I engaged dondo in a comments discussion over James Joyner's post at Outside the Beltway regarding the the no-win situation the Bush administration finds itself in with its opponents regarding the 9/11 attacks and the war on terrorism.
We essentially left off with, in dondo's words, "I don't think the key point of the PDB is that anybody 'could have prevented 9/11' -- that's just politics."
dondo's next point was,
My central criticism around all this is not that 9/11 happened, but that "terrorism" wasn't a particular priority for Bush before it, that afterwards he wrapped himself in it, and that his policies are long term disasters.
Only in retrospect, from our vantage point two and a half years later, can we truly find fault with the Bush administration's level of emphasis on terrorism. Despite Richard Clarke's self-serving comparison of the Clinton and Bush administrations, it seems to me there was no significant difference between the two on this point.
And looking at terrorism through an early 2001 prism instead of a 2004 prism, I don't really have a problem with their levels of emphasis. I don't think you can lay any more blame at the feet of the Bush administration on their approach and emphasis to international terrorism, both state sponsored and non-state sponsored, than you can with the Clinton administration. Those of us outside the intelligence community don't have the knowledge to evaluate if there was enough useful information to justify more aggressive action before the 9/11 attacks, but to all appearances, there wasn't an appreciable increase in useful intelligence for the Bush administration than what was available to the Clinton administration. The PDB certainly doesn't provide much in the way of recent information. While the losses we suffered on 9/11 are truly regrettable, I just don't think it's reasonable to blame a President for failing to prevent them. No one had reason to expect that Islamic terrorists were considering hijacking airliners and flying them into buildings.
I'll pause here to express my contempt for newscasters who try to turn the August 6, 2001 PDB into an indictment of the Bush administration. I watched Alan Colmes do it tonight, and I'll state flat-out right here, he's being intellectually dishonest with that position. For Texans, I'm calling him a liar. Alan's a smart man, and he knows better than that. He's starting from a position and stacks the bits and pieces to support that position, rather than letting the facts fall where they may so that he can discern the truth, or acknowledging the inability to discern the truth based on limited information. Yes, I'm calling Alan Colmes a liar. And merely to be fair and balanced, I'll state here that Sean Hannity is frequently intellectually dishonest, despite his many protestations. Yes, Sean, you're a liar, too. And if you're not a liar, you're unbelievably stupid.
I've covered a lot of stuff here, so I'll pause for responses, if any. Next up: dondo says that Bush's post-9/11 policies are long term disasters. We disagree, and neither of us will convince the other to switch sides, but it should be an interesting discussion.
P.S. Is Susan Estrich really a liberal? I'm watching her on Greta van Susteren's On The Record, and like every other time I've seen her on Fox, she's the most conservative nominal liberal I've ever heard. I'd love to discuss these subjects with her — not that I don't enjoy discussing them with you, too, dondo. :-)
