Bush's Counterterrorism Record: 0 for 1

[DeepModem Mom]

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Thursday, December 18, 2008

Has President Bush kept America safe? The only conclusion supported by the facts at our disposal is no.

Bush yesterday tried once again to take credit for the absence of a major terrorist attack since Sept. 11, 2001. "While there's room for honest and healthy debate about the decisions I've made -- and there's plenty of debate -- there can be no debate about the results in keeping America safe," he said. Listing four allegedly averted terror plots, he intoned: "We'll never know how many lives have been saved." But Bush has yet to offer verifiable evidence that he's done anything to save even a single life. And there's no reason to believe the so-called plots he trumpeted yesterday were ever anything more than fantasy.

Indeed, when it comes to terrorist attacks on this country, the only one we know much about is the one that Bush did not prevent.

In the initial aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, as the nation rallied behind its leader, there was little appetite for exploration into whether Bush could have done more to avert the destruction. But over time, it has emerged that he willfully ignored any number of warning signs, and that he certainly could have taken more proactive steps against the known threat that al Qaeda presented. So much so, that any retrospective of Bush's terror policies should start with what now appears to have been a significant failure on his part.

Exhibit A in the case against Bush here, of course, is the infamous memo. The president spent a month in Crawford shortly before the Sept. 11 attacks, when critics say he should have been more attentive to warning signs. And during the first week of that vacation, he waved off a memo drafted specifically for him, vividly titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US." The memo warned of "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks." But according to author Ron Suskind, Bush heard his CIA briefer out -- then told him, "All right. You've covered your ass, now."...

And Dana Priest wrote in The Washington Post in April 2004: "By the time a CIA briefer gave President Bush the Aug. 6, 2001, President's Daily Brief headlined 'Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US,' the president had seen a stream of alarming reports on al Qaeda's intentions. So had Vice President Cheney and Bush's top national security team, according to newly declassified information released . . . by the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks....

Back in September 2006, former President Bill Clinton revived charges that Bush didn't take the threat of terrorism seriously enough before Sept. 11.

Clinton told Chris Wallace of Fox News that he came "closer to killing" Osama bin Laden in a 1998 missile strike on terrorist training camps in Afghanistan than anybody has since. "I didn't get him," Clinton said. "But at least I tried. That's the difference in me and some, including all the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try. They did not try. I tried. So I tried and failed. When I failed, I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy and the best guy in the country, Dick Clarke, who got demoted."...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/12/18/BL2008121802193_pf.html

[Orsino]

1. Pssst. Dan. We know about more than one.

Try again.