Going back in time...1998:

On Friday, August 7 1998, President Clinton is called before sunrise by National Security Adviser Sandy Berger. Explosions at the Kenya and Tanzania American Embassies. They immediatly suspect Osama bin Laden. Denouncing the violence, Clinton said "these acts of terrorist violence are abhorrent; they are inhuman."
The following Monday, Clinton is briefed on additional CIA evidence against bin Laden and orders the Pentagon to weigh military options.
On Thursday, Aug. 13, Clinton speaks at Andrews Air Force base: "America's memory is long, our reach is far, our resolve unwavering and our commitment to justice unshatterable."
On Friday, Aug. 14, the CIA and Pentagon present a case that bin Laden is not only responsible for the Africa bombings but is planning additional terrorist attacks against Americans.
The president orders the Navy to deploy warships with cruise missiles.
On Monday, Aug. 17, Clinton gives testimony in the Monica Lewinsky investigation. Later that night, Clinton addresses the nation and admits to an inappropriate relationship with the former White House intern.
On Wednesday, the Pentagon says they're ready to strike- and await the President's go ahead. Meanwhile, bin Laden's folks vow further strikes against the U.S.
After staying up through the night making calls, at 6 am, Thursday, Aug. 20, Clinton orders the bombings in retaliation agsint bin Laden- bombing six sites in Sudan and Afghanistan.

Here is some contemporaneous reaction:
from Salon:

It took only a few minutes for one of the reporters in the Pentagon pressroom to ask Secretary of Defense William Cohen the question on many minds: "Have you seen the movie?" He was referring to "Wag the Dog" and the unsettling coincidence between Thursday's military strikes and a movie in which political fixers concoct a war to distract public attention from a presidential sex scandal.
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But cynicism could not be avoided. I was eating lunch with a prominent Republican official when his office called to inform him of the Clinton-ordered attacks on terrorist installations in Afghanistan and a supposed chemical-weapons factory in Sudan. The official immediately asked the caller, "Is CNN airing video footage of a young girl running with a kitten?" -- a direct reference to a scene in the film. He got up to leave, noting, "Clinton will do anything to get away from Hillary."
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Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., also rushed before television cameras to suggest that Clinton may have had more than national security on his mind in deciding to bomb. Oddly, two days ago, the president's critics were arguing that his scandalous behavior rendered it difficult for him to act decisively. Then when he did move forcefully, that aggravated his antagonists.

and to be fair, the article also mentions:

But there were different takes among Republicans. House Speaker Newt Gingrich stated plainly the assault "was the right thing to do." And Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, remarked, "We should all back the president of the United States."

Senator Dan Coates said:

The New York Times has a different quote from Dan Coats. According to the Times, what Senator Dan Coats said was:

"The danger here is that once a president loses credibility with the Congress, as this president has through months of lies and deceit and manipulations and deceptions, stonewalling, it raises into doubt everything he does and everything he says, and maybe even everything he doesn't do and doesn't say," said Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind., who less than 72 hours earlier had called for Clinton's resignation over the Monica Lewinsky issue.

Coats added, "I just hope and pray the decision that was made was made on the basis of sound judgment and made for the right reasons, and not made because it was necessary to save the president's job."

This, from CNN, commenting on the movie, Wag the Dog:

But the movie is serving as a reference point in the debate over Clinton's motivations.

"Look at the movie 'Wag the Dog.' I think this has all the elements of that movie," Rep. Jim Gibbons said. "Our reaction to the embassy bombings should be based on sound credible evidence, not a knee-jerk reaction to try to direct public attention away from his personal problems."

Massachusetts acting Gov. Paul Cellucci, a Republican and a movie buff, said: "It popped into my mind, but I do hope that that's not the situation and I trust that it isn't."

All of this, of course, sounding familiar to criticisms that Clinton "Wagged the Dog" when he bombed Iraq. From CNN in December, 1998:

The last time President Clinton launched air strikes on Iraq, Monica Lewinsky's name was just beginning to become a household word. The comparisons to that attack last winter with the movie "Wag the Dog," in which a president wages a fake war to divert attention from a sex scandal, were inevitable, but ultimately speculative, and only came from unofficial sources, not Congress.

