<p>Kluge, I prefer to see it as a democrat finally standing up rather than “getting down in the mud”. Clinton has been quite reticent to speak out against the Bush administration. He was killing two birds with one stone when he defended his actions as president.</p>
<p>Allmusic, you need a \ in front of the second quote. (In the brackets.)</p>
<p>oops, sorry, I gave the wrong directions on quoting.</p>
<p>You need a / not a
for example: to enquote the phrase “driver is such a total genius–I can’t believe it” you would do this:
[quote]
driver is such a total genius–I can’t believe it[/] </p>
<p>BUT you would type the word “quote” (without quotation marks) after the forward slash. It would then produce this:
</p>
<p>…nor can I, but then… ;)</p>
<p>Liz, you get faster with practice.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, there ya go.</p>
<p><…you show me those tough questions they are asking Bush?>
Did you ever watch a press conference? See David Gregory questioning Bush? Or Helen Thomas? Tough questions, I would say. Did you see them question Blair when Bush and Blair gave a joint press conference a few weeks ago? Blair was brilliant and Bush was inarticulate, as usual–but they both hold the same beliefs about the war.</p>
<p>kluge, I see you are trotting out that August PDB as some sort of “proof” of Bush’s culpability. Do you notice the dates associated with that PDB? This is all “historical” information just as Condi said. When Bush asked for the status, the intelligence community resurrected information that they had in their files and did a core dump. The only information that is “recent” is the surveilance of federal buildings in NYC. So I guess that you claim that perhaps Bush should have diverted all security to put a ring of manpower around the federal buildings? </p>
<p>If you are critical for Bush not doing something to prevent a hijacking, what exactly did Clinton do when the information first came out back in '97-98? If you are going to use the PDB as a critique of an administration, it is far more damaging to Clinton than it is to Bush. Clinton had years to do something about it, Bush had a month. Of course, logical as this is, this goes against the Dem talking points so it is automatically rejected.</p>
<p>Actually, Bush had eight months. Richard Clarke was knocking on the door on January 25. The “Attack in the US” memo in August was just the most blatant thing the Bush Administration ignored before 9/11. </p>
<p>But consider your talking point: “Clinton had years to do something about it, Bush had a month.” Clinton sent cruise missles in an attempt to take out Bin Laden in 1998 - and was criticized and derided by Republicans in Congress for doing so. Remember “Wag the Dog?” Bush has had “years” to go after Bin Laden now, including a free hand in Afganistan and a lapdog Congress which will let him do anything he wants - and Bin Laden is still around. So exactly what is your “talking point?” That Bush can’t be criticized for the same failure Clinton has admitted to? That Clinton’s efforts to deal with Bin Laden despite a hysterically antagonistic Congress intent on attacking him for anything and everything he did while in office are subject to derision and contempt, while the exact same failure by Bush has to be ignored? Is that your point?</p>
<p>If you read the 9/11 commission report, you’ll see what Clinton did to try to take out Bin Laden, starting on page 117. Clinton required his staff to give him daily updates on the latest information regarding Bin Laden’s whereabouts. Until 9/11 Bush couldn’t be bothered. The thumb-twirling of the Bush Administration is laid out in all its bureaucratic glory starting on page 200. I recognize that it’s a standard diversionary tactic of the right to try to blame everything on Clinton -a tactic most recently indulged in with the ABC show - but facts are facts. Clinton tried to take out Bin Laden. He came close, but he failed - and he admits it. Bush didn’t even try until after 9/11, with his administration quarreling over how to budget the three year plan to “do something” about al Qaeda.</p>
<p>
Yet both the Republican leader in the Senate and House (Lott, Gingrich) applauded Clinton for this action. (Don’t try to kid me that Pelosi/Reid would ever applaud anything Bush does.)
Nice sound bite - right from the Pelosi/Reid/Dean talking points, but bin Laden isn’t in Afghanistan and Bush is smart enough to realize that bin Laden at this point has been fairly neutered and it certainly is not worth destabilizing a nuclear power to get him.
