[watermock]

I am going to have fun with his latest delusion:

Rice Description Of Pre-9/11 Events Fails To Square With Facts
Rice Claimed Bush Team Did All It Could To Fight Terror Before 9/11...

Rice: Bush Team Did "Everything It Could." In 2002, after the first questions began to surface over Bush's handling of pre-9/11 terror threats Rice told reporters that "this government did everything that it could in a period in which the information was very generalized, in which there was nothing specific to which to react..." [Rice Briefing, 5/16/02]
...But 9/11 Commission Say Attacks Were Preventable

9/11 Commission: Attacks Were Probably Preventable. The chairman and co-chair of the 9/11 commission investigating the 9/11 attacks said that the 9/11 attacks could have been prevented. Commission chairman Thomas Kean -- a Republican -- said that "I do not believe [the attacks] had to happen...[CBS News, 12/17/03, emphasis added; NBC Meet the Press, 4/4/04, emphasis added]

"Probably Preventable? Pearl Harbor was "probably preventable". Total absense of preactive remedy. Total.

There were people certainly, if I was doing the job, who would certainly not be in the position that they were in at that time because they failed. They simply failed." The commission co-chair, Lee Hamilton, said "You can string together a whole bunch of ifs. And if things had broken right in all kinds of different ways...and, frankly, if you'd had a little luck, it probably could have been prevented."

A little luck? Wouldn't that of been Islamaphobic? The Bush Admistration was left holding the bag. If it was that important, someone should of been beating down the door. And dont' go there. I am talking personal warnings.

Rice Claimed Bush Anti-Terror Efforts Were Adequate Pre 9/11...

Rice: Bush Team Understood Al Qaeda Threat. Condoleezza Rice wrote in the Washington Post that "The seriousness of the [terrorist] threat was well understood by the president and his national security principals." [Rice Op-Ed, Washington Post, 3/22/04]
...But Facts Show Bush Team Failed To Take Threat Seriously

Not true. If you checked your facts, Bush was allready under way to totally restucture the intelligence community from a "sat game" to more James Bond types. That takes time. Go look it up. Yeah, we got caught with our pants down. Notice how we are starting to pick up these bastards now. How many did Clinton arrest? Answer? a handfull.

FACT: Rice Focused On Matters "Other Than Terrorism." In the months prior to the September 11 attacks, Condoleezza Rice "was usually fixed on matters other than terrorism, for reasons that had to do with her own background, her management style and the unusually close, personal nature of her relationship with Mr. Bush." [New York Times, 4/5/04, emphasis added]

Total assertion, and flies in the face of some KKK President who has more African American Cabinet positions in the history of the country. It's total assertion. It's a total assertion. see "was usually fixated" as an opinion.

* Rice's Major Foreign Policy Address -- Scheduled For 9/11/01 -- Downplayed Terrorist Threat. The Washington Post reported that "on Sept. 11, 2001, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was scheduled to outline a Bush administration policy that would address 'the threats and problems of today and the day after, not the world of yesterday' -- but the focus was largely on missile defense, not terrorism from Islamic radicals." Rice's speech was postponed by the terrorist attacks, and while "it mentioned terrorism" it "did so in the context used in other Bush administration speeches in early 2001: as one of the dangers from rogue nations, such as Iraq, that might use weapons of terror, rather than from the cells of extremists now considered the main security threat to the United States." [Washington Post, 4/1/04, emphasis added]

Wow, a forward looking speech. How amusing you still don't get the fact that WE WERE ATTACKED, HOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND. Oh, the dangers of rougue nations like Iraq? OIC. How amusing now that they seem to think the WMD evaporated, and now they think that there might be cells of extremists in Iraq? Gee wiz Bluto! Guess what. All of a sudden there ARE terrorists cells in Iraq.

FACT: Bush Team "Struggled" With Anti-Terror Policy Before 9/11. A report by the New York Times found that "A review of the Bush administration's deliberations and actions in the summer of 2001, based on interviews with current and former officials and an examination of the preliminary findings of the commission, shows that the White House's impulse to deal more forcefully with terrorist threats within the United States peaked July 5 and then leveled off until Sept. 11. The review shows that over that summer, with terror warnings mounting, the government's response was often scattered and inconsistent as the new administration struggled to develop a comprehensive strategy for combating Al Qaeda and other terror organizations." [New York Times, 4/4/04

You sure love the NYT. Of course it was problematic. We didn't have proper intelligence whatsoever. I have said again and again we were caught with our pants down. Noone denies that. We might again. Meanwhile, your whining about too much security in New York.

FACT: Bush Himself Admitted No Sense Of Urgency. In his interview with journalist Bob Woodward for Woodward's book Bush at War, "the president himself acknowledged that Osama bin Laden had not been a central focus in the eight months before the attacks. 'I was not on point,' Mr. Bush was quoted in the book as saying. 'I have no hesitancy about going after him. But I didn't feel that sense of urgency, and my blood was not nearly as boiling.'" [New York Times, 3/29/04]

Yeah, so that means he is a war monger? Here is the point. When they attacked, he attacked back. Period. This crap about pre-emptive action is a bunch of crap also. We were attacked, and he striked back, maybe to weakly. Dont even get me going that we didn't try to negotiate with these animals.

