Mike Meehan, the Orlando businessman who paid to put up a billboard displaying the burning World Trade Center next to the words “Please Don’t Vote for a Democrat,” appeared on CNN’s American Morning where he argued that the attacks of 9/11 could have been prevented had a Republican been in the White House in the late 1990s. Meehan has his facts wrong. During the Clinton years, al-Qaed More.. a training sites in Afghanistan were targeted by the U.S. military, missing Osama bin Laden by just hours. The federal anti-terrorism budget tripled under Clinton, who also consistently pressed for antiterrorism legislation, even with a Congress hostile to such measures. The common right-wing myth — parroted here by Meehan — that the Clinton administration had bin Laden “in their hands” is false. In contrast, for the first nine months of the Bush administration terrorism wasn’t seen as an “urgent issue.” Less..