NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/08/washington/08bush.html?ex=1315368000&en=98aee6ce8b7bb9f7&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rssBush Assures That the Nation Is Safer as Memories Turn to a Day of Destruction
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: September 8, 2006
ATLANTA, Sept. 7 — Setting out his own narrative of what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush on Thursday defended his administration’s record on domestic security, saying he had “learned a lot of lessons” on that day and had made Americans safer as a result.
Speaking to an audience of conservative intellectuals here, Mr. Bush also called on Congress to pass legislation authorizing one of his most controversial antiterror initiatives, a once-secret National Security Agency program to eavesdrop on suspected members of Al Qaeda.
The president used the latest in a series of his addresses leading up to the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11 to continue his effort to reshape the political climate by focusing the nation on the threat from terrorism rather than the war in Iraq. He mentioned only briefly the proposal he unveiled on Wednesday for interrogating and trying detainees linked to terrorism.
Instead, he offered his version of how terrorists plotted to attack the United States on Sept. 11 and used that framework to present a “progress report” — a rebuttal to critics who say he has not done enough and a playbook that Republican candidates may use as they face skeptical voters in November.
<<snip>>
In Mr. Bush’s version of events, there was no mention of the August 2001 intelligence report warning that Osama bin Laden was plotting to attack inside the United States. Nor was there any of his own early response, judged by his critics to have been erratic, after learning, during a visit to a Florida elementary school, that planes had crashed into the Word Trade Center.
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