Now, Lewinsky is probably more famous than Michael Jackson, and Bill Clinton's eleventh-hour bombing of Baghdad, just before a probable impeachment by the House, has some Members of Congress questioning the President's motives in violation of an unwritten code that says you don't criticize the Commander-in-Chief during wartime.

"Never underestimate a desperate president," said Rep. Harold Solomon, (R-NY)

Solomon, who is retiring at the end of the year, said Clinton's only way of postponing his impeachment and getting it "off the front page" was the air strike on Iraq.

Even Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) publicly questioned the President's motives. "Both the timing and the motive are subject to question," he said.

House Speaker-elect Bob Livingston (R-LA) was a bit more diplomatic in saying that he supported "the troops" while pointedly failing to say that he supported the President.

And lastly, for this trip to 1998, we'll have the experts' opinion of the effecacy of Clinton's bombing al qaeda. From a Salon article:

The bombing of six supposed terrorist sites in Afghanistan and the Sudan Thursday by U.S. forces may have given some Americans a sense of revenge -- and temporarily diverted some public attention from President Clinton's deepening sex scandal -- but a number of foreign policy experts believe it will serve only to embolden Middle East radicals bent on further terrorist acts against the United States.
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Thursday's attacks were directed against targets associated with Osama bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi Arabian who's been financing terrorist attacks since the early 1980s. U.S. investigators have concluded that bin Laden was behind the recent bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa. The air strikes carried out yesterday were direct retaliation, but they may have been futile.

"It doesn't affect bin Laden unless he was killed," says Scott Armstrong, a former Washington Post reporter who's been in contact with bin Laden's associates in researching a book about American policy in the Persian Gulf. "The U.S. military wanted to show great strength. It did. But the only real impact on bin Laden is that he might hamper him a bit in getting money from his family."
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Professor Reich says bin Laden represents a brand of terrorism that's a departure from the state-sponsored terrorism prevalent during the 1980s, when Libya and Iran encouraged and financed terrorist operations. Bin Laden springs more from an ideological, romantic strain of terrorists, who are much more difficult to identify, target and control.

"Bin Laden may be of the romantic variety, but he is the functional equivalent of a state," Reich says. "He's worth a half a billion dollars in a part of the world where people will do things for very little money. He can provide cover, passports, transportation. He can do what Syria can do, what Libya did with Pan Am 103."

Taliban leaders in Afghanistan reported that bin Laden was not killed in Thursday's bombing raids. Reich says it's just as well. "He would have become a martyr," says the professor. "It could very well have had the opposite effect."
Armstrong agrees that the bombings could backfire. "It could recruit huge numbers of people to his cause," Armstrong says. "He has about 4,000 active members right now, and he could call on many thousands more. These raids will multiply that by a factor of 10."

"You have to remember that bin Laden is revered by thousands of his followers," a weary intelligence specialist said before heading back to another 13-hour shift at the counter-terrorism center in the Pentagon Thursday afternoon. "He's revered as Daddy to them -- Daddy Bucks.

"He's got thousands of freedom-fighting veterans who went back to their countries, mostly in the Middle East and North Africa, but also stretching into Asia. They're certainly capable of doing all sorts of nasty things."
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Says Professor Reich: "We have no conclusive evidence that raids of this sort will have any effect on terrorism. Yes, we can reach anywhere. We have an incredibly impressive arsenal. The question is do you stop groups who are doing terrorist acts?

"We have no solution to terrorism," he says. "We can slow it down, we can divert it, but a determined terrorist can pull off a terrorist act with relative ease."

In light of all this, were Thursday's attacks more politically motivated than militarily? "This event does look like a wonderful confluence of international opportunity and domestic advantage for Mr. Clinton," says James Morrow, a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

"People say that the Lewinsky scandal is weakening the United States internationally, that it is encouraging states like Iraq and North Korea to challenge the United States," adds Morrow. "I think that argument is absolutely wrong and it's backwards. I think the temptation for the wounded leader to act is stronger in crisis, and therefore, if you're a prospective opponent, you have to be aware of that. I think opponents are less likely to challenge a leader who is down, precisely because they know they are more likely to get a strong response."

And now, we zoom back to today. hope the trip was fun.