¶ … 911 Commission: the Clinton Administration's Response in 1998 versus the Bush Administration's Response to 2001 After the Cold War, the state of American intelligence was in incredible disarray. The Cold War had ended. The purpose of all of American intelligence efforts had been shifted from a Cold War focus on the Soviet Union to a more chaotic, diverse, and internationally and ethnically divided world. The 9/11 commission, when comparing the Clinton Administration's response to the 1998 Al Qaeda bombings of American embassies, admitted that during this period of world history the Clinton Administration was still in a difficult and transitional world period, and domestically, the nation was uncertain as to how to go forward. The Clinton Administration made a cautious response that did not fundamentally reconfigure the systems of intelligence gathering in the nation, or the bureaucracy of the intelligence agencies in the United States. This was difficult to do...

However, the commission also allowed that the negotiations going on between Israel and the Palestinian representatives made a strident response difficult, as if the United States were to respond forcefully, it could not with good moral conscience criticize Israel for doing the same, when Israel was attacked by terrorist bombings on its territories.
But the intelligence miscommunications that still characterized the Clinton Administration continued to characterize the Bush Administration's response to terrorism before, during, and after the September 11th attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. This, the 9/11 Commission stressed, cannot continue, lest the United States' sense of security in the world continue to be compromised. The commission stated that there may be more attacks in the future, but this does not…