A Tale of Two Administrations

MANIFESTO

While I'm certainly not happy with the "systemic failure" evinced by federal security forces during Christmas day's bombing attempt (and the concomitant repercussions; i.e., TSA screws up and it's airline passengers who must pay the price), I suppose I can take a certain consolation in the fact that this administration is facing up to this situation a lot differently than its predecessor regarding the 9/11 fiasco did.

Viz.,

On July 10, 2001, two months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet met with his counterterrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, at CIA headquarters to review the latest on Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist organization. Black laid out the case, consisting of communications intercepts and other top-secret intelligence showing the increasing likelihood that al-Qaeda would soon attack the United States. The mass of fragments made a compelling case, so compelling to Tenet that he decided he and Black should go to the White House immediately. Tenet called Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser, from the car and said he needed to see her right away ...

[During the meeting] Tenet and Black felt they were not getting through to Rice. She was polite, but they felt the brush-off. President Bush had said he didn't want to swat at flies.

Of course, when this meeting (and the more important August 6 memorandum) became publicized, Rice made the risible claim that the Bushies were not aware that planes might be used in an attack on the US. Moreover, she claimed that warnings the Bush Administration had received regarding the possibility of an attack weren't specific enough to warrant moving "heaven and earth to stop it."

Needless to say, in light of the fact that Gorgeous George asserted he'd made no mistakes in the first half of his administration, the Obamans' admission that

bits and pieces of information were in the possession of the U.S. government in advance . . . that, had they been assessed and correlated, could have led to a much broader picture and allowed us to disrupt the attack

while discomfiting, is at least appreciably more forthright than the Bushies' nonsensical contention that they could have done nothing to prevent 9/11.