No, you haven’t seen me being critical of Clinton’s efforts. If he is to be criticised for anything it is the string of lies and exaggerations that he made with Chris Wallace in terms of the extent to which he claimed to go after bin Laden. However, Bush HAS captured hundreds of al Qaeda, including the mastermind of 9/11. Meanwhile, the Dems are trying to take away the tools that have been used so effectively in capturing these thugs and have proven to have stopped many plots which would have resulted in many more dead people - perhaps someone you know is alive today because of this success (after all, one of the targets for one of the disrupted plots was LA).</p>
<p>Fundingfather: what makes you think there isn’t someone I know who’s dead today because of our pointless war in Iraq? As to the “proven” plots you refer to: please identify them. I don’t know if the Bush Administrations efforts have actually stopped any functional “plots” at all - and neither do you. The only things I seen reliably reported are a bunch of hopeless wannabes with no actual prospect of ever doing anything harmful to anyone but themeselves: viz: Jose Padilla, those shmoes down in Florida, and some kid from Lodi. </p>
<p>Those soldiers being blown up in Iraq, however, are really being killed, by the increasing number of anti-American fanactic recruits. </p>
<p>Finally: what “string of lies” did Clinton tell on the Wallace show? Please specify.</p>
<p>Rumsfeld, Ashcroft received warning of al Qaida attack before 9/11
By JONATHAN S. LANDAY, WARREN P. STROBEL and JOHN WALCOTT
McClatchy Newspapers</p>
<p>WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Attorney General John Ashcroft received the same CIA briefing about an imminent al-Qaida strike on an American target that was given to the White House two months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.</p>
<p>The State Department’s disclosure Monday that the pair was briefed within a week after then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was told about the threat on July 10, 2001, raised new questions about what the Bush administration did in response, and about why so many officials have claimed they never received or don’t remember the warning.</p>
<p>One official who helped to prepare the briefing, which included a PowerPoint presentation, described it as a “10 on a scale of 1 to 10” that “connected the dots” in earlier intelligence reports to present a stark warning that al-Qaida, which had already killed Americans in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and East Africa, was poised to strike again.</p>
<p>Former CIA Director George Tenet gave the independent Sept. 11, 2001, commission the same briefing on Jan. 28, 2004, but the commission made no mention of the warning in its 428-page final report. According to three former senior intelligence officials, Tenet testified to commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste and to Philip Zelikow, the panel’s executive director and the principal author of its report, who’s now Rice’s top adviser.</p>
<p>A new book by Bob Woodward of The Washington Post alleges that Rice failed to take the July 2001 warning seriously when it was delivered at a White House meeting by Tenet, Cofer Black, then the agency’s chief of top counterterrorism, and a third CIA official whose identity remains protected.</p>
<p>Rice’s deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, who became national security adviser after she became secretary of state, and Rice’s top counterterrorism aide, Richard Clarke, also were present.</p>
<p>Woodward wrote that Tenet and Black considered the briefing the “starkest warning they had given the White House” on the threat posed by Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network. But, he wrote, the pair felt as if Rice gave them “the brush-off.”</p>
<p>Speaking to reporters late Sunday en route to the Middle East, Rice said she had no recollection of what she called “the supposed meeting.”</p>
<p>“What I’m quite certain of, is that it was not a meeting in which I was told that there was an impending attack and I refused to respond,” she said.</p>
<p>Ashcroft, who resigned as attorney general on Nov. 9, 2004, told the Associated Press on Monday that it was “disappointing” that he never received the briefing, either.</p>
<p>But on Monday evening, Rice’s spokesman Sean McCormack issued a statement confirming that she’d received the CIA briefing “on or around July 10” and had asked that it be given to Ashcroft and Rumsfeld.</p>
<p>“The information presented in this meeting was not new, rather it was a good summary from the threat reporting from the previous several weeks,” McCormack said. “After this meeting, Dr. Rice asked that this same information be briefed to Secretary Rumsfeld and Attorney General Ashcroft. That briefing took place by July 17.”</p>
<p>Lt. Cmdr. Joe Carpenter, a Pentagon spokesman, said he had no information “about what may or may not have been briefed” to Rumsfeld at Rice’s request.</p>
<p>David Ayres, who was Ashcroft’s chief of staff at the Justice Department, said that the former attorney general also has no recollection of a July 17, 2001, terrorist threat briefing. Later, Ayres said that Ashcroft could recall only a July 5 briefing on threats to U.S. interests abroad.</p>
<p>He said Ashcroft doesn’t remember any briefing that summer that indicated that al-Qaida was planning to attack within the United States.</p>
