Monday, October 02, 2006

The memory's the first thing to go

The new Bob Woodward book, "State of Denial", reveals that Condoleeza Rice received urgent warnings of an impending al qaeda attack from the CIA in July 2001. The terrorist "chatter" that intelligence people analyze had been growing increasingly busy over the preceding months, then ominously dropped off in July. From past experience, the CIA understands this to mean an attack is imminent, and they were frantically trying to get someone in the white house to pay attention. At a meeting on July 10, 2 months before the September 11 attacks. the CIA's George Tenet and Cofer Black laid out all the evidence pointing to a major attack in the near future. Rice said she "doesn't recall" the meeting. Of course not.

Knowing the lackadaisical attitude the Bush white house had towards terrorism in early 2001, this doesn't come as a surprise. The fact that the information comes from Bob Woodward gives it added credibility -- Woodward is not known for his assassination pieces on the Bush administration, anything but. His books "Bush at War" and "Plan of Attack" were two of the most sycophantic pieces of crap I've ever read. That's why, as a writer, Woodward has such incredible reach into the white house; he's on the team. Or was.

Democrats, attention please. Here's one more thing to add to the election campaign hopper, the theme of which will be: "They Didn't Try".