FACT: Former Bush NSC Staffer: Bush Team Not As Focused On Terror As Clinton. Army Lt. General Donald Kerrick, who served under both presidents Clinton and Bush, "noticed a difference on terrorism. Clinton's Cabinet advisers, burning with the urgency of their losses to bin Laden in the African embassy bombings in 1998 and the Cole attack in 2000, had met 'nearly weekly' to direct the fight, Kerrick said. Among Bush's first-line advisers, 'candidly speaking, I didn't detect' that kind of focus, he said. 'That's not being derogatory. It's just a fact. I didn't detect any activity but what Dick Clarke and the CSG were doing.'"" [Washington Post, 1/20/02, emphasis added]

And what did Clinton do? Real focus? WTF did they do?

FACT: Bush Taskforce On Terrorism Never Met. On May 8, 2001 "Bush announced a new Office of National Preparedness for terrorism at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. At the same time, he proposed to cut FEMA's budget by $200 million. Bush said that day that Cheney would direct a government-wide review on managing the consequences of a domestic attack, and 'I will periodically chair a meeting of the National Security Council to review these efforts.'" Neither Cheney's review nor Bush's took place." [Washington Post, 1/20/02]

FEMA has an open budget you dimwit. It's not even designed for terrorism.

FACT: Two Days Before 9/11, Rumsfeld Threatened Bush Veto On Funding For Counterterrorism. According to Time, on September 9, 2001, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld threatened to urge a presidential veto of a Senate plan to divert $600 million from missile defense systems to counterterrorism. Instead of anti-terror planning,"the whole Bush national-security team was obsessed with setting up a national system of missile defense." [Time, 8/12/02]

That may be true, but it was a threat. It never happened. The threat of N. Korea is still very real my naive friend.

FACT: Rumsfeld Helped Keep Predator Drones Grounded. Through October 2000, the CIA used unmanned aerial "Predator" drones to spy on terrorists such as Al Qaeda. During the late summer of 2000, the Predator even took a photo of a man thought to be Osama bin Laden. In October, a Predator crashed on the Afghan border and the flights were grounded for repairs and winter weather. "The Clinton team left office assuming that the Predator would be back in the skies by March 2001. In fact, the Predator wouldn't fly again until after Sept. 11" -- partly on the order of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. "Through the spring and summer of 2001, when valuable intelligence could have been gathered, the Bush administration never launched even an unarmed Predator. Hill sources say DOD didn't want the CIA treading on its turf." [Time, 8/12/02; Newsweek, 5/27/02]

more Time. So why didn't Clinton pull the trigger? I love how time mag knows that the DoD and CIA were at odds.

* FACT: Despite Warnings Of "Imminent" Al Qaeda Attack, Rumsfeld Made No Changes. According to reports released by the 9/11 commission, "intelligence reports in 2001 had warned of an imminent attack by Al Qaeda, and that Mr. Rumsfeld had not ordered any new preparation against Al Qaeda or the Taliban from the time he took over the Pentagon to the 9/11 attacks." [New York Times, 3/24/04]

First, the Taliban wasn't the issue, cells in the US were, mainly Egyptian that had allready infiltrated. Did Clinton order new security for our airlines? We had not attacked anyone at that point. who was to know they would be so brazenly cowardise against civilians? Their barbarism shocked the world, at least momentarily. Exactly what did you expect? Again, there was no clear target, only the clear threats.

FACT: Ashcroft Refused To Prioritize Anti-Terror Efforts. Before 9/11, Attorney General John Ashcroft had other priorities than fighting terror. According to Newsweek, under Ashcroft, the Justice Department "was being prodded back into its old law-and-order mind-set: violent crime, drugs, child porn...When FBI officials sought to add hundreds more counterintelligence agents, they got shot down even as Ashcroft began, quietly, to take a privately chartered jet for his own security reasons." In the summer of 2001, "acting FBI director [Tom] Pickard asked the Justice Department for some $ 50 million for the bureau's counterterrorism program. He was turned down. In August, a bureau source says, he appealed to Attorney General Ashcroft. The reply was a flat no. Pickard got Ashcroft's letter on Sept. 10." [Newsweek, 5/27/02; Time, 8/12/02, emphasis added]

Do you think that these appropriations would of stopped 9/11?

* FACT: Ashcroft Indifferent To Terror Threat Before 9/11. According to reporting by Newsweek, "at the Justice Department, Attorney General John Ashcroft seemed particularly indifferent to the threat. He brushed off regular briefings on national-security warrants to wiretap terror suspects. When two top antiterror officials flew out to his home in rural Missouri one weekend to get his signature on one such warrant, Ashcroft demanded, 'How come you guys are bothering me out here?' He signed, but didn't even invite them in for a glass of water." [Newsweek, 4/5/04 issue, emphasis added]

Wow, how much Newsweek and the NYT know when our own government doesn't. Doesn't surprise me with Clinton in office while the terrorists made their plans. Of course he signed. So your point? He signed. People used to take the initiative in the old days.