In case you missed it, Knoller defends the press against Bill Moyers devastating documentary. After a blogswarm, he put us critics up to a challenge: what would we have asked at the time? Well, check out this column by Eric Alterman on Oct. 7, 2002, entitled "Just Asking" ( http://www.thenation.com/... ) in which he some questions he wished the cowed news media would ask. Some choice questions:
This article can be found on the web at
http://www.thenation.com/...
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Stop the Presses by Eric Alterman
Just Asking...
As a patriotic American, I'd like to offer up a few questions to which we might like answers related to the attacks of September 11, the war against Al Qaeda (which I support) and the proposed war against Iraq (which I don't). In addition to my own research, I have relied on recent reports by Patrick Tyler and Jim Dwyer of the New York Times, Robert Kaiser of the Washington Post, Eric Boehlert of Salon and Juan Gonzalez, author of the new book Fallout. Here goes:
Why did the Bush national security team ignore the Al Qaeda briefing it received from President Clinton's National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger, in the fall of 2000?
Why did the President ignore the August 2001 intelligence briefing warning him of the likelihood of an Al Qaeda hijacking?
Why, in August 2000, was the FBI unable to locate Al Qaeda operatives Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaq al-Hazmi, both of whom had been placed at a terrorist planning meeting by Malaysian intelligence in December 1999?