The Big Spin

[Tactical Progressive]

The big spin that Condi and the right wingers are putting on this issue of Bush's gross national security negligence leading up to 9/11 is conflating protecting America with the 'war on terror'.

BushCo left America open to attack with their dismissal of all manner of warnings and recommendations about an impending terrorist attack. They didn't do anything. Clarke revealed that, but we already knew. A few of the news programs even pointed out that Bush himself had admitted as much to Bob Woodward. You've all seen the stats. A new one, at least for me, was Clarke telling Jon Stewart that the Bush administration held 100 'principals' meetings, and only one was on the threat of terrorism. Clarke sounded flabbergasted as he related that fact. There are many such indicators of just how totally negligent the Bush administration had been regarding terrorist threats to America.

Yet, when the questions come to Condi she talks about everything but. She talks about how 'previous' administrations didn't get bin Laden. She talks about increasing funding for intelligence operations. She talks about plans for a more 'robust' response to al Qaeda. She talks and talks and says nothing about protecting America. You've probably seen the most common form of this argument as: 'Clinton had eight years to get bin Laden while Bush had only eight months.' It's a completely inverted premise. The issue of domestic security is: 'Clinton kept America safe for eight years while Bush didn't keep us safe for eight months.'

The plan is to put Bush's failure to protect America behind a smokescreen of generalities about fighting the broader war on terror and how, essentially, because Clinton didn't kill al Qaeda, then BushCo did just as good in not getting al Qaeda.

Except that what is at issue regarding 9/11 is specifically the failure to protect America. Not the failure to stop worldwide terrorism. That's the difference that the members of the 9/11 commission have to keep separated when they question Rice.

What did you do TO PROTECT AMERICA, Condi?

[izzie]

1. Bush wanted star wars so Rice wanted star wars.

She is working for Bush not the good of the country. We can see every thing had to come through her slant and look what happened to Powell or any one that was not what Cheney wanted? This really puts Bush in a bad light. We now know who is running things and it is not Bush, he is kept to only knowing what Rice and Chaney want.

[xchrom]

2. clinton kept us safe -- bush didn't

didn't the millenium give bushco precedent for sifting through heightened alerts and they doidn't even do that?
the frame work was there, some of the same people were there, certainly enough people saying we're going to get hit were there, and nothing happened in the white house -- oh except that big fat vacation in crawford.