earthmann

A quick look at Rice’s NYT op-ed:

“The seriousness of the threat was well understood by the president…”
Not true: Bush said, "I knew he was a menace and I knew he was a problem," Bush said of Osama bin Laden in a Dec. 20 interview with The Washington Post. "I was prepared to look at a plan that would be a thoughtful plan that would bring him to justice, and would have given the order to do that. I have no hesitancy about going after him. But I didn't feel that sense of urgency."

“We committed more funding to counterterrorism [before 9-11]…”

Not true: Internal FBI budget records clearly slashed the funding for counterterrorism. As late as 10-12-01 Ashcroft refused to allot money for the 75% of the FBI’s budgetary requests. When Ashcroft inherited the Justice Departments, the agency, per Reno’s order, held counterterrorism as the highest priority. In all of Ashcroft’s directives pre-911, counterterrorism wasn’t to be considered one the “top seven priorities.”


“We pushed hard to arm the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle so we could target terrorists with greater precision.”

Not true: At the end of Clinton’s term, Bin Laden had been located three times in Afghanistan, plans were held until the presidency could be passed to Bush. Bush ordered the cruise ship that waited with cruise missiles to “stand down.” Instead, an armed Drone would take him out. This effort to take him out was thwarted by interagency quibbling over mission leadership. Bin Laden played in the gun sights, while the administration tried to decide who gets to pull trigger. The White House denies these accounts, claiming the technology to outfit a Drone wasn’t fully operable. However, armed Drones were deployed on 9-12-01 to patrol the U.S. borders.