ABC movie shows incompetent Bush Administration

Clinton and progressives should value the movie “Path to 9-11”. Albright and Sandy Berger get spanked (deservedly so?) but Rice and the Bush Administration get blistered.
The bombing of the USS Cole took place only two months before the Bush/Gore election and there were a number of legitimate reasons for no Clinton retaliation during that time…but what was Bush’s excuse? Fixation on other priorities or incompetence comes to mind. (I can see where conspiratorialists get their ammunition).
Bush team took Richard Clarke, one of our nation’s best Al Qaeda experts,
off Bin Laden’s case months before 9-11. What were they thinking? I’m
guessing they thought ‘terrorism wasn’t a big deal and missile defense needed more attention.’ Were they ever wrong. Murderously wrong!
Hindsight is nice but how many warnings of terrorists plans to hijack airliners, threats against US targets in NY and DC, and FBI reports of Islamic immigrants taking flying lessons are needed before an Administration takes at least some defensive actions? A simple thing like putting US air defenses on high alert during a time when our counter terrorist “threat matrix was overloaded” as it was in August and early September might have
been useful. What were they thinking? Conspiratorialists don’t believe
anyone could be that stupid. Maybe they can.
The famous August 6th “Bin Laden determined to attack within the US” PDB with the mention of “hijackings” should have at least sparked an advanced policy for “rules of engagement” regarding hijacked airliners. What were they thinking? That we were just too big and bad for anyone to try such a thing. Where they ever wrong. Lethally wrong!
So regarding the upcoming elections…Which party is best at protecting U.S.
national security? Democrats may be weak on funding traditional ‘defense’
systems but they weren’t all that useful on 9-11. In fact it was average citizen’s on Flight 93 armed only with their bare hands, courage, their wit and key information that brought us our first ‘victory’ against religious extremist mass murderers.
Remember. The first attack by Al Qaeda on US soil was under Clinton’s watch in 1993 but there wasn’t another domestic attack for 8 years. And that came
during the Bush Administration. It has only been 5 years since 9-11. Bush
can claim credit for stopping at least half a dozen planned terrorist attacks against the US in the last year alone, but there weren’t that may attempts during the Clinton Administration. Why have terrorist attack plans
against the US increased under Bush’s watch? Even some home grown
attempts.
ABC deserves awards for this program. I was expecting the worst but found the movie to be one of the best docudrama’s I’ve seen. There is no doubt that religious extremists threaten the security of our nation. The only thing we need to do is figure out which religious extremists are the greater threat. Islamic or Christian?
(For additional anti-Bush documentation from the first evening see blog
below.)