The President WAS Warned Of Impending Terror Attack by Turkana
Mon Jan 04, 2010 at 01:09:11 PM PST
The president's name was George W. Bush; and the necessary debunking of the baseless criticism leveled at President Obama over the recent failed attempted terrorist attack is important, but it's not enough.
Because it's not enough to defend President Obama from baseless criticism, and it's not enough to remind people of the astonishing failures of Bush and his entire administration. What's really needed is to shatter the false political narrative that Democrats are soft on defense and national security, and that Republicans are strong.
That narrative not only is false, it is dangerous. It is dangerous on both political grounds and on policy grounds. It is one of the main reasons why Democrats continually support misguided and terrible policies, such as authorizing the Iraq War, passing the "Patriot" Act, or legitimizing police state domestic spying. Too many Democrats too often fear that doing the right thing will play into that false narrative, and they therefore do the wrong thing, further promoting that false narrative. It has to stop.
Both the corporate media and the public need be reminded of the facts, over and over and over. The Democratic Party apparatus needs to be always at the ready, with facts at hand, to remind both the corporate media and the public of the facts. Over and over and over. Because the facts are clear: it is the Democrats who are strong, simply by being smart; it is the Republicans who are weak, because they favor ideology over pragmatics, and they politicize national security even when it endangers national security. So, let's review the facts.
Just a month before the 9/11 attacks, while on a month long vacation, Bush was personally handed a presidential daily briefing entitled:
Bin Laden determined to strike in US.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/10/august6.memo/
With characteristic intelligence and class, Bush responded with the words:
All right. You've covered your ass, now.
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/06/20/911pdb/
And went fishing...
SNIP
...But the Bush team was so obliviously sanguine that:
Though Predator drones spotted Osama bin Laden as many as three times in late 2000, the Bush administration did not fly the unmanned planes over Afghanistan during its first eight months and was still refining a plan to use one armed with missiles to kill the al-Qaida leader when Sept. 11 unfolded, current and former U.S. officials say.
http://www.helenair.com/news/national/article_1808a3b2-1a4d-59d7-a1c9-f3210fbbdc11.html
And as for Cheney himself:
Bush administration officials told former Sens. Gary Hart, D-Colo., and Warren Rudman, R-N.H., that they preferred instead to put aside the recommendations issued in the January report by the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century. Instead, the White House announced in May that it would have Vice President Dick Cheney study the potential problem of domestic terrorism -- which the bipartisan group had already spent two and a half years studying -- while assigning responsibility for dealing with the issue to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, headed by former Bush campaign manager Joe Allbaugh.
The Hart-Rudman Commission had specifically recommended that the issue of terrorism was such a threat it needed far more than FEMA's attention.
Before the White House decided to go in its own direction, Congress seemed to be taking the commission's suggestions seriously, according to Hart and Rudman. "Frankly, the White House shut it down," Hart says. "The president said 'Please wait, we're going to turn this over to the vice president. We believe FEMA is competent to coordinate this effort.' And so Congress moved on to other things, like tax cuts and the issue of the day."
"We predicted it," Hart says of Tuesday's horrific events. "We said Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers -- that's a quote (from the commission's Phase One Report) from the fall of 1999..."
http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/09/12/bush/
SNIP
Not only did the entire Bush Administration ignore multiple screaming warnings, but Cheney himself was tasked with studying the risk of domestic terrorism! And even though Bush himself said he'd periodically review the issue :
Neither Cheney's review nor Bush's took place...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8734-2002Jan19?language=printer
MORE AT:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/1/4/821835/-The-President-WAS-Warned-Of-Impending-Terror-Attack
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