Many adults in the United States believe their current president is partially responsible for the fact that Osama bin Laden has not been captured or killed, according to a poll by Gallup released by USA Today. 53 per cent of respondents blame the George W. Bush "a great deal" or a "fair amount" for the situation.

In addition, 42 per cent of respondents think former president Bill Clinton—whose tenure began in January 1993 and ended in January 2001—is also partly to blame for the failure to eliminate or apprehend the al-Qaeda leader.

In a survey by Opinion Dynamics released by Fox News, 32 per cent of respondents blame the Bush administration more for failing to capture or kill bin Laden, while 22 per cent point the finger at the Clinton administration.

Al-Qaeda operatives hijacked and crashed four airplanes in the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, killing nearly 3,000 people. In October, after Afghanistan's Taliban regime refused to hand over al-Qaeda leader bin Laden, the U.S. launched the war on terrorism.

In 1998, bin Laden was indicted in the United States for his alleged involvement in two terrorist attacks that killed 257 people in the American embassies located in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya. Clinton also ordered a cruise missile strike on alleged terrorist bases in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan.

In an interview broadcast on Fox News on Sept. 24, Clinton rejected the notion that his administration failed to "connect the dots" and "put (the terrorists) out of business", saying, "I think it's very interesting that all the conservative Republicans, who now say I didn't do enough, claimed that I was too obsessed with bin Laden. All of President Bush's neo-cons thought I was too obsessed with bin Laden. They had no meetings on bin Laden for nine months after I left office. All the right-wingers who now say I didn't do enough said I did too much—same people."

On Sept. 26, Bush declined to comment on Clinton's statements, saying, "I'm going to continue to work to protect this country. And we'll let history judge—all the different finger-pointing and all that business. I don't have enough time to finger-point. I've got to stay—I've got to do my job, which comes home every day in the Oval Office, and that is to protect the American people from further attack."

Polling Data

a) How much do you blame Bill Clinton / George W. Bush for the fact that Osama bin Laden has not been captured or killed?

Source: Gallup / USA Today
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 1,010 American adults, conducted from Sept. 21 to Sept. 24, 2006. Margin of error is 3 per cent.

b) Who do you blame more for failing to kill or capture Osama bin Laden?