just a little reminder that the bush administration did jacksh*t about terrorism before september 11, 2001

A helpful little article in today's Washington Post relays the story of how CIA Director George Tenet (Clinton appointee, Bush Medal of Honor recipient) and his senior terrorism people tried throughout early 2001 to get then-National Security Advisor Condi Rice to pay attention to their urgent concerns that a big attack was imminent. In fact, the CIA had been trying to get Rice to win permission for the CIA to take greater actions against Al Qaeda. However, that months-long effort, and the extraordinary July 10 meeting that Tenet arranged with Condi specifically to address, all failed to engage her attention. Condi it seems was too busy focusing on ballistic missile defense and other stuff.

Good article, but would have been better if not buried on page A17.

Remember this as the de facto Bush Administration -- including Rice -- and Fox News and ABC-TV all try to play up the idea that somehow 9/11 was all Bill Clinton's fault. As Clinton said on Fox News, he tried and tried to get Bin Laden. He wanted to invade Afghanistan BEFORE 9/11 but couldn't get basing rights from Uzbekistan (he also couldn't get the CIA and FBI to certify that Al Qaeda was responsible for the bombings of two American embassies in East Africa). Clinton tried and failed (but succeeded in thwarting the Millennium plot).

Bush? Didn't even try. He was already planning for the invasion of Iraq. Which, of course, was not involved in 9/11.