On August 6, 2001, while on vacation in Crawford, Texas, President George W. Bush received a confidential memorandum entitled:
"Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.".
One part of this memo stated:
"FBI information ... indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York."
Keep reading, please:
This was the 36th Presidential Daily Brief in less than 9 months related to bin Laden and al-Qaeda. The President's reaction to this stunning (and clearly growing) threat?
According to the 9/11 Commission:
We have found no indication of any further discussion before September 11 among the President and his top advisers of the possibility of a threat of an al Qaeda attack in the United States.
What happened in response to these briefings? NOTHING. No warnings were issued; no high-level meetings convened; no Presidential-level attention was given to the impending threat of an attack by Osama bin Laden. And on September 11, 2001, America was attacked.
Now, on March 19, 2005, President Bush is once again on vacation in Crawford, Texas.
Reuters reports:
President George W. Bush is cutting short his Texas vacation to return to Washington in hopes of signing a bill aimed at restoring a feeding tube to Terri Schiavo in the Florida right-to-die case, the White House said on Saturday.
Apparently the man has priorities, and SOME things are important enough to interrupt a vacation for. "Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S." just wasn't one of them.
I'm not suggesting that Bush wanted people to die on 9/11 -- clearly he did not, and the suggestion itself is abhorrent -- but the contrast between his actions then and now shows clearly two things: that his judgement is severely lacking (and in fact makes us less safe), and that politics is ALWAYS more important than policy in the Bush Administration.
I know YOU, dear reader, already know all this ... but doesn't it seem like one of these days, the rest of our countrymen (and women) will have to compare two situations like these, and see that the emperor has no clothes?