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Thursday, April 08, 2004

Actual News from the 9/11 Commission As much as Condi-baby lied through her teeth, we actually learned a couple of interesting things from her testimony. First off, the infamous still classified presidential daily briefing that dubya received on August 6, 2001 was entitled "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the United States." While we don't quite know what was in the briefing, former Sen. Bob Kerrey told us that it included information that there were al Qaeda activities "consistent with preparations for hijacking." Makes you wonder what was going through George's 'mind' as Andy Card whispered in his ear on 9/11 that the first plane had hit. You think he really thought the first plane might have been an accident? Was he really that stupid? OK, not a fair question.... Anyhow, what's the entire administration doing on vacation for a month after getting a briefing like that on August 6? No high level meetings. No sense of urgency. No warnings to FBI agents across the country. But a helluva lot of following the dog around, rooting out armadillos. Too bad Spot wasn't the National Security Advisor; maybe we'd have found Osama by now. Unanimously, the 9/11 Commission members – Republicans and Democrats – are calling on the Bush administration to declassify this PDB. We also found out that there was no response to explicit and repeated warnings about al Qaeda attacks. Rice's claim that the FBI sent warnings to field offices was totally refuted by commissioners who said that, after conducting thousands of interviews and reviewing thousands of documents, they concluded that nobody at the FBI recalls any such warnings. She had the frickin' nerve to say, basically, 'Hey, I told these people to do something, I just figured they did it.' Shit, you think maybe you should check up on these people, you stupid twit? Randi Rhodes is right, Condi does look like a reptile (more like a snake, really). Here's an interesting exchange between Bob Kerrey and Condi: KERREY: You said the president was tired of swatting flies. Can you tell me one example where the president swatted a fly when it came to al-Qaida prior to 9-11? RICE: I think what the president was speaking to was ... KERREY: No, no. What fly had he swatted? RICE: Well, the disruptions abroad was what he was really focusing on ... KERREY: No, no ... RICE: ... when the CIA would go after Abu Zubaydah ... KERREY: He hadn't swatted ... RICE: ... or go after this guy ... KERREY: Dr. Rice, we didn't ... RICE: That was what was meant. KERREY: We only swatted a fly once on the 20th of August 1998. We didn't swat any flies afterwards. How the hell could he be tired? RICE: We swatted at - I think he felt that what the agency was doing was going after individual terrorists here and there, and that's what he meant by swatting flies. It was simply a figure of speech. KERREY: Well, I think it's an unfortunate figure of speech because I think, especially after the attack on the Cole on the 12th of October, 2000, it would not have been swatting a fly. It would not have been - we did not need to wait to get a strategic plan. Dick Clarke had in his memo on the 20th of January overt military operations. He turned that memo around in 24 hours, Dr. Clarke. There were a lot of plans in place in the Clinton administration - military plans in the Clinton administration. In fact, since we're in the mood to declassify stuff, there was - he included in his January 25th memo two appendices - Appendix A: Strategy for the elimination of the jihadist threat of al-Qaida; Appendix B: Political military plan for al-Qaida. So I just - why didn't we respond to the Cole? RICE: Well, we ... KERREY: Why didn't we swat that fly? How come, Condi?

posted by pjs 2:10 PM
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