The C.I.A. Report

[cal04]

The C.I.A. inspector general’s report on the agency’s failures before Sept. 11 was devastating — but not because it showed that America’s spies missed the rise of Al Qaeda. George Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, rang the Qaeda alarm. He sent a memo to the entire intelligence community saying that he wanted no effort spared in the “war” with Osama bin Laden. He took on the president’s closest advisers to agitate for a strike on a Qaeda base in Afghanistan.

The disturbing thing was that this all happened under President Bill Clinton. When George W. Bush won the White House, Mr. Tenet seems to have shifted his priorities. The C.I.A. chief suddenly seemed consumed with hanging on to his job (through such innovative antiterrorism measures as naming the C.I.A.’s Langley, Va., headquarters for Mr. Bush’s father).

(snip)
Americans still don’t have the full story of how Mr. Bush hustled them into a war in which United States soldiers are trapped without hope of victory. Congress has rushed to pass profoundly dangerous changes to the constitutional fabric — the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, recent changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — without real deliberation.

(snip)
The good news is that Senator Jay Rockefeller, Democrat of West Virginia, now runs the Senate Intelligence Committee, and he forced the release of this report. He also is pushing the committee to finally finish its investigation into the creation of the myth of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

This is not about plowing old ground. Ignoring the mistakes of the past dooms a nation to repeat them. Just look at the comparison Mr. Bush drew yesterday between Iraq and Vietnam. The only lesson he found in the nation’s last foreign quagmire of a war was that it ended too quickly.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/23/opinion/23thu1.html

[napi21]

1. Yes he sounded the allert under BC, and if you recall, the CIA,

Richard Clark, AND BS told Shrub Al Qaida was their biggest threat! Unfortunately, Shrub and his crowd hated Clinton so much, they were determined to ignore ANYTHING he and his admin said!


THAT's the real reason 9/11 happened! Nobody was paying any attention because it was some BS from BC and they figured it was all stupid!