...I'm okay with being REALITY-based.




Thursday, April 08, 2004
      ( 11:01 AM )
 
Meanwhile...

I didn't get to see or hear all of Condi's testimony this morning, but from what I did see, it sounded like she'd done a LOT of prep. She knew what questions she was goign to have to wiggle around. I am still left wondering what did she tell the President? If she knew there were threats, and she said she and Tennet briefed the President on these threats, then Bush knew. As Atrios simply puts it:

For those who are a little fuzzy on their recent history, the timeline goes something like this:

August 6, 2001: Bush gets briefing titled "Bin
Laden Determined to Strike Inside US."

August 7, 2001: Bush begins month long vacation
in Crawford, TX.

Billmon discusses the memo further:

In any case, it does help explain the extremely careful
wording of Bush's most recent public statement regarding
what he was or was not told during that long, lazy
summer on the ranch down in Crawford:

"Had my administration had any information
that terrorists were going to attack New
York City on September the 11th, we would
have acted."

I'm waiting for excuse 2.0, which will probably be rolled
out after the 9/11 Commission report is released this
summer. I'm guessing it's going to sound something
like this:

"Had my administration had positive confirmation
that on the morning of September 11, nineteen
Al Qaeda operatives were going to hijack
American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines
Flight 175 from Boston's Logan Airport, and
American Airlines Flight 77 from Washington's
Reagan National Airport, and United Airlines
Flight 93 from Newark airport, and then fly them
into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon
-- and either the White House or the U.S. Capitol
in the case of Flight 93 -- we would have acted."

So it's obvious that Bush not only knew there were threats and that they were increasing, but he chose to focus instead on cloning embryos and clearing brush from his non-working ranch. If the administration was so able to get systems in place AFTER 9/11 happened, why weren't they working on them before? It seems as though Rumsfeld's and Cheney's jones for Iraq and Bush and Rice's jones for Star Wars were major impediments to seeing the forest for the trees.

MEANWHILE...

The unecessary battle rages on.

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