Other, far wiser heads than
Other, far wiser heads than I weigh in on the "Bush Knew" nonstory. See Sullivan today, John Ellis yesterday (reference lifted from Sullivan). And, oh--Donald Rumsfeld. He's usually got some insight into this sort of thing:
"There's always been concerns about hijacking. That's been true for months and years as a possibility. Apparently the intelligence community, our intelligence community, the country's, did not have sufficient granularity to issue any specific warning. But I should say that through the spring and summer there was a great deal of threat reporting indicating on a variety of different things all over the world, but without any specificity as to what might happen."
'Nuff said. As far as it being "Clinton's fault," (see yesterday), Sullivan made roughly the same point as I did (with more finesse and less profanity): the man has an eight-year record of failing to properly assess the gravity of the al-Qaeda threat. Bush ordered a review of that situation and of our security posture, which was nearing completion on 9/11. That's more than Clinton did during his terms which (as mentioned) included eight years' worth of situation reports, five outright assaults on American military, civilian, and diplomatic targets, and an offer to extradite the man responsible for some of those attacks and, eventually, the 9/11 attacks.
