http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,167791,00.htmlI want you to go back in time with me. Not far. Not long. A week. Just a week. A week ago today. Perusing that day's newspapers, Wednesday, August 24.
There's no mention of New Orleans (search). The Big Easy was still livin' easy. Mississippi and Alabama were fine. Oil refineries were open. And oil prices were about five bucks a barrel lower than they are now.
One paper mentioned this "Katrina" storm — but she was just that — a storm off the Florida cost. A lot of rain, the guess. Not much else, the hunch. Even Floridians ignored it. No one in the Gulf even mentioned it. Just a week ago. It got me thinking how so many lives were uprooted by something no one fathomed. No one saw coming. History is like that — defined not by events we see, but those we do not.
The storm that no one thought would become a hurricane. The drenching that no one expected would lead to an evacuation. Seven days ago, the levies were fine. And so were we. Funny thing, time. How one moment the space shuttle's the be-all and end-all, then in an instant, it isn't.
How a worldwide war on terror is ignited by passenger plane uses no one envisioned. Such is history. Such is life. Such is us. Prompting me to wonder about the headlines I read this day. And how dated they will seem in only days.
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APRIL 10--Under pressure from the September 11 commission, the White House today declassified and released an intelligence digest given to President George W. Bush weeks before the 2001 terrorist attacks. The confidential President's Daily Brief (PDB) for August 6, 2001 contained a two-page section entitled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US," and refers to possible hijacking attempts by Osama bin Laden disciples and the existence of about 70 FBI investigations into alleged al-Qaeda cells operating within the United States. The August 6 PDB, an excerpt from which you'll find below, was presented to Bush while he vacationed at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. The digest is prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency, an official from which briefs the president on the report's contents. While Bush critics have described the August 6 PDB as a warning of an impending al-Qaeda attack, Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser, testified Thursday that the document contained "historical information based on old reporting. There was no new threat information." (2 pages)http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0409041pdb1.html