Tom Daschle has just put the dagger to Bush...

[TruthIsAll]

It's about time, Tom.

Now do you know why Bush and Cheney forbade you not to investigate 9/11?

Now do you know why Patriotic Democrats have felt so frustrated by your actions in applying teflon to the most miserable failure of a President we have ever had? And one who was not even elected, at that. He stole it, Tom. You know it. The whole world knows it.

As Howard Dean has said many times: We want our country back.

Welcome aboard the Truth Train.

http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/04/03/con04130.html

snip

While the former Clinton Administration officials have cooperated fully with the commission, the Bush Administration's record on access to officials and documents is, in a word, unsatisfactory.

As a result, I am confident the commission and the American people will get a full picture of the Clinton Administration's activities against Al Qaeda. All Americans will have an opportunity to evaluate both the things the Clinton Administration did right and the things it may have done wrong. Unfortunately, unless senior Bush Administration officials have an immediate change of heart, I am much less confident that the same can be said about their activities.

If the Bush Administration is truly serious about allowing the commission to examine its actions against Al Qaeda before September 11, it must provide answers to the following questions:

Was defeating Al Qaeda the Bush Administration's top national security priority before September 11?

Although both Clinton Administration officials and the intelligence community repeatedly warned the Bush Administration that Al Qaeda posed an immediate threat to America, accounts indicate defeating Al Qaeda was not, in fact, the Bush Administration's top priority. The President's most senior advisors did not meet to discuss terrorism until September, 2001 - nine months after the Administration took office. In fact, some senior Bush officials reportedly believed the Clinton Administration was obsessed with Al Qaeda. According to both former Treasury Secretary O'Neill and Richard Clarke, the President's top counter-terrorism expert, President Bush and senior Administration officials viewed Iraq as a greater threat to our security.

Did the Bush Administration have a strategy for defeating Al Qaeda prior to September 11?

Reportedly, the Bush Administration was unsatisfied with the Clinton Administration's approach for dealing with Al Qaeda and President Bush requested a new strategy. Dr. Rice recently wrote in the Washington Post that "the President wanted more than occasional retaliatory cruise missile strikes. He .... was tired of swatting flies."

However, even as the Administration was being told that the threat posed by Al Qaeda was growing, press accounts indicate President Bush did not see - let alone approve or implement - the new strategy until after the terrible attacks on September 11. The American people need to know what really happened.

What did the Bush Administration do before September 11 to defeat Al Qaeda?

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