WASHINGTON — President Clinton, the two men who want to succeed him and dozens of lawmakers all have vowed that America will make those behind the deadly bomb attack on a U.S. destroyer pay dearly for the terrorist act.
"We will find out who is responsible and hold them accountable," Clinton pledged, using words echoed by Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore and Texas Gov. and GOP White House hopeful George W. Bush.
But past experience shows that's far easier said than done.
It could take weeks, if not longer, to affix solid blame for the blast Thursday in the side of the USS Cole guided-missile destroyer in the Yemeni port of Aden. There is a possibility that the act, which killed seven U.S. sailors and left 10 unaccounted for, could largely go unpunished.
What follows is a look at some of the factors that make swiftly finding both the perpetrators and a suitable method of retaliation a distinct long shot.
First hurdle: Determine who was responsible.
This requires a combination of skilled detective work, good intelligence, multi-government cooperation and a big measure of luck.
Not only must the actual perpetrators be identified — a difficult task given that they died in the blast, which flung debris into the water — but those pulling strings behind the scenes must indisputably be tied to the attack.
"It's a good chance we'll eventually be able to identify those who took part in the actual event, such as those who provided safe houses, transportation and the like," said Brian Jenkins, a terrorism expert at international security firm Kroll and Associates. "But it's very, very difficult to make the link" to the masterminds.
U.S. officials got lucky in the 1998 twin U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa that killed 12 Americans and over 200 others. Helped by solid cooperation from the Kenyan and Tanzanian governments, a well-preserved scene, and eyewitness accounts, they were able to quickly identify and apprehend several suspects.
Communications intercepts and gumshoe detective work were used to tie those men to a loose terrorist network led by wealthy Saudi exile Osama bin Laden, who, along with some of his alleged conspirators, have been indicted in U.S. federal court. Even so, it took months for all the pieces to come together.
It's too early to tell if U.S. investigators will face a similarly friendly environment in Yemen. While Yemen's leaders are pledging cooperation, Middle East experts note that President Ali Abdullah Saleh owes some of his power to the substantial support militant Islamic groups have given him in the past.
Next obstacle: Locate those responsible.
U.S. investigators never got to that point in their probe of the 1996 truck bombing of a U.S. Air Force housing compound in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, in which 19 airmen died and more than 500 were injured. While the FBI believed they had identified the masterminds of that attack, the agents accused the Saudi government of holding back critical evidence and information from them.
The Saudis, whom the U.S. count as strong allies in the Persian Gulf, apparently were leery they would anger Islamic groups and stir up trouble within their country if they cooperated fully with the FBI.
As a result, no one has been publicly identified as the culprit, no suspect has been indicted and no military or other punitive action has been taken.
In the USS Cole case, no clear indications of culpability have emerged. A little-known radical group called "Muhammed's Army," believed until now to have operated only in Chechnya and Dagestan, is reported to have claimed responsibility. Sen. John Warner, R-Va., said an unnamed group with ties to bin Laden is the focus of scrutiny.
But Middle East experts have pointed to no less than seven other Islamic radical or Palestinian organizations that not only have had a presence in Yemen, but also the capability to carry out such an attack, cover their tracks and effectively vanish quickly.
Adding to the difficulty is the fact that Yemen has been a hotbed of terrorist training camps for decades and a source of fighters for such holy "jihads" as the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Identifying suspects is one thing, but finding them is another.
Last leap: Craft a politically defensible retaliation plan, particularly if military action is chosen.
After the East Africa bombings, Pentagon and other top national security leaders spent weeks devising a military operation to punish Bin Laden and his accomplices. Even so, the carefully targeted cruise-missile attack on the Afghanistan training camp where the ascetic leader and his closest aides were believed to be hiding managed to destroy some flimsy structures, but found few human targets since Bin Laden and his crew had apparently left before the U.S. attack.
Another prong of the punishment was a the bombing of what was believed to be a Sudanese factory that had been involved in making chemical or biological weapons. Although the CIA at the time claimed to have found solid physical evidence of such deadly manufacturing, after-bombing analyses determined the factory was legitimate and benign. Its owner now is suing the U.S. government for reparations.
Among the factors complicating any contemplated military response to the USS Cole incident is the effort the United States has made over the past half-dozen years to bring Yemen into the anti-terrorism fold. Also, the United States continues to hope the troubled country can serve as a strategically useful ally in the pivotal Red Sea region.
The fast-approaching U.S. presidential election also makes military action politically dicey. Clinton and the Pentagon found themselves accused of staging a "Wag the Dog"-like diversionary scenario by bombing Iraqi targets just as Clinton's House impeachment hearings were to begin in 1998.
Already some pundits are weighing the effect of a similar attack on the now too-close-to-call race between Gore and Bush if it occurred before the Nov. 7 election.