Here's
Milbank and Pincus at the Washington Post:
In a fact sheet released with the PDB, the White House asserted that the document "did not warn of the 9/11 attacks" and noted: "Although the PDB referred to the possibility of hijackings, it did not discuss the possible use of planes as weapons."
The White House also asserted that the PDB "was based largely on background information" and that "there is no information" that the call to the UAE embassy or the surveillance of buildings in New York "was related to the 9/11 attacks."
Ok. The easy one. Obviously, if they'd done anything to address the presidential-briefing level possibility of hijackings--regardless of their purpose in the minds of terrorists, hijackings are things we try to stop--they might have (accidentally) prevented the tragedy they claim is something that never occurred to them, the use of planes as weapons.
This is just the stupidest argument they could possibly put out and try to manipulate as a talking point. Anybody who cannot throw this nonsense right back at them in a highly embarrassing manner is pathetic.
Onward, dear reader. I am also struck by a number of strangely familiar words in the White House fact sheet: "was largely based on
_ [1]
_ information," and "there is no information
_ [2]
_ was related to the 9/11 attacks." This all sounds vaguely familiar (but not frustratingly vaguely familiar).
Of course, [1] conjures up something we've all griped about w.r.t. pre-war intelligence for some time. We substituted "bogus," "cherry-picked," "forged," and so on. When it comes to Bush denouncing his own intelligence, though, he calls it "background." Like that briefing Clarke gave the press--background garbage and spin.
I remind you of something katieforman pointed out here in the PDB Open Thread. From George Tenet's testimony:
"We considered policymakers' questions whether al-Qaida was feeding us this reporting to create panic through disinformation or to test our defenses..."
In other words, the policymakers (Bush administration) requested a briefing because they thought maybe the intelligence was bogus, alarmist, forged, etc. My strong suspicion is that Bush had been getting al-Qaida stuff in the PDB off-and-on all summer and finally asked the CIA to demonstrate (on August 6th) precisely what intelligence was behind those warnings--prove to me that this is something that merits my attention.
Tenet connects the dots: "[W]e concluded that the reports were real."
Bush connects the dots: "You grab a line and I'll grab a pole/And we'll go a-fishin' down the fishin' hole/Honey."
And as for blank [2] above, I'm just happy to hear Bush can find something that has nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. I may have to start calling this "The Saddam PDB," the one that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. (Ah, but did it have anything to do with Saddam?)