One hears the Bush apologists state:  ” They ‘ saved’ us from attacks for nearly 8 years”.

Is this true?  To verify that statement, one must, of course, provide cause/effect data that the policies of that administration prevented attacks, such as the one against the Pentagon and other sites on 11 Sep 2001.

One might ask: ” What would the Bush administration have done if the US mainland been attacked again?”  Such an attack would have given them the opportunity and justification to do more of the same that they did after 9/11: increase military spending, and reduce civil and human rights.  That being the case, they would have seen such an attack as benificial, and therefore were not motivated to prevent same.

N.B.: Under the Clinton administration, there were 7 years and 11 months with out a terrorist attack; under the Bush/Cheney administration, 7 years and 4 months.

N.B.: The Bush admininistration did not protect us from the first terrorist any more than they did New Orleans from Katrina: the schrub saw a warning in a PDB  more than a month in advance and ignored it.