<p>The CIA briefing didn’t provide the exact timing or nature of a possible attack, nor did it predict whether it was likely to take place in the United States or overseas, said three former senior intelligence officials.</p>
<p>They spoke on condition of anonymity because the report remains highly classified.</p>
<p>The briefing “didn’t say within the United States,” said one former senior intelligence official. “It said on the United States, which could mean a ship, an embassy or inside the United States.”</p>
<p>In the briefing, Tenet warned in very strong terms that intelligence from a variety of sources indicated that bin Laden’s terrorist network was planning an attack on a U.S. target in the near future, said one of the officials.</p>
<p>“The briefing was intended to `connect the dots’ contained in other intelligence reports and paint a very clear picture of the threat posed by bin Laden,” said the official, who described the tone of the report as “scary.”</p>
<p>In his comment Keith Olberman accused George Bush of cowardice. I think the White House spin on Woodward’s book confirms all that Keith Olberman said in his comment.</p>
<p>“The State Department’s disclosure Monday that the pair was briefed within a week after then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was told about the threat on July 10, 2001, raised new questions about what the Bush administration did in response, and about why so many officials have claimed they never received or don’t remember the warning.”</p>
<p>Government officials who lie to the American people hate America.</p>
<p>And just yesterday Ashcroft got all uppity saying if it was so important, why wasn’t he briefed…HE WAS…egad</p>
<p>FF:
</p>
<p>In light of Woodward’s reporting, we’re clearly not seeing data dumps, we’re not seeing this as “when Bush asked for a status” (where did that come from? ), and we are not seeing “only a month”. </p>
<p>Let’s look at this a different way. First of all, Clark was nagging the administration about al quaeda beginning in January. Then in July Tenet and Black, since they’re not getting a hearing for their concerns, jump in a car and get an audience with Rice. They connect the dots and present a powerpoint that was, in the words of one of the people present, “scary”. They say an attack is imminent, and that they will probably get no further warning. What does Rice do? Nothing, except pass them along to someone else. So they then present to Ashcroft and Rumsfield. Again, nothing. In fact, Ashcroft, by his own testimony, said he didn’t want to hear one more word about Ben Laden.</p>
<p>Then in August, a PDB says Ben Laden is determined to attacked IN the US. Recap: in July, they had imminent and urgent info about an attack, but didn’t know where or when. Now in August, they know where. They still don’t know when, but an attack is still urgent and imminent.</p>
<p>What to do? First thing would be to double or triple the number of tranlators, so that they knew what the terrorist transmissions were saying in real time. If they had done that one, little thing, they would have translated the message that said the attack is TOMORROW. But no, they only translated that one after 9/11. Who knows what other info Tenet had - it’s classified. But Tenet probably had some suggested action steps. The steps should have been taken.</p>
<p>Could Bush or anyone have prevented 9/11? Probably not. But we will never know, because, to paraphrase Clinton, he didn’t try.</p>
<p>LOL, has the BDS epidemic caused people to lose their ability for logical thinking? So, based on this “explosive new information” from unnamed third party sources we are expected to believe that the dots were connected way back in July. Not only were the dots connected but they pointed at some “scary” and “imminent” threat. Yet, despite Tenant’s best efforts, he couldn’t get Rice or anyone in the administration to even listen to him. Wow, what a missed opportunity!!!</p>
<p>Well, not really. A rational mind would ask, “if the information that the CIA had was so explosive, why didn’t they include it in the PDB given to Bush in August?” They had a direct pipeline to the oval office, why was it not mentioned in the PDB? Why did the PDB focus on information that had been known since 1998? Perhaps because the information conveyed in the meeting didn’t amount to anything? Or, perhaps they were actually part of the plot to “allow” 9/11 to happen just as the conspiracy wingnuts insist.</p>
<p>Another question to ask yourself, “if this information was so explosive, why didn’t Tenant tell it directly to Bush instead of Condi?” Unlike Clinton who managed to find time to meet with his CIA chief only a few times, Bush met with Tenant on a regular basis.</p>
<p>Really, folks, don’t you think that you should think these things through before grasping at every straw that has the potential to make Bush look bad?</p>
<p>July 10, 2001 - a day that will live in infamy.</p>
<p>I know, I know, they were too busy protecting our family values.</p>
<p>Cause maybe Condi was the way to Bush? Just a thought…guess going through channels was the wrong way to go, obviouslly…and I am beginning to worry about the short term and long term memory loss of Republicans…seems epidemic</p>
<p>Condi, Ashcroft, Reynolds, and it is truly amazing that Abormoff and his posse were like not noticed for the over 400 times they were in the white house</p>
<p>and these people are deciding the future of the world, but can’t remember stuff…now that makes me feel safe</p>