Conason: Bush* Must Explain Why Washington Slept

[kskiska]

Although the final report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States won’t be completed until this summer, its interim reports and public hearings have already revealed why the White House feared an independent investigation. The portrait of the Bush administration that is emerging in testimony and documents is unflattering, to say the least; it is the picture of an incompetent but arrogant group that ignored repeated, emphatic warnings.

Unfortunately, almost everyone had "other priorities"—to borrow a phrase immortalized by Dick Cheney—during the first 233 days of the Bush administration.

During much of his first year as President, George W. Bush was, literally and figuratively, on vacation. (The years that followed have not been much different.) Prior to September 2001, he spent 54 days at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., 38 days at Camp David, and a four-day weekend at the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, Me., which works out to slightly more than 40 percent of his time. He was on a month-long retreat in Crawford on Aug. 6, 2001, when he received his daily briefing from C.I.A. director George Tenet. In obvious deference to Mr. Bush’s attention deficit, the C.I.A. chief delivered a very brief document—less than 20 sentences in total—whose message was its now-famous headline: "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in U.S."

(snip)

In accordance with the blustering attitude always favored by the Bush White House, Mr. Ashcroft kept calling himself "tough" during his appearance before the 9/11 commission. Then he tried to shift blame to his predecessors and to former President Bill Clinton.

more…
http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/conason.asp

[apnu]

1. My take on this is..

... America has a culture of sleeping until someone sets fire to our pants. We did it when the warning signs of civil war were smacking us around in the 1840's and 1850's. We did it again in WWI and WWII.

Its what our culture does, ignore a festering problem until it can't be ignored. And 9/11 is a direct result of our habit of ignoring problems until there's no way we can continue to ignore them. Our defenses against hijacking were dismal at best, our WH was apathetic to anything but lining their own pockets, and everybody else was watching Survivor and the Sopranos (and I like that show!)

We, as a nation, ignored civil rights in the South for decades, and we ignored Gulf War Syndrome, and AIDS in the 80's... Stuff like this is rife in our history and "character" There's a reason we were known as the "Sleeping Giant" in the 1940's -- and I don't believe it was a mark of respect that our school history books say it is.

There have always been elements in our culture that don't sleep and scream at the moon when the warning signs slip over our necks like a noose, but the majority of the nation ignores them. They are dismissed as "wackos", "nuts", and "reactionaries"

So if * won't explain it, then try my explanation out while you're waiting for the mold to go away.

[cap]

2. how can you be at "battlestations" when you are on vacation?

eom

[jbfam4]

3. thanks for posting

Joe is on point once again.

"Like Mr. Ashcroft, the administration has taken an unapologetic stance: to change the subject, to filibuster the hard questions, to feign toughness and to portray all critics as unreasonable partisans. The administration’s principal argument seems to be that the attacks of Sept. 11 could not have been prevented because there was no specific warning about when, where and by what means Al Qaeda’s assassins planned to strike. "

[donhakman]

4. Aug pic