April 11, 2004

How to make a silk purse with nothing more than a PDB
Posted by Jon Henke

The usual suspects are working overtime to make something out of not very much at all. Atrios....

After getting information about possible hijackings in the US, what additional measures did the Bushies implement or at least propose implementing?
Perhaps Atrios didn't have a chance to read the PDB before pontificating. If he had, he'd have known that the FBI was "conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin Ladin-related".

So, perhaps the question should be "what else was the Bush administration doing?" Paul, at WizbangBlog, points out the dead-end to that line of thought. It's worth reading.

Further...

We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a [deleted text] service in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Shaykh" 'Umar' Abd aI-Rahman and other US-held extremists.

Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

The information contained in that PDB dates back to 1998. Why is Atrios only concerned about the actions taken by the Bush administration in response to information we'd had for 3 years?

To put it another way; if Bush should have acted on the information contained in the PDB, why was Clinton any less negligent?

Could it be because - and I'm going way out on a limb here - they just didn't have reliable, actionable intelligence data? If the information the Bush administration saw was actionable - and should have been acted on - then the Clinton administration is just as "negligent" as the Bush administration....but for two years longer.

NOTE: John Cole is equally annoyed at the spin.

TrackBack

Comments

Once again, since the dates on that PDB are 1998, "what additional measures did the CLINTONISTAS implement or at least propose implementing"???????????????????

Posted by: shark at April 11, 2004 05:14 PM

Why do you continue to place blame on Clinton? You make me wonder if you blame him for for the billing errors on your phone bill or the traffic tie ups on your way to work. Anyway, the last time I checked, he wasn't in charge. 9/11 did not occur on his watch. Clinton is a non-issue here. Stop this nonsense -- right now! Your arguments are becoming tiresome and they hold little water. What did Bush do? Nothing more...nothing less. Face it -- embrace it -- and then get really angry at the whole lot of them. Clinton, Bush, Reno, Rice, Berger, Ashcroft, Wolfowitz, Perle, Clarke, Tenet -- the whole bunch of them. They *all* dropped the ball. By God, be angry -- yes, but not just with Clinton. That's too narrow a scope -- and this is bigger than one man. It just is.

Posted by: Becky at April 11, 2004 07:35 PM

Becky ... see my questions posed on another post.

Why aren't THOSE questions being asked? To me they're quite salient.

Blame isn't the point to all this, or isn't supposed to be. As Clarke admits, for all intents and purposes, nothing would have stopped 9/11. Rice points to the fact that only luck could have stopped it as the system in place at the time was incapable of doing so.

But one has to wonder if the Clinton administration had given it the priority its claimed to have given the problem why the "intel" from '97 and '98 didn't produce some "actionable" intelligence?

Posted by: McQ at April 11, 2004 09:31 PM

Sorry Becky, but the PDB containing this info that Bush saw was OLD. At some point, I presume Clinton saw this info when it was CURRENT.

So you dare to come here and fault Bush for not jumping to work on 3 year old intel, but give Clinton a pass for not jumping to work on the intel when IT WAS FRESH??

Also, to your cute claim that 9/11 happened on Bush watch- well, the planning and some of the execution HAPPENED ON CLINTONS WATCH. When bush assumed office, the terrorists were already here. And do you really want me to run down a laundry list of what happened on Clinton's shift?

You blame Bush for 8 months- 8 deadlocked months when he couldn't even get his full staff in place because of confirmation gridlock, and a short transition period, yet 8 years without the action you seem to demand Bush should have taken- that you have nothing to say.

You're a partisian hack.

Posted by: shark at April 11, 2004 10:48 PM

Becky -- do you have a clue to why the World Trade Center did not fall down in 1993? It's because the people who set that bomb didn't know what they were doing. They had all the tools to destroy the place as completely as 2001, and they tried, but they were too stupid to hack the program. Please note: this, too, has nothing to do with that horrible Arkie shitbag who sat in the Oval Office that year. It is the merest chance -- nothing more -- that this did not happen in his term.

And the fact of the matter is that it is quite despicable for anyone to give him a break while beating Bush over the head, which is exactly what the lefties are up to in this country. It's one of the most breath-taking dishonesties I've ever seen, and if you don't see it, I don't know why, but it doesn't matter: you're disqualified from the debate on grounds of ignorance.

Now: are you really that ignorant, or am I wrong?

Posted by: Billy Beck at April 12, 2004 03:07 PM