John Hawkins of Righ…
John Hawkins of Right-Wing News has distilled Condi’s testimony before the 9/11 Commission into a good group of quotes. They cover everything from my favorite “And as I said, they have to be right once; we have to be right 100 percent of the time”, to the real “plan” given to the Bush administration from Clinton, to a few reality checks with regard to Richard Clarke, to credit where credit is due in the Customs Department, to where we go from here. Bookmark this for the future, when folks (continue to) suggest that Clinton did more against terrorism than Bush has.

Speaking of which, Hawkins also has a link to a Gregg Easterbrook column that says far better that I have before what would have happened if Bush had truly done what it would have taken to fight terrorism in a pre-9/11 mentality. It’s a potential alternate history of what would have happened had those 19 hijackers been apprehended before they could carry out their plans, especially in light of what Condi has said about the intelligence reports before 9/11. A quick excerpt:

Bush justified his attack on Afghanistan, and the detention of 19 men of Arab descent who had entered the country legally, on grounds of intelligence reports suggesting an imminent, devastating attack on the United States. But no such attack ever occurred, leading to widespread ridicule of Bush’s claims. Speaking before a special commission created by Congress to investigate Bush’s anti-terrorism actions, former national security adviser Rice shocked and horrified listeners when she admitted, “We had no actionable warnings of any specific threat, just good reason to believe something really bad was about to happen.”

It starts out with Cheney being sworn in as the 44th president following Bush’s impeachment. Before you charge Bush with being a “cowboy” or not doing enough against terror back then, consider what the country would have thought about what it really would have taken to prevent 9/11.

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